Family Linen (14 page)

And as for her, Don says she's the wild card in his deck. He never meant for it to happen, or to continue. Candy believes this. Often, they'll go months, or years, between. It's up to him. She's here. And it has suited her, too, since she doesn't want a regular man—Candy likes men, but she doesn't want one. She's beyond making plans, or fixing up the house, or asking somebody what they think about something in the paper. She knows that's what most people want. But not her. She knows what it can be, after all. And she and Don are like an old pair of shoes, real comfortable, back in the closet. Don's different here. Here, he says, he lets down his hair. He doesn't have to get ahead in the world, or figure anything out.

“Candy, Candy,” he said.

She had her slip on. She came back up behind him and put her arm around his stomach. Don used to be real skinny, in high school. Then he got sort of heavy. Now he's real trim, he runs three miles a day. Myrtle goes to Total Woman health spa, but Candy doesn't do a thing. She's too busy working, that's a fact. Plus she really doesn't care.

“Every time somebody dies, I feel like they're dying twice,” Don said. “When Verner died, it almost killed me, because it made me miss my own father. I guess because I never knew him. It was like two deaths. And now it's the same way with Miss Elizabeth. It makes me miss what I didn't have, kind of like the way they say a leg still aches when it's been cut off.”

“Hush, Don,” Candy said. She has yet to meet a man who didn't try to talk too much. And Don is into this—relating, he calls it. Expressing his feelings.

Her own feelings went like this—in about ten minutes she had to go over to the funeral home and fix her mother's hair and makeup so she could lie in her coffin looking good until they buried her, the next day. The coffin cost fourteen hundred dollars, paid for by Dr. Don. Candy planned to put a White Mink rinse on Miss Elizabeth's hair, to tone down the yellow. And hugging Don from behind, she thought, I wouldn't mind it, you know, right now. There's a link between somebody dying and this. But we both know better, we know what's right. Don finished his drink and straightened his tie, and kissed her. It was businesslike. He was on his way home, and nervous.

Candy was a little nervous too. She kept trying things on, deciding what to wear. This was not like her. I'll have to see people at the funeral home, she was thinking. She couldn't just wear what she usually did, a smock and slacks, or a uniform. Finally she put on a pale blue pants suit.

She parked between two hearses in the back, and Mr. Gurney Fletcher let her in. Gurney Fletcher is a big man, maybe two fifty, two sixty, with fat red cheeks. Every Christmas, he's Santa in the Shriners Parade. The children in town all say he looks like a pig, and he does. Gurney Fletcher, Jr., Little Gurney, who is Tony's age and played on the junior-high football team with him, is just as bad. He used to sit at Candy's kitchen table, eating peanut-butter-and-marshmallow-creme sandwiches. Little Gurney stood right behind his daddy, both of them sweating, wearing suits.

“Hello, Mrs. Snipes,” Little Gurney said. He's already losing his hair.

“Come in, Candy honey,” said Gurney Fletcher.

Candy had been there, before. She had fixed up old Tyler Balsam, and Mrs. Clarence Wampler, and Janette Little who died in a wreck by the Chicken Bridge. The boy who was driving, Hugh Roberts, never got over it. Janette Little was real hard to do, but it meant a lot to her mother, who has been one of Candy's ladies for years. The saddest one she ever did was Juanita and Ted Sizemore's little girl who was born with a hole in her heart. Why does this stuff happen? you ask yourself. The answer is, you don't know.

Miss Elizabeth was wearing her gray voile dress with the white lace collar and cuffs, which Lacy and Myrtle had picked out. The dress had a spray of silk violets at the collar. Her hands were folded on the little white Bible she kept by her bed. That was a real nice touch, Candy thought, but she'd have to work on her nails. They had asked the Fletchers to put stockings and shoes on her too, even though she'd be covered from the waist on down. It didn't seem right not to, although Gurney had told them that most people don't have it done. Somebody was singing “Mister Sandman” on Gurney Fletcher's FM radio.

“Well, what do you think?” Gurney said.

Candy reached over and took off her mother's glasses. She looked funny without them, blank and soft, old. After a woman reaches a certain age, you can tell what she's like by the lines on her face. Miss Elizabeth's face looked sad in death, and sweet. Not angry, or mean—Candy has seen that, too. Just soft and sad and kind of worn out. It's hard to be a good woman. “You all have done a real good job, Gurney,” she said.

And it was neat as a pin in that back room where they worked. He had her coffin on a kind of a little cart, wheeled over to a table where Candy could spread out her stuff, which she did. Gurney and Little Gurney and their assistant, Ralph Joiner, stood back and talked about fishing while she worked, to put her at her ease. Candy had known what to bring, but she hadn't known what to expect. About her mother, that is. The main thing was the thing which is always true and which you always tend to forget. Miss Elizabeth was dead. Her spirit was gone. Her flesh was flesh, like it all is, only a little bit more like modeling clay. You could make, and Candy did, a bit of a smile, the way for instance Miss Elizabeth might have smiled to glance down and see a flower in her yard.

Candy covered up her face and got to work. She used the dry shampoo, then a little White Mink to dull out the yellow, then she sprayed on Redken Airset and blew it dry. Then she set her magnetic rollers, as usual, thinking that hair is a funny thing—it's not like flesh. It doesn't change in death. It's the most vital organ of the body by a long shot. It's the most responsive. You can damage hair any way you want and it will still come back as healthy as it ever was. It will grow after death. It's one of the great mysteries. Along with death. Candy has always been good with hair. And sometimes she thinks she was born knowing all about death, too, which might be why she's lived like she has. She took the rollers out, took the towel off, and combed her out around the face and at the crown and the sides, where people could see, and then sprayed her. She did her nails, Dusty Mauve, and cleaned her glasses, and did her makeup. She put her glasses back on. The radio was playing Willie Nelson, “Georgia on My Mind.” By then Candy's hands were shaking. Gurney was telling Ralph Joiner about a sand shark he caught one time at Myrtle Beach. Candy was glad they were in there.

Then Gurney came over and did a better job of folding her hands on the Bible, intertwining her fingers. The Dusty Mauve looked real pretty. He said he'd take off her rings right before he closed the coffin, and give them to the family. He said he always did that.

“She looks real nice,” he said. “Most people put too much blush on. They think it makes them look more alive but it don't,” he said.

Candy said, “No.”

She could hear people already coming in the front. They had switched the radio to religious. She could smell the flowers. Miss Elizabeth was a lady, and she looked like a lady in death. She had lived, Candy reckoned. She had had children, she had felt things, thought things, she had died. She had loved one man, and another man had loved her. It's hard to say which of those conditions is better, or worse. Sometimes, neither one of them happens. That's probably the worst. Candy knows—she's heard it all. But Mother had had a life. And as for God, what she believed in, Candy couldn't tell you. She's not the type to say a word about God. Mother looked peaceful, at rest, the way you're supposed to. Not all of them do. While she was alive, she was worried so much of the time—about money, about what people would think, about her children. Miss Elizabeth and Candy never saw eye to eye. They were natural strangers. They couldn't help it. Candy has turned out different from what her mother hoped. There was a time when Candy had to get out, to get away, or she would have died.
Died
. There were other times, too. Well. Candy thinks back on those times now and it seems crazy how upset she was, it seems like another person. But it was her. Candy used to get so upset, she used to hate Miss Elizabeth. She took off her mother's glasses and put a little silver liner right along the lashline. She was certainly a lady, you know she couldn't have killed Jewell Rife, no matter what Sybill thinks she saw. Sybill is crazy anyway, it's just like her to try and spoil everything. Don told Sybill he would deal with it in due time. Then he made her promise to shut up about it.

Candy put her mother's glasses back on her just as Lacy, all trembly, came in. Candy touched up Mother's lipstick. She was crying.

“There,” she said. She stood back. She felt good, but she was crying. “Isn't she pretty?” Candy said.

Elizabeth is dead and Nettie has got to go to the funeral. You have to dress up for a trip to town, you have to dress up for a funeral.
But you stay here
. Elizabeth has died of heart failure which comes to us all in the end except for a few like Cary Grant who is more in demand than ever or Douglas Fairbanks Jr. still suave and handsome he hits the big seventy-five mark on December ninth he has been on Love Boat a couple of times recently. He said we would take a trip, well why not go on the Love Boat?
I just want a good time girl
, he used to tell me that. Lively Ann-Margret grew up in a funeral parlor which is where Elizabeth is now. Imagine that. He used to pick up the mandolin and sing.
You have to walk that lonesome valley you have to walk it by yourself, nobody else will walk it for you, you have to walk it by yourself
. That midget's sick he's got an incurable disease he can't walk he's not long for this world he'll have to walk it by himself. It's a long valley between here and town. Before that of course he'd like to set the story straight about his painful divorce and his departure from Fantasy Island, now that's a trip. It's important to have insurance which Ed McMahon will give you if you will respond before March twelfth. Of course you can't buy insurance for failure of heart. Jackie Onassis will not marry again. Instead, she'll travel. She's had it! Ha ha and me too!
I'm getting out of this one-horse town
he said
honey, I'll take you too. We'll take us a big long trip, we'll go to Florida you'll like it there you can get you a suntan, honey, there's flowers blooming all the time
. A lady from California drove through and told Nettie they get
All My Children
faster out there, a month ahead of us, and Erica has already died in a wreck. Which must not be true as she's not even planning a trip although currently she is estranged from all. Erica's such a bitch. The Wacky Way I Met My Mate was that my next-door neighbor asked me to take care of his dog while he went to Reno, Nevada, for a divorce. I could tell he was a nice man since he fed his dog chicken livers, a high liver, ha ha! Well the dog bit me! And he came back and took me out to dinner we fell in love by candlelight. It's a heart-shaped scar and now every time I see it, I think about the Wacky Way I Met My Man. Love leaves scars. Love hurts, and love is blind. In Ogdensburg, New York, they've got a state order to keep Dr. L. D. Bogdanovitch from operating on patients because he's blind. I do it by touch, he says. But doctors can't save Elizabeth now she has to walk it by herself.
At Daytona Beach the sand is so wide you can walk for hours you can see for miles I'll take you there, you'll have to wear dark glasses
.

Illuminated by rosy light from Jesus's robe, they stood together to recite the anthem. Afternoon sun fell through the stained-glass window onto the printed program in Lacy's hands. Jesus himself stood holding his shepherd's crook amid a circle of fluffy white lambs and little children. The children, wildly out of proportion, came up to about his knees. In the middle window, he was kicking the moneylenders out of the temple; sun came in through the shimmering gold as it spilled down the left-hand side of the window, out of the moneylenders' grasp. Saint Catherine stood in the last window on Lacy's side, head bowed, against a royal-blue background. The golden spokes of her wheel formed a shining halo about her head.

This, too, had been Lacy's ambition: to be a saint. She used to fast—at least she skipped meals—and pray. Odd that she never noticed how weird the children look in the first window, like Munchkins. The Shepherd of Oz. Her mother lay in her coffin, banked by flowers, at the front of the church. The smell of the flowers was heady, almost overpowering up at the front where the family had to sit. Like the junior prom, which Lacy attended with Louie Scuggs. Like the scent in Millard Cline's florist shop, all those years ago; she can barely remember. If only she could sit at the back.

George Llewellyn, the pale young rector, looked splendid in all those robes. Those vestments—that purple cloak. No wonder she wanted to be a saint. Yet he was nervous, too; perspiration, in spite of the air conditioning, beaded his upper lip. No wonder: right before the service, outside the church, Arthur addressed him as “Your Honor.” Arthur said, “Your Honor, I know you'll pardon me if I just stay out here, I have a bad heart. I'll be with you in spirit, Your Honor.” Sybill had been furious. Now Lacy envisioned Arthur outside in his car, hand over his heart. It won't do to get tickled now. Arthur's car was long, yellow, dented, and made a terrible noise. If only she could sit at the back—not seeing them, she could feel even more somehow the weight of all the people they had grown up with, the full weight of the past, behind her in these pews, pressing her up against all the flowers. Lacy has never really liked hothouse flowers. She wanted, desperately, to be a saint. But now the anthem:

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord;

he that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live;

and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

I know that my Redeemer liveth,

and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;

and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God;

whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold,

and not as a stranger.

For none of us liveth to himself,

and no man dieth to himself.

For if we live, we live unto the Lord;

and if we die, we die unto the Lord,

Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;

even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.

Lacy sank back gratefully onto the cushioned pew. There was some comfort to be found in language, after all. Her mother was right about that. Miss Elizabeth had left the Methodist church of her youth to become an Episcopalian because she found the service more lovely, she said. She said it was “sheer poetry,” and adamantly opposed the new
Book of Common Prayer
. She signed petitions, which came in the mail. And the language was still lovely. She was still right. But it seemed strange to Lacy, after so long, to feel the phrases rolling on her tongue, to taste their familiarity. The thin gold cross on the altar was the same gold cross. Lacy felt sure that she was the only one who had come to church with Mother out of desire. Sybill came because she thought it was her duty, which seemed to be why she did everything. Verner Hess came on Easter because she made him. A country man, he was uncomfortable with exactly what she loved, this ritual, what he called “all the whoop-dee-doo.” Arthur wouldn't come, nor would Candy, after a time. Myrtle switched to the Methodist church because it had a more active youth group—the Episcopal church, at that time, being attended mostly by old ladies and Lacy, the congregation numbering under thirty on any given morning. Myrtle's MYF used to have Sweetheart Dinners, and make field trips to Myrtle Beach. There was a way in which Lacy wanted to go to the MYF, like Myrtle. She wanted to go to Myrtle Beach. But she was afraid she wouldn't have anybody except Louie Scuggs to ask to the Sweetheart Dinner, and besides, she loved to kneel on the velvet kneepads, and see the candles glowing on Christmas Eve. Kneeling, and standing, and sitting: it was a comfort having something to do, in a church. Knowing that no one would have a chance to say anything out of order, or—as Mother would say—anything in bad taste. Lacy could see how she felt, kneeling and standing, and sitting, and kneeling, making the right responses that in the end we shall all ascend into light.

When was it, how was it, that Lacy ceased to believe? She remembers the way it was, believing, the rush of emotion, the way her head felt light. It seems that one moment she was a saint, and then she was a student, and then somehow she was married. All with a fearful intensity, with a total disregard for the facts. She makes no excuses. That's how it was. She transferred all that belief straight from God straight to her professors straight to Jack. Who was also one of her professors. Unfair to everybody concerned, including herself. But she can still remember the way she felt.
I sing a song of the saints of God, patient and brave and true, who lived and fought and loved and died for the Lord they loved and knew. And one was a doctor and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green, they were all of them saints of God and I mean, God helping, to be one, too
. The service continues. Lacy is a whiz at the right responses. Her mother is dead. This is what she hates, this coldness she sees in herself. She wonders if it's new, or if she's always had it. She could kill Jack. They had such good intentions, she and Jack. She loved him. But when a man leaves you, you hate him, too. Lacy hated her mother sometimes, too, in a way. It strikes her how the two are similar, death and divorce. In divorce, one person dies to another just as surely as if a physical death has occurred. Only it's a lot harder because the corpse is still there to be dealt with, still up and walking around. Still
talking
. Impossible, then, any coming to terms: she will never come to terms with her mother either, of course.

Those questions which she never asked in real life will continue endless in her head:
Why did she go, why did she leave me? Why did she let Sybill be the mother, so often, to me?
Sybill, almost ten years old when Lacy was born, took care of her until she was eight, until Sybill went off to school. They never write letters, now. Lacy buys Sybill a nice sweater every Christmas. Was Mother just tired of it, of raising children, by then? Were Candy and Arthur too much for her? Or was it some particular thing, or the lack of something, in Lacy? Especially since she tried so hard, she was so good—Candy, for instance, was
bad
. Bad when she flunked Spanish, when she got kicked out of band, when she ran away from home, when she got pregnant, when she got married. Candy took up attention, and tears, and time. Mother lay on the fleur-de-lis loveseat before the bay window and wept: “Why does she do this to me?” And somehow, everybody seemed to feel, you couldn't expect much from a boy. Boys will be boys, especially Arthur. Sybill made straight A's, and did the laundry. Myrtle was Miss Everything. Perhaps by the time Lacy came along, everyone was simply exhausted, except for Verner Hess. A sweet and limited man. It felt so good to cry. Lacy loved him, she did. How has she grown angry, and old, and cold? She did have good intentions. Now she will not be a saint, even though she kneels, after so many years, in prayer.

O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: accept our prayers on behalf of your servant Elizabeth, and grant her an entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of your saints, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen
.

Amen
. Into the land of light and joy. At Cape Canaveral this morning the shuttle
Challenger
took off at 7:30 a.m. and rocketed Sally Ride into space. “Sally, have a ball,” her husband said. Somehow Lacy always knew she'd never have a ball. But maybe she's coming to some glimmer of understanding. At this age, growing up—or is that ever possible? Her niece Theresa, at the funeral home last night, reminded Lacy of herself as they all stood together greeting those who came, and everyone came, discussing gardens and baseball and how many babies they or their children had had and where everyone went to school. Theresa, pale and confused, asked, “Is the conversation at something like this always so
trivial?
” That's Theresa, who used to be a cheerleader and now wants to be a writer and says “shit” a lot, and sees everything as ironic. Which is only partially true in Lacy's opinion and has long been grasped by her own tough Kate. In the newspaper photograph this morning, for instance, the shuttle's launch was pictured from across a lake, so that its ascent, that phallic thrust, those clouds of smoke, also appeared in reverse, as it seemed to be burrowing into the depths of the lake, into the lake's reflection. Trick photography: up or down? That's the problem with irony, someone should tell Theresa. It can go either way. The lake reminded Lacy of the silent tarn in the beginning paragraph of “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Her head is so full of ridiculous things. Small wonder that she couldn't finish, didn't want to teach: Lacy feels she has nothing to say, and a lot to learn. Still there came that glimmer, in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly, how ironic. Yet why not, why not there as well as anywhere else, as well as here? Lacy finds it ironic that her mother and Sally Ride have ascended into light together. While the rest of the world bats around in the dark—

“
Let go
,” Lacy said, and they stood, Sybill clutching at her sleeve. Even now, Lacy realized, even now Sybill thinks I have to mind her. Of course she's crazy, hysterical. Maybe she's always been crazy. “
We'll get to the bottom of this
,” said Don. In a clear still lake in Florida, the missile roared, descending. Lacy wants to get to the bottom of this, too. She wants to know. Is it because they are the two outsiders, Lacy and Sybill, that they need to know? Is it because they are cold? Even when Sybill first explained it there at the hospital, Lacy had a chill, a premonition, a notion.
There might be something to this, after all
. She could kill Jack. And in some terrible, ancient, resentful part of her brain, she began to feel, irrationally, that Sybill may be somehow right. Except Lacy has also begun to feel that it is her own body under discussion, her own body there at the bottom of the well. Lacy is terrified.

And the only person she wanted to talk to was Jack. Dressed for the funeral home last night, she stared at the old black phone in Mother's house for the longest time; she nearly dialed. She imagined Jack and Susan having dinner,
coq au vin
. Jack is a pretty good cook. It was pathetic. Jack was the only person Lacy wanted to talk to about this, about how scared it made her. Susan has long black hair. She is very young. Lacy was pathetic. Reminding herself of one of Pavlov's dogs—or that horrible thing she read in the paper about abused children, who always want to return to the abusive parent, it seems, always, if given a choice. Jack said, “Lacy, I don't love you. I'm sorry, but there it is. I am in love with someone else. I'm telling you this to avoid misunderstanding and false hopes. I will always think very highly of you, of course.”
Of course
. She's so scared. Now she thinks she stopped being a saint because it was too scary. Now she feels open, bloody, exposed—like a wound. Not a pretty image. And the image ladies are all here at the funeral: the Poetry Society. Slim pastel volumes privately printed. Chicken-salad sandwiches and sonnets, on summer afternoons. This strikes Lacy as lovely. And Miss Elva Pope herself was to read “ 'Tis the Last Rose of Summer” beside the grave, at Mother's request. God knows what else Mother requested, in those letters left in the safety deposit box, inscribed with her spidery hand. “Concerning My Last Rites.” “Concerning My Worldly Possessions.” “My Last Will and Testament.” They hadn't opened the other two. God knows what else she wanted, what any one of us really wants.
Not to die
. The Poetry Society had appeared in force, and the Garden Club. At the end of the Rites for the Burial of the Dead, printed on the program, Lacy found:

Flower in the Crannied Wall

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies,

I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,

Little flower—but if I could understand

What you are, root and all, and all in all,