It is a very hot day, even for Savannah. The air is thick with humidity as if the clouds might burst at any moment releasing the rain. The humidity holds the scents close to the ground like a cloud of toxic waste hovering near the earth’s surface.
As Rose walks through the crowd, she receives a few nods from old family friends, who are at least pretending to mourn. Most everybody else appears to hide their glee. Inside the door of the church, Rose grabs a program and uses it to fan away the fumes. The church reeks of a hundred years of incense, which seems a docile scent compared to what is outside.
The obituary in the newspaper that morning applauded her mother’s philanthropy over the years, as well as her commitment to the betterment of Savannah. Though it is true that her mother was generous to certain organizations, to Rose it sounded like a press release written by her mother. The announcement only mentioned her brother, Edward, and spelled out in several paragraphs the Temple lineage. A lineage that made no mention of Rose and Queenie.
Rose thinks of Old Sally. Given the predominance of Temple ghosts already “stuck” in the house, Rose hopes that Old Sally is wrong about her mother’s transition being incomplete. Perhaps her mother’s spirit made a belated exit after all. Or perhaps she’s here right now.
“Rest in peace, Mother,” Rose says aloud as she enters the empty sanctuary. She wears a simple black dress and heels she pulled from her closet at home and threw in her suitcase before leaving Wyoming, an outfit she hasn’t worn in the seven years since Max’s uncle died. Ranching seldom calls for formal attire.
Rose walks down the same aisle of the church that she walked down when she and Max were married. A platinum casket with gold handles sits in front of the altar, where her father’s casket sat many years before. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t Catholic and may have preferred another church. Her mother was in charge of everything and—in her usual way—used the event to showcase the Temple family.
Should she view her mother’s body before people arrive? Rose debates this issue while Queenie and a younger priest enter the sanctuary through a side door. Wearing a black dress with a large yellow sash and a yellow hat, Queenie waves as she and the priest discuss lighting and sound as though preparing the stage for a Broadway production. They stop momentarily to reposition several containers of flowers—full of their own scent to rival the incense—that might impede the flow of traffic. Then Queenie and the priest exit stage left.
As if stepping to the edge of a precipice, Rose inches closer to view her mother in repose. The top half of the casket is open revealing a plush white lining dotted with gold stars sewn into the fabric, as though the person in the casket was a president or one of the heads of state.
A bit over the top, Rose thinks, but this is just the kind of thing Mother would have picked out for her exit scene.
Her mother’s lips form a stern, thin line like she is bound and determined not to rest in peace. Her makeup is minimal, something she must have specified in her funeral arrangements, and her white hair is perfectly styled the way her mother has worn it since Rose was a girl.
Rose’s mother is dressed in an elegant black dress, as if a mourner herself, and wears a double strand of pearls, the creamy white in perfect contrast to the black. Proof that you can take it with you, at least until after the service.
While viewing her mother’s body, Rose studies her like a possible portrait subject. She notes the line of her mother’s brow, the slope of her nose, her wrinkled jaw—the skin all drooping southward in a tribute to her Dixie roots.
A door opens in the back of the church and Rose jumps like she’s been caught stealing the pearls from around her mother’s neck. Queenie strolls down the aisle. Despite the sobering occasion, her eyes sparkle.
Sweet Queenie, Rose thinks. What would I do without you? This moment would be much harder if it were Queenie in the casket or Old Sally. A thought which makes her feel guilty.
“How are you holding up?” Queenie asks, as she joins Rose.
“To be honest, she seems like a stranger,” Rose says.
Queenie squeezes Rose’s hand. “I doubt anyone really knew Iris,” Queenie says. “Including Iris.”
“Do you think she was ever happy, Queenie?” Rose’s voice catches on a snag of emotion.
“For a brief period years ago,” Queenie says. “But it didn’t last for long.”
“It’s like privilege robbed her of any ability to be real,” Rose says. “I wonder who she might have been without the Temple money. What might she have done if she had to venture out and forge a career?”
“I guess we’ll never know,” Queenie says.
They gaze into the casket, as though peering into the vastness of the Grand Canyon. On the ranch, death is a mystery that reveals itself quite often. Nature makes sense in the way it takes care of things. The weak die. The strong survive. But it is harder to put humans into that model. She would have thought her mother too strong to die.
As Rose contemplates the meaning of life—a hazard of attending any funeral—Queenie pulls a tissue from her purse and covers her mouth overcome with emotion. Rose does her best to console her, but then realizes that Queenie isn’t weeping at all. In fact, she is doing everything she can to keep from laughing.
“What’s going on?” Rose whispers. Her eyes widen with the question. She doesn’t know whether to be alarmed or intrigued.
“Can you keep a secret?” Queenie whispers, her hand still covering her mouth.
“Of course I can,” Rose whispers back. She has been bred to keep secrets. In a way, secrets are the family business. Just ask anyone in Savannah right now. But what could be so funny on such a serious occasion?
Queenie pulls Rose toward the closed end of the casket and taps the top of the lid with a fingernail. It makes a slightly hollow sound.
“The secret’s in there,” Queenie says. Her voice remains a whisper.
Rose’s face registers her confusion. “The secret’s in Mother’s casket?”
Queenie nods. Rose’s thoughts jump to a letter or something of sentimental value. Perhaps a locket or a trinket. Or maybe the infamous Temple Book of Secrets. But this doesn’t make sense. Why is Queenie fighting so hard not to laugh?
“I don’t understand,” Rose whispers.
Queenie leans in to Rose and whispers back, “I put something in the casket.”
Rose studies Queenie’s face and she gives Rose a grin that can only be described as sheepish.
“Don’t be mad,” Queenie says.
“Why would I be mad?” Rose whispers.
Queenie pauses, as though weighing the consequences of her confession, and then announces: “I put a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken at your mother’s feet. Or between her knees, actually.”
Queenie’s whispered confession carries the strength of a Shakespearean actor projecting to the back row of the empty church. Her eyes glisten with tears and not tears of grief.
“You did what?” Rose says in full voice.
“I wedged a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken between your mother’s knees,” Queenie says in a quasi whisper. Then she shrugs, as though disbelieving of the news herself.
Rose’s shock slowly warms to a muffled laugh. Her face turns red and hot.
“It seems only fitting,” Queenie whispers in conclusion. “It was, after all, her favorite food. And not the least bit exotic, I might add.”
Two sets of double doors fling open in the back of the sanctuary as if orchestrated by well-trained theater ushers. The first wave of aromatic mourners enters the church. Queenie takes Rose’s arm and steers her into the family pew. Rose refuses to look at Queenie in case the glance might cause a snicker to escape. Rose anticipated her mother’s funeral might be difficult, but she never anticipated that it might be difficult for this reason. She begs Queenie to be quiet, and then grits her teeth to stop the laughter that threatens to burst past her lips into the room.
Do not laugh, she tells herself. Do. Not. Laugh.
“Are you angry with me?” Queenie asks.
Rose shakes her head. Queenie’s defiant gesture seems mild considering everything she put up with over the years. It is the element of surprise that has put Rose at risk of losing it on more than one level.
Luckily, Rose and Queenie’s squelched laughter sounds close enough to the sounds of grief that the stares they receive are out of sympathy instead of shock. The organist, soft-pedaling their grief, begins to play one of her mother’s favorite hymns, Onward Christian Soldiers. In response, Rose imagines an army of fried chicken legs marching off to war led by a miniature Colonel Sanders.
A snort of laughter escapes that she segues into a cough. She forces herself to count the panes in the stained glass window in the side chapel. Perhaps if she engages the mechanical side of her brain it will override her desperate need to laugh. In the meantime, the perfumes, colognes, and aftershaves of two hundred mourners—who have undoubtedly dabbed on extra portions on her mother’s behalf—consume the musty, incense-laden, flower-filled church. Refusing to go down without a fight, the aroma of fried chicken joins the other smells. The cumulative effect makes Rose’s eyes water. It also makes her nauseous, which proves the most effective tool to stopping her need to laugh.
A door squeaks open in the side chapel and Edward steps inside. He looks straight at Rose and gives what could be mistaken for a sneer. Suddenly, laughing is the last thing she feels like doing. Encounters with Edward always prove to be a bit harrowing. First, there was the brief, bizarre meeting in the garden and then Edward’s macabre visit to their mother’s bedroom later that afternoon.
Queenie nudges Rose and motions in Edward’s direction. Rose nods that she has seen him, too. The nub of her missing pinkie throbs.
The young priest enters from behind the altar and begins the service. According to Queenie, he has stepped in at the last minute to replace the elder priest, who has been ordered bed rest because of a mild cardiac infarction the day before. The young priest is probably thirty at best, and is a Sunday school Jesus look-alike with shoulder-length brown hair. Her mother would not be pleased.
Will he pull out a guitar and lead the mourners in Kumbaya? As an afterthought, Rose leans into the aisle to see if he is wearing sandals. If her mother were still alive, his informality would prompt several letters to the Vatican. Long hair and guitar singing are for the lower classes. As is anything else that might hint at liveliness.
Throughout the next hour, several people from the community get up to eulogize her mother. If not for their familiar faces, Rose would think they were paid actors endorsing a product. Iris Temple was generous to a fault, says one. Thoughtful, says another. Selfless, says yet another. The woman described in the eulogies is not Rose’s mother. No one speaks of secrets, either, yet she imagines that’s exactly what is on everyone’s mind.
Glancing at her mother’s casket, she decides that it is ingenious product placement. Then her stomach growls. Maybe it is the smell of chicken, but she is suddenly borderline ravenous. Why didn’t she eat at the house before they left? At the time she wasn’t hungry. Now she salivates as she envisions the banana bread Violet made that Rose turned down. The current speaker looks over at her, an older gentleman wearing a bow tie. Did he hear her stomach growl?
Spud Grainger gets up to eulogize her mother and introduces himself. The name sounds familiar and Rose wonders where she’s heard it before. His dark suit is accented with a pale yellow shirt and a bow tie that looks like the wings of a monarch butterfly. He has kind eyes and seems like the type that would take in stray animals, yet paradoxically he mentions he is the head butcher at the Piggly Wiggly.
Rose nudges Queenie’s arm. “Who is he?” she whispers.
“Long story,” Queenie whispers back. “I’ll tell you later.”
Rose nods.
As Spud Grainger speaks, he stops several times to blow his nose into a white handkerchief he pulls from his jacket pocket. Of all the mourners, he is the only one who appears genuinely bereaved. Rose wishes she had known the woman he grieves.
Meanwhile, the front of the church smells more and more like a fried chicken franchise. Rose fantasizes about tiny Styrofoam containers holding mashed potatoes with gravy, as well as small white dinner rolls. It doesn’t help that Spud Grainger is going on and on about exotic meats. Her stomach growls again, louder than before. Sound carries quite well in the sanctuary. Unfortunately, smells do, too.
The reptilian part of Rose’s brain plots out different ways to scavenge food. She fantasizes about creating a diversion so that she can make her way to the altar and grab a chicken breast from between her mother’s knees. Perhaps she could do it under the guise of revealing one of the biggest Temple secrets. However, she’s not sure what that would be.
She glances at her watch. Katie, Rose’s daughter, is due in from Chicago any minute for the graveside service. Rose busies herself with worrying about the synchronization of Katie’s different flights and landings as the next speaker rises to eulogize her mother, offering more praise for the saint-like Iris Temple.
This is overkill, Rose thinks, regretting her word choice.
Rose looks over the large crowd of Savannah’s elite gathered to pay their last respects. Some of the same people attended Rose’s wedding. She didn’t know them then and doesn’t know them now. The wealthy do this for each other. They throw parties and donate to each other’s charities and attend weddings and funerals. But other than that, they are strangers. Except these strangers, wearing Rolexes and designer fashions, seemed poised for a revolution.
The young priest steps forward to end the service, asking one final time if anyone has anything they want to say. Edward rises from the shadows and walks over to their mother’s casket. He rests a hand on the top, as if a gesture of ownership.
“Thank you for your heartfelt acknowledgment of the Temple family’s contribution to our fair city,” Edward begins, as if to remind the angry mob of their manners. His words are as polished as his shoes. He exhorts the Temple brand, reminding everyone that Savannah wouldn’t be Savannah without the Temples. And despite any hard feelings of late, because of a few unfortunate secrets, they should be grateful that it wasn’t worse. He looks at Rose as he speaks. Is he trying to remind her who is the new sovereign in the Temple clan? His hubris, like his suit, seems perfectly tailored to fit the event. His presentation would have probably made their mother proud.
The service finally over, Rose avoids Edward and steps into the first black limo she comes to outside of the church. Queenie follows, a splash of color among all the black. Rose rifles through her purse and pops three cinnamon Altoids into her mouth hoping the curiously strong mints will count as sustenance. She has a headache now.
“I’m starving,” Rose says to Queenie, her words mumbled and her mouth on fire from the mints.
“Hold on,” Queenie says. “Let me see if I have something.”
Queenie drapes her large purse across her even larger lap and pulls things out of her bag that look like they might belong to some kind of southern survival kit: lipstick, billfold, two different types of bug spray, a crumbled box of tissues, a paperback mystery, four crumpled packets of Splenda, a small roll of twine, a red Swiss army knife, and enough colorful headbands to set up a store display in the corner of the limo.
Queenie finally offers Rose a handful of orange Tic-Tacs that are loose in the bottom of her purse. Rose picks off the biggest pieces of fuzz before popping them into her mouth, along with two aspirin and the cinnamon Altoids. Her mouth puckers in disgusted satisfaction. As Queenie loads everything back into her purse, Rose chews the aspirin and Altoids, leaving only small pellets of
orange Tic-Tacs to suck on.
“Edward was in rare form today,” Queenie says.
“This is an awful thing to say about my own brother, but I don’t trust him,” Rose says.
“I would worry about you more if you did,” Queenie says. She straightens her hat that nearly touches the roof of the limo.
“He always stays at the country club when he’s here,” Queenie says. “In the past few years he’s come to Savannah and not even told your mother. I would see him in town when I ran errands. I never told her, though. That would be just the thing to get your mother on the war path.”
“Why would he not tell her he’s in town?” Rose asks. She crunches the last of the Tic-Tacs.
“I don’t think he could stand to be around her,” Queenie says. “Lord knows she would test the patience of Job.”
The limo leads the procession to the graveside. At the entrance, people hold placards that say things like Good Riddance and The Wicked Witch is Dead. Queenie and Rose hold hands as if to fortify themselves against the scene.
“Why are they so angry?” Rose asks.
“They think she’s a snitch,” Queenie says. “They thought she was the one releasing the secrets. Now they don’t know who it is, but they’re still angry.”
The limo passes through the wrought-iron gates leading to the section of the cemetery where the ornate Temple mausoleum stands. The last time Rose was here was when they buried her father, over two decades ago.
Thick clouds gather and block the sun. Though a bit cooler, the humidity seems to be rising. Within minutes, an afternoon drizzle begins. Edward stands on the other side of the priest. Even though it is only three o’clock, his five o’clock shadow is pronounced. He seems alone, even in a crowd, which causes Rose to wonder if her brother ever gets lonely.
As far as she knows, he has lived in the same penthouse in downtown Atlanta for the last thirty years and has never married or lived with anyone. His firm specializes in helping corporations handle scandals—another form of dealing with secrets. Rose can’t even imagine the wealth he has amassed while she and Max have struggled to keep the ranch afloat. Being a Temple in the southeast can have its advantages. He probably doesn’t have to work at all, but just wants to have something to do.
Temple Secrets: Southern Humorous Fiction: (New for 2015) For Lovers of Southern Authors and Southern Novels Page 13
