Making Waves (2 page)

“You're going to ruin your supper, honey,” I said to him, sounding ill as a hornet. I was still tense from my conversation with the Floyds, still dreading going to the funeral home. I especially didn't want to go once I'd seen Tim sitting there in his jeans, shirt off, wolfing down that pie. He has the most gorgeous body, in spite of the scars and the lame arm—lean and tanned and muscular. Sometimes I just can't keep my hands off of him, even after two years of marriage.

Tim looked up in surprise at my ill-sounding voice. “Where you fixing to go?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. I was still standing just inside the door, with the roller bag in one hand and my purse in the other.

“I got to go to the funeral home.” I didn't know why, but suddenly I didn't want to tell Tim what I had to do.

“You going right now? It's almost supper time.” 'Course he'd be worried about his supper.

“I'll be back in plenty of time. Thought I'd fry that fish you caught Sunday.”

Tim stuffed a piece of pie in his mouth and talked with his mouth full. “I'm gonna go to the field in a little while and watch football practice.”

“Again?” was all I could say. My stomach sank, though. Oh, Lord, not again!

“Coach asked me to. He's starting Tommy at quarterback against County High.”

Tim pushed back the hair that was always falling across his forehead, white-blond hair a girl would kill for. You can't duplicate that color with Clairol. I had to turn my back to keep from going to him, going and putting my hands into that soft sweet hair of his. Lord, Lord—after two years!

“What you going to the funeral home for?” Tim asked, reaching into the box for another piece of pie.

Since I never lie to him, I just said, “Miss Maudie died.”

“Oh, yeah—I heard that. She was a sweet old thing, wasn't she? She always liked me a lot for some reason.”

I nodded, smiling. “She was especially nice to us after the accident. She called me not too long ago from the nursing home, just to see how you were doing.” We both fell silent a minute, remembering, then I reached for the door.

“Well, I got to go on.” I called back to him as I went out the door and down the back steps, “Why don't you go ahead and clean the fish, get them all ready before you leave?”

I got quickly into my car and cranked it up. It was hot as hell, suffocating hot, even though I parked under a shade tree. I swear I hate summer worse than anything! I can't wait for fall and cooler weather, though half the time in west Alabama it's November before it comes. I pulled the car out onto the Columbus Highway and the air-conditioning kicked in, making me feel a little better.

Zion Funeral Home is only three miles out from town, on the four-lane highway to Columbus, Mississippi. It stands alone in a grassy field, nothing else around. Across the highway Robby Burkhalter's turned an old Shell station into a tacky video rental store, but other than that, the funeral home looks kind of funny all by itself with only a few scraggly pine trees nearby.

It's not a pretty building: flat-roofed and red brick, with white columns and a gravel driveway in front, big floodlights on the funeral home sign, even in the daytime. It has never been named anything nice and comforting either, like Heavenly Rest or Beyond the Sunset. Just plain old Zion Funeral Home.

I like the funeral home in Columbus—a big old house that use to be an antebellum mansion. When I was at the technical college in Columbus, taking my beauty course, my instructor's husband died and we all went to the funeral home to pay our respects. Lord, was it something! The house itself looked like Miss Melanie's in
Gone With the Wind
. They had a little bitty brass sign out front, otherwise you'd never have known it was a funeral home at all. Inside you couldn't tell it, either. There were real flowers, not silk, in big oriental-looking vases in the foyer, and everything was decorated in shades of rose and dark green.

Best of all were the rooms they put folks in for the laying out. They were real personal-like, with nice furnishings and antiques. Even the Kleenex boxes were in fancy cross-stitched holders. It made you think you were there for a friendly visit instead of in a set-up room with a coffin in the middle. I sure liked it better than Zion Funeral Home. Made a body not mind being laid out in a setting like that.

I pulled the car into the driveway and started to circle the building, going around back like Miss Mary Frances told me to. Next to the funeral home was a brand-new graveyard, but only about ten people were buried there. It's mainly for drifters or Yankees or people who move into town with no family in Zion County. Everyone else's buried in Clarksville on the hill, in the big shady cemetery in the old section of town. There, everybody has tombstones. Here all the poor things have are little markers with their last names on them. In front of each one's a plastic wreath of red roses or white lilies, not azalea bushes and things like folks plant by the graves in Clarksville Cemetery. Why, when Miss Dorothy Davis died, her daughters dug up her whole flower garden and planted her azaleas, gardenias, and rose bushes all around the plot. Folks claim you can see Miss Dorothy there among them like she always was in life.

I parked right next to the hearse. That thing gave me the creeps every time I saw it, but there was no other place to park. Miss Mary Frances's big black Lincoln Continental was taking up the rest of the space. The only other thing in back was a cotton field, and I couldn't park out there.

I grabbed my purse and the roller bag and jumped out of the car, being careful not to look at the big white hearse as I walked to the back door.

The door opened when I got to it and I jumped, startled. However, it was just Miss Mary Frances, standing there holding the back door open for me.

“Donnette, honey, come in this way,” she whispered to me. Now why on earth she was whispering, I couldn't imagine. Daddy always said none of the Clark women had the sense God promised a billy goat.

“I brought my rollers and things with me, Miss Mary Frances,” I told her as I went through the door she was holding open for me. And lo and behold, there I was whispering too! I guess something about this place made you want to be real quiet.

Mary Frances Floyd stood and looked at me carefully after she let me into the little hall, I reckon deciding if I was really going to do this. I just stood there like an idiot and stared back at her, blinking my eyes in the darkness of the hallway. Miss Mary Frances's a tall, big-bosomed woman in her sixties, with the Clarks' sharp blue eyes behind silver-framed glasses, making her look kind of bug-eyed. Her hair's about all gray so Aunt Essie colored it Precious Platinum and pulled it in a stiff French twist, the way she's worn it for years. As befitting a Clark, even for ever-day wear Miss Mary Frances dressed fit to kill, and today was no exception. Her dress was a pretty shade of aqua, and she had on lots of aqua eyeshadow to match, magnified by her glasses. I'd have to find a polite way of telling her that at her age she shouldn't be wearing frosted eyeshadow—it shows up every line. A muted earth tone would be better.

“Come on, sugar,” she said to me finally, grabbing my arm. “Miss Maudie's back here. She's the only one here now.”

She turned down the hallway and I followed close behind her. It was dark except for little globe lamps on the wall, the hall papered with really dreary, dark wallpaper. I didn't like this place one bit.

Miss Mary Frances stopped before a closed door that had a small brass sign on it:
KEEP OUT
. She turned to me before opening the door.

“Donnette, the hardest thing is to wash the hair. Usually we use a dry shampoo unless they've been sick a long time and it's too dirty for that. Since it's your first time, I went ahead and washed her hair for you, but next time that will be part of it, you understand.”

She opened the door and took my arm again, feeling that I needed to be pulled in, I guess.

The room was bigger than I expected and very cold, cold as a refrigerator. I glanced around quickly and noticed that it looked like a doctor's office, with examination tables, big hanging lights, and lots of strange-looking equipment. I wouldn't look at any of that equipment, turning my eyes away soon as I saw strange hoses and things hanging above one of the tables. Instead I stared at the aqua-silk back of Mary Frances's dress. Oh, God, the room smelled funny! Unless that was Miss Mary Frances's perfume.

Miss Mary Frances stopped right in front of me as she led me toward the back of the room, and I almost ran into her.

“Also, honey,” she said to me in her loud whisper, “I did you another favor, too. Since Miss Maudie's hair's so thick and would take so long to dry, I went ahead and set it for you, too. I told you I'd help you since it was your first. I do believe it looks real natural the way I fixed it.”

As she said this to me, Miss Mary Frances moved out of my way.

Right in front of me, on a long metal table, was Miss Maudie. I was so completely startled that I just stared down at her. Then I caught my breath and let it out real slow, relieved.

Oh, my God, it wasn't Miss Maudie after all! It was some horrible dummy they'd made to look like her. It didn't even look that much like her, but instead was a small, shriveled old dummy, way too little to be Miss Maudie. Though her eyes were closed, her white lifeless face was slack and her jaw sagged, making her mouth hang partly open. They'd dressed her boney shrunken body in a navy blue dress, with white lace at the collar and cuffs, like something Miss Maudie would wear. And Miss Maudie's cameo, the one she'd never go without, was pinned ever so neatly at the neck. But she looked funny all dressed up, because she had no shoes on. The dummy had no shoes or stockings on—she was barefooted! The neat dark dress was way too long for her, and I started to laugh. Her little wax feet looked so silly, sticking out at the bottom of her dress. I started to laugh real loud, and Miss Mary Frances grabbed my arm, hard.

“Donnette—,” she gasped. “What on earth—?”

I dropped the roller bag and my hand flew up to my mouth to try and stop the laughter. I saw then that all around the shrunken wax face was pincurls, held in place with little plastic clips. Miss Mary Frances had fixed up the dummy of Miss Maudie with thick white pincurls.

“
No, no,
” I cried. “That ain't right—
no
, Miss Mary Frances!”

I couldn't help myself, causing Miss Mary Frances to grab both my arms even harder.

“Oh, honey, I know, I know,” she crooned. “But the poor thing is better off—”

“No, ma'am—that's
not
Miss Maudie—what have you done with her?”

I was crying for good now, tears rolling down my cheeks. So that was what funeral homes did—replaced people with wax dummies made to look like them, laid out in coffins. Now I knew why dead people always looked so unreal.

Miss Mary Frances was about to panic, I could tell. “Donnette, stop this—you are hysterical—let me get you out of here!” She tried to pull me closer to her, but I pushed away and stared at her.

“If y'all are going to fix her up to look like Miss Maudie, the least you can do is get her right.” I sobbed loudly, no longer remembering to whisper.

Miss Mary Frances dropped my arms and stepped back, looking at me as though I'd lost my mind. “What in God's name—” was all she could say.

Still sobbing, I turned back to look at the dummy again. Very slowly and carefully, I stepped over to her.

Bending down, I forced myself to look at the dummy of Miss Maudie, staring at the colorless waxen face. The snow-white hair of big fat curls held in place with pink and blue clips was a glaring contrast to the dummy face. I made myself stop sobbing by taking deep breaths as I stared down at it. Then, reaching out with trembling hands, I touched the pincurled hair gingerly. Still damp.

“Miss Mary Frances?” My voice was trembling so much I could barely hear it myself. Miss Mary Frances leaned closer to me so she could catch what I said. “Could I have some water, please?”

Miss Mary Frances looked paler than Miss Maudie. “Water, hell! I'm going to get you and me both a shot of whiskey. Cleve always keeps some back here.”

I couldn't help it, that really made me laugh. Maybe I
was
hysterical after all. “No, ma'am—I don't want to drink it. I need to wet Miss Maudie's hair again.”

Miss Mary Frances stared at me, but she turned quickly and went over to a sink in the back of the room where I heard water running. I took another deep breath and began to pull myself together. Reaching down below the table, I picked the roller bag up off the floor.

With shaking hands, I took a comb and began to comb through the dummy's thick white curls after I yanked the plastic clips out. Miss Mary Frances came up beside me then and quietly handed me the glass of water.

I dipped the comb down in the water glass and combed through the hair to wet it, being real careful to look only at the hair and not at the white wax face. Miss Mary Frances then pushed a stool up for me, and I sank down gratefully. It was only after I sat down that I realized how badly shaken I was. My hand shook so hard that drops of water fell from the comb, splattering on the metal table.