Bitter in the Mouth

by Monique Truong

  Baby Harper had asked for no fresh flowers, so we compromised and filled the smaller of the two chapels at the Home of Eternal Rest with potted plants, mostly bromeliads, in honor of Baby Harper’s favorite southern continent, the point of origin of these sturdy but florid tropical plants. Clay said that he could donate them afterward to a retirement home nearby and that none of the plants would go to waste. We all thought that Baby Harper would have approved of the compromise.

  When Clay and I first met, over a home-cooked meal at the Craftsman bungalow that he shared with Gregory, he said that I looked like the childhood photographs that they had seen of me.

  “We liked you best with your long hair and we’re glad to see you wearing it that way again,” Gregory added, as he poured me another glass of wine.

  Gregory and Clay must have known that I was wearing a wig now, but they were polite southern gentlemen who, if they wanted to (and they did), could compliment a sow covered in mud.

  After my surgery, my body had undergone what my OB/GYN called an “abrupt” menopause, which brought with it a host of unpleasant, to say the least (which is my forte, after all), symptoms, including partial hair loss. Kelly, of course, hadn’t said a word to me about my wig. Just like I hadn’t said a word to her about her weight gain. She, though, had known to expect the mane of long black hair because I had written to her when I decided to buy it. I told her that my own hair was becoming so thin that it was just easier this way. One less thing to think about in the morning, I wrote. “Asian women,” I added, “are the main providers of the raw products needed for high-quality human hair wigs anyway!” What I meant was that I could be related to my wig.

  As for DeAnne Whatley Hammerick, she must have known too, but like so many of the things between us, I was waiting for her to bring it up first, and she was probably waiting for me to do the same.

  I took another sip of wine and politely asked Gregory if he had any Scotch in the house. I wasn’t supposed to drink alcohol with the anti-anxiety medication that I was taking, but that night I had to. I wanted to be able to converse for as long as possible with Clay and Gregory, these two men who seemed to me to be sent from God. Gregory, in fact, looked a bit like Jesus with a beer belly and a mullet. So much so, that I had blushed when he had answered the door of the bungalow.

  I had missed out on seeing my great-uncle’s life with Cecil. I knew that in front of me that night were two different men, but still one of them was a gay southern funeral director. I figured this was as close as I was going to get at a second chance. By the end of the evening in their company, I understood that it was better than a second chance. What I was seeing in Clay and Gregory was a caring, functioning relationship, not just the ghost of one.

  Clay and Gregory had invited DeAnne Whatley Hammerick to dinner that night as well. She had telephoned them right away when we received their handwritten invitation, complete with a proposed menu, in the mail. She said that while she did love Gregory’s grilled trout, she would have to decline this time. Linda, however, is very pleased to accept, she said on my behalf. I think it’s best that you young folks get to know one another without me underfoot, she explained to me after she hung up the phone.

  We did get to know one another, and as it turned out, Clay and Gregory already had had a head start.

  After Gregory’s compliment, sweet but a bit too revealing, Clay quickly chimed in that they had seen childhood photos of me in my great-uncle’s albums. “I hope you’re not offended that we looked through them. We were just trying to get to know Uncle Cecil and Harper better,” Clay explained.

  “We didn’t see any photos of Harper but we saw a lot of you,” Gregory added.

  “We always meant,” Clay resumed, “to spend more time with my uncle and Harper, but you know how life gets. Too busy, too tired, too late. Those two invited us to Thanksgiving dinner I don’t even know how many times.”

  There was a long pause, as if Clay was trying to remember exactly why they, like me, had never made it to the table at the Greek Revival.

  “Fayetteville is so close, and we still somehow managed to, excuse my French, fuck it up,” Gregory finally said, finishing the thought for Clay.

  We all drank more wine and I had some Scotch. We traded stories of our misspent youths in North Carolina. I vowed to eat at their home as often as possible in the time that I had left in Boiling Springs. As promised, on the menu that night was grilled trout served with a fresh spinach salad, which was wilted right before serving with a warm bacon vinaigrette. When there was nothing remaining on the table that we could consume, Clay went into the kitchen and returned with a lemon meringue pie and an antique silver server. The three of us knew exactly what was going on. We were trying to get to know one another and the ghosts of Cecil and Baby Harper at the same time. We wished that we had all met under different circumstances.

  Sometime after midnight, when the outside world was all hush and stars, I said goodbye to Clay and Gregory. I promised them that I would stop by the next day with some photo albums of my great-uncle Harper and Cecil that they hadn’t yet seen.

  The caterer from Asheville arrived early in the morning to set up in the Home of Eternal Rest’s kitchen. DeAnne Whatley Hammerick thought it best to have the memorial service and the lunch in one place, as the people who had known Baby Harper were getting on in years and would appreciate the “one-stop mourning.” Another quick, sharp laugh from this woman who had inherited Iris’s sense of humor, but it was less like battery acid and more like a splash of cider vinegar.

  We arrived an hour ahead of time to have coffee with Clay and Gregory. They wanted to respect Cecil’s wishes about not having a funeral or memorial service, but we all agreed that Cecil was a part of Baby Harper’s life. Therefore, Cecil wouldn’t mind if his photograph was displayed at the front table alongside the few photographs that we had of Baby Harper when he was a boy. Clay and I had discussed whether or not to include a photograph from their travels together in South America. We decided that those images were private, which we told each other was different from saying that they were secret. I admitted to Clay that I hadn’t shown them to DeAnne Whatley Hammerick yet. Clay said that he didn’t think that was necessary. We all have a right to a private life, Linda. Not everything has to be shared or shared right away, Clay told me.

  We had mailed out thirty-five invitations and placed a notice in the Shelby Star. A hundred and twenty-seven people attended the memorial service for Harper Evan Burch. Clay opened up the sliding walls between the two chapels, and we were able to accommodate them all. Kelly pulled me aside, and we went into the kitchen, where she handed me a flask. It was full of vodka. Then she gave me a breath mint. Kelly was prepared; she was a Boy Scout of a drunk. I was grateful that one of us was ready. I took a swig and a mint, and then asked the caterer if they could supplement what they had made with orders of barbecue from Bridges. Phone calls were quickly made, cars were dispatched for the pickup, extra plates and cutlery were set out, more tea was brewed, sweetened, and iced, and bottles of Cheerwine and Dr Pepper added to the refrigerator.

  The memorial service itself was brief. DeAnne Whatley Hammerick spoke. Then I spoke. We tried not to say the cliché things that were said in honor of the dead. We didn’t succeed. We said we loved him. We said we missed him. We said we knew that he was enjoying his time now in Heaven. Then we handed out the lyrics to Patsy Cline’s “He Called Me Baby,” and we all sang a rousing tribute to him.

  Now each night, in dreams, just like a song

  I still hear baby, baby

  Still hear baby, baby

  Still hear baby, baby, all night long.

  We drew out the last word, fitting inside the last o everything that we weren’t eloquent enough to say about Harper Evan Burch.

  Then we ate.

  We had been able to smell Bridges’s vinegary sauce, its sharp notes tickling our noses, as we sat in the chapel. We knew what was awaiting us, and we knew that it would be good. The food that the
caterer had prepared for the estimated thirty-five guests was served as the appetizers: dainty pimento-cheese sandwiches—made not with white sandwich bread but with a brioche loaf, which started a wave of “Oh, my!” and “Oh, dear!” among those of my great-uncle’s generation who weren’t quite sure that they approved of the substitution but eagerly ate the sandwiches anyway, bite-size buttermilk biscuits with thin slivers of baked ham, little tureens of summer squash casserole. I had ordered that dish for Kelly, the lone vegetarian in a sea of pork eaters. It was also a veiled reference to our childhood nemesis Sally Campbell, who, beautiful as she might have been and still may be, would always be to us a member of the humble squash family.

  Later that night, we the remaining family gathered at the Greek Revival, and we danced.

  DeAnne Whatley Hammerick sat on the green velvet divan. At first, she blushed at the sight of two men dancing. Then she tapped her stocking feet. The pitchers of mint julep that Gregory made for us had encouraged her to take off her shoes. I complimented her on the bright red nail polish on her toes, adding that I had never seen them painted before. I could have added that I had never seen her drinking alcohol before either, but I thought that would make her self-conscious and forestall further metamorphosis. She leaned in and whisper-yelled that BABY HARPER had worn this very shade ON HIS TOES. Something about that divan always encouraged confessions and revelations, I thought. Or perhaps it was the julep. Either way, we raised our glasses, hers full of julep and mine full of sweet tea, both garnished with sprigs of mint from the garden. She pointed to the leaves and asked me what I was doing in her drink. Kelly, who was sitting next to me, let out a single hiccup.

  DeAnne Whatley Hammerick and I looked at each other and we thought the same thing. Baby Harper had decided to stay in the Greek Revival for a little while longer.

  At the memorial service, Kelly had two of my great-uncle’s cameras hanging around her neck. When she lifted a camera up to her face, she was secure in the knowledge that it would hide her as sure as a veil. She spent the afternoon discreetly photographing all of the attendees, men and women I had never seen before but who all had known Baby Harper well enough to miss his presence on earth.

  DeAnne Whatley Hammerick and I asked Kelly to live in the Greek Revival for as long she would like. Cecil, who had shared the house with Baby Harper beginning in 1987, never gave up having a house of his own, which was the Craftsman bungalow that Clay had inherited as part of his uncle’s estate. This explained why I hadn’t seen much evidence of Cecil around the Greek Revival. The decor was all Baby Harper. Like his uncle, Clay wasn’t really a Greek Revival sort of man. Clay seemed lost in the grandly proportioned rooms and around green velvet. So while Clay and Gregory had a firm claim, morally if not legally, to half of the Greek Revival, they had no interest in it. I could tell that they doted on Kelly and would rather see her ensconced there as well. The four of us danced that night to a stack of 45’s, the needle skipping their worn grooves. DeAnne Whatley Hammerick curled up on the divan and slept, snoring softly.

  What would Iris have thought, I wondered. Here was her sixty-six-year-old daughter, drunk and shoeless and sleeping in the living room. Here was her thirty-year-old granddaughter, hair flying, sweat dripping down, dancing up a summer rainstorm with her fat best friend and two gay men.

  My grandmother Iris was named for the Iris prismatica, a flower more commonly known as the slender blue flag. From the moment of her birth, her eyes had reminded her mother and father of this flower’s dazzling hue. The problem, which neither of her parents had anticipated, was that the name also meant that she had only one eye. Iris was a Cyclops for the rest of her life. She saw not the world but only her narrowed worldview, which in the end diminished us all. Iris, may God forgive me for thinking this, but I’m glad that you are no longer with us.

  FROM THE GREEK SYN, MEANING “TOGETHER,” AND AISTHESIS, meaning “perception,” the word “synesthesia” was the scientific name for my condition and the key to a mystery. I was happy to have the key, but it didn’t roll off my tongue. I couldn’t use the word “synesthesia” to explain my very specific relationship to the world in the same way that someone else would use “achromatopsia” to refer to his or her color blindness or “amusia” to communicate his or her inability to recognize or process music. Perhaps I just needed to live longer with the word. I have been synesthetic for many more years than I have known a name for it. Maybe it was this asymmetry in years that explained why I felt that the word couldn’t possibly hold enough within it the entire body of my experiences. Perhaps it was also my discomfort with the easy language of labels and names. Was I not proof that they were often inaccurate, insufficient, or incapable of full disclosure?

  A mystery could be an unknown set of facts or a known set of facts that had been kept secret. Often the holder of a secret would claim that he or she was protecting something or someone more valuable than the set of facts itself. Often this claim wasn’t the full truth, which wasn’t the same as a lie. We kept secrets to protect, but the ones most shielded—from shame, from judgment, from the slap in the face—were ourselves. We were selfish in our secret-keeping and rarely altruistic. We acted out of instinct and survival, and only when we felt safest would we let our set of facts be known.

  Kelly and I wrote long letters to each other. We hand-delivered them now because we wanted to see each other as much as possible while I was back in Boiling Springs. During the week, I would meet Kelly for lunch at her office at Gardner-Webb. Sometimes I would borrow DeAnne Whatley Hammerick’s car and sometimes DWH—that was what Kelly and I called her in our letters now—would drop me off on her way to run an errand or visit with her coterie of friends.

  These friends were the women who had been the first to marry and to have children, and they had watched as DWH was the first among them to become a widow. At first they felt sorry for DWH. Then they envied her. Some now had lost their husbands too, but in other ways. A younger woman or a weak heart, surprisingly, wasn’t the most common reason. Golf, fishing, and televised sports more often accounted for the absences and the abandonments. After a lifetime of competing with one another via the accomplishments of their husbands, these women one by one found themselves without these men. They looked to DWH for guidance on what to do next. They joined her at her weekly water aerobics class at the Gardner-Webb gymnasium. They liked how the water’s resistance felt against their skin. Like a caress, they thought. They laughed when DWH insisted that their skin wasn’t wrinkled, only puckered from being in the water too long. They read the same novels that DWH did, and then they gathered in one another’s homes and watched the film adaptations, which most of them preferred. They cut their hair short like a boy’s and asked themselves why they hadn’t done it sooner. Their exposed napes thrilled them, like teenage girls baring flat, toned midriffs. Beth Anne, Kelly’s mom, was one of these women. She had lost her husband to the law firm of Fletcher Burch or, rather, to its latest incarnation. After my father passed away, her husband, Carson junior, had taken over as the firm’s managing partner. In 1993, he merged the firm with a larger one based in Raleigh, which had 120 lawyers statewide. Gone were the days of Carson junior arriving home at 5:30 P.M. for dinner and never working on Saturdays. At first, Beth Anne turned to Pastor Reynold for guidance. He suggested that she consider missionary work. Spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ to sub-Saharan Africa would “recharge your batteries,” he told her. Beth Anne telephoned DWH for a second opinion. DWH told her that she shouldn’t replace an absent man with a dead one, even if the dead one were the Son of God.

  “Are you sure my mom said that to your mom?” I wrote to Kelly in letter #1,308.

  Kelly assured me that all of this had taken place.

  Beth Anne had taken DWH’s advice and stayed in Boiling Springs.

  According to Kelly, Beth Anne lost her husband and her svelte daughter at around the same time. “By the end of 1993, I had re-fatted,” Kelly wrote in letter #1,309. Kelly, who had been
born with the same body type as her father, had wide hips and sturdy thighs and a barrel chest. Kelly calculated that she was exercising for more than 70 percent of her waking hours in order to keep herself at an acceptable size six. She gave up her gym membership and was very soon thereafter an unacceptable size sixteen again. In letter #1,310, I suggested a compromise, “Exercise for 20 percent of your waking hours and be a size twelve.” But in all honesty, I loved Kelly re-fatted.

  Over the past weeks, as we ate our lunches together, mostly in silence, with our letters to each other in our purses waiting to be read, we decided that Kelly needed a new job and a new wardrobe. In a reversal of our roles, I took the lead and informed Kelly that Baby Harper could be her resource for both. We would begin with the inside of Baby Harper and Cecil’s bedroom, I told her. We made plans to meet at the Greek Revival after she got off from work that day.

  As Kelly had described it, the interior of Baby Harper and Cecil’s bedroom was a jaw-dropping example of high camp. My great-uncle’s adoration of Gone With the Wind, so chastely expressed downstairs in the deep green velvet of the divan, was up here in full ruffled-parasol bloom. The love that he felt for the other South was expressed in his use of tropical colors, which weren’t exuberant but drunken. The walls were painted Peony Red and trimmed with Mango Tango. The ceiling was a splash of Pineapple Punch. Kelly and I both had the funny feeling that right before we opened the door to their bedroom there had been movement inside.