Her eye drifted to an ad:
EXCEPTIONAL CRYPT FOR SALE
Pierce Brothers Mortuary in Westwood Village
Resting Place for a Single Casket and a Single Urn
Located in “Sanctuary of Peace”
Crypt is at eye level, in the same enclave as
Marilyn Monroe, Truman Capote, Natalie Wood and other legendary personalities
Price $105,000
There are no longer any other crypts available in this Sanctuary.
Don’t burden your heirs with a hasty choice of your final resting place.
It gave her the biggest idea she ever had in her life.
As she drove through the cemetery gate, infused with collagen and Percodan, Joyce saw a familiar coxcombly figure at the far end of the oval drive — her father-in-law, chatting with a groundskeeper. She parked close enough to see the old man press something into the other’s hand before Epitacio shut him into the Silver Seraph and spirited him away.
She of course knew of Mr. Trotter’s exhaustive search for the ideal mausoleum, but had never visited the winning Westwood site. She’d never seen any of the famed funerary models either (except for the doghouses), not having had a great interest and never, oddly, having been invited into that most legendary and exclusive of clubs: the Withdrawing Room. Amazing, she thought, to run into him at this time of day — the man truly was obsessed! Joyce watched the Rolls roll away and the homely caretaker return to raking. Then she ambled to the park office, where a receptionist quickly introduced her to Dot Campbell, the effervescent manager (she used Gilligan instead of Trotter); Ms. Campbell, in a smudged gingham, seemed ill-fitted for the part.
As they strolled the enclave past various “bench estates” and columbaria — new mausoleums were in varied stages of construction — she learned more about Ms. Campbell and her sister Ethel’s pet peeves than she might have cared to. That was all right; in this instance, a kind-hearted eccentric would serve her well. SIT DOWN AND HAVE A CHAT WITH SADIE AND MORRIS was etched into a marble love seat beside two graves. Dot explained how Sadie and Morris were not yet dead but wanted the legend inscribed anyway. In funeral-world parlance, that was what they called pre-need.
Something drew her to the farthermost corner of the property, where a maintenance yard was being razed to make way for more tombs. It was lonely there, and felt colder than the rest of the grounds. When she saw a whitish pigeon wheel overhead, it reminded her of the doves at Castaic and she knew her instincts were, well, dead-on. Dot was glad the woman was interested in something family plot — size and said the work-in-progress parcel could be had for a million and a half, including a newly built adjacent shrine.
But Joyce said she wanted a simple field of grass, and besides, the unfortunately pink cenotaph held just four — not nearly enough. No: her babies needed to be in and of the earth. Well, said Dot, an unbuilt-on field did have its advantages — caskets could be “contumulated” or stacked vertically; if you cremated, you could fit more than a dozen. The benefactress stared at a separate grid that was going for about $500,000—at eleven by fourteen, it still seemed a bit confining … yet what was she expecting in the middle of Westwood? Elysium? Would she even be able to raise that sort of money to bury unknown children? She would have to incorporate her loose-knit group of “angels.” They could call themselves Candlelight — the Candlelight Group. The Candlelighters … they’d have fund-raisers and make the bigwigs give them their money. She was adamant on doing it all without Dodd’s help.
Joyce felt a surge of confidence and emotion. The gesture of acquiring Westside memorial space was born not of convenience (the drive to Castaic was actually meditative) but as a way of weaving those orphans into the everyday tapestry of her — Westside — world. There was something mildly depressing about their current resting place, that arid, unincorporated outback of hinterland exurbia butt-up against the whiz and rumble of failed ride-share speed lanes, sig-alert big-rigs and CHP gunships. How magnificent it would be to bury those treasures here—here, not there — amid wealth of skyscraper, museum and university, far from potter’s field. The poorest of forgotten children may after all help the richest of men into heaven.
When they were done, Dot let her be. She communed with Dorothy Stratten, Donna Reed and Dean Paul Martin, then with deliberation, “Mrs. Gilligan” moved closer to the groundskeeper, who now angled toward her as he raked. She struck up a casual conversation, wondering in what schemes her father-in-law had enlisted him. It was Sling Blade’s peculiar fate to be linked to all the Trotters, without one another’s knowledge.
In time Joyce returned to Pierce Brothers with Father de Kooning, whose blessings she required. The Bel-Air matron needed confirmation that her crusade didn’t smack of dilettantism, that what she was considering was real and mighty and good.
The pastor mentioned meeting her sister at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital, and Joyce testily corrected him: sister-in-law. It seemed like she could never escape Trinnie — well, she could, but only on Trinnie’s terms … those would be whenever she decided to leave the country or go into rehab (usually doing both at once). And when she returned, the men of this family still dropped everything to pend upon her every move. Now, here Joyce was with Father Tim, her Father Tim, whom she’d first met while doing selfless service at a godforsaken graveyard in Castaic, something Trinnie Trotter would be too stoned or bored or grandiose to ever do, and here he was serving her up just like that! Your sister-in-law, he said, was kind enough to be donating her services in designing a garden for the hospital (“kind” because even in her dereliction she was expensively renowned) — with a coy smile he called ministering at the hospital his “day job,” meaning, thought Joyce, the real place he worked, the place that paid and sustained him, the place with a tangible, needy, dying parish, the place a thousand leagues above whatever after-school volunteer eulogizing he happened to do for dumpster babies on behalf of vainglorious society women with too much time on their hands. Her gorgeous, drug-addicted sister-in-law was donating her time, which was precious — precious, priceless Time and Service, making a beautiful, deathless “wandering garden”—whereas she, Joyce, the drab, laughable, very old in-law, the one who had to work her ass off to even look half decent, the one who cruelly brought a crippled genius into the world, was out there burying the discarded dead.
A few visits later, Joyce let it be known to Ms. Campbell that she was in fact a Trotter. She handed her a check for $50,000 as a deposit on a deposit — which Dot happily though confusedly accepted, noting that her father-in-law, “Mr. Louis,” already had a plot and rather famously at that. Joyce said she was well aware, but the space she’d become interested in was for a “different” family, one she was quite close to and for which she wished to make this gift. That melted Dot’s heart, triggering a lengthy, somewhat inappropriate monologue of how her sister Ethel told her of a “great scandale—a horrible woman bought up all the remaining cemetery space in the Hamptons — for her own family of course, not for others. A hundred and ten plots! The selfishness!” Joyce listened and clucked along before making it exceptionally clear that she did not wish her visits or intentions passed on to the Trotter patriarch; she would tell him in time. She assumed Ms. Campbell gossiped with employees, so took it upon herself to reiterate as much to the character we know as Sling Blade, who was surprised and impressed that she and the old man were related. For his part, he couldn’t help wondering if Joyce would soon put him to work. The possibility caused him some anxiety, what with Dot being not at all shy about expressing her dissatisfaction with his growing absenteeism. The clan had him moving around so much — as occasional night watchman at various properties, for which he was on the Quincunx payroll, and sometime Mauck chauffeur, whereupon the old man tipped him lavishly — that under his breath he called them not Trotters but Gallops. He was not without his own brand of humor.