At the close of the service, Mrs. Darnell said, none too quietly, “Well! Wasn’t that just the oddest funeral you’ve ever attended?”
A woman in front of them turned around.
“Strangest ever,” she said.
Startled, Sam looked questioningly at his patient.
“What? You didn’t notice? They hardly mentioned her! Barely even said her name! Such a lovely girl, so giving and generous, and not a word about any of that. Nothing about her childhood, or even her education-and she went to fine schools, believe you me. I’ll grant you, too many funerals these days go overboard into a dreadful sea of sentimentality, but this went too far onto dry land. There’s restraint, and then there’s looking as if you don’t give a damn about your own child! When is the last time you went to a funeral where fifteen distant cousins twice removed didn’t get up to speak about how close they were to the deceased, telling all those family stories that nobody else gives a hoot about?”
She was right, he realized. He’d been so wrapped up in theorizing about the Windsors that he’d barely noticed the entire service was nothing but hymns, Scripture readings, prayers, and a quick stiff homily from a minister who didn’t seem to have even met Priscilla. That was explained when Mrs. Darnell gossiped on, saying, “This isn’t even their church, you know. Maybe they couldn’t get in when they wanted to, but I’ll bet you this church now has a nice endowment for a new set of choir robes. Or something. But what an impersonal service! Why, even my church lets people get up and lie flatteringly about the deceased, and we’re Episcopalian!”
They were rising to their feet, along with the rest of the crowd, when a man’s deep voice cried out. “Wait! Wait! I want to say something about her!”
People stopped, stared, looked at each other.
“Uh-oh,” Mrs. Darnell said, looking maliciously pleased.
“She was an angel!” the man said. “Is no one going to tell about how she was an angel? Sit, sit! Let me tell you what she did for me!”
“Pakistani, do you think?” Mrs. Darnell whispered.
People sank down again in the pews, a little anxiously, shooting glances toward the family in the front row. Sam watched the sister turn around to check out the speaker, but she quickly faced forward again, as if her mother, seated next to her, had pulled her back. The father’s left shoulder jerked hard, once, and that was it. The three of them returned to sitting like statues.
“She must have bought a hot dog from me twice a week, every week, for the whole last year,” the man said in a voice that penetrated every corner of the large room. “She said I had the best hot dogs in New York City! And I treated her like I treat everybody-I yelled at her to hurry up, to give me her order, to move along. She smiled at me; I never smiled back. She said thank you, but I never did. Then, the day before she was killed-the day before!-she came early to my stand, and she said…” His voice faltered. He pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “She said she’d give me five thousand dollars if I was nice to all of my customers for the entire day.”
Audible gasps arose from the audience.
“Five thousand dollars!” he said again, sharing the crowd’s astonishment and skepticism-even though it was well known in the city that Priss Windsor had once given away a three million dollar inheritance from her godfather.
“A crazy girl, I thought,” the man confessed. “But five thousand is five thousand, so I said, what would I have to do? And she said, you have to be kind to people, you have to smile at them, and say things courteously. You have to thank them for their business, and you can’t throw things at them!”
He shook his head. “Sometimes, it’s true, I hate it when people pay in pennies and nickels. Sometimes, it’s true, I throw it all back at them.”
He made fast work of the rest of the story. How she gave him half the amount to start, how she had brought a blanket and sat on the grass to observe him, and how she gave him grins and thumbs-up as his courteousness improved throughout the day. And how, at the end of the day, she gave him the rest of the five thousand dollars, and he gave her a free hot dog.
“She was an angel,” he said, turning toward the family whose faces had not turned toward him. “She changed my life that day. My wife says thank you, too!”
There was a low murmur of chuckles.
“I just want to say all that, and how sorry I am that she… I was so shocked when I saw…”
His voice trailed off, and he sat down.
But then he popped back up again.
“Somebody has to speak for the dead!” he proclaimed. “She says, ‘Be kind.’ Thank you.” He sat down again, flushed with exertion and emotion.
Someone else stood up, a pretty young woman.
“He’s right, Priss really was an angel, and she was funny! I was in a taxi with her two days before she died, and right after we got in, the driver laid on his horn something awful. Priscilla leaned forward and told him that she’d give him a hundred dollars if he didn’t honk for the whole rest of the ride-”
There were little explosions of laughter among the crowd of frequent taxi riders.
“And he didn’t! When he let us off, he grinned at her and he said, ‘So what will you give me if I don’t honk for the rest of the day?’ ”
At that, nearly the entire crowd laughed, the kind of heartwarming, affectionate laughter that makes shocked and grieving people feel better.
“What did Priss say to him?” a man called out.
The young woman turned a trembling smile toward him. Her eyes shone with tears. “She said that she and several million people in Manhattan would give him their everlasting gratitude.” Again, the crowd burst into laughter. “And then he said, the driver said, ‘Is it okay if I tap on my horn if I need somebody to move back at a stop light?’ And Priss laughed and said, ‘What? You think fifteen cars behind you won’t beat you to it?’ ”
There was laughing and clapping, but not from the family, Sam noted. Their shoulders did not shake with laughter; they still did not dab tears from their eyes. Whatever was damming them up inside did not give way.
As yet another mourner got up and started to tell a story, Sam saw Mrs. Windsor give a sharp sign to the minister to get his attention. Then she pointed to the organist, making it clear what she wanted. Almost immediately, the music rose to Bachian heights, drowning out the testimonials. Ushers walked rapidly into place at the ends of pews and began to move the big, and now boisterous, crowd out of the sanctuary.
Shocked, Sam realized he might have just heard evidence of Priscilla Windsor’s bucket list: Tell the truth. He wondered, If this was what she did with strangers, what was on her list for people she knew well?
“Now, that was more like it,” Mrs. Darnell said approvingly as they rose to their feet. “Even if Maggie hated it. Did you see how fast she got that minister to move? Oh, well, at least we had a little fun, and that dear girl would be glad, I’m sure of it. You’re going to the reception now?”
“No. I wasn’t invited. I don’t know the family.”
“Oh, well, bosh to that. You just crook your well-tailored arm and let me hold your elbow, and I’ll get you in as if you live there. I’m assuming Priscilla was your patient, although I know you won’t tell me so. You know us better than our husbands do, and that makes you at least as close to her as family. Closer, in the case of her family, and don’t you ever tell anybody I ever said so!”
Sam smiled at her. “I won’t.”