What wasn’t perfect in Prescott?
However, I had heard a joke about Prescott that a newspaper reporter told my grandpa at the landscape competition. The reporter joked that the nondenominational cemetery should be entered in the contest, too, because it truly was the most beautiful property within its boundaries.
“You do more for the dead here than you do for the living, Mr. Arnold,” he said, “and you don’t get paid for it until you join them.”
He wasn’t wrong. The burial sites and the monuments were as carefully designed and as full of restrictions as the houses of the living. Myra said that the trees and the landscaping, the fountains, and the chapel looked like they were all part of a property owned by the British royals or something: “You’d think you had entered Buckingham Palace.” Graves were dug only at night so it appeared as if the ground simply had opened up with perfect proportions to gently accept the newly departed the following day. I even heard Myra tell My Faith that you practically needed an invitation from the Queen of England to get in.
But, as my grandpa and I now too painfully understood, being rich, even as rich as we were, really didn’t bring us immunity from tragedy. Everyone knew that was true, but here in Prescott, there was an attempt to get back at death by creating a cemetery so elaborate and attractive that a popular joke outsiders supposedly cracked was “Prescott residents are dying to get in there.”
Well, Willie hadn’t been, I thought, and neither were my parents or Grandma Arnold.
My Faith and I sat with Myra until she fell asleep, and then My Faith rose quickly and said she had better get into the kitchen and start to prepare food.
“I’m not hungry. I’ll never eat again,” I said.
She smiled and stroked my hair. “You will, darlin’,” she said. “But we’ll need food ’cause all your grandpa’s friends will be comin’ to pay their respects as soon as . . . as they know,” she said, and walked off, mumbling about how quickly bad news can travel.
I sat there. Of course, she was right. I remembered how it had been after the news about my parents spread and especially after Grandma Arnold died.
Our house, a Greek Revival mansion, had already been indelibly stained with the weight of those tragedies. Willie’s death was just going to make it all darker, heavier. Already, to me, there were shadows now where once there had never been. I sat fixed and afraid to leave Myra’s side, because I was sure the vast rooms would seem terribly empty to me, despite the elaborate and expensive furniture and large classical paintings on the walls. From now on, voices would always echo, footsteps would hang longer in the air, and in a few hours, people would be whispering. Maybe they would never stop whispering.
Myra moaned in her sleep. I looked at her, afraid to touch her because she had been so broken. Maybe she hurt all over now. I certainly did. I rose slowly, confused about where I should go and what I should do. I really was afraid of the house, afraid of how much smaller I would feel in it now that Willie was no longer to be with me. No matter how annoying he could be sometimes or how demanding of attention, he was still like the other half of me.
I left Myra’s room and walked slowly back to the kitchen to look in on My Faith. She and one of the maids were working quickly to prepare dishes, sobbing and dabbing their eyes as they worked. They paused when they saw me, but I walked away. I didn’t want to be any part of that or even admit to myself that it was going on.
I thought about calling Lila, but just the idea of doing something I would normally do sickened me. The world should have stopped. Clocks shouldn’t be ticking. No one should be working or playing. Certainly, no one should be laughing, anywhere. I walked past the living room and paused at the doorway of Grandpa’s office. He was behind his desk, his big, strong hands pressed against his temples, and he was leaning over and staring down at what I knew was his favorite picture of my mother. I couldn’t speak. I just stood there. Finally, he looked up and realized I was there.
&
nbsp; “How’s Myra?” he asked.
“She’s asleep.”
“Good. I had Jimmy go for her medicine.” He sat back. “I called your other grandmother,” he said. He always called my father’s mother my “other” grandmother. He never used her name, which was my name, Sanders. She was Patricia Sanders. “She’ll be coming with her sister Sally to the funeral. Seems that’s the only time we ever see her, eh? Funerals,” he said bitterly. “Death has had a feast here.”
He had his hands clenched into fists. I didn’t know what to say. He looked like he would spring up out of his chair and start swinging at anything and everything. I supposed the expression on my face softened him. He unclenched his fists and stood.
“My secretary, Mrs. Mallen, is on her way here. She’ll oversee what has to be done. Your uncle Bobby is on his way, too,” he said, but not with much enthusiasm.
I looked up with more interest. Both Willie and I loved Uncle Bobby, but Uncle Bobby and Grandpa had never really gotten along as well as a father and a son should, and I don’t think it was only because Uncle Bobby didn’t want anything to do with the business Grandpa had created.
In looks, he resembled my grandmother more than my grandfather. He was tall and lean, with much more diminutive facial features. He had my grandmother’s sea-blue eyes and her more feminine high cheekbones. My grandfather was burly, muscular, someone who would be cast faster as a bartender or a bouncer than as the owner of a multimillion-dollar business, often wearing a suit and tie.
From what I knew, Uncle Bobby was always more interested in music and dramatics than in running a trucking company. His goal was to become a Broadway choreographer. Currently, he was on the road with a new production, a revival of Anything Goes. My grandfather had attended some of his performances in high school but never any in college and only went to a Broadway show my uncle was in because the whole family went. Grandma Arnold and my mother followed Uncle Bobby’s career but were careful not to talk about it too much in front of Grandpa. Most of the time, he would simply get up and walk out of the room.
“You’d better go upstairs and rest a bit, Clara Sue,” he said now, and started around his desk. “I’ll look in on you later when I return.”
“Where are you going, Grandpa?”
He paused. I could see he was debating what to say. “I have to go to the funeral parlor,” he began. “Then I have to go back to the hospital.”
“The hospital? Why, Grandpa? Are you going to see Willie? I want to go, too.”
“I’m not going to see Willie,” he said. “There’s nothing more I can do for Willie.”
“Then why are you going to the hospital? To pay a bill?”
He almost smiled. “No,” he said. He pressed his lips together for a moment like someone who was trying to keep words locked in, and then he said the strangest thing. “Your grandmother wants me to go back.”