The Dearly Departed (12 page)

Approximately one mile behind Sunny's limousine was a buffed and gleaming black Town Car driven by Dickie Saint-Onge himself, who liked to do the honors when it concerned a V.I.P. But plans had changed somewhere. Now the Town Car's backseat held only Fletcher Finn, the son of one of the deceased. The gal running for some national seat, the promised V.I.P., had turned her plane around and gone home.

Dickie had arrived at the airfield in the middle of their squabble. After expressing his condolences, he explained that if Mr. Finn had arrived earlier, he could have arranged for a few private moments with his loved one, but this was cutting it too close. The hearse had left the funeral home promptly at eleven-thirty.

“No big deal,” said Fletcher.

Emily Ann, smoking a cigarette ten yards away, her back to him, harrumphed.

“That's my boss,” said Fletcher. “She just fired me.”

“You have my deepest sympathy,” said Dickie.

Fletcher called to Emily Ann, “How the hell am I supposed to get home?”

“Walk. Hitch. Steal a car. That's what criminals do.”

“She's pissed at me,” Fletcher translated.

Emily Ann strode over to him and Dickie. “You thought I'd fly you in our private plane back to—where?—campaign headquarters? My parents' house for dinner? Forget it! Let the punishment fit the crime: Sexual assault of the plane owner's daughter results in the perpetrator being grounded.”

Dickie blotted his forehead with a large white handkerchief and replaced his chauffeur's cap.

“No one would question my using the return half of my figurative ticket,” said Fletcher. “Nor would anyone have to know you gave me a ride.”

“You don't think they keep records?” She pointed to the two men standing inside a corrugated metal lean-to in Big John windbreakers and Big John baseball caps. “Like the F.A.A. wouldn't know that Fletcher Finn was on this flight? With my luck, we'd crash and no one would ever file a complaint.”

“You're making a scene and you're only punishing yourself: You've started smoking again and you're cheating yourself out of a listening tour of Dixville Notch.”

Emily Ann yelled to the pilot and co-pilot, “Alan! Bret! Can you come over here?”

Fletcher handed his suitcase to Dickie and held up both hands. “She doesn't need protecting. I'm harmless.”

“He is
not
harmless. Quite the opposite.”

Fletcher lowered his voice. “I think you and I both know that what I did was a deliberate act of civil disobedience to get myself off the payroll and to get you out of an embarrassing campaign.”

“Civil?” she repeated shrilly. “Civil disobedience? How about sexual harassment? When was the last time you read a newspaper?”

Fletcher said, “Em—”

“He assaulted me,” she told the pilots.

“I did not assault her. It was consensual in the sense that she and I entered into a conspiracy—”

“ ‘Consensual'? Are you insane? He grabbed my left breast!”

Fletcher, with Dickie in step, moved back a few feet. “I'm not discussing this in front of your henchmen. I thought we had a deal. If I misunderstood, I'm sorry. I am not interested in your breasts. And if you'll excuse me, I'm off to bury my father.”

Emily Ann shouted after him, “I knew you wouldn't work out. You never had any faith in me. And now I know why! You saw me as an object.”

“I assure you—” Fletcher stopped. “Guys? C'mon, back me up here. Tell Ms. Grandjean that that's ludicrous.”

“Why is it ludicrous? Men see me as an object all the time. It's why they don't vote for me. It's why they can't see me as their congress-person!”

“Take your belongings and scram,” said one of the men.

“Find your own way back,” said the other.

“We don't want to miss the service,” said Dickie.

“Like they'd start without the guest of honor,” snapped Fletcher.

Dickie hustled Fletcher across the spongy grass toward a girl in a white dress and picture hat, who stood still and silent on the edge of the buzzing crowd. “You two haven't met: Miss Batten, Fletcher Finn. We should start right away—the bagpipers have already done a graduation this morning. Please follow me to your seats.”

Fletcher liked the way she looked—dignified and a little fierce. Not a bad outfit for the boonies. “Sorry I'm late,” he whispered. “Just landed.” He offered his hand, which Sunny didn't take.

“Sorry about your mom,” he tried.

“Let's get this over with,” she answered.

They both pretended not to stare. Her hair had properties he recognized: It rose and floated as if magnetized. His was backlit and almost invisible—filaments of silver she had to squint to see.

The bagpipers tuned up, then played “Pomp and Circumstance.” Sunny and Fletcher took their seats, and the minister cleared his throat. The citizens of King George lifted their gazes from the ebonized coffin and its mahogany mate to study the next of kin. Later, the topics of their gossip would be these: the propriety of a white dress at graveside; the son's chewing gum, his red tie, his argyle socks, and the flagrant display, wherever one looked, of Miles Finn's genes.

 

After the Service, No Mourners Are Invited Back

M
ind if I hitch a ride?” Fletcher asked Sunny. “I assume that's the way it works? The next of kin get the limo?” He had stayed by her side since their introduction, had even put a comradely arm around her shoulders as the first few spadefuls of dirt trickled onto the coffins.

Sunny said, “I believe there's one car for each family.” Fletcher opened the rear door a step ahead of Dickie. “Slide in,” he said. “What's the next event?”

Dickie said, “Sunny's decided to call it a day. Understandably.”

“Fine with me,” said Fletcher.

Sunny removed her hat and stepped into the limo. Fletcher climbed into the backseat next to her. After playing with the buttons that raised and lowered the windows, he said, “You understand, of course, that I'm contributing to the cost of everything.”

“Contributing?”

“My father's share.”

“Which I consider to be half,” said Sunny.

“Fine, half. That seems fair. Sure.” He moved his gaze to her shoulders.

“What?” she said.

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-one,” said Sunny.

“When's your birthday?”

“Why?”

“I'm thirty-one, too. What month?”

“April.”

“I'm August.”

“So I'm older,” said Sunny. After a minute, after the limo had finally left the cemetery roads and turned onto Route 4, she asked him what he was staring at so intently.

“Did either of your parents have insanely premature gray hair?”

“My mother didn't.”

“And Mr. Batten?”

“Moved away before I was born.”

“And where is this father today? Why isn't he at your side as your sole surviving parent?”

Sunny murmured, “He couldn't cope with being a father. Or so the story goes.”

“My parents eventually got divorced because Miles fooled around a lot.”

“A lot of times? Or with a lot of women?”

“My guess would be both—frequent affairs, with hordes of women.”

Sunny said, “You're sitting on my dress,” and wrenched a few inches of a wide voile pleat out from under him.

“Not that my mother is a reliable source,” Fletcher added.

“And you are? You didn't even know your father was getting remarried.”

Fletcher turned away to look at the scenery. “Cows,” he said. “What's it supposed to mean when they're lying down? Rain or no rain?”

“Don't patronize me,” said Sunny. “I don't need to walk my mother down the aisle to make her respectable. I'm just telling you what everyone else knows.”

After a few moments, Fletcher turned back. “It isn't just the hair.”

“What isn't?”

“You. The resemblance. There's more to it than that.”

“I just met you,” said Sunny. “Isn't this a topic someone should lead up to gradually?”

“Not my style,” said Fletcher. “Okay, here's what I'm thinking: You look uncannily like my father's mother. He looked like her, but you look even more like her. It's spooky.”

“I look like a lot of people,” said Sunny.

“Au contraire.”

“Then it's the outfit. You probably have a picture of your grandmother in her youth wearing a dress like this.”

“I'm a little more observant than that,” said Fletcher. “I spotted my grandmother in you from the other side of the cemetery.”

Sunny put Regina's hat back on her head and pulled its brim down over each ear.

After a minute Fletcher asked, “Can I touch yours?”

“No you may not.”

“Have you found any product that makes it lie down?”

“No.”

“I don't buy the stuff, but sometimes I'll try a cream rinse in a hotel bathroom.”

“You're a guy. You can cut it short and forget about it.”

He smiled. “It's my signature. I think it makes me look dignified. Prematurely so.”

“Or mad-scientistish.” Frowning, she reached over and rubbed a few wisps between her fingertips. “Some products work better than others. The weather is the main factor.”

“Were you blond to start with?” he asked.

“Very.”

“Was your mother?”

“No.”

“What about the putative father?”

“He lives in Arizona.”

“Sorry, that's not responsive. What I'm getting at is the paternity issue—do you resemble him? If you don't know, why not? Don't divorced fathers, even lousy ones, see their kid once a year? Once a decade?”

Sunny opened Regina's beaded purse, fished out a roll of mints, peeled back the foil, and took the top mint without offering one to her seatmate. “What would make a total stranger drill someone he's just met at a funeral about her parents' divorce and her paternity?” she asked.

“No social graces, or so I've been told.”

Sunny asked, “How do you know it isn't the most sensitive topic in the world to me? Or that you aren't dropping a bomb on my head?”

“Am I?” he asked mildly.

“Assaulting me with questions is bad enough, but highly personal—”

“It's highly personal for me, too. It would be a lot easier all around if I were making small talk instead of tackling issues like identity and paternity and, and, adultery.”

“Well, good for you. Congratulations on not taking the easy way out, on not just maintaining a respectful silence on the five-minute ride from the cemetery.”

“I know what you mean, though, about getting assaulted with questions,” continued Fletcher. “I had a roommate in college who worked for the school newspaper, and the only way he could carry on a conversation was to interview you—where you grew up, your major, your minor, sisters, brothers, pets, secondary school.” He paused, then asked, “Where'd you go to school?”

“Maryland.”

“How come?”

“Golf,” said Sunny. “Mid-Atlantic Conference.”

“Now, that is interesting,” said Fletcher. “Very interesting. More than you know.”

Sunny said, “And why is that?”

“Because—and this astounds me—my grandmother played golf. I mean, really played. She was a scratch golfer and a club champion.”

“Is this the grandmother I'm supposed to resemble?”

“Exactly.”

After a minute, Sunny asked, “Do you know if she was on the tour?”

“She was an amateur, I know that much. And she once gave Eleanor Roosevelt a golf lesson.”

“People competed as amateurs unless you were a big, big name, and even someone like Babe Didrikson—”

Fletcher asked, “Have I isolated the strand of DNA that piques your interest?”

“Golf isn't an inherited trait,” said Sunny. “In my case, it was geographical. My mother rented a house that sat on the edge of a golf course. Still does. I played because it was my backyard. We couldn't even afford to join, so I caddied.”

“I like that,” said Fletcher. “Very Abe Lincolnesque. Sportswriters love that rags-to-riches stuff. Did my father know you golfed?”

“Your father didn't know I existed.”

“Literally?”

“We met once. She introduced us.”

“As?”

“As ‘Sunny Batten, my daughter; I'd like you to meet my friend Miles Finn.' ”

“How old were you?”

“Thirteen? Fourteen?”

“And did you look then like you look now, only with blond hair? Because if you did, he couldn't have failed to notice—denial aside—the resemblance.”

“Which begins and ends with the hair,” said Sunny.