Tom Hubbard Is Dead

by Robert Price

  Chapter Two

  The phone rang. Melanie checked the clock—half past twelve. The funeral and the burial were most likely over. Either her younger brother Tony or cousin Billy Quinn were calling, once again, to say how important it is that she attend, at the very least, the memorial reception for her cousin Tom. The previous evening she had angrily refused Tony’s invitation to accompany him to both events. It had been the third time he asked and her refusal was more out of spite for his bugging her than it was from the embarrassment she felt for having to depend on his support; the invitations were charity. Sure, she was thirty-eight and still alone. But she thought, So what? I’m better off without a man.

  The phone continued to ring.

  And it wasn’t just Tony and Billy. Her grieving aunt, too, since finding out about her son Tom’s death, called Melanie multiple times and left long messages on the answering machine. The first messages the old woman left expressed a quiet sorrow over the loss of Tom while at the same time conveying a subtle concern for Melanie’s wellbeing. Over the past two months, even before Tom’s death, Melanie, feeling a need for privacy, had begun to avoid their weekly face-to-face check-ins and even their daily chitchat phone calls. She knew this troubled her aunt. But when Tom’s burial date was set, and then as the date approached, the tone of her aunt’s messages had turned into pleas for Melanie’s attendance rather than a concern for Melanie’s health and whereabouts. At one point, her aunt even coaxed her cousin Elizabeth—in town with her husband for her brother’s funeral—to call Melanie and invite her to join the family in the front pews at the church, on the folding chairs at the gravesite and for the comfortable limousine ride from the church to the cemetery and then back to the house after the burial. Melanie had ignored Elizabeth’s call as well.

  However, even while rejecting all family invitations to attend the funeral, Melanie was still unsure about whether to go to the memorial reception. When Tony had originally asked if she planned to attend, Melanie gave him a vague, indefinite answer, wanting to keep all options open. There was, after all, one person who might show up whom she wanted to see.

  The machine answered after the ninth ring. She waited for the outgoing message to finish and then turned up the volume.

  “Hey, Mel, pick up. It’s your brother, Tony. I know you’re there. Pick up!” A pause. “Melanie, okay, so don’t answer. Aunt Casey is driving me absolutely fuckin’ nuts! She’s acting like Tom’s soul won’t go to heaven unless you’re there—Melanie!”

  “Hi, Anthony.”

  “I knew you were home. Hope you’re getting ready to go, ’cause Aunt Casey keeps asking me if I’ve talked to you. She’s convinced you’ve locked yourself up in your house or something. You’re coming, right?”

  “Who was at the funeral?”

  “Mel, whether you believe it or not, your family is important. So get your shit together.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m just leaving the cemetery now.”

  “Was it sad?”

  “Mel.”

  “Did you get a limo ride?”

  “Jesus Christ, Mel! Yes, it was sad. It was fucking horrible. You should have been there.”

  “Don’t give me your shit, Anthony. Tell Aunt Casey I’ll be there in about an hour.”

  “Thank God for that.”

  “See you later,” she said. But she spoke to the dial tone. Her brother had already hung up.