The Funeral Makers by Cathie Pelletier Page B

years…
    for then she could stand alone. Nay, by the rood,
    She could have run and waddled all about…”
    â€”Nurse (About Juliet), Act I,
    Scene III, Romeo and Juliet
    In her bra and panties with the silk heart that said TUESDAY, Amy Joy twisted on her vanity chair. She studied each angle of her face, sucked in her cheeks to produce cheekbones, and cocked her head provocatively to one side. This, she decided, was her best stance. Her Fuller Brush lipstick samples were in a colorful disarray before her and she studied them as though they were tasty candies. After mystical deliberation, she settled upon Pink and Pouty.
    Dressing was Amy Joy’s favorite ritual. At fourteen, the adolescent’s limbo, it was her only ritual and she threw herself into it with the same fervor as a dying nun about to encounter the beatific vision. Amy Joy worshiped dressing. Once Pink and Pouty had been established as the color of the day, it set the tone for the rest of the outfit. Out of the closet came a white cotton blouse with a large pink carnation sitting above a gold stem with two gold leaves. The slacks were her straight-legged cotton ones, a shocking pink. Her flip-flops were a mediocre pink compared to the rest of the uniform. Amy Joy had cleverly added a dash of white to accentuate the white of her blouse by attaching a tiny cloth daisy to the strap of each flip-flop.
    Her hair, being thick and frizzy by nature rather than answering fashion’s cry for smooth and curly, disappeared into the folds of the familiar French bun. The hairdo was further decorated with a cluster of tiny plastic daisies she had found at J. C. Penney’s dime sale. They were glued to a bobby pin that was painted a bright gold. From months of training, the two pin curls on each cheek fell quickly into place, as though they had sprouted out of skin and bone. A wave of perfume added the final panache, and she stood back to examine the whole. This was Amy Joy McKinnon’s finest hour.
    Opening her bedroom door a crack, Amy Joy peered out to see if the intruders in the living room were still making funeral arrangements. A vision in pink, she sneaked down the hallway and paused at the door to the living room. She could hear her mother’s voice and Aunt Pearl’s, but no others. Thankful that she would not have to slip past her father’s barricade, which was virtually foolproof, Amy Joy made her way out the back door and disappeared on the path that led to the old American Legion Hall.
    Why the subject of death seemed more appetizing to her parents than the love she felt for Chester Lee was not clear to her. Not that she didn’t feel remorse about Marge’s dying. She did. But the hours away from Chester were like years, and each opportunity lost was gone for good. As Marge drew her last breaths, Amy Joy was immersed in loving for the first time, in being caressed and whispered to by a man who seemed to know all the wonders of the world.
    There had been good moments. Evenings together on the porch, while Marge was still strong enough to shell the peas from Sicily’s garden, the two watched those last evenings creep over Mattagash like a shadow, memorized every song the crickets knew. And if Marge fell asleep on the swing, it was Amy Joy’s warm young touch that led her to her bed and sleep. If the promise of Marge’s imminent death was lost on Amy Joy, it was because the fat promise of life had caught her up in its frenzy.
    But there were times, in the stillness of night, devoid of her cacophony of colors, that she’d come awake, drenched in her little-girl flannel gown, and the first sound she listened for was the clock’s ticking in the hallway, as though it were Marge’s weary heart pumping its final blood. And in the deep of night, when Chester Lee’s man smell was no longer with her, when the burn of his whiskers had healed on her face, and the blood to her excited nipples had receded, it was