Whisper Me This(71)

I find myself missing her with an astonishing depth of passion.

All the years I’ve been away, I’ve rarely given her a thought outside of our regular phone calls. But then, I haven’t been sitting in church with the rest of the family. Where is she now? Can she see us sitting here? Would she be glad that Marley has come, for whatever reason?

My head aches.

The minutes tick by.

At long last we all stand up to sing a final hymn and then wait as the pallbearers pick up the coffin. Our usher appears discreetly at the end of the pew, signaling that we are to get up and follow my mother down the aisle and out to the waiting hearse.

Marley is gone.

The spot she had occupied at the end of a pew is now empty. She’s not in the crowd at the back of the church. She’s not in the parking lot. She’s nowhere to be seen at the graveside ceremony, where the sound of the first clods of dirt hitting the coffin do something to my knee joints and nearly drop me.

Dad’s mind goes soft again about halfway through.

“Why are we standing here?” he whispers in my ear. “I’m thirsty. Can I get a drink?”

“It’s the funeral, Daddy. This is Mom’s grave.”

All I want to do is take him home and put both of us to bed for a nap, but there’s still the potluck to navigate.

I catch a glimpse of Tony with his mother. She stands with her head leaning against his shoulder, his arm around her waist. Mia catches my eye and smiles, a ray of light that I cling to while counting the minutes of yet another little sermon, a song, a prayer.

Greg’s mom is there, in a wheelchair. She nods at me, but doesn’t smile. She never did think I was good enough for her beloved son, and when I had the gall to turn down his proposal, her disapproval shifted into outright enmity. I let my eyes move away from her sanctimonious face, scanning the crowd for signs of Marley, but she’s as absent as my mother, vanished just as suddenly and with as little explanation.

No warning. No good-bye. Just—poof!—gone.



The funeral potluck is held, not at the church, but at Edna Carlton’s house. The good news about this is that it’s right next door to home. The bad news, besides having to deal with Mrs. Carlton, is also that it’s right next door to home. People wander in and out of both houses, as if Edna’s is a buffet and ours is a museum, some sort of open-admission tribute to my mother’s life.

When a breathing space presents itself between hugs and well-meant condolences, I escape to Mom’s kitchen to scavenge for ibuprofen. Two women and a man, all balancing paper plates, are standing there, examining the floor by the island.

“Do you think this is where she fell?” one of the women asks in almost a whisper, eyes wide with fascination.

The man, middle-aged, short, with a monk’s tonsure balding pattern, unloads his potato-salad-laden fork into his mouth and then uses the fork as a pointer. “Of course it is. You can still see bloodstains.”

Both women bend their heads, peering down at the floor. “Are you sure? There’s a rust color running through the tile.”

“Surely the daughter has scrubbed it by now.”

I have so many choices in this moment. Leave it be, Maisey, I tell myself. Walk away. As usual, I ignore my own advice.

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” I say, matching their tone. “But you know what they say about the daughter. The woman might like blood on the floor, for all we know.”

All three of them stare, first at me, then back at the floor. The man’s right cheek bulges with unchewed food, giving him a distorted, gnome-like expression.

None of them are wearing church-goer funeral clothes. He’s in jeans and a T-shirt that proclaims he’s a Budweiser man—his belly offering proof. The women are in tank tops and capris; one of them wears flip-flops.

“You think?” the flip-flop woman whispers.

The second woman sets her plate on the island, bends over, and runs a finger across the tile. “It’s clean.” She sounds disappointed, but then perks up. “Let’s go look at the bedroom. I hear he kept her in the bed for a week.”

The man laughs, as if this is a big joke. The flip-flop woman elbows him in the ribs. “Save it, Bernie. Let’s go.”

None of them recognize me. I could tell them to clear out of the house, that this is not a museum, but I’ve lost my ability for speech. I melt backward against the counter, watching them go.

They don’t get far. Tony stands in the hall, blocking it. He doesn’t step aside.

“Are you folks looking for something?” he asks politely enough, but his voice holds an edge.

“Just looking around,” the man says.

“This isn’t a museum,” Tony says, his voice still deceptively pleasant. “People live here. In fact, I believe Mr. Addington might be having a little nap.”

“We won’t wake him.”

“Of course you won’t. Let me walk you to the door.”

“Oh, do you live here?” Flip-flop woman puts her hand on his arm. “Could you just answer some questions? We are dying of curiosity.”

“I’m afraid there’s no cure for that disease,” he says, still politely, then takes her arm and propels her toward the entry.

I hear the sound of the door closing and locking. Tony’s footsteps. I still can’t move.