The Appearance of Death, chapter 5

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Chapter 5

That was two weeks ago, and it seems I've barely paused for breath since. I spend my days dashing from the house to work and back, over and over. Cooking good meals, leaving notes for Rick, chatting with Karen in late afternoon, studying at night. Emery Plott has much to teach a newbie like me. We've had one funeral and burial of an elderly man and two pet cremations. I have discovered that this work is more engrossing that I thought, and much more difficult. I've been borrowing books from Mr. Plott's shelves, falling asleep with them on my chest, and peppering him with questions each morning.

“Mrs. Monson! Mrs. Monson!” he would say over his coffee. He insisted on the formality of last names. “Patience! All will be revealed. You cannot acquire in a few weeks the expertise of decades. It will come.” And he would stir a little Irish cream into his coffee, close his eyes, and listen to Brahms on his 1970s turntable. Emery Plot had created his perfect world of tranquility inside his funeral home. If everyone felt about it as Karen did, I imagined he was able to live quite undisturbed.

Yesterday I came home from this tranquil world to Karen, banging around in her kitchen.

“Hey, honey,” I said. “What're you looking for?”

Her head was in a bottom cabinet. “Mumblemumblemumble,” she replied.

“What?” I asked.

Her head retreated from the cabinet. Her hair was a mess and it seemed she had been crying. She wiped her mascara.

“The chicken fryer. Cast iron. I want to make beef stew.”

“Beef stew? In April?”

She rotated in her squatting position and gave me The Karen Look. “Yes. In April. I haven't had beef stew since ….” She couldn't pin a date on it. “...forever. And cornbread. I want your cornbread.”

“Honey, let me cook.”

“No, Mama!” Her lower lip started to wobble. “I miss cooking too. I miss doing things. I haven't done a dang thing in my own kitchen for months!” She leaned back against the cabinet with her legs in the floor and sighed. I walked over and stroked her hair. She was right – it was coming out.

“There, there, sweetheart.” A younger and thinner mother would've slid down easily and sat beside her. This chubby grandma, however, needed the chair back and Karen's shoulder to support me on my way down.

“You're gonna have to help get me up again,” I said. She laughed.

I reached over and held her hand. “Are you sure it's okay, having me here?” I asked. “I can find something else, a little apartment maybe.”

“No, Mama,” she answered. I expected her to say I was a joy to have around, or I felt like part of the family, or it was no trouble at all. Instead she said, “I really need you right now. I can't do all this.” It was my turn to sigh.

“It won't be forever,” I whispered to her. “This too shall pass. You'll get well --” Here, she wept. “ – and I'll get my own place. I like Peace Valley. I'll be right here to help you, even when you're better.”

Karen put her head on my shoulder. This is how Jeffrey and Jimmy found us when they burst in from school.

“Mom! Nana!” they shouted. “Woohoo!” And both boys plowed into us and made a pile of backpacks and school books on the kitchen floor. Both were sweaty and smelled of the playground, just as little boys should.

“What's for supper?” Jeffrey asked me. I felt Karen's head turn down.

“Taco rice, young man,” I answered. “But tomorrow night your mama has asked for beef stew and cornbread, and that's what I'm excited about!”

Perhaps the most exhausting thing about a long illness is the constant effort to be cheerful, and yesterday none of us had the energy to do it. After supper the boys were fighting. Karen sat on the porch waiting for Rick, who didn't return until 8:00. She was fatigued by then, and they fell into an argument. The house rang with raised voices. I sat in my room, trying to study.

“I told you I'd be late.”

“It's been such an awful day.”

“That's my Lego set!”

“Get out of my room!”

“We have to get more business in the B&B. Sales are slipping.”

“Why am I so unhappy?” Karen moaned.

“Mom!” That came from both boys at once.

At 9:00 I couldn't take the negative energy anymore, and I thought longingly of Mr. Plott's tranquil office, the drifting richness of Brahms, the squeak of his leather chair. Patty Goyle kept Diet Coke in the mini-frig and Nutter Butters in her desk drawer. I grabbed my purse, my latest reading material on cremation, and headed for the door.

Rick was in the living room with a beer and ESPN.

“I'll be back,” I said.

The walk between the house and the funeral home was beautiful in any weather, but it was like a dream that night. A nearly full moon cast shadows on the street. Not a car passed by. Pink and white azaleas glowed in massive banks and filled the yards around each home, invisible boxes but for the boxes of warm light from within. Somewhere behind it all, in the trees or in the woods, heavy drapes of honeysuckle vines filled the world with that sweet perfume of childhood. I shook off the cares of my family and my life, and stood there studying daffodils in clumps near my feet. I heard laughter far away, and the low thunder of a train.

Mr. Plott's office light was still burning at 9:15. There were no cars in the tiny parking lot, but that was not surprising since he never drove a vehicle, except the old hearse, and that only for a cemetery burial. It was parked around the back under a carport. I was surprised he was still there. We had no new deaths that I knew of, and he's quite partial to his bedroom slippers and an evening of old radio shows.

“Mr. Plott? It's me, Ivy Monson.” I dropped my purse and book on Patty Goyle's desk. “I'm surprised to see you here this late. I hope you don't mind --” I was saying, as I walked through his door.

And Karen was right. Emery Plott was dead. He was sitting in his chair as usual, a bit slumped, his hands on the desk. He'd knocked his whiskey over and made a mess. I stood, shocked, looking at this man I barely knew, frantic that somehow the weight of his death, his burial, this business, his deep obligations, had somehow fallen on me. I had not bargained on this.

“Oh, my God!”

I felt for a pulse in his neck and on his wrist, but it was silly; I could tell he was dead. He just was. I mopped up the whiskey and walked to Patty Goyle's desk and sat down. That's who I needed to call. Patty would know what to do. The phone rang seven times.

“H'lo?” she asked.

“Patty? Patty Goyle?”

“Yeah, honey. That you, Ivy Monson?”

“Yes, it is. Oh my God, Patty, I'm at the office. You have to come down here.” I tried to calm myself. There was nothing to be alarmed about, really. “Mr. Plott, I've just found him dead in his office.”

“Is that a fact?” she asked. “Well, I'll be darned. He was saying yesterday he was feelin' a little poorly.” She paused. “My hair's up in rollers, but I'll be right over. Just hang on, honey.”

I sat at her desk, ate seven Nutter Butters, downed a small Diet Coke on ice, and waited. I wondered about Patty. If she weren't at least 70 years old, I'd have labeled her an air-head, but few women are truly air-headed at that age. Life's bumps and abuses have usually knocked them down to the ground and put some sense in their heads. In two weeks I'd only seen Patty Goyle do two interesting things, and both involved her fingernails. She typed with the tips of her fingernails, and she could talk on the phone and paint little pictures on her fingernails at the same time. At the time I thought she might've gone into the wrong line of work.

Patty breezed into the office with her purple rollers under a Japanese silk head scarf and wearing a matching silk robe over red silk pajamas covered in black hearts. She wore 3-inch spike heels in faux alligator skin on her feet. Her toenails were unpolished. She glanced down.

“I know, hunnee. I'm sorry. Couldn't get to the toesies. Your call interrupted my evenin' rooteen.” She came to the desk and squeezed my hand. “Let's go in togethuh, shall we?” We processed into Mr. Plott's office, which was now swathed in darkness. She flipped on the light and stared at him. She dropped my hand and gently laid one painted 2-inch fingernail against his brow.

“Oh, he's gone alright. No doubt.” She looked up at me. “Did ya call the coronuh?” I shook my head. “I'll call him then,” she said, and she left the room.

It was all quite fast after that. The coroner came, one Harold Garvey, and examined the body, talked briefly on the phone with Dr. Whitehead, and left the office with his certificate in hand. He paused at Patty's desk.

“Well, Miss Goyle, this was thoughtful of Emery, wouldn't you say?” he asked. “Quite convenient.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“You got his latest envelope?”

“Uh, yeah.”

He snapped his briefcase closed, patted her on the back, and left. Patty sniffed and wiped her nose with her Japanese silk scarf, which had slipped off her rollers.

I sat on the padded chair next to her desk. “Latest envelope?”

She reached in a bottom drawer and removed a crisp, white envelope. “Mr. Plott wrote up a new one ever' three months,” she said. “Instructions pertainin' to his death. He was a man prepared for his last day.” She handed it to me. “He gave me this one last week.”

I ran my finger under the seal and pulled out a single sheet of paper. As the wall clock ticked away in the hallway, I read it aloud:

“Dear Miss Goyle and Mrs. Monson,

If you are reading this letter, then I have passed. Please prepare my body for cremation. The urn I have selected is in the alcove in my office. It is a round mahogany box with mother-of-pearl inlay. You may do with my remains as you see fit, but I would prefer for them to remain here at the funeral home, at least for a time, as long as I am remembered here.”

At this point Miss Goyle began to weep loudly. I continued reading.

“If family and friends wish to gather for a memorial, I would be honored for them to do so at the location of their choice. My will can be found with my attorney, Mr. Ben Stade. You will find that I request that the proceeds from the sale of my home on Mulberry Street be given for the care of the memorial gardens at Peace Valley Cemetery. The funeral home will continue operation as before with you, Mrs. Monson, as its director. The business is owned by my cousin Herbert, according to the dictates of my will, so it will remain in the Plott family as it has for over seventy years.

Dear ladies, I bid you farewell until we meet again.”

He signed it in a flourish of letters in eloquent Southern style. I flopped against the back of the chair and stared at Miss Goyle. We were both speechless. Finally I spoke.

“Miss Goyle, it's nearly 11:00. Will you help me move the body into the morgue? I will … I will tend to the body in the morning, if it's okay with you.”

She nodded. In a few minutes we had completed the task. Miss Goyle had clearly done this many times before, helping her boss. Her tears fell on his dress shirt as we rolled him into the morgue. She tidied her head scarf and went to the door.

“See ya tomorrow,” she sniffed.

I had turned out all the lights and had my keys in hand when Miss Goyle's phone rang. It was nearly 11:30. I wanted to ignore it, but the feeling of responsibility that was Emery Plott's very heart's blood was now trickling through my veins as well. I picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Yes,” a desperate voice choked on the other end. “Is this the funeral home?”

“Yes, this is Peace Valley Funeral Home. May I help you?”

“Yes, yes! She's dead! I don't know what to do!” The desperation rose to panic. “She's dead!”

“Miss,” I said coolly. “It's okay. Calm down. Please give me your address. I will call the coroner, and we will be there as soon as possible to do everything necessary. You don't need to panic. We will take care of everything.”

My tone seemed to work. I could hear her breathing. “Oh, good,” she said. “Oh, good. We're at 217 Hwy. 706 cut-off, after the water tower. A yellow house. And please hurry!”

My evening was just beginning.

To read chapter 6, please click here.

Copyrighted by M. K. Christiansen