I checked Ralph in the rearview mirror. His eyes had gone out of focus. I could hear Marjorie breathing in and out.
Finally, Ralph asked, "What are you going to do with it?"
"I think I'll leave it to the public library."
I turned the corner into Hillfield Avenue, and the gray Victorian shape of the Trott Brothers' Funeral Home came into view. Its slate turrets, gothic gingerbread, peaked dormers, and huge front porch made it look like a house from a Charles Addams cartoon.
I pulled up at the foot of the stone steps that led up to the Trott Brothers' lawn.
"What's on the agenda here, John?" his father asked.
"We have some time alone with April." He got out of the car. "After that there's the public reception, or visitation, or whatever they call it."
His father struggled along the seat, trying to get to the door. "Hold on, hold on, I can't hear you." Marjorie pushed herself sideways after her husband.
Alan Brookner sighed, popped open his door, and quietly got out.
John repeated what he had just said. "Then there's a service of some kind. When it's over, we go out to the crematorium."
"Keeping it simple, hey?" his father asked.
John was already moving toward the steps.; "Oh." He turned around, one foot on the first step. "I should warn you in advance, I guess. The first part is open coffin. The director here seemed to think that was what we should do."
I heard Alan breathe in sharply.
"I don't like open coffins," Ralph said. "What are you supposed to do, go up and talk to the person?"
"I wish I could talk to the person," Alan said. For a moment he seemed absolutely forlorn. "Some other cultures, of course, take for granted that you can communicate with the dead."
"Really?" asked Ralph. "Like India, do you mean?"
"Let's go up." John began mounting the steps.
"In Indian religions the situation is a little more complicated," Alan said. He and Ralph went around the front of the car and began going up behind John. Bits of their conversation drifted back.
Marjorie gave me an uneasy glance. I aroused certain misgivings within Marjorie. Maybe it was the ornamental zippers on my Japanese suit. "Here we go," I said, and held out my elbow.
Marjorie closed a hand like a parrot's claw on my elbow.
2
Joyce Brophy held open the giant front door. She was wearing a dark blue dress that looked like a cocktail party maternity outfit, and her hair had been glued into place. "Gosh, we were wondering what was taking you two so long!" She flashed a weirdly exultant smile and motioned us through the door with little whisk-broom gestures.
John was talking to, or being talked at by, a small, bent-over man in his seventies whose gray face was stamped with deep, exhausted-looking lines and wrinkles. I moved toward Alan.
"No, now, no, mister, you have to meet my father," Joyce said. "Let's get the formalities over with before we enter the viewing room, you know, everything in its own time and all that kinda good stuff."
The stooping man in the loose gray suit grinned at me ferociously and extended his hand. When I took it, he squeezed hard, and I squeezed back. "Yessir," he said. "Quite a day for us all."
"Dad," said Joyce Brophy, "you met Professor Ransom and Professor Brookner, and this is Professor Ransom's friend, ah—"
"Tim Underhill," John said.
"Professor Underhill," Joyce said. "And this here is Mrs. Ransom, Professor Ransom's mother. My dad, William Trott."
"Just call me Bill." The little man extended his already carnivorous smile and grasped Marjorie's right hand in his left, so that he could squeeze hands with both of us at once. "Thought it was a good obituary, didn't you? We worked hard on that one, and it was all worth it."
None of us had seen the morning paper.
"Oh, yes," Marjorie said.
"Just want to express our sorrow. From this point on the thing is just to relax and enjoy it, and remember, we're always here to help you." He let go of our hands.
Marjorie rubbed her palms together.
Just Call Me Bill gave a smile intended to be sympathetic and backed away. "My little girl will be taking you into the Chapel of Rest. We'll lead your guests in at the time of the memorial service."
By this time he had moved six paces backward, and on his last word he abruptly turned around and took off with surprising speed down a long dark hallway.
Just Call Me Joyce watched him fondly for a couple of seconds. "He's gonna turn on the first part of the musical program, that's your background for your private meditations and that. We got the chairs all set up, and when your guests and all show up, we'd like you to move to the left-hand side of the front row, that's for immediate family." She blinked at me. "And close friends."
She pressed her right hand against the mound of her belly and with her left gestured toward the hallway. John moved beside her, and together they stepped into the hallway. Organ music oozed from distant speakers. Alan drifted into the hallway like a sleepwalker. Ralph stepped in beside him. "So you keep on getting born over and over? What's the payoff?"
I could not hear Alan's mumbled response, but the question pulled him back into the moment, and he raised his head and began moving more decisively.
"I didn't know you were one of John's professor friends," Marjorie said.
"It was a fairly recent promotion," I said.
"Ralph and I are so proud of you." She patted my arm as we followed the others into a ballroom filled with soft light and the rumble of almost stationary organ music. Rows of folding chairs stood on either side of a central aisle leading to a podium banked with wreaths and flowers in vases. On a raised platform behind the podium, a deeply polished bronze coffin lay on a long table draped in black fabric. The top quarter of the coffin had been folded back like the lid of a piano to reveal plump, tufted white upholstering. April Ransom's profile, at an angle given her head by a firm white satin pillow, pointed beyond the open lid to the pocked acoustic tile of the ceiling.
"Your brochures are right here." Just Call Me Joyce waved at a highly polished rectangular mahogany table set against the wall. Neat stacks of a folded yellow page stood beside a pitcher of water and a stack of plastic cups. At the end of the table was a coffee dispenser.
Everybody in the room but Alan Brookner took their eyes from April Ransom's profile and looked at the yellow leaflets.
"Yay Though I Walk is a real good choice, we always think."
Alan was staring at his daughter's corpse from a spot about five feet inside the door.
Joyce said, "She looks just beautiful, even from way back here you can see that."
She began pulling Alan along with her. After an awkward moment, he fell into step.
John followed after them, his parents close behind. Joyce Brophy brought Alan up to the top of the coffin. John moved beside him. His parents and I took positions further down the side.
Up close, April's coffin seemed as large as a rowboat. She was visible to the waist, where her hands lay folded. Joyce Brophy leaned over and smoothed out a wrinkle in the white jacket. When she straightened up, Alan bent over the coffin and kissed his daughter's forehead.
"I'll be down the hall in the office in case you folks need anything." Joyce took a backward step and turned around and ploughed down the aisle. She was wearing large, dirty running shoes.
Just Call Me Joyce had applied too much lipstick of too bright a shade to April's mouth, and along her cheekbones ran an artificial line of pink. The vibrant cap of blond hair had been arranged to conceal something that had been done at the autopsy. Death had subtracted the lines around April's eyes and mouth. She looked like an empty house.