Jack nodded and stepped forward, looking flustered. He cleared his throat and at the top of his voice, began to pray. “Gracious heavenly Father, we thank you for the life of your servant, Virginia Singleton. And we ask that you receive her into your heavenly kingdom now and forever, amen.”
Helen Streider screamed. In her wheelchair, Sylvia Kryszewski frowned at the upheaval. Putterman reached for his walker, calling Helen a nasty name.
Alex unfurled the length of cloth and wrapped Helen with it to subdue her and keep her from hurting herself or Flavia. Beneath his rolled sleeves, veins snaked over his bulging biceps. Flavia spoke firmly but soothingly to Helen, and Miss Wilson bawled, shaking her head and dabbing her eyes with her embroidered hanky.
Kennet followed Jack and Nathan into the foyer. He couldn’t blame them for wanting to leave.
“It was a nice service, Kenny,” Jack managed in his gravelly voice. This comment embarrassed both of them. He slapped Kennet’s back and went out the front door.
Nathan said, “Wow, dude. Sorry about the commotion. You did a great job, though. Your mom would’ve been proud.”
“I hope so. Thanks for coming, man.”
Nathan grasped Kennet’s right hand and embraced him with the other, pounding him twice on the back. “Remember, you need anything . . .” Nathan held his thumb and pinky to his head in the “call me” gesture.
Nathan bounded off the front porch and down the wheelchair ramp.
“You’re a good, boy, Doc,” Albert Putterman told him, trundling his walker into the foyer. “Your mother was a good Christian woman, too. But that Helen Streider’s a crazy bitch if I ever saw one.”
Kennet smiled in spite of his disappointment and retrieved his mother’s urn and Bible from the fireplace mantel. Then he followed the hall to his room. He set the items on his little three-drawer dresser with under the mirror. His hair had dried back into curls, and beneath it, his face was wan. He squeezed his broad hands into fists and sank to the bed.
So much for honoring your mother’s memory. “I hope you’re pleased, Ma.” And he hoped she heard him.
He forced himself to relax, spreading open his hands on his thighs. Honoring his mother consisted of more than a funeral service, wherever it was held. He hoped Lawnboy was right—that she was proud of him.
The afternoon before she died, she had spoken to him of the future. She called him at the funeral home, and he walked home on his lunch break to see what she wanted. He stepped into her upstairs room and asked, “What’s up, Ma?”
She smoothed the white sheet over her waist with knotted hands, hands no longer raw from scrubbing floors. She gazed intently at him with her one good eye, and he knew something serious was coming.
She’d turned somber in the last two months, while recuperating from a case of pneumonia that had landed her in McKeesport hospital for a week. But it wasn’t sickness that made her solemn. He could tell she had something on her mind. Waiting for her to gather her thoughts, he peered out the window and surveyed the tossing treetops and the sinister looking roof of the funeral home down the road.
“You remember the night the lady prophet laid her hands on you?”
How could he forget? He regretted that night like no other. Not because of what the preacher lady said, but what happened afterward, when they got home. Twelve long years had passed, but he vividly recalled his father’s abuse, their struggle, the blast of the shotgun.
“Of course I remember.”
“We never talked much about that night.”
Kennet stared at the floor, willing away the gory images this topic resurrected. “I told you before, but I can’t say it enough. I’m sorry, Ma.”
“Not about that,” she said, reaching for his hand. “About what Sister Etta spoke over you.”
“Oh. That.” Kennet had pondered the woman’s words countless times, trying to find some truth or meaning in them. Something about being vindicated from his enemies, whoever they were, and being healed of his wounds. He absently fingered the star-shaped scar on his cheek, a memento received from his father. The prophecy still puzzled him, but he remembered the power, the raw energy that coursed through him that night. He still sensed it at times. But for what purpose?
His mother touched his chin and turned his face toward hers. “Kennet, I believe you’re touched by God.”
Touched? Marked, maybe. Afflicted. Those were good King James words that more accurately described his life and anything the Almighty’s hand had dealt him. He and Ma were free from Sir’s abuse, but life hadn’t improved much in the last decade.
“I don’t know about that.” Outside, an ominous thunderhead encroached on the funeral manse.
“I’m sure of it,” she said and squeezed his fingers. “When Sister Etta laid her hands on you, she imparted something to you. A spiritual gift.”
Kennet withdrew his hand and sat back. “Please, don’t get religious on me. That’s a bit ludicrous, don’t you think, seeing where we’ve ended up?”
His mother pressed her lips together and ran her fingertips along the hem of the sheet.
“I don’t have any special powers, Ma. If I did, you wouldn’t be confined to that bed. Or the wheelchair.”
“How can you say that?” She considered him sternly with her single eye. “The Lord gives different gifts. Healing may not be yours, but you know you’re gifted. You have the dreams, the visions in the night.”
Kennet couldn’t argue this point with her. Sure, he had the same dreams everyone else did, the kind inspired by a late night snack, the silly kind that made no sense, the kind his morning shower washed away. Yet at times, others came, night visions so strong and vivid he couldn’t shake them, no matter how badly he wanted to. They were nearly tangible, more real to him than recollections of the previous day. And they happened often enough that he couldn’t consider them flukes. Dreams . . . powerful dreams.
Like when his mutt, Fort, ran off the summer before second grade and Kennet dreamed that he came back. His dad claimed Fort was dead. “Killed on the road,” he said. “I’m glad of it—one less mouth to feed.” But as in the dream, Fort returned a week later, a little skinnier, but unharmed.
And he dreamed of Aunt Mae in the otherworld, strolling beside a river clear as crystal. The next day, his mother received the news that her sister had passed away during the night.
And when Kennet dreamed his father swallowed dynamite from a bottle and blew himself up . . . well, that had certainly proven true in its own way.
Beyond the dreams, there was the thing with the marshmallows, but that was a silly parlor trick, a useless novelty. What good was discerning the cause of death after cremation? They were already beyond all aid, weren’t they?
“What’s a gift,” Kennet said, “unless it helps somebody else?”
His mother scowled at his cynicism. “You know Daddy wouldn’t let me make the trip to West Virginia for Aunt Mae’s funeral the summer before . . .”
“You can say it, Ma—the summer before he killed himself.” The painful ringing in his ears returned, followed by the stench of blood and whiskey.
She looked at him. “What you told me about her was always a comfort to me.”
You called me home to talk about this? Tired of this conversation, Kennet stood, ready to head back to work.
“And what have you seen about me?” she asked.
He took a deep breath to break the sudden feeling of suffocation. He felt dizzy and sick. Stood up too fast. . . . He gripped the bed rail.
“Nothing, Ma,” he said. “I keep telling you it doesn’t work that way. I can’t decide to have a dream or a vision. If one comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t.”
She frowned. Why she was concerned about her fate? She’d come home from the hospital. She was getting better. In another week or two, she’d be parked in the parlor with the rest of the residents, shouting figures at The Price Is Right. Then again, drawing near to death might naturally prompt her to consider her
fate. Ma licked her lips; she wasn’t finished yet. But he didn’t care to hear any more of her spiritual musings. He needed to get back to work.
“I always wanted a gift and a ministry like Sister Etta,” she sighed.
“I know.” She’d told him a hundred times over the last twelve years. Kennet had often wrestled with the preacher woman’s pronouncement over him, sometimes considering it profound, at other times considering her a profound nut case.
“God didn’t ordain it,” Ma said wistfully.
“You just said God gives different gifts.” He leaned over the bed to brush a white curl from her pale forehead. “Listen, Ma. Here’s how I see it. You’ve instilled in me what’s most important in life. Love of the truth. A desire to do right. And perseverance in the face of hardship. Those are more important than making people hit the floor like some phony televangelist.”
“Kennet . . .” She gripped his hand again, fiercely. “What about courage to face the future?”
Kennet studied her one ocean-blue eye and then the other, veiled with a milky cataract that prevented her from seeing anything, good or otherwise. As always, it strummed the chord of guilt within him, although the resounding vibration was no longer so harsh.
“I don’t know about that either, Ma, but it’s my concern now, not yours. I’m a high school graduate, an adult.”
From the television downstairs, the authoritative theme music of KDKA-TV News at Noon began. He needed to return to work. He started to step away, but she kept hold of his hand. He sighed and stopped trying to escape her grasp.
“It’s time,” she said. “Time to start a new adventure. Launch out on your own. But you can’t leave the harbor unless you cut the anchor and set sail.”
“I’ve always thought of you as more of a ball and chain, not an anchor.”
She let go and slapped his hand. “I’m serious, Kennet. True, you can’t stay with me forever. But you’ve got to leave your father behind. It’s long over, and it would be a crying shame to let him control you from the grave.”
She was right, yet it wasn’t that simple. What his father did that night had shipwrecked him on the shoals. Even if he could break free, he had nowhere to sail to, no horizon to yearn for, and no one to share his journey.
“Hand me my Bible,” she told him. He groaned but passed the worn, leather-clad book from the nightstand into her frail hands. She leafed to an underlined passage in Joshua and read to him, as she often did. “Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Then she closed the book and folded her hands over it. “It’s time to be strong, Kennet. Nothing is impossible if you just have courage.”
Kennet nodded patiently and bit his tongue. He’d heard all this before. Work awaited.
“I love you, Son.” Her eyes brimmed with tears now, something he rarely saw. His attitude softened, and he laid his hand on hers. She said, “In spite of what’s happened to us, the bad times, the hard times, the Lord has seen us through. You’re touched by God, and freedom is your destiny, as Sister Etta prophesied. Let that hope be the anchor for your soul.”
Kennet wiped her tears away with his thumb and bent to kiss her forehead, soft and wrinkled. “All right, Ma,” he whispered. “I’ll try.” He left her there, clutching her tattered Bible. And that was the last time he’d seen her alive. He wiped his own eyes now.
The future . . .
It was absurd for a nineteen-year-old to be rooming in a personal care home with a bunch of crazy old people. It was time to move out on his own, meet the world. With his mother gone, he had no reason to stay. Yet he’d never lived on his own and was unsure how to get there, uncertain how to launch himself into adulthood.
Kennet suddenly heard his mother’s last words to him: “It’s time to be strong.” Courageous. To step out, believing that doors would open.
He made fists again, this time not in frustration, but with determination. Then he rose to return to the funeral home and the ashes that awaited him.
Chapter 5
Cecil Grinold hiked his black suit pants to his prodigious waistline and tucked in his shirt in the light from the trailer’s bedroom window that looked out on the muddy driveway.
Delores Swann reclined on the waterbed, her legs crossed beneath her ratty houserobe. She never bothered to doll up, but that’s not what he came for. Not that he was successful in his mission today. Then again, if she made herself more attractive—presentable, at least—he could have raised the flag.
Grinold laced his wingtips and then fastened a cufflink through the French cuff of his shirt. “Shall I drop by tomorrow?” Sundays were sometimes iffy for Delores.
“Drop by?” Delores sat up, making the mattress pitch. “That’s all you do.”
Ignoring the bait, he buttoned his suspenders to the waistband of his pants. If he moved fast enough, he might get out before she started something ugly.
“Cecil, I want to know where this relationship is going. You know how I feel about you. When are you going to commit to me? When are we going to get married?”
Too late. Grinold paced the room as he buttoned his shirt. He avoided the scattered clothing, stacks of ladies’ shoeboxes and the shoes that should have been stored in them. He despised untidiness. He pinched his tie-tack off the tray on her side of the dresser, overturning the vial of her prescription asthma medication. He righted it and then pocketed the tie-tack.
“You’re already married, Delores.”
“To a no good loser of a man. If you can call him a man. I want to be with you. I want to go somewhere in life.”
He smiled at this although he didn’t let her see. It was more like, I want to live in a real house . . . I want to go shopping every day. . . . Well, at someplace other than Walmart.
“Nonetheless, you’re still legally bound.”
“What are you saying?” She floundered to the edge of the bed. “Are you asking me to leave him?”
“To protect my reputation”—squinting in the dusty mirror, Grinold struggled to close the collar button at his neck—“you’d have to go through with a divorce first.”
She sucked in a breath to launch a comeback, but he cut her off.
“You know I’m not the marrying type, Delores. I told you that from the beginning. So whether you remain with Mabon or divorce him is immaterial. Besides, I don’t think you really like me.” Grinold lifted an open box from the vanity seat and toyed with the tissue paper nestling the faux-leather sandals.
Delores shook her head, tossing her bleached straw hairdo. “If you were in my position, you’d take anything better you could get.”
She was right about that. But he wasn’t in her position and never would be. He did his level best to keep himself out of “positions.” He always enjoyed the best and didn’t care to share it with anyone.
“A girl’s gotta have something, seeing as you don’t exactly perform so well.”
Grinold’s stomach turned sour. Bitch. “What you’re saying, then, is that you’re doing me just for the gratuities.” He tossed the box back on the vanity seat, then cinched his silk tie.
Delores stood and planted her fists on puffy hips. “Don’t make me out to be some cheap bimbo, some two-bit tart.”
Heavens, no. I wouldn’t be quite so generous.
“You know I can’t make a living arranging dried flowers.”
Not the way you arrange them, you dried twat. “You have your husband to support you.” He chuckled inwardly at his own sarcasm. “My jacket.”
She dogged him down the narrow hall into the cluttered living room. “You know I want out. Can’t you see that?”
All too clearly, and for that I don’t blame you. He lifted his suit coat from the arm of the sofa, shook it a little, and pulled it on. Glancing at the mounds of dried flowers, green wire, and hand tools scattered across the work table before the front window, he whisked at the front of the jacket with his fingers, hoping nothing had clung to the expe
nsive material.
“You need to find some work outside of the house,” he said.
“Ditch that redhead and give me her job, then.”
Grinold choked back laughter. “Can you type?” Or spell?
She folded her arms under her ample breasts. “No, but I can learn.”
“Mary Grace is the model of efficiency, and if I let her go without cause she might raise a fuss. Replacing her with someone who has no experience would look suspicious.” Grinold stopped preening and looked Delores in the eye. “It’s best for us to keep some distance. Not because I don’t care for you,” he added quickly, “but for your protection. If word leaked into the community that I was seeing another man’s wife, it wouldn’t be good for either of us.”
“You mean for you. You and your precious reputation!” Her hazel eyes blazed with a spark of orange. “If you were so worried about your reputation, you wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Delores . . .”
“Don’t you ‘Delores’ me, you bastard. You’re only concerned about yourself. Always have been. Well, I’m tired of it being all you, you, you. What about me?” She poked her chest with a red press-on nail. “I’m not your personal whore you can keep tucked away in a five-room dump in the backwoods. I want a life, too. I’ve got dreams, I’ve got plans.”
“Now, Delores.”
“No.” She fisted her hands at her sides. “You get what you want, and all I get are cheap shoes and trinkets.” She slapped a catalog off the work table. The pages splayed on the worn carpet.
Grinold drew on his raincoat. She was simply impossible when she got this way.
“Where do you think you’re going?” She was nearly screaming now. “We’re not done yet!”
“I’ve got to get back to the funeral home.”
“And I’ve got to have a change. You either come up with something substantial—like cash—or I’ll, I’ll . . .”
He opened the trailer door.
She snatched at his coat sleeve. “I’ll let it slip that our fine, upstanding local funeral professional is having an affair with a married woman.”
Death Perception Page 4
