“Oh, Matthew,” she said, “I don’t know what’s happening to me. I can’t remember how Bach’s ‘St. Anne Fugue’ goes. It keeps getting mixed up in my head with Mozart’s ‘Ave Verum.’ ” She had him hum them.
“Yes. Oh yes,” she said. “I remember.” And had gone on to discuss and approve the names of various trumpeters they could get for the Purcell anthem she had decided on only the night before.
“Do you really think so, Matthew? Fred Turner? Do you trust his embouchure? Ask Willy Emerson for me, would you? And call me back. Mills will give you the number.”
In the hospital, even in the motel, she barely glanced at the dozens of letters and get well cards sent by her friends, but had Mills read the acceptance letters of her designated pallbearers over and over to her, listening for tone, searching out reluctancies. She would take them from Mills and make him listen as if for sour notes in music. When she was satisfied that they meant what they said she dictated formal acknowledgments of their receipt, as if she had formed some binding legal accommodation with them.
She had spoken to Bishop McKelvey long distance. She knew, she said, there could be no eulogy as such, only the authorized prayers, but since they’d already agreed that certain special friends and relatives would be permitted to read the responses, she thought, wondered really, if she mightn’t be granted one teeny dispensation. It was awfully important to her. Though it was the bishop’s decision. She would submit no matter what he decided. Well then, she said, could they set aside some time toward the end of the service, for Breel, her psychiatrist, to address the mourners? No, not a eulogy. Nothing like a eulogy. A clinical report on the state of her head, her symptomatology when she had been mad.
George had seen RSVP’s from all six pallbearers.
One was flying in from Europe, another had postponed his trip till after the funeral. “Friends,” she’d told George, “loyal friends.”
Had she indicated, Mills had asked the brother, which one was to be bumped? “Come on, Mills, she was dying. These were practically her last words, just before she called that Merchant chap to the bedside. Did you expect her to think of everything? I suppose we can do some things for ourselves.”
“She thought of everything,” George muttered.
“How’s that? Speak up. I can’t hear you over the jets.”
This was on Tuesday. The funeral was Thursday. It was too late for Mills to shop for a new suit, too late even to get the suit he had cleaned and pressed. But everyone, he thought, no matter his station, had a decent suit. She thought of everything. She even thought of that. She knew me, knew even I’d have one. She probably knew where it would be, anticipating the very closet, the yellowing plastic garment bag in which it would hang, protected from dust, moths, the wear and tear of poor men’s air. She thought of everything. How could he be her brother and not know that?
So he looked for their white gloves. (Knowing they would not come from the cut-down carton in the church vestibule, just as he knew that the Bibles and hymnals they brought would be their own, as he knew that some of them would somehow have managed beforehand to obtain printed copies of the order of the service — just as he knew they’d be printed rather than mimeographed — as he knew they would have anticipated, and in perfect accord with Mrs. Glazer’s wishes, the precise order of the seating arrangements, only himself and the contingent from the south side guided by the otherwise strictly ceremonial ushers.
(And how did he know, this George Mills in rare and tandem connection to privilege, his alliance occasional and metered as astronomy? Where did he even get off knowing? How had he known of the tuxedos and jodhpurs, spats and top hats that would be in their wardrobes? How had he intuited their pallbearer’s customized gloves, the mother-of-pearl buttons like milk gems? What gave him his outsider’s inside information?)
So he looked for the white gloves — his own pair taken from the very carton he knew they would neither avoid nor wave off but were simply unaware of.
Then he was helpless. Having turned himself and Louise over to an usher, having followed the young fellow to a pew neither conspicuously close to nor far removed from the principal mourners, he relinquished himself to some principle of sheer minstrelsy, searching the laps of the men for white-gloved hands, looking over his shoulder, rubbernecking occasion and the congregation like some complacent proprietor of worship. He saw nothing. (Blinders on his intuition here, totally without knowledge of the tailor’s contrivances, the special spaces that could be built into space, the secret concealing depths of bespoke pockets, ignorant of the reinforced material that could clothe a wallet or hide car keys without revealing a bulge or wrinkle.)
Someone came up. It was Messenger, the Meals-on-Wheels man, and George turned to him. “Excuse me,” he said, “do you think you could point out the pallbearers?”
“Nice tan,” Messenger said, “ni-ii-ce tan.” He was stoned.
“The pallbearers,” George said again.
But Messenger was enjoying himself. He indicated women, kids, some of his clients from Meals-on-Wheels, several with canes, walkers. “She loved her mischief,” he said.
George mentioned names he recalled from the correspondence he’d seen in Mexico. “My God, man,” Messenger said, “one owns the damned newspaper, and another introduced branch banking into this state. What’shisname just bought a franchise in the NFL, though he’s probably never been to a game or even watched ‘Monday Night Football.’ Those other names I don’t even recognize. You’re here for the autographs, am I right? You want them to sign the psalms in your program.”
“George is a pallbearer,” Louise said.
“We all got our pall to bear,” Messenger said.
So he looked for their tans, the special signals they radiated of wealth and leadership, all the lights of influence and pulled-string, procurate agency. But he had forgotten the decent suit in everyone’s closet, appearance got up like a made bed, hospital corners. Why, even the Meals-on-Wheels group looked distinguished, their walking aids and wheelchairs lending them the look of pampered cranks. One old man in a lap robe might have been their line’s coddled, consanguinitic first cause.
So he looked for the stalwart, for stamina, recalling the beefy first and second mates and ordinary seamen who had been sent by the Barge and Shipper’s Union to carry his father-in-law’s casket. He looked for the powerhouse honor guard of the rich.
Sam approached him. He leaned across Louise and whispered in his ear. “Professor Messenger said you were uncertain about the other pallbearers, that you weren’t sure where to go.”
“Nobody told me. Nobody told whoever I’m supposed to replace I’m supposed to replace him. I didn’t know anything about any of this, Mr. Glazer. Mr. Harry sprung it on me on the plane.”
“If you’re uncomfortable,” Sam said quietly. “If you’re the least bit uncomfortable…”
“Well,” George said, “Mr. Harry said it was what Mrs. Glazer wanted.”
“All right,” he said softly, “talk to the gentlemen in this row. This is the pallbearers’ bench.”
He looked down the aisle. “Gee,” he said, “I never even gave my name. I wonder how the ushers knew.” (Thinking even as he said it that the nieces and nephews had his number, that Mr. Claunch — Harry — had given it to them. Like a psychological profile of hijackers and bombers which even the girls at the airport metal detectors knew, the maintenance men in the public toilets.)