by Kia Corthron
Over the next three-quarters of an hour the house clears, as if they had all been waiting for Eliot to arrive before they could leave. Only Aunt Beck remains, and Dwight pulls out the couch-bed and makes it up for her. He had given his own house keys to Aunt Peg-Peg so that she and her brood could stay at his place in Lewis, much closer than their home in Bear, while he sleeps here in the boys’ old bedroom. Dwight tells Eliot he doesn’t know if any other family will come into town and need the guestroom but, for tonight, Eliot is welcome to sleep there. Eliot brings his suitcase to the middle bedroom. It is past 1:30, the rest of the house dark, when he makes the call.
“Hello?”
“I woke you?”
“Of course not.” A pause. “I called the office to say hi, and Andi told me. She gave me your family’s number. She thought you might need someone to talk to.” Another pause, Didi waiting for a response. “It was thoughtful of her.”
“Hmm.” His eyes are fixed on the afghan his mother crocheted for the guest bed while he was away at college, to help her sift through the reality that both her boys were grown and gone. He gently taps a tassel to watch it sway. Vaguely he has a sense of significance, Didi finally calling after a silence of so long.
“I’m so sorry, Eliot.”
“Thank you.” The tassel, a soft pendulum.
“Listen. Do you need me to come?”
There is a universe of difference between Do you want me to come? which is I am there for you, and Do you need me to come? which is I will if I have to. Eliot understands the distinction and is surprised that he is relieved to hear it. To know that she would come but would rather not. Because, he realizes, while he truly appreciates the offer, he also would rather she not.
“No, I’m fine.”
“Sure?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do you want to talk?”
“No. I mean I’m tired. It was a long drive.”
“Of course.” On the lower wall behind the dresser, an expertly rendered sketch of Little Orphan Annie and Daddy Warbucks, now faded. You would have to be sitting in this precise spot and looking from this precise angle to notice it. Eliot remembers coming home from school when he was still very small and finding it: a surprise gift from Dwight. He didn’t thank him. At some point, Claris had apparently moved the bureau to cover her firstborn’s wistful vandalism for the sake of guests, but Eliot sees that she never painted over it. “When is the funeral?”
“Monday morning.”
“What church?”
“No, a funeral parlor. My brother and I have to go pick out the casket in the morning.”
“Uh-huh. What’s the name and address of the funeral parlor?”
“Waverly’s. I forget? I forget—”
“That’s okay, I’ll find out the street.” A brief lonely cry from his father in the next room. Eliot had thought he was asleep.
“Alright. Well I’m going to call to check on you again tomorrow. If you want to talk that’s fine, and if you don’t want to talk that’s fine too. Okay?”
“Okay.”
A silence. “Okay. Well I’ll call tomorrow. Maybe early in the afternoon, after you get back from the funeral parlor.”
“Okay.”
“You get some sleep.”
“Okay.”
“Okay. Okay. Good night, Eliot.”
“Good night, Didi.”
He has not eaten since lunch, and after all the admonitions from his aunts to put something into his stomach, and with a refrigerator already stuffed with food from just the first day of bereavement visitors, he goes downstairs to see if he can tempt his appetite. He opens the fridge and stares for several minutes before giving up.
Back in the guestroom he dials a number.
“Hello?” Her voice sleepy.
“Sorry! I woke you. What time is it?”
“Eliot! Don’t worry about it. How are you?”
He swallows. “I’m fine. Andi?”
And Eliot tells her about his earliest memory, still a toddler, his mother giving him a bath in the kitchen sink. Her smile. And about being wrapped in a blanket on her lap, with his brother on the floor with the Sunday funnies, and her uttering “lynching,” the first time he’d ever heard the word. About sitting on the front porch sliding chair with his mother and brother, his mother saying that the heavy raindrops smashing against the pavement were people dancing in the streets. And then he speaks about Miss Onnie and her cats, and feeding the birds with her, and Parker. Miss Onnie saving Parker, and Ramonlee’s puppy, and Eliot trying to teach Parker tricks. About Colored Street and Mixed Street, about being cross-eyed and getting his first pair of glasses, and earning the Perfect Attendance certificate. About his father the porter and A. Philip Randolph’s visit and his father’s Baltimore defense job and the coal mountain in the basement and his disappointment at the canceling of the March on Washington. About the Bartons and the little baby girl Barton who drowned and Roof Barton becoming a kid miner. About being in trouble with Miss McAfee for coloring the white schoolbook children brown. About Jeanine almost getting hit by the car driven in the snow by the white man, and the new used twin beds, and the long ride on the school bus to visit Helen and Ellen Brown and their big family. About that Memorial Day at Aunt Beck’s, and the Dream Man, Uncle Sam and his lynched mother Tiny. About Jeanine’s rabbit in the box. About his father getting the glass factory job and the time he brought home two prisms from work, one for each of his sons to hang in their windows and watch the rainbows dance around their rooms. About Dwight. His big brother, always chasing after Dwight. Tarzan movies with Dwight, Dwight teaching him to make snow angels. Dwight the artist, Dwight’s cartoons, Dwight’s chalk lynch drawings. Dwight always letting Carl run over him, and Dwight was better than Carl. Dwight’s dog Rex, and Parker’s tragic end. Eliot talks about being chosen class valedictorian, and his high school moments of shame: the time he refused to dance with a heavy girl at the Valentine’s Day hop, the days he watched an outcast boy being bullied and did nothing in his defense. His high school sweetheart Jeanine over junior and senior years, wholly innocent and his longest relationship, as each of the four girls from college never stuck around, or he didn’t, longer than a month. His undergrad sick drunk night that permanently terminated his taste for hard liquor, his antisocial law school days. And Miss Onnie’s passing. And Christmas, walking Liddie’s twins and meeting the little girls next door and that black doll. And Dwight’s job with the postal service. And Dwight’s underground comic, and Dwight and his friends. When Eliot is finished, he yawns. He looks at the clock: almost four.
“I’ve kept you up!”
“It’s okay. I was already awake after the phone rang.”
“I’ve done all the talking!”
“It was a nice change of pace.”
“The long-distance! I’ll have to pay my dad back, in the morning I’ll tell him—”
“Eliot, it’s really the least of your worries,” and with that a cry spontaneously escapes him, then expires just as quickly.
“Andi. Can you come here?”
There is a silence, and instantly he feels ridiculous. They are not together anymore, and what? Does he expect her to miss work Monday? So everyone will know about their former relationship? Though he imagines they’d figured it out by now anyway, given all the weird energy between them. She wouldn’t go to Gary with him when they were together, and now with it all over he presumes she would be willing to become sucked into the middle of it all, his life? And what must she think, him asking her to drop everything and come to Maryland after he’s been with Didi all this time?
“Andi, I’m sorry, that just popped out. But I really appreciate your listening.” Still no answer. “Andi?”
He hears the receiver jiggle. “Okay, go ahead.”
“What?”
“Oh sorry, Eliot, I had to
put the phone down. With all the books and notepads strewn around here, you wouldn’t think it would have taken me that long to find a pen and paper. Alright, give me the driving directions.”
16
“These are some of the samples we have in right now.” Stan Waverly the funeral director, a short, stocky fifty-something white man with white hair and much pink in his smooth, fair complexion, sits at his desk, holding up a three-ring binder. A picture album, except these pages are neatly filled with photographs of caskets. Dwight and Eliot, sitting next to each other opposite Stan, stare at the images, both brothers looking like they’ve been through the war, confusion and exhaustion, but Stan is used to that appearance in his clients. Despite Eliot’s phone call into the wee hours, the time seemed to have dragged until this 10 a.m. meeting, having woken every half-hour from vivid dreams. Several vases of artificial flowers adorn the room, one placed on a tall chest made of cherry wood, as is Stan’s tidy desk, both pieces unmarred. A cup on the desk is filled with pens (waverly funeral home with the address and phone number), a standing American flag is situated in a corner, and on the wall is a framed diploma authorizing Stan as a Mortuary Technician. Undertaker. Until now, Eliot had not thought about how literal the word is: he takes them under.
To spare their father, Dwight and Eliot have taken on as many tasks as possible: choosing the coffin; writing the tribute to their mother, assigned by Dwight to Eliot the lawyer before he arrived; the organization of the cars for the funeral procession and other logistics (Dwight); arranging the pallbearers (Dwight again). Eliot had remarked that the elder seemed to have unfairly burdened himself with the bulk of the work, but Dwight assured him he had not taken on more than he could handle, and Eliot left it at that.
“Most people choose steel. Very sturdy and economical. It may seem cold, but it comes in a variety of colors. White, pink, tan. And of course silver, gold. I assume an open casket for the viewing, closed for the funeral?”
The brothers stare at him blank.
“That’s the general custom. See here, the upper half of the casket is open so that visitors can see her face. The bottom half is always closed so you needn’t bring shoes.”
Again the brothers gape in utter confusion.
“You will have to pick out an outfit for her to wear of course.”
Eliot and Dwight look at each other.
“I can do that,” says Dwight. “Or. I can pick out something, and then I’ll check with you.” Eliot nods.
“Alright, so you’ll notice the design on the inside upper half. This one with the praying hands is very popular, as is this. With the roses, ‘Mother’?” Dwight looks to the lower part of the page. “Now that we call ‘Going Home,’ very simple, very tasteful.” Stan Waverly allows a few moments of silence while the brothers stare at pictures, turn pages. “These,” he begins again quietly, “are in the range I imagine you’re looking at. But I should also—” He turns several leaves to the wooden models. Eliot notices that the prices have now doubled. “These oak and mahogany pieces are quite elegant. I’m especially partial to the ebony.” Four times as much as the steel. “I’ve already reserved one for myself.” Stan softly chuckles.
The brothers stare for a few moments. “My mother’s life insurance benefit for the whole funeral is a thousand dollars,” Eliot says finally.
“Certainly,” says Stan, and moves to turn back to the budget section.
“Wa-wait! Let’s jus look at a few a these,” says Dwight, his hand holding the page with the ebony model. Eliot’s face slowly turns to his brother. Dwight doesn’t notice.
“Well the ebony is certainly very striking.” Stan smiles broadly, then glances at Eliot and tempers his expression. “Now, some families prefer the cherry, more affordable than the ebony. A little color. Softens things.” The cherry is half the cost of the ebony but still twice as much as the steel.
Dwight leans forward, turning the sheets, studying, frowning. At last he sits back in his chair. “Well! I say we go with the ebony.” As if injected by a boost of some stimulant, he suddenly seems brighter, smiling at Eliot. “Whadda ya think?”
Eliot stares at Dwight as if his brother is from Mars. “What do I think? I think the ebony’s two thousand dollars and we only have one thousand for the entire funeral.”
Dwight ponders this, as if Eliot were sincerely posing a question. Lightbulb: “I can pay for it.”
“What?”
The elder laughs. “I been workin with the postal service a long time, little brother. I put some away, savings. It can be paid in installments?” He is looking at Stan now.
“I’m sure we can work something out.”
“What do you need installments for. I thought you had savings.”
“Well I don’t have all of it!” Dwight laughs. “But I can cover half up front. And the rest.” Dwight leaves the sentence dangling, the idea having already been completed by the discussion of partial payments. He seems delighted to have resolved this issue so quickly.
Eliot stares at Dwight, then turns to Stan, whose face is frozen noncommittally. After a moment, the latter speaks. “You know, I have some other business I need to attend to. Why don’t I leave you two alone to talk.” He walks out, closing the door behind him.
Eliot turns back to Dwight, his eyes narrowing. Dwight, befuddled by the heat he is gathering from his brother, does a doubletake.
“What!”
“I’m not letting that bloodsucker prey on our grief. The five-hundred-dollar casket is fine.”
“‘Fine’? ‘Fine’? That’s good enough for your mother? We only have one chance to do this, Eliot!” And Dwight bursts into tears. Eliot glares.
“It’s my money! What’s the difference if that’s what I wanna do with it?”
“The difference is she’s our mother, not your mother, and I say no.”
“Eliot! I been workin longer than you. I know you don’t make much your kinda law, I know in the city rent’s high. I don’t mind doin this. I wanna do this!”
“You wanna be a fool for that parasite.”
“It’s not about him! It’s about Mom!”
“Oh you think Mom wants this? Letting some white man bamboozle her grown sons she thought she’d raised with some sense?”
“It ain’t about black n white, Eliot! everything to you’s about—” Dwight takes a breath. “And if it was, you think if we were white he’d be sellin us the cheap junk? If you’ll recall, that’s what he started us with. Maybe I’d like to show him niggers can afford the ebony good as the whites.”
“Yeah I’m sure that’s just what he’s hoping. Nothing he loves better than when the spooks are trying to keep up with the goddamn white Joneses, he loves that all the way to the bank.”
“Who cares what he thinks! Who cares if he gets rich? It’s not about him!”
“I know, it’s about Mom, who as you know would be rolling in her grave if she knew after she took out that life insurance policy to cover all her expenses, we were sitting here contemplating going into debt on a damn two-thousand-dollar coffin.”
“My money! I said I’d pay for it! And whadda you know about Mom anyway? How many times the last few years you seen her? I seen her every Sunday, called her every day! Every day! I called her yesterday mornin and she was fine!” and Dwight is wailing again. Eliot is violently silent. Finally Dwight wipes his face. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna tell anyone. People’ll jus think we both paid for it,” and it is with every fiber of his being that keeps Eliot’s fists clutching his chair and away from his brother’s face.
Forty minutes later they stand outside, having settled on the more moderately priced cherry, Dwight committing to making up the fiscal deficit. Parked in front of the parlor is an old red pickup truck. The street is one-way, and the truck parked on the left so that the driver’s side is next to the sidewalk. Behind the wheel sits a slim blond man,
late twenties or early thirties. He looks straight ahead. Not at the funeral home, despite the fact that there are many parking spaces and there would be no reason for him to park where he is unless he had business with the establishment. Not at the brothers, despite the fact that they are the only people on the street and only a few yards away from him. He wears a flannel shirt with both sleeves torn off leaving his arms bare, a tattoo of some kind on his left near the shoulder. Poster boy for trash, Eliot thinks, though he allows that at least the guy looks clean. Dwight glimpses the truck, then looks away.
“Eliot, listen, you go on ahead home. I got some things I gotta do, I’ll be there in a while.”
Eliot’s hands are in his pockets. “Who’s that?”
“What? Oh, him! That’s Keith, he’s a friend.”
“Friend.”
“I gotta go, Eliot. I got some stuff to do, I’ll come by the house later,” and Dwight runs to get into the passenger side of the pickup. The moment he closes the door he breaks down sobbing again. The driver steals a glance at Eliot before pulling off.
At home he is grateful that the constant flow of relatives and friends paying respects seems to be a comfort to his father, and that his assignment to write his mother’s tribute means he is excused to shut his door against all visitors. He needs to finish before tomorrow evening, in time for Dwight to look it over and provide any input. They would also need to decide who would read the piece, someone close to their mother but not so close as to break down emotionally before finishing. Uncle Rick?
