The Flicker of Old Dreams Read online

  I cut a slit in the back of it so I can dress him without a lot of lifting. And then I secretly snip off a single button, the spare sewn to the inside breast pocket. It seems fitting to remember him with something so deeply hidden.

  Together, we transfer Mr. Purvis into the casket, arrange his head on the pillow. I take his wedding ring from the bag where I’ve kept his photo and glasses, shine it up and place it back on his finger. My father then arranges the hands, left over right at his waist. We stand back and admire our work. By the time of the viewing, no one will see the gaunt and yellow man I’ve spent these last days with, nor will they see that these vulnerabilities are what I like most about him.

  We slide the casket onto the gurney and my father begins to roll it up the ramp to our parlor.

  “Wait just a sec,” I say and give the man one last touch of blush. “Okay. Ready.”

  And we move him together from the basement to the first floor. This is probably the first time in Mr. Purvis’s life that he’s worn makeup, but then again you don’t know. People carry so many secrets.

  27

  My father and I wheel Mr. Purvis into the parlor with its faded rose carpeting and two floral couches. Pop finds this room comforting, but I think it’s stale, like a club you don’t want to join.

  We set up the casket under pink lighting to give Mr. Purvis a healthier complexion. Often we have music playing—either from a portable CD player or the upright piano—though everyone knows we don’t keep it tuned. Mrs. Purvis, however, has requested that there be no music. She says the people coming today won’t be able to hear one another if there’s background noise.

  As my father puts Mr. Purvis’s name on the placard outside the room, I set up bouquets near the casket—fragrant carnations, mums, lilies, all designed to mask the smell of death, an illusion we can only continue for so long. After the funeral, what were once favorite flowers of the dead or bereaved will become reminders of the sorrow and the vague smell of formaldehyde and rot.

  Little things bother me today: a picture on the wall tilts to the left, but when I try to straighten it, it tilts to the right. The casket is also off center but too heavy to move. I keep feeling like I’m hearing the phone, hoping it’s Robert so we can clear things up.

  The room is chilly but my father is careful about our heating bills. I call to him as he arranges rows of folding chairs in front of the casket.

  “Pop, do you really want it as cold as the prep room up here?”

  “The room will heat up when it fills with people.”

  “You can’t try to squeeze pennies everywhere.”

  “When it’s your business,” he says, “you can run it any way you like.”

  Such a comment used to send me into a panic. I never wanted to inherit the funeral business, or even be a part of it for this long. But like most who stay in Petroleum, my vision of the future has narrowed. Pop and I each grab an end of a metal table, move it to the corner of the room, and unfold the legs.

  He passes me one end of a peach-colored cloth, and together, we spread it over the table. Then we set items on top—a framed photo of Mr. Purvis, a guest book, and a brief biography of the man, as written in his obituary. There are bereavement pamphlets, prayer cards, and details concerning the burial this afternoon. There is also a platter filled with small chocolate bars, always the most popular feature of our services.

  Soon, we see a hand with a pocketbook hanging from its wrist reaching through the velvet drapes we use to partition off the parlor. The viewing isn’t to begin for another twenty minutes, but the widow has come early. She is so slight, the curtains seem to push back against her.

  Pop weaves through the chairs.

  “Mrs. Purvis,” he says in a way that expresses everything he’s learned about grief and comfort and welcoming guests into this space.

  He takes her gloved hand so very gently.

  “Are you ready to see him?” he asks.

  They walk in short, slow steps toward the casket. As she gets closer to her husband, she begins to tremble. Pop stays only a moment before giving her time alone.

  He’s told me how he likes finding the balance each customer desires between consoling and offering privacy. And he knows the only pain he can take away is the overwhelming demands of those first few days; the rest has to run its course, and often its course is a lifetime.

  Mrs. Purvis touches her husband’s hand, withdraws, then gingerly returns. As Pop finds the tie he’s tossed on the parlor couch, I walk over to him with a carnation to put in his buttonhole. After I pin it, I pat my hand against his chest—this is how I apologize for being cranky with him earlier—and he nods, approving of the flower’s color.

  Another elderly woman squeezes through the heavy velvet, complaining of the chill.

  “I told you,” I whisper to Pop.

  As he greets her, I part the drapes and tie them at the sides of the doorway.

  The widow is still beside the casket, holding her husband’s hand. The second woman holds the widow at the crook of her arm. Together they look at Mr. Purvis.

  “Is he smiling?” the second woman asks. “Oh, dear Lord, he’s smiling.”

  Guests file in. I direct them toward the registry book and let them know they can leave a message for the family there. I’ve laid out a number of ballpoint pens with our funeral home’s name and number stamped on them in large, gold letters, hoping some will disappear into purses and breast pockets. Every gathering is an opportunity to advertise. Our only real competition is the funeral home forty-five minutes east. Even though their embalmer often leaves people looking badly taxidermied, their business offers cheaper rates, and we can’t afford for them to take away potential customers.

  My father greets the guests at the back of the room, but mostly it’s a silent affair, brief whispers and hands touching, offers of condolence, some sitting and praying. Several cluster around the chocolates. Mr. Purvis’s smile is the talk of the room.

  The doorbell rings, and Pop discreetly leaves the service to answer it. I poke my head into the hallway and see Robert. He looks weary, rattled.

  I listen to hear if he asks for me.

  “It feels like it might be soon,” he tells Pop. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Sometimes there’s nothing to do.”

  “She’s not afraid of dying,” Robert says, looking embarrassed but desperate to be sharing this. “She’s afraid of suffocating.”

  My father, who can still surprise me, invites him in, presses his hand to Robert’s, and says how sorry he is.

  “She doesn’t want to go to the hospital,” he says, “but it’s the only thing I can think to do.”

  “Yes, I understand,” Pop says. “How about I stop by after the service? I’ve let too many days go by without a visit to Doris.”

  I hear in his suggestion the need to get back to Mr. Purvis’s viewing. Robert finally notices me and looks only briefly. The force he displayed earlier is gone, but I’m still hurting too much to approach him.

  My father looks at me as well, then over my shoulder at the curious guests. When he turns back, there are quiet words between them and then Robert is on his way.

  “What did he want?” I ask, as if I hadn’t been listening.

  “It’s not an easy thing to watch someone’s last days,” he says, walking back to the parlor.

  Most of the guests, if they’re not in the hallway, are gathered by the velvet drapes. The widow, however, holds a vigil beside her husband. She has taken out her hearing aids, set neatly on the casket, so that nothing else interrupts their final moments together.

  28

  I leave early for the cemetery, to set up before others arrive. My van is filled with folding chairs, rolled-up plastic carpeting, and flowers, most left over from the viewing, to arrange around the burial site. Robert is at the back of his mother’s driveway, stacking rolls of wire mesh. I drive past slowly. He sees me but turns back to his work.

  What I’m
beginning to understand is how lonely I’ve been, a loneliness I’d gotten used to, a way of living that—after this brief glimpse into the possibility of a different life—I can no longer bear.

  I cross the highway, then a dried-up creek, and finally, two cattle guards. The burial ground is filled with a hodgepodge of markers—large headstones with professional etching ordered through our catalogs, but mostly a variety of cheaper, more creative markers from when the town had just come into being. There are crosses made of two-by-fours, license plates, and even sections of the highway’s guardrail with names scored into them.

  I have always loved the near-perfect square Pop and I have made of this space, marked by a chain-link fence to keep out the cattle. When I try to get out of my van, the wind leans against the door. I push too hard, and the door slaps into the fence. A mule deer, spooked by the noise, scurries over a hill.

  Cold nips at my neck, and I wish I’d worn a hat. I can smell the snowstorm on its way. Since I was a little girl I used to come here regularly in high boots, my father nearby with a shovel and a shotgun, to clear the field of sagebrush and rattlesnakes. He used to shoot the snakes and hang them, still twitching, over the fence. Later, when he was finished with his work, he’d cut off the rattles, which I would save in an old cigar box. I still keep that box full of rattles in a kitchen drawer, behind the matches.

  What always struck me about clearing out the sage, rabbitbrush, and greasewood was how the silvery green of new growth would return so quickly. It’s as if the land can’t sustain a human imprint for long and any evidence is gone in a season.

  Across the cemetery, there are unmelted mounds from the last snowfall and taller drifts at the windiest corner. Pop and I should have come yesterday with our shovels to clear a level path for the elderly, who can lose their footing.

  In this field, you can see the history of our town—the poor man’s burials, the many graves for stillborn and young children, the entire Flint family who died in the Great Rimrock Fire, and the tattered basketball jersey above Eddie Golden’s headstone.

  Has Robert visited his brother’s grave? Has he ever sat here and talked helplessly to a stone? I wonder if I will ever know, if we’ll speak again.

  I pick up pieces of trash and straighten the faded plastic wreaths. On the western corner, the only place in this field that isn’t flat, the stones of the Heesacker brothers—Charlie and Sam—slip closer and closer together with each rain as if, even after death, they need to lean their heads together and gossip. I pluck a weed from their shared plot.

  I am procrastinating, always shy about visiting my mother.

  We keep her grave nice, a rare bush planted and watered beside it, the overgrowth cut back. The stone’s inscription, loving wife and mother, feels like Pop’s fantasy since she only knew me as something fat in her belly.

  When I was younger, teachers tried to comfort me on the days mothers were invited to class to help make gingerbread houses or other holiday projects. And I tried to tell them I was fine. That I didn’t grow up without. My father taught me so much, how to be self-sufficient and unafraid of hard work. “If you think for a minute that I missed out on a woman’s touch,” I once told a teacher, “look how I spend entire days playing makeup and dress-up.”

  I wanted so badly for a teacher to laugh at my funeral humor. I wanted to push back against pity, against the idea that I’d turned out stunted and strange.

  But the truth is, I always felt the empty space when I saw girls browsing through their mother’s pocketbooks, reaching for scented lotions and compacts that opened up to little mirrors and pressed powder. And I do wonder, though I insist to Pop that I don’t, how our family might have been different if she’d remained with us. If I’d had memories of my mother telling me about menstrual cycles, lending me her sweater or earrings, waiting up till I got home safe. I wonder if I would be better at making friends, at finding love. I wonder what she’d say if I told her about Robert.

  Sometimes I try to imagine my mother’s hands on me through her belly, the sound and vibration of her voice when I floated inside her womb, wondering if anything about that brief time we had together is still with me.

  I tuck my hands into my armpits. I always feel silly after visiting my mother’s grave, wishing we weren’t strangers. Wishing I had a single memory of her instead of standing here, dumb.

  29

  Pastor Lundy waves hello as he opens the double-wide gate at the back of the chain-link fence. We quietly get to work. He moves out the machinery he used to dig the grave, and I unroll the grasslike carpet to define the space for our service. Together we arrange flowers and folding chairs until we see the procession of cars and trucks with their headlights on. Led by my father’s black pickup and the giant flag blowing in the wind, they travel under the speed limit, the number of vehicles a sign of the respect Mr. Purvis holds in our town. In that line of mourners, I see Slim’s school bus, nearly gray with dried mud and empty of children. Though I don’t guess he was a close friend, some come to funerals for their own reasons—a reminder of the brevity of life, a chance to socialize, the promise of coffee and baked goods after the service.

  The vehicles wind along the outside fence, and I walk out to greet the mourners, signaling where they should stop, and making sure there’s room to get the casket out of the hearse. When Pop steps out, he reminds the drivers to turn off their headlights, or the end of the service becomes all about dead batteries and jumper cables.

  “You look good, Pop,” I say.

  “I used soap,” he says and winks.

  The first few snowflakes begin to fall as Pop helps to round up the casket bearers—old men with curved backs and carnation boutonnieres, who can only lift the casket but for pride and their feelings, likely never shared, for the man inside of it. They carry the plain box with careful, labored steps.

  I help the widow out of the car, trying not to rush her.

  “A blizzard’s coming,” she says. “These low clouds, the ache in my knees.”

  She is out of breath and struggles two-handed to hold a heavy bouquet of lilies, finally letting me take them from her. Her children and grandchildren follow, and the line of mourners grows, many wearing sheepskin coats, itchy wool pants, and Scotch caps with the earflaps down. I set the lilies at the altar.

  “Such a nice touch,” Mrs. Purvis says about the carpet as I help her to a chair in front.

  It always dawns on me, just about now, as the heavy casket is maneuvered from truck to carriers to gravesite, that I was the last to see the person who has passed. I was the last to see the secret items tucked into the casket—a lucky penny, a pack of Marlboros, a bundle of racy photos, a fishing rod, and for Mr. Purvis, his old, black lunch bucket. I saw the widow slide it beside her husband’s leg shortly before we closed the casket.

  Guests are occupied with talk of snow. Got chains on your tires yet? Shovels at the front and back doors? Sacks of oats and salt tied up and stored? Have you filled up with extra gas and planned a pathway to the livestock?

  Winter is serious business here. Last year, the snowdrifts were as high as the eaves of most houses. Once neighbors dug out, they had to trundle in waist-high snow to reach the livestock. Many had cattle stepping right over fences as if they weren’t there, and some smothered in the deep drifts, ranchers unsure of their losses until the melting snow uncovered the carcasses.

  People talk more about the weather than the loss of Mr. Purvis, not because he didn’t matter to them but because those are feelings most around here keep to themselves. Pop and I take our places in back, behind the chairs, watching for anyone or anything that needs attention. I see Pete pull his white Ford beside the fence. Every guest turns to greet him. He acknowledges each with a look or a handshake, and me by raising his gloved fingers and one eyebrow. I take it as a reminder of the pressure I’m under to do things his way.

  The guests stand inside what appears to be a fallen cloud. White sky, white winter skin, white exhaled breath as Pastor
Lundy welcomes everyone, naming each of the relatives. He bends before their chairs, pressing his gloved hands into theirs, and saving his warmest greeting for the widow.

  The pastor has tried hard to build a congregation, but many in this community don’t feel God’s presence in the confined space of a building, or in the hands of a pastor, just a man. Instead, they experience God in the magnificent earth and sky, in the first sunlight over the rimrocks, in the blue, blue snow at twilight, in the care they invest in this land and its creatures—never a guarantee of a return for their labor, forever at the mercy of a force greater than themselves.

  Funerals, then, are Pastor Lundy’s biggest audience. He stands before the casket now and looks out at the snow-dusted guests. “The man we honor today was quite a handyman,” he says. “I think everyone here has had something fixed by him.”

  The widow’s shoulders rise. I don’t think she or her husband thought of him as the man taking odd jobs. That was only to keep his family going. But he was not that. A handyman. Even though he did that work for two decades.

  Pastor Lundy opens his Bible and reads from Ecclesiastes. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.”

  There are no tears. This death is not a surprise. It’s the kind of death people prefer—expected after a long life with many friends, a blessing to be free from illness and pain.

  “Let us pray.”

  Heads bow. Some close their eyes, but most use this time to see who’s here and who isn’t. Children kick at stray piles of snow. Pete tries again to catch my eye, but I pretend not to notice. Instead I watch my father’s wind-chapped face and clouds of breath as he says, “Amen.”