After the Fire Read online

  “Good excuse for a shave,” he said, a hand on his stubbly cheek, and he gave her a rueful grin.

  So many people these days, without a church to offer some structure for grief, wanted to let the dead go without public acknowledgement. But one of the points of a funeral was to make people take that first step, begin to pull themselves together. Riley would be the better for a shave and he knew it. And, once they were all gathered together, it would be easier for them to realize that, if they felt any responsibility for Dickie’s death, they all shared it, and it became a more honest weight, one with a meaning for the future. She knew. She had buried a son of her own.

  Miss James was sitting alone in the lounge, looking out at the somber morning. When Henrietta put a hand on her shoulder, she started.

  “Sorry,” Henrietta said.

  “I was riding the ferry from Oakland to San Francisco before the Bay Bridge was built,” Miss James confessed.

  “You still may want a lift into Vancouver,” Henrietta said loudly.

  “Thanks, Hen,” Miss James said. “That woman called me about the funeral.”

  “Oh, I hope you don’t think you have to bring anything.”

  “Of course I do. I’m past baking, but I can bring a pound of coffee.”

  “Worth its weight in gold,” Henrietta said apologetically.

  “Well, money’s to spend. Everyone who might have been waiting for me to die is dead themselves, long since.”

  “Where are you going today?”

  Miss James frowned at her.

  Henrietta repeated her question.

  “To my ear man,” Miss James answered wryly. “I’m going to ask him if an ear trumpet wouldn’t do better than this gadget.”

  “I’ll see you at the car then,” Henrietta said and moved on.

  Miss James was the only person on the island who was never called anything but Miss James. Only a few people, Henrietta among them, knew that she had been christened Lily Anne, which probably hadn’t had such a silly ring at the turn of the century in the South where Miss James had been born. There was hardly a trace of it in her voice, except when she pronounced names like Mary or Arthur. In Mary the “r” was pronounced and stretched. In Arthur, there was no “r” at all. It was a nomadic accent with traces of many dialects, its only true country great old age, a flat and windy plain. Miss James wouldn’t thank Henrietta for the stab of pity she felt at that deaf isolation.

  In the car Miss James chose, as most deaf people do, to talk since she could not listen, but she was attentive enough to fall silent at the moments when the traffic piled up or Henrietta had a difficult turn to negotiate. Miss James was for Henrietta an ideal passenger.

  “There’s something I’d like you to think about, Hen,” Miss James said as they were delivered from the Massey tunnel. “I want to do something for Red. I’ve been thinking about it for some time. She’s too young to have nobody in the world. Oh, she might marry, I suppose, but I wouldn’t like to see her marry for that reason. She can live alone. I was thinking of leaving her my house. It isn’t much of a place, but at least it’s got electricity and indoor plumbing, and I think it would suit her. But sometimes I’m afraid I’m going to live forever. When I think of that child dead in his bed …”

  For a moment Henrietta didn’t realize Miss James was referring to Dickie, but there was no distance between child and boy in Miss James’ long view.

  “If I knew I’d be dead in a year, that would suit me for her, but longer seems too long. I thought of telling her, but she might feel obligated, and I don’t want that.”

  “Why not?” asked Henrietta, for whom obligation had been a kind guide. But Miss James didn’t hear the question.

  “I give her a bonus at Christmas,” Miss James continued, “but that’s only fair. And to tell the truth, I don’t think she spends the money she earns. She has no rent to speak of. She collects her own wood, grows her own vegetables. She doesn’t run a car. She hasn’t even got a phone. And she certainly doesn’t spend it on clothes. I don’t suppose she knows what a bank account is. It wouldn’t surprise me if she kept her money in a sock under her mattress or buried it in a jar in her garden.”

  Henrietta made a mental note to ask Red what she did do with her money. It had never occurred to her to teach Red about banking, but of course she should have.

  “But she’d know what to do with a house. She takes care of it now as if it were her own,” Miss James concluded.

  For the first time it struck Henrietta that there could be a pleasure in being childless, that someone with even Miss James’ limited resources was free to speculate on generosity, to bestow it where she chose, unlike Henrietta who considered herself in stewardship over what would be Hart Jr.’s and then his children’s legacy. It would never have occurred to Henrietta to give Red anything but her attention.

  “We’ll talk about it,” Henrietta shouted just before she let Miss James out of the car.

  Then Henrietta pulled up beside The Big Scoop to get Hart his pint of peppermint ice cream.

  Milly admired and resented the way Henrietta could delegate authority and then simply take off for a day in town, leaving a dozen or so women to do all the work for a funeral she’d take credit for. Well, be given credit for anyway. Milly had never baked anything that wasn’t ready-mixed, and usually she went to a bakery until she had moved to the island where, though nobody said anything, you were expected to turn up at every bake sale with something made from scratch—an apt expression that, for Milly’s own disastrous first attempts.

  “Get a specialty,” Henrietta had advised her. A solution which, Milly knew, would only add boredom to frustration.

  Milly had taken a page out of Hen’s book and delegated all the baking and even the sandwich-making. But still twenty years away from her old age pension, she couldn’t get away with a box of tea bags for her own contribution. She could manage making radishes into little flowers, carrots and celery into little fans, and arrange a tolerably good-looking and appetizing tray with dip in the middle (though she never served dip at her own house out of fear for her carpet), and some olives scattered around.

  Her idea of a party was getting dressed up and going out either empty-handed or occasionally with a bottle of wine or a box of mints to a meal someone else prepared, served, and cleaned up after. People didn’t give parties like that on this island. You took potluck, which was just that, given all the young vegetarians on the island. And afterwards, you did the dishes; they were part of the fun. Henrietta was one of the few people on the island with enough water for a dishwasher, but she didn’t have one.

  “The simple life,” Forbes had called it when he bought this place fifteen years ago.

  Had it been in the back of his mind even then that it would be a place to park her? This whole island was a large used-wife lot, more widows than divorcees, but even the women with their men still around were used.

  “If you had your choice, you wouldn’t go back to the city, would you?” Henrietta had asked her.

  “In a minute!” Milly had answered.

  “You want to live in the city?” Forbes had taunted her. “Go work for it then, the way everyone else does.”

  All very well for him to say, but what could Milly do? She’d have to work in a stationer’s shop or a ladies’ dress shop and not make enough to rent anything but someone’s basement suite.

  “So consider yourself fortunate,” he had said.

  How did men get away with it? There Forbes had stood, promising “Until death do us part” before God and everybody they knew, and he could still say to her, twenty years down the road, “I have other plans for the rest of my life.” And apparently there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. A man could go to jail for stealing her purse; yet Forbes went scot free after stealing twenty years of her life, leaving her years she could not now give away.

  Not that Milly wanted to marry again. Who would be fool enough to fall for that twice? “Wash your own socks,” she sna
rled at her imagined suitor.

  There was a second timid knock before Milly realized there was someone at her kitchen door. Nobody on the island used a front door. Jane, Homer’s, wife, stood with a baking pan in her hand.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “but I can’t go tomorrow. I promised my daughter I’d go over for the day and stay with the baby while she goes to the dentist.”

  “Come in,” Milly said.

  “Oh, isn’t that pretty?” Jane exclaimed at the tray of raw vegetables. “It looks like something in a fancy restaurant.”

  Milly shrugged. She could still remember the first night Forbes had complimented her on the dinner instead of on her own good looks.

  “Homer’s going, but I didn’t like to ask him to take this,” Jane said, nodding at the pan. “You know what men are like, remembering.”

  “Some of them even forget their wives,” Milly said wryly.

  “Poor Hen,” Jane said. “I don’t think I could take it.”

  It was Forbes Milly had in mind, but it wasn’t a new experience for her to see the sympathy she bid for won by someone else. It was very like the way she played bridge.

  “Cup of coffee?” Milly suggested.

  “I shouldn’t, but …”

  They sat at the kitchen table, a habit Milly had given in to because her living room in winter was so dark and gloomy, but it still gave her an odd feeling, as if she were a servant entertaining behind the back of the lady of the house.

  “These are such pretty cups,” Jane said, her gardener’s hands uncertain and careful.

  They had been wedding presents, and Milly had once thought them pretty, too. But they mocked her now, as did Jane’s envy of them. Jane didn’t need cups; she had a husband, even if he was just poor old weather-beaten Homer.

  “Did you ever want to leave the island?” Milly asked.

  “When I was young,” Jane answered. “I had all sorts of fancy notions about going to England to study to be a nurse or a midwife, but my dad said I could learn as much helping with the lambing. Anyway, there wasn’t the money. I probably only thought I wanted to. I wasn’t used to strangers. So many of them do leave now, and I guess that’s best if you think about what happened to Dickie.”

  “It could have happened anywhere,” Milly said.

  “Sadie said it was because of that girl,” Jane ventured.

  “Red? Who’d break his heart for Red?” Milly asked.

  “You break your heart for whoever’s there,” Jane said.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Jane,” Milly said. “Did Dickie have a heart? Do any of them?”

  “He wasn’t that bad,” Jane protested, and she burst into tears.

  Milly cried with her from that vast store of menopausal tears which could be squandered.

  “Well,” Jane said, recovering. “I guess I needed that. I couldn’t break down in front of Sadie.”

  Milly blotted her eyes carefully.

  “Homer’s dinner!” Jane said suddenly and got up.

  “Homer’s dinner,” Milly repeated when Jane had gone, and she cut a large square from the pan of brownies Jane had left behind.

  Servant no longer, Milly was now a naughty child in her own kitchen. She cut another square and poured herself another cup of coffee. Before she was through, she had eaten half the pan.

  Who’s to know, she thought. She could take the rest out and put them on a plate.

  Chapter III

  “PEOPLE USUALLY GET ON with the eating and drinking after the body’s decently buried,” Milly said as she helped Henrietta unfold the large linen cloth to cover the extended dining room table.

  “Sadie wouldn’t hear of it,” Henrietta said. “If it’s a party for Dickie, he has to be here.”

  “Where are you going to put him?” Milly asked, looking around the large but amply furnished living room.

  “In Hart’s den,” Henrietta said. “That way, a few people at a time …”

  “Is Sadie going to sit in there with him?” Milly asked.

  “I doubt it. She’ll do what she can, poor soul.”

  Henrietta lifted the shining tea service from the sideboard, put it on the table and stood back to admire it. Milly began to take the cups from their hooks in the glass-fronted china cupboard.

  “Don’t you fear for these?” Milly asked as she set them out.

  “I’d be grateful to anyone who broke one,” Henrietta admitted. “There is so much too much of it.”

  “I suppose, if you didn’t have it, you wouldn’t get yourself into things like this,” Milly speculated sympathetically. “There’s always the hall or the school gym.”

  There was a knock at the front door. The two women exchanged surprised glances.

  “It must be the undertaker,” Henrietta decided, checking her watch to see if the ferry from Vancouver Island could have arrived.

  The two men at the door seemed almost indecently young for their job, and for a moment Henrietta thought they might be Jehovah’s Witnesses. Then she caught sight of the hearse in the drive.

  “If you’ll just bring it … him in here,” she said, showing them the den.

  “Shall we, like, move that couch?” one of them asked.

  “Oh, could you?” Henrietta said.

  The furniture rearranged, they went out for the coffin, distressingly ornate, winking with brass, and placed it on the floor where the couch had been.

  “You want us back here at two.”

  “Yes,” Henrietta said.

  When she’d let them out, she turned back to Milly.

  “Well,” Milly said, “the guest of honor has arrived.”

  “I picked some winter-flowering jasmine this morning, and I bought yellow roses in town yesterday.”

  “I’ll do the roses if you like,” Milly offered. “It’s one of the few things I’m good at. I told Forbes before we were married that I was a girl who had to be sent roses.”

  “And did he?”

  “Still does, on the anniversary of our divorce, the bastard!”

  The two sprays of jasmine sat on the floor at each end of the coffin, and Milly stood with the bowl of roses.

  “On the coffin, I think,” Henrietta decided.

  “No peeking, right?” Milly asked as she set them down.

  “Who would be tempted?”

  “Now,” Milly said, stepping back, “that looks cheerful.”

  “I think I’ve decided against candles,” Henrietta said.

  “Too much like church,” Milly agreed.

  At eleven-thirty the women began to arrive with the food. Several of the younger ones came in first with babies who were deposited in their baskets on Henrietta’s bed. Then the young mothers went back out for their food. The table wasn’t large enough for it all. Pans of fried chicken, bowls of salad, plates of smoked salmon, loaves of homemade bread, cookies, pies, and cakes filled all the kitchen counters, and two huge pots of clam chowder were put on the stove.

  “Bowls,” Henrietta said.

  “We brought them from the hall.”

  “You do think of everything!” Henrietta exclaimed.

  “Who’s bringing Sadie?”

  “Jane probably.”

  “Jane’s in town,” Milly said. “Homer said he’d pick her up.”

  “Hey!” Rat’s wife suddenly said. “Where’s the body?”

  “In the den,” Henrietta replied.

  “Is that where Sadie’s going to be?”

  The women moved timidly to see the coffin for themselves and admire the flowers.

  “Would one of you light the fire in there?” Henrietta called over the heads of her guests.

  “Do you think we should? Would it remind her?”

  “The coffin will remind her.”

  Henrietta left them to debate the question and come to their own conclusion. If you couldn’t look on what killed, you’d go blind.

  Miss James presented herself at the back door. “The cab was late; so the coffee is late,” she s
aid as she eyed the large electric pot, its red light indicating that the coffee was already made.

  “Never mind,” Henrietta shouted. “We’ll probably have to make another.”

  “Now don’t try to make me comfortable,” Miss James said as she took off her coat. “I’m no good at crowds. I’ll just sit where Sadie can see I’m here.”

  At that moment Sadie John appeared, dressed in black, leaning heavily on Homer’s arm.

  “She could use a bit of coffee,” Homer said to Henrietta.

  “I could use,” Sadie said slowly and carefully, “a bit of gin.”

  “Later, Sadie, I promise,” Henrietta said. “Have some coffee now. I’ll just take your coat.”

  That task was accomplished with some little difficulty, but finally Henrietta could hand on an armload of coats to be put in the guest room. She and Homer led Sadie to a chair in the living room and had her settled with a cup of coffee before the men began to arrive.

  “Where have you put him?” Sadie asked.

  “In the den,” Henrietta explained.

  “I don’t want to go in there.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I don’t want to look at the coffin. I told them, make it nice.”

  “They have. You don’t have to.”

  The men brought a new weight into the gathering. Most of them wore ties. The shopkeepers were in dark suits. Their wives directed them, a few at a time, into the den, but they didn’t have to be encouraged to pay their respects to Sadie, even if all they could think to say was, “Buck up now, old girl!” or “That is a fine coffin!”

  It was the young men, Henrietta was pleased to notice, who took time with Sadie, sitting down beside her. Riley, who had not only shaved but put on a jacket and tie, had even persuaded her to have a sandwich.

  Karen Tasuki arrived late and out of breath. “I thought the eleven-ten from Swartz Bay would never come in. Has Rat spoken to you?”

  “No,” Henrietta said.

  “They’re going to wait until just before it’s time to go to the graveyard and then, sort of, propose toasts. That way they thought anyone could join in who wanted to, and nobody would have to make a real speech.”

  As she spoke, Karen unwrapped the plate she had brought.