Marcia Talley: In Death's Shadow

Please, God, don't tell me Miranda found her mother's body! My eyes filled with tears for the third time since morning, and I scurried into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. In mid-splash I caught sight of myself in the bathroom mirror and wished I hadn't. Puffy eyelids, bloodshot eyes with purplish pouches underneath. If I knew a makeup artist, I'd be using the emergency entrance.

My hair wasn't too bad, though. The week before the race, I'd had it cut in a wash-and-wear bob and highlighted, just for kicks. I fluffed it with my fingers. A wash and some mousse and I'd be ready to go.

If I ever figured out what I was going to wear.

Back at the closet, I pulled out a pants suit I hadn't worn since I quit the job in Washington, D.C. Charcoal gray. It matched my mood.

To keep my mind off the funeral home- Please, God, don't let there be an open casket -I rummaged through my jewelry drawer looking for something to brighten up my lapel. I have fifty boxes, I swear, marked AURORA GALLERY. I opened the one labeled CAT PIN and thought, not for the first time, that I should own stock in that store. If something happened to me, Aurora Gallery would have to declare Chapter 11.

I pinned on the cat and added a pink paisley scarf.

I plopped back down on the edge of the bed, checked my watch. Five o'clock. The family had been gathering at Kramer's for over an hour. Who would I know, besides Brian? And Miranda, of course, if someone thought to bring her along. I suddenly wished I hadn't been so eager to send Paul on his merry way. With Paul along, at least I'd have someone to talk to.

I rummaged in the closet, found the Ferragamos I used to wear with the gray suit, and slipped them on. They pinched. I switched to a pair of Easy Spirit pumps. Wrong color. I retrieved my Clark T-straps from under the bed and eased my feet into them. Ah, much more like it.

I could have procrastinated away another ten minutes-a hat, perhaps? I had half a dozen hat boxes-proper round ones, too-stacked on the top shelf of the closet, but I chided myself for being so ridiculous.

It's just that I have a problem with funeral homes. Especially funeral services in funeral homes. Like sending a loved one off to heaven from the lobby of a hotel. Before my mother died, she'd insisted on cremation. There'd been a service at St. Anne's-Book of Common Prayer, Rite One-with Bach and Mozart on organ and flute. Two days later, at sunset, we'd taken Mother's ashes out on Connie's sailboat and sprinkled them over the Chesapeake Bay. If you have to go, it doesn't get much better than that.

I sighed, gathered up my courage and my handbag, double-locked the front door, and wandered up Prince George to the intersection with Maryland Avenue. I turned left, killing a few more minutes by browsing the shop windows, still trying to work out in my head what I would say to Brian. I wanted to know how Valerie had died, for one thing. It seemed tactless to come right out and ask, but then, my friends will say I've never let a little thing like tact stand in my way.

For more than a century Kramer's Funeral Home had been tucked away on Cornhill Street, one of half a dozen seventeenth century streets that radiate out from State Circle like spokes. Once a grand Georgian mansion owned by a wealthy colonial tea merchant, the house had been enlarged over the years to accommodate Robert Kramer's ever-expanding services to the dead, dying, and bereaved.

I entered the lobby and looked around. A rich, red oriental carpet. A mahogany highboy. A highly polished table, perfectly round, supporting a vase containing an elaborate flower arrangement the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. I touched a lily. It was cool, slightly damp, and very real.

To my right, an ornate, carpeted staircase led up to the second floor, but a red velvet rope prevented anyone from actually venturing upstairs. I circumnavigated the table, looking for someone who could point me in the right direction, and then I saw it. One of those signboards on a tripod, black, with white snap-in letters that usually spell out things like Soup du Jour: Cream of Broccoli.

Today's special was Valerie Padgett Stone. Blue Room. With an arrow pointing to the right.

It was so bald, so matter-of-fact, so… final. I gulped for air, glancing around the entrance hall, looking for a place to sit down, but apparently Mr. Kramer didn't want me to sit down in his lobby because he'd provided no chairs. I breathed in, and out, then followed the arrow to a room that was, as the sign said, blue. Relentlessly so. Blue carpet. Blue chairs. Blue draperies. Blue walls. Even the Kleenex boxes were blue.

And in spite of the fact that the newspaper had requested no flowers, baskets of delphiniums, as deeply blue as the South Pacific Ocean and just as beautiful, were arranged against the far wall.

Among the flowers, on a stand in front of a blue and gold brocade curtain, sat Valerie's casket, made of rosewood and so highly polished that I could see in it the reflection of the blades of a ceiling fan as it rotated slowly overhead. I took another deep, steadying breath. The lid was open.

I froze in the doorway, dreading the next half hour.

"Welcome." The voice belonged to a tall guy loitering in the foyer immediately to my right. Because of his blond hair, I figured he was related to Brian. He extended his hand and I took it, covering his hand with both of my own. "I'm so, so sorry," I said. I didn't find out till later he was the funeral director's son.

"Have you seen Brian?" I asked.

Kramer, Jr. pointed.

Brian, dressed in a dark navy suit with a red and white polka-dotted tie, chatted practically forehead-to-forehead with a grandmotherly type wearing a pink A-line skirt, a matching sweater set, and a short strand of fat, Barbara Bush pearls. Her fingers dug deeply into his sleeve. I knew the type: she would prattle on forever.

"You might sign the guest book," Junior suggested. "While you wait."

Using a silver pen actually attached to the book by a chain-can't be too careful, those Kramers-I scrawled my name, and Paul's, on the top line of a new page. At least thirty people had signed the book before me; not a single name I recognized. They were scattered throughout the room now, sitting pensively on chairs, staring at their hands or the walls. Some were standing, clustered in groups of three or four, making small talk.

When I looked his way again, Brian was holding court next to the casket, talking to a young woman wearing a sleeveless dress with poppies splashed all over it. If I wanted to speak with him now, I'd have to go up there. Next to the body.

I hesitated, my hand clutching the back of a chair, the metal cold beneath my fingers. Now that I'd signed the guest book, perhaps I could slip away before anyone noticed me? Then Brian caught my eye, and I was doomed.

I weaved through the crowd to join him. "I'm so, so sorry, Brian," I said after he released me from a hug.

Brian turned to his companion. "Corinne, this is Hannah Ives, one of Valerie's friends."

Corinne offered me a wan smile and a limp hand before flouncing off to join a group of other twenty-somethings huddled behind the lectern. They looked disgustingly fit, like the aerobics instructors they probably were.

Brian rested his hands on my shoulders and studied me with dry, bloodshot eyes. "Why did she have to go and die on me, Hannah?" His voice broke and he croaked, "What am I going to do?"

"I know how hard it is," I said. "I lost my mother a couple of years ago and a day doesn't go by that I don't think about her. Sometimes I hear a joke and I pick up the phone to tell her because I know she'd laugh her head off…" My voice trailed off. "It gets easier to bear, over time, but the pain never goes away, Brian. I miss my mother terribly."