Exit Laughing by Victoria Zackheim Page B

the lid, Gyles Pelly! everyone cried. And when the last nail was driven home, Alice called for the Mullans to play a reel, and lines formed, and hands clapped, and an arch of arms spread well into the yard. Alice skipped down the middle, and she twisted and kicked, keeping with the rhythm and the pattern of beats, and in perfect time with those close behind her.
    The music came to an end, and Alice stood panting, and wanting more.
    It’s not right
, Old Mary Godfrey muttered.
It’s just not right
. First the priest and now the wife. Dear Mother of God, what is the world coming to?
    And Alice flung back her head, and laughed, showing an arc of white teeth.
    She’ll be dancing on his grave tomorrow, sneered Old Mary Godfrey.
    “And did she?” asks Oona.
    “To this day, her ghost can be seen dancing in the cemetery,” says Molly. “But only if there are stars blinking in a mauve sky.”
    I pour my grandmother a third cup of tea.
    A small payment indeed, for such a grand performance.

DEATH AND DENIAL
— Barbara Abercrombie —
    “What’s to be afraid of?” Al says. “I don’t remember where I came from, and I’m just going back to the same place.” He seems quite cheerful about this.
    We’re having lunch at the Belmont Brewery, overlooking the beach on a beautiful Southern California day, and he’s drinking a beer. Usually we’re talking about politics, but today we’re discussing death.
    “And remember, no funeral. I have it all planned.” He takes out his wallet and pulls a card from it. “Neptune Society. They take care of the whole thing. See the number on it? It’s a pre-plan.”
    I look at the card. Frankly, I find it a little creepy. My father did the same thing. He visited the local East Hampton funeral home and had a long discussion with the director about how exactly he wanted them to handle it all when he died.
    “And I’ve paid to have my ashes taken to sea,” Al says.
    “I’ll go on the boat,” I say.
    “Oh, no, you won’t.”
    “Of course I will. We’ll have a service. The whole family.” I can envision grandchildren tossing flowers into the water, the grown-ups telling loving and funny anecdotes about Al, perhaps holding flutes of champagne.
    “There will be no service.” He pats my hand. “I’m Jewish, but not religious.”
    “We’ll call it a memorial.”
    “No, nothing. Gone is gone. Nobody’s going on the boat.”
    “Maybe I really want to go.”
    “Nope.” He offers me a sip of his beer. “No tubes, remember that. No machines.”
    Finally I promise, no tubes, no machines, and no memorial at sea.
    When my mother first moved into The Breakers, a retirement hotel in Long Beach, California, I read about Al in the hotel newsletter; his wife had just died, and he didn’t want any visitors or anyone trying to talk to him. A few weeks later he resurfaced, appearing at meals and, to my utter shock, my mother—a widow who had been married to my father for fifty-five years—was giving him the eye.
    “He’s attractive, isn’t he?” she said as we had lunch one day and he strode into the dining room wearing tennis clothes. He was attractive—he was in his late seventies then, five years younger than she was, tall, lean, and athletic. But this was my mother. She already had another guy courting her that she barely tolerated because he was a Republican and too conservative. Then one day, Al (who turned out to be a liberal Democrat) heard my mother playing the piano—something by Mozart—in the lobby of The Breakers, and next thing I knew they were a couple. “I thought my life was over,” he would tell me later. “But there she was, so beautiful and playing the piano!”
    Al also played the piano, old tunes from the forties by ear. My mother began to give him piano lessons, teaching him to read music. They took long walks, held hands, laughed a lot, read the paper together every morning, and had martinis together every night. Then a year or so after moving into The