She turned her attention back to the ladies sitting on the left side of the chapel. They were laughing and giggling, just as Rachel knew Agatha would be at such an event. She figured the ladies were part of the domino team that Agatha played on at the senior citizens center.
It occurred to her that Agatha might have confided in one of them, that they might know about the son that was mentioned in Agatha’s obituary. How was it possible that Agatha had never mentioned the fact she was a mother? It seemed like something that would have come up in the conversation. The two of them had shared many talks about life and love.
Now that she knew Agatha had held things back from her, she questioned those talks, and the advice that Agatha had given. Had she been lying to her all those years? Was keeping things secret a lie?
She wanted to have Agatha in front of her right now, to be able to ask her what had happened in her life and why she hadn’t spoken about it.
“Rachel?”
At the sound of her name, Rachel’s head jerked away from where she’d been studying the group of Agatha’s friends to where Dex’s mother stood.
“Mrs. Bales,” Rachel said.
Dex’s mother pulled her into a hug. “How many times have I told you to call me Jessica?”
“Old habits die hard,” Rachel said with a laugh.
“You’ll sit with us, of course,” Jessica said. “You’re family.”
Tears stung Rachel’s eyes and she tried to blink them away.
“And you’ll come to the dinner after.” Jessica put her arm around Rachel’s shoulders and started to lead her up the aisle. When they were near, Rachel caught Dex’s gaze. He smiled at her, and then stepped forward and pulled her into a hug.
“We’re having brisket and all sorts of salads after,” he said.
“Funeral potatoes?” she countered.
“Several different versions, I’m sure,” he said. “Agatha’s domino friends are cooking for us, and we’ve invited them to join us.”
Without thinking she said, “What about Carrie? Will she be upset about me sitting with you?”
He frowned, then said, “She’ll be there, too. Don’t you like Carrie? Didn’t the two of you get along the day… that day?”
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I just figured your girlfriend wouldn’t want your ex-girlfriend sitting next to you at a funeral.”
He burst into laughter, which drew stares from some of the people around them.
“Sweetie, Carrie isn’t my girlfriend,” he whispered in her ear. “She’s Tommy’s wife.”
“Everything all right?” Dex’s father stepped up next to them. “Rachel, it’s good to see you, even under these trying circumstances.”
Rachel fought to get her emotions under control as Dex’s father approached them. She was flabbergasted by Dex’s pronouncement. Obviously the signs where there, like her leaving right after Rachel told Dex about Agatha’s death. She should have noticed it earlier.
“Rachel?” Dex took her hand and squeezed it. “Dad wants to know if everything is all right?”
“Yes, yes.” She turned to Dex’s father. “Mr. Bales, I’m so sorry about Agatha.” Tears welled in her eyes.
“Agatha thought of you as a daughter,” Mr. Bales said. “And remember, it’s Dale.” He turned to his son. “They’re calling for us to go out the side door so we can come back inside as a group.”
There wasn’t much of a group, Rachel thought as they gathered. Rachel made eleven, and she took her place at the back of them, but before she knew what was happening, she was ushered toward the front, where Dex took her hand.
“I need you by my side,” he whispered. “No, I want you there.”
“All the way,” she said, and a few tears trickled down her cheeks. Agatha had always said that to her, that they should go all the way, that halfway measures never got anyone anywhere.
“Take it from me, Rachel, if you stop and allow the world to move around you, you might well drown.”
She had said those words more than once when Rachel had given up on something, including her relationship with Dex.
“Fight for him,” Agatha had said. “You two belong together, I know it, you know it, he knows it. Don’t expect it to fall into your lap, Rachel. Relationships are not easy.”
As they started up the aisle, Rachel couldn’t help but think how right she’d been. She also wished she’d taken her advice and fought for her relationship with Dex. She let it die as if it were a tomato left too long on the vine.
She was certain after this afternoon she would see him once, maybe twice. If even that much.
“I let you down, Agatha,” she whispered to herself as they took their seats in the front of the chapel. “I’m so sorry.”
She couldn’t help but think that Agatha was watching them now. She was laughing at the pomp and circumstance. She would be happy they were following her plans, playing the music of the 60s and 70s, reading the poems and pieces of scriptures that she’d put together.
The only thing different was the obituary, which Rachel and Dex had beefed up with stories of Agatha in their youth, how she’d made them laugh and showed them which star was which, and taught them to enjoy life and think for themselves.
Rachel thought about her life, how she worked and did nothing more. How she ate her meals in front of the TV and didn’t watch movies or read books anymore.
“I’m so sorry, Agatha,” she whispered to herself again, just as the tears began to fall in earnest.
* * *
Rachel set the sacks of food on the floor as she worked to open her front door. She hadn’t cried through the whole memorial service. There had been laughter and tears of joy as people told stories of Agatha. A few of her students had attended, and had told how Agatha had affected their lives, teaching them things that they used to this day.
Her domino friends told a story of how she’d brought a bottle of tequila into the game once and made it a drinking game, where every time you played a double you had to take a shot.
“We laughed more that day than we had in ages,” a woman named Betty had said. “Agatha taught us to enjoy life, and we will continue to do so.”
The door sprung open and Rachel quickly gathered the sacks full of funeral potatoes, brisket, ham, various vegetable dishes, breads, and sweets. There had been enough food there to feed an army. After the domino ladies had packaged up leftovers for all the family members there were still leftovers. Those they had packaged up to take to the local homeless shelter.
Rachel plunked her two sacks onto her kitchen counter and sighed heavily. She wanted to sit and cry, but if she did that she was once again betraying Agatha.
“All the way,” she whispered to her empty house. Maybe she should get a cat, or a dog. That would give her some companionship, at least. A cat could stay at the loft, sleeping and chasing spiders. A dog she could take with her. She thought about it hanging its head out the window and enjoying the breeze as she drove down the road.
That made her smile. And then she thought maybe, just maybe, she should get one of each. She could call them Frick and Frack, or Mutt and Jeff. She thought of other names as she unpacked the sacks, and decided she would do exactly that. She would go to the pound first thing in the morning and adopt one of each. Maybe she would even name the cat Agatha.
Rachel knew she had work to do, but decided she would take a shower, watch some TV and go to bed. Right now she didn’t care if it was only five in the afternoon; asleep her brain would shut down, and right now she thought that was a good thing.
She’d just taken off her dress and was unhooking her bra when the outdoor bell rang. She pressed the bell and said, “Hello?”
“Let me in,” Dex said. He sounded angry, and she wondered if she’d done something that afternoon to raise his ire.
“Hello to you, too,” she said through the speaker, hoping he would laugh, that maybe she’d misread his mood.
“My hands are full and it’s hard to hit the b
utton for the speaker,” he said. “Please, open the door.”
Rachel hit the buzzer and hurried to put back on her underclothes and pull on a pair of jeans and a tee-shirt. There was a time when she would have stayed naked for him, greeted him at the door with no clothes on so they could fall onto the floor and have sex—hard, passionate sex.
She’d barely made the bottom of the stairs when he was pounding on the door. He pushed past her when she opened the door. He had three large pizza boxes in his hands. Stacked on top of them were a manila envelope and a six-pack of beer.
“Three pizzas?” she asked as he made his way into the house and put the boxes on the table. “We have enough food to last for a week. Why did you buy pizza? And so many?”
“I couldn’t decide what I wanted.” He put the boxes next to each other. Then he pulled two cans from the rings and opened them both. He offered her one and she took it. He flipped the tops off the boxes and the enticing aroma of melted cheese and pepperoni wafted across to her. After all the food she’d eaten this afternoon, she hated to admit that her stomach rumbled with hunger. But she didn’t want to join him at the table right yet. She wanted to know what was wrong.
“I thought the service was beautiful,” she said. “Well, maybe beautiful is not the word. It was so Agatha, very different, and very moving.” She paused for a moment. “I’m not sure I understand why you seem so off the mark tonight.”
He sat down and took out a slice of pizza. He ate it slowly, so slowly that it made her feel uncomfortable watching him.
Finally she said, “Dex, what’s wrong? Besides Agatha being dead, I mean.”
“My parents left today,” he said.
“What?” Did she just hear him right? “When?”
“An hour after the service,” he said. “They came home, they argued, they loaded their suitcases into Agatha’s car and left. Dad said they’d leave it at the airport. They had planned on renting a car and driving to Dallas so they could fly out first thing in the morning.”
“Dex, I’m so sorry.” She sat down next to him, and despite the amount of food she’d eaten that afternoon she took a slice of pizza and took a healthy bite. “Did they say why?” she asked after she’d swallowed.
“Not a word,” he said. “He just said for me to call if I needed anything.”
“Well, I’m not sure what to say,” she said.
“Nothing to say,” he countered before he took another slice of pizza and devoured it in four bites.
Silence filled the room, broken only by the sounds of them drinking and eating. After she’d eaten two slices, which barely found room in her stomach, Rachel said, “What’s in the envelope?”
“There was a box waiting for me when I got home,” he said. “Inside was an envelope from Agatha addressed to the both of us.”
“You didn’t open it?” She picked up the envelope and ran her fingers over the names written on the top: Dexter Bales and Rachel Mixon. “Don’t you want to know what’s in it?”
“I wouldn’t open it without you,” he said. “Whatever is inside is obviously meant for the both of us. Maybe it’s a letter dressing us down for being foolish and not being together.”
She pressed it between her hands. “There’s something else in here. It feels like a CD case.”
“Maybe it’s a CD where she can dress us down in person, so to speak.” He finished off his beer and took another one.
Today was the most emotion he’d shown since the day of Agatha’s death, when he had cried in her arms. Now she wanted to wrap her arms around him again and see if she could get him to cry more, to let out the anger that was festering inside him.
He was not only angry about Agatha, but now he had the fact that his parents had basically abandoned him in his time of need.
“Maybe you should call your father and tell him what you need is to know the truth,” she said. “You need to know why he and your mother were—are—fighting, and why they left.”
“I tried three different times while they were here to get information out of them, and I got nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. She took a deep breath. “Do you think it has something to do with Agatha’s son? Maybe what is in that envelope has something to do with it. Maybe we should open it.”
“You do the honors,” he said. “I’m not sure I trust myself to read what’s inside and not scream so loud your neighbors would call the cops.”
“We can’t have that,” she said as she picked up the envelope and ripped it open. Inside she found just what she’d thought she would, a CD case, but inside it was a DVD, marked as such. She wiggled it at him. “Let’s adjourn to the sofa and I’ll load this up.” He didn’t move, and she reminded herself that sometimes he had to be prodded, to the point of feeling anger, which was already boiling inside him. “Unless you want to continue to sit here and feel sorry for yourself.”
“Fuck you!” He turned his head toward her, and his dark eyes seemed as if they had turned black.
“That’s the spirit,” she said. She went to the TV and turned it on. Then she took the DVD out of its case and slid it into the player. Once she was seated on the couch she waved the remote in the air. “I’m hitting play in five seconds.” He hadn’t moved, so she started to count down. By the time she got to one he was sitting beside her, so close that their legs touched.
She hit play, and after a few seconds Agatha’s face filled the screen. She was sitting in her living room, with her knitting on her lap.
“Is it ready?” she asked the unknown person who was obviously operating the camera.
“It is,” a man’s deep voice said.
“Okay. So, here it is, you know, just like something out of a mystery novel. I’m not asking you to find my killer, because we all know I’m not a well woman and I died because my heart gave out. No other reason.”
Dex put his hand on her knee and squeezed. She did the same to him.
“Well, it feels weird to be sitting here talking about what will happen after I’m dead,” Agatha said. “But you know, I’m sure, that I’m not afraid of death. I never have been.” She took a deep breath, then grasped the glass of wine that was sitting on a table next to her. After she’d taken a swallow she said, “This is stranger than I thought it would be. Turn off the camera for a moment.”
The screen went black, and then Agatha’s image filled the screen once again. “So, let’s do this again. I’m dead, and I’ve left things behind that have to be dealt with.”
Rachel hit pause. “Do you think she’s talking about what’s going on with your parents? Or about her possessions?”
“Start it up again and we’ll find out,” Dex said. “Maybe. Or maybe she’ll just ignore whatever happened between her and my mother.”
Rachel hit play.
“If you’ve followed my instructions, Dex, the service was simple, and I was cremated. Once you have my ashes, I want you and Rachel to take them to my cabin in New Mexico and scatter them in the field. Don’t take anyone else with you, just the two of you.”
This was the perfect spot, Rachel thought, for her to say why Agatha and Jessica were not getting along. But what Agatha said next was not about whatever the two had been feuding about.
“I have a lot of things that I’ve collected over the years,” Agatha said. “Now that the end is in sight, I regret that. Buying things can’t replace love, or make you happy, really. I mean, well, it does make you happy to buy new furniture, but that happiness doesn’t continue if you have no one to sit with on the sofa.”
Agatha paused and took another drink from her wine glass. “So, I’m afraid the two of you have to endure a lecture from me from beyond the grave, so listen up.”
“The two of you are fools. You belong together, and you’ve been acting like petulant children. Screw your heads on straight and start acting like adults. See each other again. Kiss each other again. Screw each other again.”
“Damn, Agatha, don’t go there
,” Dex said over Agatha’s words.
Rachel backed the DVD up and it replayed, “Screw each other again. You two have been alone since whatever happened between you. Neither of you would tell me what it was, and I’m beginning to wonder if you know. But whatever it is, put it behind you and get back together. Trust me when I tell you that being alone is no fun. Friends are one thing, but lovers are another, and the two of you were meant to be together.”
After taking one more drink, Agatha said, “So, fuck like bunnies, produce children, laugh, love, enjoy your life together. And remember, I’ll be watching you.”
“How are we supposed to—”
Dex stopped speaking when Agatha laughed. “I know you, nephew, and right now you’re saying, ‘How can we fuck like bunnies when you’re watching?’ Well, I don’t mean that literally, I mean that I’ll be watching, so do what you do and enjoy it.”
One more drink and then she said, “Now, there is the matter of my worldly possessions. Rachel, I want to hire your firm to auction my things off, well, whatever is left that you don’t want to keep. I want all my clothing to go to the women’s shelter, shoes and all. After that it’s to the auction.”
Agatha drained her glass and then coughed gently. “I love you both, and I want so much for the two of you to be together. Call it a deathbed wish, if you like. Just don’t waste your life like I did. Don’t spend it alone.” Agatha’s gaze lifted just a bit. “You can turn it off now, I’m done.”
“I wonder who helped her film it,” Rachel said. “It’s at her house. Would the attorney had come there and done it for her?”
“Who knows,” Dex said. “I just can’t believe I heard her use the phrase ‘fuck like bunnies’. Has she ever said that to you before?”
“Never,” Rachel said. And then she started to laugh, huge bales of laughter as if someone had just told the funniest joke she’d ever heard. “Do you remember the first time she caught us kissing, though?”
Getting Caught in the Rain Page 5
