“At a cemetery.”
“Oh, come on.” I dared to give her a chummy pat on the shoulder, drawing her toward us. Whether she heard my desperate plea or decided that a break from work would be nice, she got her sadly patched coat and came with us. In the car, Meda gave a cry of happiness and held up a blue, stuffed dog she found in the backseat.
“Annadore will be happy to get him back. I was worried the aliens had taken him.” She laughed while Celeste rolled her eyes at me. I concentrated on driving.
As soon as we pulled through the main gates of the cemetery we saw my grandfather’s monument. There was no way to avoid seeing it. It was a monstrosity, a word which at any rate shares the same etymological root with the word monument. For more than seventy years my family had owned an elegant, but fairly discreet mausoleum on a small hill that overlooked the older part of the cemetery to the south. The new structure was fifty yards away from the original mausoleum, and even unfinished it dwarfed its humble predecessor. It dwarfed the rest of the cemetery. The foreman led us around, detailing some of the finer points of the structure. Not surprisingly, they were of an esoteric nature, as that which makes a mausoleum a standout among mausoleums involves a lot of specialized features. We surveyed the marble, the granite, the engraving, the statuary, all the subtle glories of that strange little mansion, and tried to make complimentary remarks.
“It’s so impressive,” Celeste said.
Meda mumbled some nicety like, “It seems very cozy,” and then clamped a hand over her mouth, casting me a look of muffled horror. As casually as she could muster, she said, “So, what’s a thing like this go for?” I had asked the question myself when I first spoke to Mr. Cantrell and I knew by the tone of his voice he felt it was inappropriate. Maybe he’d been an undertaker in his early career, because I could imagine him saying, “How can you put a price on commemorating the loved one?” The look on Celeste’s face was a mixture of things. Maybe she felt the question shouldn’t have been asked, but she was curious.
I was so embarrassed to be faced with the question myself that I lied. I told them about half of what the actual cost was, but my lie made both of them open their eyes a little wider. Celeste recovered quickly, but Meda stood there shaking her head in amazement. Despite the dimensions of the new mausoleum, the point of it all was reasserted by the natural draw I felt to visit the older mausoleum where so much of my family was actually at rest. They were stacked three deep in chronological order: my grandmother on top of her mother-in-law who was on top of her youngest daughter. On the other side of the aisle were my father and my brother, one Robison Penry Raleigh on top of another. On top of them was my Uncle Alan, hidden behind a blank face of marble that said Starkalan Sevier Raleigh. In the plots around the mausoleum were some miscellaneous Seviers and Raleighs, and even one lingering Penry. We’d left the Bernhams in the old country.
Perhaps after the immediate family was moved to the new place, some of the more distant relatives could move into the old mausoleum. Like buying a coach ticket and getting bumped to first class. I made a mental note to ask Mr. Cantrell about it. When I walked around to the north side of the old mausoleum, I saw the six small headstones huddled together. Meda followed me and, in a gentle voice, said, “Babies. That’s sad.”
“My cousins.” I steered us back toward the car. “We’ve been walking around here for half an hour and I still haven’t seen any Amoses.”
She laughed and looked away. When she slowed, I lagged with her, letting Celeste get ahead of us.
“People like us don’t get buried in this cemetery,” Meda said. “You have to go up north of town to see where my family is buried. It only costs two hundred dollars to bury somebody there. And you don’t have to have one of those concrete vaults. This guy named Varney who lives on German Road builds coffins. Roger—my mom’s boyfriend at the time—and I drove up there and got a coffin when my brother drowned.”
It was the sort of thing you expect would bond you to another person, that we both had lost a brother, but we were so far apart standing there in the shadow of my grandfather’s stupid mausoleum. She felt it, too, and to reaffirm it to myself, I drove out to the other cemetery. I also reaffirmed what it meant to be in charge; neither of the women asked me where we were going.
I’d driven by the cemetery before, and even from the road it looked raw and bleak, like a place of mourning instead of a golf course. Celeste’s usual chatter died out when she saw it. There were few trees, and while some of the graves had shrubs or flowers planted on or near them, there was no attempt at formal landscaping. Instead there were rows of headstones, running in irregular formation up the face of the hill. Meda headed out with certainty toward an area where the graves were gathered inside crumbling stone boundaries. Beyond that were headstones older and more worn than the oldest ones at Holy Mount.
“There I am.” Meda pointed to a small white stone that was barely legible. I squatted down and by angling my head against the glare I could just make out the ghost of old letters. “She was my grandmother’s great-grandmother.” There was a Star of David carved into the stone and below that the words Meda Amos Aged 26 yrs. Let her rest. The next grave over had a marker that read: Ann Adore, Friend.
There was a stone that read MaeLee Chinese gal and one that said Buffalo Nell O’Hara, She was a good one. A more elaborate, expensive one said Tamaura, Beloved Concubine of J. Tidwell. Most of the others were barely marked, some with wooden planks that must have once had names on them. Other graves were mere depressions in the soil. Meda led me a little further to a stone that said Zipporah Amos 1858-1897 With Her God.
“That’s Meda’s younger sister,” she said.
The Other Meda Amos
Meda
Celeste hated me because somebody, probably her mother, told her that all girls are competition, and I guess she thought we were competing for Bernie. That was the way she looked at me. Standing in the middle of all those headstones with Bernie kneeling in front of Meda Amos’ marker, I could tell she was thinking bad things about me. I was a slut, trailer trash.
“Why do they all have such weird names? Here’s one named Shuck Lou Anne,” she said.
“They’re prostitutes, aren’t they? From when this was a boom town,” Bernie said.
“Yeah, except those are people who can’t afford to be buried in the other cemetery.” I pointed over at the new part of the cemetery, because I wanted to be fair to them.
“Prostitutes,” Celeste said. “How funny. And you’re named after her?”
“I’m related to her.” That was what she wanted to hear.
“Your great-great-great-grandmother, right? Do you know what year she died?” Bernie said.
“I think a lot sooner than her sister, but I’m not sure.”
“You have a very interesting family tree.”
I guess I did, if that was his idea of interesting.
Let Her Rest
Celeste rubbed her hands and blew into them until we got the hint. I tossed her the keys and she grumpily started toward the car. We wandered back across the field, Celeste in the lead, and Meda pointing out graves to me. There was her great-aunt Leah. There were two of her grandmother’s babies, which I supposed she remembered from the recitation of family lore, because the little indentations were unmarked. She stopped abruptly in front of a marker that was made of hand poured concrete with metal letters stuck into it. It said: David Amos 1976-1993 Miss You. Her brother.
“Do you ever think about what you’ll have put on your headstone?” she said.
“I hope I won’t end up like my Uncle Alan with a slab of stone that says Bernham Sevier Raleigh.”
“I meant besides your name. I like the ones that have little things written on them. Like the one that says, ‘Too good for this world,’ or ‘Beloved Concubine’ or, I don’t know. I don’t like the boring ones, like your family’s. I like the ones where you can tell that somebody else wrote it about the person.”
“‘Let h
er rest’?” I said.
“No. I always thought that was sad. Like she’d never got to rest while she was alive. Or scary, like they were afraid she wouldn’t rest when she was dead. I want something nice on mine.”
“If there was a verbal equivalent of a shrug, that’s what they’d put on my headstone.” I shrugged at her. She obliged me by giggling. “Or, ‘He was okay.’ Did you write what’s on your brother’s headstone?”
“Yeah. I didn’t have a lot of room for what I wanted to put,” she said, embarrassed.
“I like it. You read it and you know someone was thinking of him. It’s like a message.”
“That was what I wanted. I don’t know if I believe he’s looking down and can see it, but I wanted to send a message just in case.”
Celeste was waiting for us in the car and we were getting closer despite our wanderings. It seemed in poor taste to ask what I wanted to ask in a cemetery, but I wasn’t sure I’d get a better opportunity. “Would you go out with me on a date?” I specified the date part, because I didn’t want to confuse the situation.
Meda laughed out loud as soon as the question was in the air. Then she swallowed the laugh with a hiccup.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Why not?” I said.
“The last time I dated my boss I got fired. And I really need this job. And my aunt would kill me.”
“I’m a little confused.” I debated with myself how to phrase what I wanted to say. “I got the impression that—maybe I misunderstood. If the date you had the other night, if that’s something serious, I’m sorry, but I got the impression that you would be willing to go out with me.” I didn’t want to blurt out what I really meant: tell me if I’ve misunderstood that we can have sex, but we can’t go out on a date. I was prepared to let it go rather than say what I was thinking.
She frowned. “Look, this is a lose-lose situation for me. If we go out and it doesn’t work, maybe later you’ll fire me, but if I won’t go out with you, maybe you’ll fire me anyway.”
“I’m not going to fire you. That just seems mean, and I don’t have a mean bone in my body,” I said, my mother’s somehow derogatory words coming out of my mouth. When had she said that? “Honestly, it didn’t occur to me that you would see it that way. I’m sorry. I apologize.”
We were only ten feet from the car, so I walked over and opened the door for her.
“I think I must have such a boring family,” Celeste said, as soon as we were in the car. “There’s nothing interesting in our family tree. Both my parents are teachers. And my grandfather was a bricklayer. Nobody ever did anything very important or very bad either. No scandals or anything.”
I wasn’t sure if she was waiting for us to pitch in, but since I knew her to be capable of holding a conversation without second party input, she was on her own. Meda sat quietly and I tried to figure out how to undo my stupidity. At the house, as I prepared to follow Celeste back to the office, Meda stopped me.
“I’m just being silly,” she said, once we were alone. She didn’t look at me, but kept her gaze on the little blue dog as she made it walk up my arm. “I guess it would be okay for us to go on a date. Since you don’t have a mean bone in you.”
“Not a one.” I was conflicted. I was getting what I thought I wanted, but I felt belittled by the terms under which I was getting it. I had admitted I didn’t have a spine. The vertebrae are the meanest bones in the body.
We went on the default first date: dinner. I thought my mind was playing tricks on me, when Tilda came to the table to take our order. She’d grown substantially in girth since the last time I saw her, but everything else about her was just the same as the day she stood stoically in her good navy dress at my brother’s funeral. I would like to say that she had a beautiful smile or an inner glow, but she was the girl my brother had loved, grown into womanhood. Her face had settled into the predictably jowly weight of her thirties, and sunk into the ruddiness of her face, her eyes were still small, her nose still snubbed and upturned. With no sign of recognition, she took our orders and prepared to leave.
“Tilda,” I said. I wasn’t sure what I wanted from her, but it was like looking at a museum display of my childhood.
“Yes, hon?”
“Do you remember me?”
“Bernie, of course I remember you. I’m surprised you remember me. How are you?”
“I’m okay. How are you?” I couldn’t think why it was so important for me to talk to her, but we filled up several minutes with small talk. Meda watched me with a squint of curiosity that made my skin crawl. At the moment I thought I ought to introduce the two of them, Tilda sprang her condolences on me, and before I recovered from that, she left to put in our order.
“My brother’s fiancée, when she was in high school,” I said to Meda. Some explanation seemed required.
“So, what do you do? I mean, what did you do before now, before you had to start being Bernham Sevier Raleigh? What kind of job did you have?” Meda asked the question, almost as though it were the only sort of conversation that could be made on an official date. It was odd, considering the other conversations we’d had. Her discomfort made me wonder if I’d imagined her asking me to spend the night with her.
“I’m a librarian. Actually, I’m an assistant librarian. All of the pleasure, none of the responsibility.”
“A librarian,” she said slowly. “And now you’re just you.”
“I’m planning on being a librarian again when I get all this mess straightened out.”
“Really? You’re just going to go back to being a librarian?”
“I plan to. This isn’t what I’d intended to do with my life.” I gestured uselessly, not sure how to describe the contours of what I was doing. She watched me, puzzled, but didn’t offer any assistance. “What about you?”
“You know what I do. I suppose I’ll keep doing it,” she said.
Of course, it was the wrong question. By the time our dinner came, the restaurant was so busy there was no need to worry about what to say to Tilda. She put the food on the table, smiled at us and moved on. Meda began to eat, but the conversation died from there. I’d been on enough bad dates to recognize what had just happened. After dinner, I assumed I would just take her home, but as we crossed the parking lot, she turned to me and said, “Can you dance?”
Little Bernie Raleigh
Meda
He laughed so hard I expected a totally different answer, but he said, “It depends on what kind of dancing you mean.”
“Can you two-step?”
“Absolutely. That’s one I know. And I can waltz. I think I know the fox-trot, but I may have that confused with something else.”
There’s no way to know which guys will dance and which ones won’t until you get them on the floor, but I figured I’d give him a chance. It was just a bar with a small dance floor, but I always liked it, because it wasn’t full of show offs. You could go and dance and have a place to sit down and drink a beer.
“Sorry I’m so tall,” he said when we finished the first dance and found a table. I thought it was sad, him going through life apologizing for something he couldn’t help. He wasn’t a bad dance partner, but he was too tall. While he went to get us a beer, this girl Carrie, that I used to work with at the motel, came over and sat down at the table with me.
“Holy crap,” she said. “Is that little Bernie Raleigh? You’re dating Bernie Raleigh? I don’t know why I ought to be surprised, I mean, it’s not like you don’t get whoever you want, but he’s so rich. I mean, like millions and millions.”
I knew that’s what everybody was going to think. Oh, look, there’s Meda trying to snag a millionaire.
“It’s not really a date. He just wanted some company. He doesn’t know a lot of people here.”
“Well, great, you can introduce us and then he’ll know me,” Carrie said hopefully. When Bernie came back with our drinks I introduced him to Carrie, and then she just sat there starin
g at him.
“So.” He looked at me, wanting help.
“You don’t remember me do you?” Carrie said.
“I’m sorry.”
“I used to always sit behind you in grade school. Walker, Carrie Walker, you know so I was always behind you in the alphabet.” After a while she got the hint and left, but people kept bothering us all night.
“I forget sometimes that you have a past here,” I said. It was strange to think about all the people who knew who he was.
“Sometimes I forget that I do, too.”
“You didn’t go to high school in town, did you?”
“No, fourth grade was my last year here. I went to a private school after that.”
Never Nice Enough
“Did you like school?” Meda asked.
“No one was ever as nice as I wanted them to be.” I hoped it sounded sufficiently neutral.
“Are they ever? Is it a lot different from when you lived here? Is it true how they say you can’t go home?”
“Oh, you can go home, but why would you want to?” I said. She rewarded me with a beautiful giggle that seemed to be part of her date mode. It made people turn and look at her.
“What was going to a private school like?”
I tried to tell her, but there was so little to tell. I went to a very exclusive school in Maryland, the kind of place where the students wear ties and blazers, and have to learn the fox trot for the annual dance with the girls’ school. If there are even two kids out of two hundred who remember me from school, I would be amazed. Maybe there was bonding and friendship. Maybe there were late night parties and boyish pranks and secret societies. I just don’t know, because I wasn’t there. I was the invisible student. I went to class, went to the dining hall, went to the library. I didn’t talk to anyone and the only people who noticed me were the staff members, who were obsessed with my curfew. There were a lot of sons of wealthy and famous families at the school, but the security paranoia focused on me. Pretty silly. I didn’t have any statistics on it, but I think the odds were against me being kidnapped. Again, I mean.