by Cassia Leo
DANE straightened as the door to Stella’s grandmother’s house opened. The woman standing there had to be Stella’s mother. Same eyes. Same chin.
Too bad she had the pinched look of a constipated bulldog.
“You must be the new boy.” She stepped back to let him in. “Stella’s in the kitchen.”
Dane paused to see if she would point the way. She didn’t. He stepped past her into the gloom.
The whole place smelled of sliced ham and piecrust. He headed down the foyer and into the darkened living room. The hospital bed was gone. People milled around or huddled in clumps. The funeral was set for the next day, so nobody was wearing black yet. Gimme caps and overalls, tacky florals and shiny overly bright dresses. But no Stella.
A couple of the women glanced his way, but no one asked who he was or why he might be there. He turned toward the doorway with the most light.
He saw her before he’d even entered the kitchen, the curve of her back as familiar as the seat of his Harley. Her hair was twisted up in some fancy concoction of clips, leaving her neck bare. He needed to press his lips right there, and he knew that it would help her too, but a gaggle of disapproving women paced the room like jackals, watching him warily.
Stella rinsed dishes in the sink, taking her time, as if she could keep the world at bay if she just concentrated on that task. Dane knew. He remembered a similar moment when he stacked plastic containers and aluminum trays after his mother’s wake. No fancy dishes, just a couple neighbors bringing stuff by, not expecting two single boys to return their cake plates or Pyrex, and so using throwaway stuff.
Here, everything was perfect, silver trays and crystal bowls. A whole table full of casseroles and cakes and finger food. Dane knew Stella wouldn’t turn around, so he went ahead and crossed through the firing squad, avoiding eye contact. He slid his arms right around her and rested his chin on her shoulder. He wouldn’t go so far as to kiss her, not yet, but he’d be close enough to smell her.
Her chin dropped to her chest as he fitted himself to her. She sagged a little, as though a great weight had finally been lifted and she could rest. He clasped her tightly, holding her steady. “I’m here, Stell. I’m here.”
They hadn’t seen each other in days. Once Angie died, it was impossible to get in touch with Stella. He’d asked Joe what to do.
“Just go,” the old man had said, wiping his forehead for the hundredth time in five minutes. “Nobody kicks up a fuss at a funeral. She’ll be at the house, you know.”
Her hands were in the dishwater, still holding a bowl. He reached around and took it from her and set it on the counter. She wore an apron, a frilly red thing that had probably been Angie’s.
He backed away from the counter, pulling Stella with him, untying the apron as they moved. It fell away, and she caught it before it hit the floor. “Grandma’s?” he asked.
She held it to her waist a moment.
He took it from her, folding it carefully and laying it on the counter. He leaned in close. “I met your mom. Gracious AND charming. We’re running away together after this.”
She leaned her forehead against his neck, and he could feel her smile. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “I hoped you would come, even though I didn’t call. I should have called.”
“Shh.” He wrapped her up again. “You didn’t have to call.”
She sagged again, and he realized how coiled she kept herself. He vowed, as much as was in his power, to keep her relaxed and able to live in this moment, this hard moment, but one best managed surrounded with people who actually cared.
“Hello, Vivian.” A man’s voice in the kitchen startled everyone. Dane knew it was Joe, even as strangled as it sounded.
He and Stella turned to the man, spit-shined in an aging charcoal suit, his hair slicked back.
“Well, Joe,” Vivian said. “You’re here.” Her face seemed all lips, red, lurid, disapproving.
“You couldn’t chase me away from this,” Joe said, handing her a dish. “I’m done with listening to that.”
Dane leaned down to Stella again. “What does that mean?”
But Stella shook her head. He didn’t know if that meant she couldn’t say, or if she didn’t know.
Vivian’s face bloomed to match her mouth. “Don’t you waltz in here on this day and give me any lectures about behavior.”
“I kept my peace long enough,” he said. “And I’m speaking at the funeral tomorrow.”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Vivian shouted, then caught herself. “There will be no speeches. Just a traditional service.”
“Try and stop me.” Joe whirled around then and headed back out the front door.
Dane let go of Stella. “I’ll be right back,” he said. He dashed through the kitchen, bumping into Vivian, still holding the casserole.
She whirled around, practically tossing the foil container on the counter. He heard her say, “What has gotten into this town?” as he flew through the foyer and out the door.
*
Dane nearly smacked clean into Joe, who stood just outside the door, admiring a rosebush. “Bloomed without her,” Joe said, snapping off a pink bud and sticking it into his lapel.
Joe straightened, tugging down on the jacket. Sweat beaded across his forehead, so he extracted a white linen handkerchief to dab across his face. “Missouri weather. You never know what it’s going to bring.”
Dane couldn’t think of a thing to say. Joe never dressed this way, acted this way. He was pickup trucks and gimme caps, overalls and grease.
Joe took off in his jaunty walk, one leg stiff, and Dane fell in step beside him. “You okay, Joe?”
They passed lawns of every variety, trimmed and trashed, lush with green and dead with dirt. Houses were no better. The street had no rhyme or reason, poverty next to middle class, a great jumble of human conditions. You’d never see this in Houston. People stuck together by the set of circumstances that befell them.
Joe stopped by a sagging house with a brown lawn. The porch bowed in the middle, as though its load was just too heavy.
“Look at the window boxes,” Joe said.
Bright white plastic boxes lined all four windows in the front of the house. Inside were geraniums in red and pink, vivid color against the weather-beaten trim and fogged windows.
“This is Stella’s house,” Joe said. “You haven’t been here, I reckon.”
Dane shook his head.
“Her dad doesn’t keep things up, but Vivian—Stella’s mom—does what she can.”
Dane frowned. “That woman makes Stella miserable.”
“She makes most everyone miserable.” Joe kicked at a red ant bed burgeoning by the cracked sidewalk. “Some people get all stirred up when people mess with them.” Ants poured out of the granulated mound. “Eventually you turn into that thing they poked you into becoming.”
Dane backed away as the angry insects spread wide. “So she wasn’t always like this.”
“Vivian was one of the kindest girls imaginable, just like her mother.”
“So who kicked her? Stella’s dad?”
“Nah, some man in town came along. Paid real fine attention to her. Stella was small then. Vivian was feeling blue after her father died. Her husband was the quiet sort, not one to get all up and romance-like.”
“So she had an affair?”
“That man riled her up. We all knew it. We all saw it. And once she had a taste for it, there was no stopping her. All the women had to keep their men locked up.”
“Really?” Dane couldn’t see Vivian as the harlot.
“She don’t have too many friends in this town.” Joe turned away and started his awkward gait again.
Dane stared at the house, wondering which window was Stella’s, then rushed to catch up with Joe. “So what was all that about back at Angie’s?”
“Just an old man making a spectacle of himself.”
“Did Vivian say something to you?”
“She doesn�
�t have to.” Joe stopped, catching his breath. “I know I’m not welcome. I’m the one who might have stepped on her father’s perfect memory.” He mopped his forehead again. “As a young man of sixty, I could walk these ten blocks a hundred times a day and not notice.”
“And you did, I bet.”
“I took any chance to catch a glimpse of Angie. Everyone knows it.” He started walking again. “Angie knew it.”
“Vivian got in the way?”
“Angie knew how her daughter felt. And family came first.”
They stopped at the end of another cracked walkway leading to a modest house in sound condition. Flower beds full of spindly rosebushes sprouted anemic blooms.
Joe approached the flowers and plucked one. It disintegrated into a shower of petals.
“You grow these for Angie?” Dane asked.
“I can’t grow weeds,” Joe said. “I planted these knowing Angie would want to come save them. And she did. Would walk down to tend them right up until she went to the nursing home. I chose yellow and orange just for her.”
Joe stared at the rail of his porch, and Dane knew he could picture himself there, looking down on Angie, kneeling by his struggling roses.
A wind kicked up, sending the weak limbs to swaying. More petals fluttered to the ground. “I’m sure they’ll die now. Just as well. Been a slow death for all of us.”
Dane kicked at the dirt. “So what you planning on doing at the funeral?”
Joe chuckled. “Having the time of my life.” He looked up at the sky. “Angelica, my girl, you’re going to love it.” He climbed the three short steps of his porch. “You get on back to Stella, now, boy. There’s lots of Angie in her.” He unlocked the door, the thud of its closing reverberating in the spindly rail.
Dane walked along the bed of flowers, looking for one that might hold up to a careful plucking. On the end, a yellow one wavered at the tip of a flimsy stem, still rolled tightly into a fresh bud. He cupped the bloom and snapped it a foot below, wincing at the bite of a tiny thorn he hadn’t noticed, too small to break the skin. He kept the petals protected in his palm as he continued back to Stella’s grandmother’s house, and the women who surrounded her like a cage.
***
18: Funeral Escapade
DANE tossed his sports jacket over his shoulder as he walked Stella to the church for the funeral. Fall had given in to one last heat wave. He was used to it. Hundred degrees in September was the norm back in Texas. Overall, Missouri had been easy going on the weather.
Stella gripped his hand like a vise. They approached the imposing entry of the Baptist church, where Vivian had insisted the funeral be held. Dane tugged on the carved wooden handle and led them into a foyer where Vivian arranged photographs and a guest book, surrounded by a gaggle of matronly women in dark dresses.
“About time you got here,” Vivian snapped. “I’m guessing you decided to stay out all night again even though your grandmother was cold in a coffin.”
“I’m never going to your house again.” Stella’s voice was a growl. “I will never see you again after today.”
The church women backed away, slipping through the doors to the sanctuary.
Vivian returned to the guest book, smoothing the feather on the plumed pen. “You always were so melodramatic.”
Stella tugged them forward, through the same doors as the other women. Cushioned pews spread in both directions from the main aisle. Tall, skinny windows with colored glass showed pictures of people in robes, and what Dane assumed was Jesus, always with a circle of yellow on his head.
At the front was the coffin, gray steel with blue satin. The top part was open, but you couldn’t see inside from the back. Stella moved forward, parting the church women, who whispered together in the aisle.
As they neared the front, Stella let go of his hand and rushed to the coffin. When he caught up to her, she was smoothing the gray hair off her grandmother’s face.
“She looks terrible,” Stella said. “I never understand how people can say they look so good.”
“It’s just something to say,” Dane said.
“All this makeup. This frozen expression. She’s so cold.” Still, she grasped the fingers curled artfully atop the gray linen dress.
Dane remembered the flower, and lifted his sports coat to tug the rose from the lapel. “This is from Joe.” He laid the yellow bloom in the casket by Angie’s elbow.
“She’d like that,” Stella said. “She always helped him with his roses.”
More people entered the church, waiting patiently in the aisle for Stella to finish.
Dane squeezed her shoulders. “Where should we sit?”
Stella turned away from the coffin. “Over there, on the front row.”
One of the church women approached. “Stella, darling, you can wait in the family parlor. You will walk in with your mother when the service begins.”
“We’ll stay right here, if you don’t mind, ma’am,” Dane said. Stella relaxed beside him. “Stella wants to stay close.”
The woman frowned, emphasizing the red lipstick that bled into the wrinkles around her mouth. “Well, all right then.”
“Mighty obliged.” Dane turned back to Stella.
“Thank you,” she murmured and laid her head on his shoulder. “I’d rather be here.”
“I know.”
Mourners filed forward, glancing at Angie, then finding a seat. This was only Dane’s second funeral. Just his mother’s before. He’d been too young when his grandparents died.
But really, nothing was the same. There had been no church. No funeral home. They couldn’t afford any of that. Just a few words over her grave at the cemetery. Him and Ryker and a few women whose houses she cleaned before she got too sick.
Dane vowed not to die impoverished and practically alone. He looked over at Stella, whose head was bowed so he could only see the tufts of her blond hair. Not her, either.
Organ music began, and Dane turned to marvel at the machine, up high in a section in the back like a balcony. The pipes extended up to the ceiling, and a woman in a robe pumped madly away with hands and feet, her gray hair bobbing. He felt the shudder of Stella next to him, crying now. He was helpless at this point, couldn’t do anything but sit there and let her hold on. He realized too late his jacket was still folded over his arm.
More people streamed in, stopped by the coffin, and moved to their seats. Dane recognized a few from the shop, but nobody he’d rather avoid appeared—the bartender, the car sales jerks, Darlene, or Bobby Ray’s contingent. He relaxed against the hard back of the pew. He’d make it through this and get Stella home, wherever that might be for her now. They could sort everything else out later.
A shadow in a window caught his attention. Behind the altar, off to one side, near the back.
It flashed again, something temporarily blocking the light. Too big for a bird. Dane glanced around, but no one else seemed to notice, focused on the prayer cards, or holding Kleenex.
He sat a little straighter, focusing in on the window, which was only a few feet wide and maybe two feet tall, but set high.
The object blocked it again, and this time Dane made out the shape of a head, then a hand pressed against the glass for just a moment. Someone was jumping, trying to peer in.
He looked down at Stella. Should he tell her? Who would do such a thing? Maybe Bobby Ray was looking for another ploy. He pulled his arm from her. “I’m going to be right back,” he said.
Stella’s face crumpled, and he hesitated. “I’ll be back before it starts. I promise.”
She leaned away, and he stood, quickly striding back to the foyer. Vivian stood talking to a sheriff by the door, and upon seeing Dane, her eyebrows flew up. He pushed past them and out into the bright morning, quickly rounding the corner of the church to the wall with the window.
Joe was bent over, hands on his knees, breathing heavily.
“What are you doing?” Dane asked, helping his boss stand erect.
Joe leaned against the wall, running a hand over his hair to try and smooth the flyaway strands. “Damn Vivian called the sheriff to keep me out. Thinks I’ll make a ruckus.”
“Weren’t you going to?”
“Absolutely.” He turned back to the window, the bottom ledge just above his head. “Should have brought a damn ladder.”
“There’s no other way in?”
“Locked up tight. But this window,” he pointed to the latch, “is broken.”
Dane reached up and pushed on the bottom of the pane. It shifted a little. “It’ll open all right. You sure that’s what you want to do? You’ll land right in front.”
“Splendid. Now give me a boost.”
Oh, man. “This is crazy, even for me.”
“These are the things in life worth being crazy for.”
“You know what you’re going to say when you get in there?”
“I’ve known what I was going to say longer than you’ve been pissing in a toilet.”
Dane spread his legs for stability and linked his fingers. “All right, then. Foot here, count of three. I’ll lift you, you get the window open, second count, I’ll push you through.” He inhaled deeply, rushing out a breath. This was going to hurt like a mother.
Joe set his mud-caked dress shoe in Dane’s hands. “I’m ready.” He looked up to the window.
“One, two, THREE!” Dane shoved the old man in the air. “Get your elbows on the ledge.”
Joe braced himself against the window, taking the pressure off Dane to hold him up. He pushed up the pane with one hand and wriggled partway through.
“Here you go the rest of the way!” Dane said, and lifted him again. Joe tumbled through, his feet flailing, then disappeared through the window.
He hoped the old man survived the fall.
***
19: Joe Says His Piece
THE whole room gasped as Joe flung himself through a window by the altar, slithering headfirst down the wall and crashing into the acolyte’s bench.
