“Fine,” Mildred pronounced when he was done. Marci wanted to break into applause on his behalf, but he maintained the same calm, helpful demeanor he’d had the whole time. “Is there anything else?” he asked. Dear God, man, Marci pleaded telepathically, don’t re-open the door. Get away while you can.
“Yes,” Mildred said, her voice softer now and less demanding. “Just a single white rose, please.” He fetched this quickly and once Mildred had refused the water vial on the end and the decorative tissue, they were off.
Shady Heights Cemetery was about ten minutes away. Fortunately, Marci remembered how to get there, and Mildred was therefore silent for most of the trip. Her presence was evidenced primarily by the sudden sucking-in of air and clutching at her bag and flowers whenever they approached a stoplight, another car within fifty feet, or a curve in the road. It reminded Marci of learning to drive, seeing her mother clinging to either a purse or the sides of the seat as though her life depended on it whenever fifteen-year-old Marci was behind the wheel.
When they arrived at Shady Heights, Mildred insisted on entering the small office/maintenance building alone. A few moments later, a slick man in his late 40s emerged with her, escorting her by the crook of her arm in the exact fashion for which she’d just scolded Marci a half hour earlier. He motioned to Marci to follow them as he took Mildred to a large, luxurious golf cart with upholstered seats and a tasteful canvas awning. She sat on the bench seat facing backward, glad that Mildred had someone else to criticize for a while.
But the old lady was quiet as the golf cart zipped up the hill to the large shade tree under which Great-Uncle Herbert was at his final rest. Marci held her flowers and purse while the man assisted Mildred from the cart. The white rose still lay on the seat, Marci noticed. She and the slick man remained a respectful distance back as Mildred placed the bouquet in the permanent brass vase on Herbert’s grave marker. A blank marker was next to his, where Mildred would one day be buried herself.
Mildred did not spend long with her departed husband, but soon picked her way back between the other graves to the golf cart. Marci was surprised, though, that the man did not turn to head back toward the cemetery entrance, but continued along the road over the little hill toward the back. She had never been this far into the grounds before. The little road curved farther back than she imagined, toward a little pond and a chapel. They moved slowly downhill and around to the right, veering from the main road before reaching the area closest to the pond.
Here were a cluster of obviously older graves, more modest than their counterparts in the more picturesque parts of the grounds, with no decorative statues or looming family monuments. Mr. Slick pulled the cart expertly to a flat part of the ground. Once he had assisted Mildred out again, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small cell phone. Glancing at it, he said with only a trace of an accent, “Ladies, will you please excuse me for less than ten minutes, as I must attend to something at the office. I feel you will have no trouble finding the other plot. It is just three rows back and to the left as I described. Forgive me. I promise to return presently.”
The other plot? Marci was confused, but while Mr. Slick was obviously assuming she knew what was going on, Mildred was looking away from her, toward the general direction he had indicated. He bowed slightly and revved the golf cart back over the hill, far faster than it had gone before. Mildred had begun a slow totter into the grounds, gripping the white rose, and Marci started to follow. “No, stay here,” she commanded, without looking back.
So Marci stood at the edge of the asphalt, nudging the grass with the toe of her shoe and waiting. Her annoyance and boredom at being here were beginning to be outweighed by curiosity about the second grave Mildred was visiting and obviously did not want Marci to see. She wondered whether it would be worth a trip back to the cemetery later just to find out, and whether she would remember how to get to this particular spot if she did. Just then, Aunt Mildred’s hunched form began to waver, and she collapsed to her knees with a horrifying thud.
Marci raced to her, panicked, desperately trying to get to her before she fell forward and hit her fragile old head on one of the gravestones. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. Mom’s going to kill me.
But as she got closer, hitting her knee painfully on a headstone as she went, she realized that Mildred was not in danger of falling further. She had not fallen, exactly, but dropped to her knees, where she now held herself, shaking and sobbing. The elderly voice, always so controlled and stern, was now pitching in moans and cries that were painful to hear. Marci was embarrassed to be there. She was about four feet away now: too far to presume any interaction, but too close to gracefully back away.
Aunt Mildred leaned forward, still sobbing, and with a trembling hand, placed the rose in front of the grave of Dorothy Elizabeth Walters. Who was Dorothy Walters? The realization hit Marci like cold water. Dottie. This was the mystery roommate of Aunt Mildred’s, who’d been abandoned in favor of traditional marriage and children. She looked more closely at the dates below Dottie’s name. March 12, 1919, to December 4, 1948. Not even thirty.
Questions came in a rush. How had Dottie died? Illness? Sadness? Suicide? Had she and Mildred stayed in touch after Mildred married Herbert? Did Dottie marry? Had Mildred been coming here week after week to visit her husband, but never before seen the grave of her best friend?
Marci thought of Suzanne and tried to imagine losing her dearest friend, which was horrible enough. But then never acknowledging that loss out loud would make it so much worse. If it were a friend who were also a lover... Tears dripped down Marci’s cheeks. Mildred’s face was in her hands now, and the shaking in her body had eased. She felt a strong desire to go and comfort the poor old woman, but could not bring herself to intrude on the moment, much less incur the wrath of having disobeyed explicit instructions.
Soon she heard the buzz of the golf cart just over the hill, and instinct told her that Mildred did not want Mr. Slick to see her in this state. Gently as possible she called, “Aunt Mildred?”
Mildred did not seem surprised by Marci’s presence; she simply nodded and held out her hand to be helped to her feet. Marci obliged, careful not to look her in the eye. Mildred produced a linen handkerchief from somewhere and wiped her face wordlessly. Mr. Slick gave them a practiced smile as he conveyed them back into the golf cart and back to the car.
When they got back in the car, Mildred stared straight ahead and said, “Marcella.” This surprised Marci—she had not even been sure that Mildred knew her name. It seemed to be a question, but did not sound like one, exactly.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Your mother says you’re a good girl. Is that true?”
Depends on what you mean by good. “I guess so, ma’am.”
“Good. You keep things to yourself, then.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Marci could not understand many things about Mildred, and many of her questions would remain unasked and unanswered. But Marci knew something about secret pain. She could keep her mouth shut.
The ride back to Peaceful Estates was less tense than before, though still entirely silent. Both women seemed lost in thought, and Marci noticed that Mildred grabbed her purse rather less often than on the way to the cemetery. Despite her dislike of her cranky great-aunt, Marci began to entertain the idea of spending time with her periodically, reading to her or helping her run errands.
Marci had no living grandparents, not since her sophomore year in college when her dad’s mom had passed away. Mildred’s own children lived out of state; her only consistent company was Marci’s mom and Odessa. Of course, she could be horrible, but Marci felt perhaps she had seen a human side of her today, and maybe that could bring them together on some level. In the movies, hard-shelled old women always ended being secretly vulnerable and sweet.
She held the elevator door for Mildred, wondering whether she had any fascinating hobbies or a memoir that Marci could help her write. It was actually perfect that Marci wasn’t wo
rking right now so she could visit regularly. Perhaps she could invest in a tape recorder to take down Mildred’s stories. Of course, it would have to wait until after the wedding...
“Are you gaining weight?” Mildred asked as soon as the doors closed.
“What? Um, no, I don’t think so, Aunt Mildred.”
“Your calves look heavy. And your face is fat. You’d better be careful or you’ll never get married. Your sister is thin; that’s why she had no problems finding a man.”
“Uh, okay, Aunt Mildred. Thanks for the suggestion.”
“Stay away from bread, that’s my advice. And all those sodas and hamburgers you kids eat. You know what they say, ‘A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.’”
“Yep,” Marci said. And never mind about the tape recorder, then. She deposited Mildred back in her plush suite and headed home.
Chapter 16
Tuesday before the wedding, Jake called to take Marci and Suzanne out to dinner at a place they’d wanted to try, which advertised its nouveau Southern cuisine. Nearly blind from wrapping tiny handfuls of birdseed in tulle and tying the bags with bits of ribbon, Marci could not get out of the house fast enough.
Barely glancing at the menu after they settled into a booth, she accepted the waiter’s first suggestion for a cocktail, a pecan pie martini. It tasted like burnt caramel, but Marci didn’t care. They ordered a couple of the more interesting appetizers, including green tomato and goat cheese fritters and something called butterbean kabobs, which turned out to be the aforementioned beans and other tiny vegetables speared on little toothpicks and served with some sort of sweet glaze for dipping. Marci wondered what her rural Southern grandmother, who had eaten butterbeans at almost every meal with a glob of mayonnaise on top, would’ve thought of this rather prissy presentation.
“So how are the preparations for the Wedding of the Century?” Suzanne asked, helping herself to a fritter.
“Oh, my God,” Marci exhaled dramatically. “Who is this crazy person and what did she do with my sweet little baby sister? She’s the devil!” She told them about Nicole’s most recent meltdown when the florist couldn’t get some particular flowers in on time because of heavy rains in South America. There had actually been crying and pulling of hair (Nicole’s own, thank goodness). Marci had never seen anything like it.
“See? This is why I don’t do weddings,” Suzanne said. “Too much emotion. If the floral arrangements aren’t exactly perfect for the grand opening of a car dealership, no one throws a tantrum or threatens to fire me. Hell, chances are, no one even notices.”
“It sounds like Nicole is under a lot of stress,” Jake said diplomatically. Marci loved how he was always seeing the good in people, even at the worst times. But right now she really just wanted to be pissed off.
“Yeah, well, she’s certainly handing a lot of that stress my way,” she said, dipping a fritter into some sort of creamy pepper sauce and popping it in her mouth whole.
“Well, let this be a lesson to you,” Suzanne said in her best motherly tone. “When you get married, you’ll have a simple wedding and be a totally low-maintenance bride, right?”
“If I get married,” Marci said without thinking. She’d become so accustomed to joking about marriage in this self-pitying way in the last couple of years, she had momentarily forgotten Jake and their decade-old promise. Damn.
As usual, Suzanne didn’t let the ball sit on the field for long. “Hey, aren’t you two supposed to be getting married around now? I seem to remember there was some sort of promise made in a bar back in college...” she said innocently. Marci kicked her shins under the table, hard. Of course, she had told Suzanne everything, and now she was playing dumb and stirring up trouble. Marci could kill her.
Jake grinned. “We are supposed to be getting married this year, actually. I’m up for it, but I think Marci is still too attached to whoever she left in Texas.” This last bit held just a hint of an edge to it.
“Well then, Jacob, perhaps you’d better get on the ball and show her why you’re better than anyone else. Thirty doesn’t last forever, you know.”
“Yeah, I guess I’ll have to work on that. Let me know if you have any ideas about how to win her over.” They were grinning at each other the way they always did when having a laugh at Marci’s expense.
“Very funny, you two. Can we move on, please? The real wedding is stressful enough.”
They did move on, to a conversation about Suzanne’s latest job, a huge convention at the World Congress Center that had her running around like a headless chicken. By far the biggest event she had planned since going out on her own, she’d had to hire an assistant. For the control freak Suzanne, delegating to someone else—a bright, motivated college grad named Chad—was about as easy as pulling out her own toenails. Still, she was beginning to admit, albeit grudgingly, that she had never been more organized.
While Suzanne went into a few of the more minute details about the event, which Marci had heard in long form as they had come up in the past couple of weeks, Marci’s mind drifted to Doug. She had only heard from him a couple of times since she blocked his number from her phone, calling from the office number, which she did not block. He had not left messages, though, and Marci supposed he had figured out she wasn’t listening or maybe given up on being able to say anything that would sway her. In a way, she was glad, but it was strange not to hear from him.
In spite of her anger, she was curious how he was doing, how he was feeling, what was going on in the office and in his life. She wondered how her departure had been received by Frank Dodgen, for example. She knew her hasty explanation to Stella that she needed to be home due to a “family situation”—she hadn’t said whose family—was thin at best. Of course, she would not call Doug, but there was a tiny seed of regret for deleting all the messages he’d left and the information they might contain.
Jake was talking about his latest project, following a few top-ranked Georgia high school football players as they went through the college recruiting process. “I have five kids on board for the fall, which I know sounds like a lot,” he was saying. “I’ll be on the road quite a bit, taping games and doing family interviews and stuff, but hopefully it means at least a couple of them will have great stories for the film.”
Suzanne, who hated sports, made a show of feigning interest. “So it’s a movie about how these football players decide where to college?”
“Well, yeah,” Jake said, slowed by the question. “But it’s so much more than that. A lot of these kids come from lower-class families in rural areas, and suddenly they’re being offered all kinds of scholarships and opportunities and being put on pedestals as hometown heroes. Eventually, I’d love to follow all these kids through college and beyond. There’s always a chance one of them could make it to the NFL, and then it gets really interesting.”
“Watch out with those potatoes there, Mr. Spielberg,” Marci teased him. He had been waving his fork of mashed potatoes animatedly as he talked, coming dangerously close to flinging them onto her shirt.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry, Marce.” He put down his fork and went on, not noticing the smiles exchanged by his female companions. “Anyway, there’s this one kid, Jamal Anderson—he’s a really talented wide receiver from Bainbridge. I think he could be talking to schools all over the country. He has nine brothers and sisters and will be the first person in his family to ever go to college. He works a part-time job and has a 4.0 average on top of being a State All Star. He runs track in the spring, too. The kid is amazing, and actually a really nice guy, too.”
“It sounds fantastic,” Marci said, and meant it. Jake was great at shooting commercials and community service announcements, and everything he did was polished and beautiful. But Marci knew his real love was the human side of things, especially with sports.
She was so proud of him, and yet there was a stab of envy, too. She envied Jake’s passion for his work, his connection to the kids. More than anything, Marci wanted that
same passion about something she did, rather than just someone she loved.
On the drive back to her parents’, Marci mused how much of her energies in the last couple of years had been divided between figuring out how to get by on a temp worker’s pay, and investing in a relationship that was doomed from the start. She thought of all the hours she’d spent hiding out with Doug, or waiting for Doug to arrive, or being sad that Doug was not around, or wondering what Doug was doing. In the moment, she’d never felt as if she was wasting her time on him, because when he was around, the passion was delicious.
Until a couple of weeks ago, every moment she’d had with him had been equal parts devastation and ecstasy, and she could focus on nothing else. It was like a drug, as though the torrid beginning of the relationship had never faded into comfortable normalcy. Even several months in, she had always put on makeup and shaved her legs when he was coming over. She never made him watch bad television with her or wasted their precious time together by complaining about her family or her job. She didn’t fart in front of him or shit in the bathroom while he was at her apartment.
At the time, she’d thought of this as a positive thing; their love always felt new and exciting. They didn’t have to deal with the things Beth complained about with Ray: perfunctory sex during halftime of the football game, month-long periods without any sex at all, spending all their time managing the kids and schedules and finances, bitching at each other about laundry and dirty toilets. Doug and Marci never had to deal with any of that. When she was with him, she felt as if he was the only thing in the world he cared about. And when she wasn’t, she was looking forward to the next time she would be. Until now.
She walked quietly into her parents’ dark kitchen, thinking perhaps that everyone might be either asleep or watching a movie. She needn’t have bothered, however, because as she turned into view of the living room she saw that everyone was awake, and that Ravi had been added to the group. Her father was the first to notice her; he smiled wanly from his place on the couch. In the middle of the room, Ravi was kneeling on the floor with Nicole, who was obviously sobbing. He whispered to her and stroked her hair, while their mother paced in and out of Marci’s view in front of them.
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