Louise Erdrich - The Master Butcher's Singing Club

She stopped by the drugstore and bought a phosphate, drank it quickly to calm herself. Then she walked straight to the funeral home.

EVERYTHING ABOUT THE Strubs’ establishment was tasteful — painted gray and trimmed in dark maroon; even the awnings on the windows were made of matching, striped canvas. The porch was railed with turned cast iron. The lawn was a perfect swatch of muted green and the flowers in the summer garden were hushed lilac and mauve hollyhocks, white petunias, delicate blue bachelor’s buttons, nothing too colorful. The back door, also painted a calm gray, was fitted with a modern electric bell. Delphine pushed it, heard a pleasant stroke of music from inside. She looked nervously around to see whether she had been followed. When Clarisse came to the door, Delphine gestured at her to quickly let her in.

“Is it Roy?” said Clarisse, in an anxious, knowing way that temporarily unnerved Delphine.

“No!” she cried out.

“I’m sorry,” said Clarisse. “What was I thinking? Come in, come in. How stupid of me.” She put her arms around Delphine and led her into a soothing little back entry room.

“We have to talk now. Where can we talk?” asked Delphine.

“I can take you downstairs,” said Clarisse. “I’m working with Mr. Pletherton.”

Delphine nodded. The basement was a carefully planned space, cool in summer, heated minimally in winter, always just the right temperature for work. There, Clarisse and her uncle and Benta concentrated their attentions on the town’s dead. Delphine knew that she was privileged to be permitted to enter — no one else, except Doctor Heech and, in a case of suspected foul play, the sheriff, was allowed downstairs. Delphine had never been particularly bothered, and now she found the Strubs’ preparation room much less upsetting than the back cooler of the slaughterhouse. And for sure, anything they said there would go no further. So she went down the back stairs, following her friend, who wore a crisp white coat and now peeled off her gloves with a snap.

“I thought I had a date with a guy from South Dakota, but he stood me up,” Clarisse’s voice floated back. It seemed that her profession was still as unsettling to potential boyfriends as it had been in high school. The boy had quickly made it clear that if she wanted to date him, she’d have to quit. For a while she and Delphine talked the way they used to, exchanging news of the states of their emotions. Clarisse said she wondered how she could respect a man who was afraid of her job.

“He called me an undertaker , Delphine. You know how I hate that! He’s like the others. None of them would probably come down here, even if I asked them. They’re chicken.” Her expression shifted to a startling mask, and she hunched and croaked, “They fear I’ll drain them dry as hay.”

Delphine laughed, although Clarisse’s sudden transformation, in the basement surroundings, slightly unsettled her. In one corner, a phonograph record played lovely, swelling opera music. Clarisse played the music not only for herself, but also, she claimed, the notes had a soothing effect upon the flesh of the bodies she was working on, causing them somehow to absorb the fluids she pumped into them more evenly. She swore it was true, but perhaps her current client did not appreciate opera music. The place was brilliantly lit and Mr. Pletherton, whom Clarisse paused to regard critically before she wheeled him back into the cooler, looked gray and actually dead. Perhaps Clarisse was still trying to get the quality of dye right. She was constantly experimenting, trying to choose the exact right mixture of arterial solution for the peculiarities of each body. “They’re all so different.” Clarisse gave his arm a clinical stroke as she put him away and there was a small crackling sound. She frowned and muttered, “Postmortem emphysema.

“I’m having a lot of trouble with him, Delphine. He died of food poisoning. Fargo restaurant.” There was a whisper of distress in her voice. “Tissue gas.”

The north wall was outfitted with glass-fronted cabinets, the top shelves neatly decked with small tubs of lip pins, mouth and eye cement, bandages, and glue. There was a small box of leftover calling cards from visitations. Benta kept the cards to dip in paraffin and she used them instead of cotton to make a durable barrier between the gums and lips. There was Bon Ami, used as a tooth polish, massage cream and lemon juice, vinegar and soap. Piles of clean towels. Hand brushes, hairbrushes, nail files, and clear lacquer. The broad lower shelves were stocked with serviceable gallon bottles of methanol or wood alcohol, ethanol, arsenic solution, formalin, and smaller bottles of oil of cloves, sassafras, wintergreen, benzaldehyde, oil of orange flower, lavender, and rosemary. Aurelius Strub’s original embalmer’s diploma, the first awarded west of Minneapolis and east of Spokane, hung from the wall in an elaborate frame. Although the basement was always cool, the general heat was wreaking havoc with the burials. Amid all of this Clarisse maintained her cheerful curved smile and her graceful prettiness. She suddenly put Delphine in mind of Malcolm’s line, Though all things foul would wear the brows of grace, yet grace must still look so. She pushed the quote from her head.

There were two nice plush chairs in the corner, and even a tiny electric stove and a pot for brewing coffee.

“All right,” said Clarisse. “I’m all ears. Now, what is it, really?”

Of course, an afternoon visit signaled some emergency, inner or outer, and Delphine got immediately to the point.

“What costume did you wear when you played the lady in The Lady and the Tiger ?” asked Delphine.

“It was a cute little number, all—”

“Red, pink, peach flapper beads, those tube iridescent kind.”

“I sewed a million on that dress, remember? It was practically a work of art.”

Clarisse was, in fact, a clever seamstress and used a variation of herstitching to create perfect hidden sutures in her clients, even using two crisscrossing needles sometimes and hiding the knots. Even underneath the clothing, where no one would ever see, her work was perfect and she scorned lock stitch or bridge sutures— That’s just sewing , she’d say.

“Where is it?”

“I think it’s in my closet somewhere,” said Clarisse, easily. “Why?”

“Get rid of it,” said Delphine.

“After all that work I put into it?” Clarisse dropped her jaw in false outrage.

“Listen, I got wind of the way Sheriff Hock is thinking. You know the cellar door at my house was pasted shut with this awful solid goop and in it there were beads just like your beads.”

Clarisse opened her mouth, but then a look of pain and panic suffused her face, and she put her hands to her pretty cheeks. Her little oval nails whitened with the pressure of her fingers, “Oh God, Delphine! I told you that Sheriff Hock practically ripped the dress off me that night…”

“I have this feeling that Hock’s cooking something up in his fat, fevered head.”

“Hock is baiting me,” said Clarisse. “He’s… impossible. I can’t reason with him. He’ll use this coincidence — the dress, poor Ruthie and Doris… how can he? There was a little girl down there!” She burst into quick, frustrated tears, but after a few moments, she took down her hands and said, “No, no, I’ll not let him get the better of me. He should lay off. I’m a professional and I have to finish Mr. Pletherton by five, and he’s a really difficult case.” She suddenly drooped, very tired, frowned at Delphine, and then shook her curls. “Hey, would you be a real girl pal and grab that dress from my closet? Just go home and throw the damn dress in the fire.”