Elinor Lipman - The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

“Must be serious, judging by the color of your cheeks,” Frederick continued.

I said, “Any color on my face is utter astonishment and, and, dismay, and frankly—”

The door swung open and Ray was at my side. At first I thought the object of his survey was the grandness of the built-in appliances and the curve of the granite countertops, but he was looking for his gift.

“In the pantry,” said Frederick.

Ray popped a pastry triangle in his mouth. “Spinach,” he said.

“ Spanokopita ,” said Frederick. “Though not fully defrosted.”

“Not bad,” said Ray. “Not what I expected. I thought it was going to be sweet—a miniature turnover, like with fig inside.” Ray chewed, swallowed, popped another triangle in his mouth. “You Greek?” he mumbled through the phyllo.

Frederick shook his head in the smallest possible arc, and turned back to the sink.

Ray looked at me: You see that? You gonna let the kitchen help diss your guests?

I said, “Frederick? My mother wanted you to make up a nice plate for Mr. Russo.”

Frederick crossed to the refrigerator, returned with a plastic bag of some curly purple vegetal matter. “She didn’t mention this to me,” he said.

“We’ve been on the road since six A.M.,” I said.

Ray helped himself to a deviled egg, then another. “Don’t bother. I’m gonna head out so I can get a good seat.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about a crowd,” said Frederick. “She outlived every one of her friends.”

“I lost my wife at a young age,” said Ray, slipping an arm around my waist. “So good genes mean everything to me.”

I moved a discreet step away and said, “My other grandmother died at sixty-two of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”

“I did the brunch,” said Frederick.

I said I might lie down for a short rest myself before the limo arrived, if they’d excuse me.

Ray grinned. “These doctors! They can catnap on a dime. I swear—ten minutes of shut-eye, and she’s up for a triple bypass.”

Frederick smiled knowingly.

Ray’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not saying that I’m well versed in this lady’s personal habits—if I read that smirk correctly.”

Unfazed, Frederick blinked and turned to me.

“I’ve never done a triple bypass,” I said. “I’ve never even watched.”

COVERING FOR OUR vacationing pastor was a woman with a crewelwork stole, who ruined the funeral by eulogizing my grandmother as “Barbara.”

At the fourth or fifth misstatement, my mother barked from behind her handkerchief, “Betty!”

The minister looked up; smiled indulgently at the grieving heckler.

“Her name wasn’t Barbara,” clarified a male voice in the back.

Everyone knew it was the homely pin-striped stranger who’d arrived ahead of everyone else and whose signature was first in the guest book: Raymond Russo, Boston, Mass.

“ Betty ,” repeated the minister. “How careless of me.” She smiled again. “My own mother was Barbara. I think that must say something, don’t you?”

My mother was having none of it: Her stored grief found a new cause, a new enemy, in the rainbow-embroidered figure of the overly serene Reverend Dr. Nancy Jones-Fuchs, who was told in the recessional, in frigid terms, that her services would not be needed graveside.

Ray was the only one who had thought to slip the Book of Common Prayer beneath his overcoat. My aunt Patricia suggested we honor my grandmother Quaker-style, which was to say, in silence. After several minutes, Ray opened the prayer book. We looked over. He offered it to my mother first. “I couldn’t,” she said. Nor could Aunt Patricia, which left my father, who looked to me.

“I could read a psalm,” Ray offered. “Or just say a few words. Whatever you think she’d like.”

“Read,” I said.

“The Twenty-third Psalm is on page eighty-two,” whispered the funeral director.

Ray’s recitation was from memory, eyes closed, and more heartfelt than I expected. When he finished he said, “I didn’t know Betty, but I wish I did.” His voice turned breezy; he tapped the coffin genially with the corner of the prayer book. “Sorry you have to have a virtual stranger here, Betty, reading the last prayer you’ll ever hear, but I guess I know you at least as well as that lame minister did. Boy, was that annoying. And I think you and I would’ve been great pals if we’d crossed paths earlier.” He looked to my mother, who nodded her permission to continue. “I should be an old hand at this, but I didn’t have the composure to say anything at my wife’s grave. She passed away around this time last year. So maybe this is God’s way of giving me another shot at it. Which reminds me—if you run across Mary up there, maybe you can buy her lunch and tell her it’s from Ray.” He raised an imaginary glass. “So here’s to you, Betty: Ninety-four rocks. You had, what? Like, twenty presidents? Four or five wars? I hope you kept a journal or you talked into a tape, ‘cause I’d love to hear the high points.”

“She did,” said my mother.

“Which?” asked Ray.

“Videotaped. On her ninetieth birthday.”

“God bless her,” said Ray.

“Amen,” said the funeral director.

“Amen,” we echoed.

“Now what?” asked my mother.

EACH LUNCHEON ATTENDEE was called upon to share her indignation: What an insult. What a besmirching of Betty’s memory. Imagine living for ninety-four years and getting eulogized under another name. And who the hell was Barbara ?

When the crowd thinned and the cousins drove away, Ray and my mother moved on from ministerial misdeeds to fiber art. I had to remind him that we had a long drive ahead, and that I had to be back at work at six A.M.

“You’re not staying over?” my mother cried.

“We’ve discussed this,” I said.

“One day off for the death of a grandparent?” my father said. “What kind of hospital is that?”

“A five-hundred-bed teaching hospital,” I said.

“The show must go on,” said Ray.

“Call her department. Let them page the goddamn head of surgery,” my mother said. “Tell him it’s an outrage. I need my daughter here.”

I darted between my father and the kitchen door. “Dad,” I said. “Please don’t. It’s not like a regular job. We don’t take sick days. No one asks for a day off unless it’s life or death.”

“Which this is,” my mother said.

Ray took her hand. “Mrs. Thrift? What if we stayed for another coupla hours?”

“Alice makes up her own mind,” she said.

Ray guided her to a dining room wall where they stood in front of “Flotsam and Jet Set.” “Of the ones on the first floor, this is my favorite,” said Ray.

In docent fashion, my mother asked if he could explain why.

“The seaweed. The lobster claw. It reminds me of home.”

“Can you tell that the wood is charred? I think it must have been kindling for a clambake.” She pointed to a crumpled piece of paper. “This was a contrivance on my part, but I’m not apologizing for it.”

Ray moved closer, cocked his head, and read, “Nokia Issues a Profit Warning.”

“From The Wall Street Journal , obviously. Which I found in the trash and not, strictly speaking, on the beach.”

“Do all your canvases tell a story?” he asked.

My mother said they did, but not her story. The beholder’s. Each composition was a Rorschach test. If someone saw, for example, capitalism or disorder or impotence—whatever one would call it—that justified her flexing her artistic muscles to add, for example, a piece of newsprint that wasn’t necessarily organic to the site.