Katherine Page - The Body in the Cast

One of the occupational hazards of being married to a minister was that one ended up attending a great many funerals. Over time, Faith expected to become inured to 260 the solemn ritual and finality of the service, which always prompted fervent prayers of her own for the wellbeing of everyone she knew, but at the moment she was far from it. Alden Spaulding's obsequies were no exception, and she sat in church the next morning reciting a litany, starting with Tom and the children and extending to Mr. Reilly, who brought fresh eggs from his chickens to the parsonage, along with pumpkins in the fall and pansies in the spring.

The church was filled to capacity, despite the bad weather. It was cold and a light rain was falling. Faith recognized many Alefordians, but there were also strangers, and she doubted if all were loyal workers from COPYCOPY come to pay their last respects. More likely, they were those odd individuals drawn to the spectacle by their own lurid imaginations, fed by the media. It was ghoulish, like those drivers who slowed down to get a really good look at an accident.

The organist was playing. Brahms, Faith thought. She was fairly good at classical music after years of listening to it at church and at home—Tom Petty and other heartbreakers of her adolescence had been relegated strictly to her Walkman.

The slow, sad strains sent her mind wandering pensively to an odd conversation she'd had the night before with Maxwell Reed during one of the breaks in the shooting. She'd been alone in the kitchen, preparing a new tray of sandwiches to take upstairs. He'd come to get a bottle of his Calistoga water. After learning of his penchant from Cornelia, she had stocked plenty for him and anyone else who wanted it. When he'd walked in with his request, Faith had wondered why the PA or someone else wasn't doing the fetching and carrying. He'd answered her unspoken thought.

“Wanted to get away for a minute and it's too damn cold to go outside.”

He'd sat down in one of the chairs at the table and Faith had gone about her business as silently as possible. But it was not solitude he'd sought. It was an audience, a small audience. He was in his ubiquitous corduroy pants and a crew-necked sweater over a turtleneck. The sweater had a hole in the sleeve. He hadn't shaved in a while and Faith could see there was a lot of white coming in. It didn't show so much in his blond hair, standing on end now as if he'd been running his hand through it all night. He looked rumpled but full of energy.

He took off his thick-lensed glasses and polished them on his sleeve. His eyes were fantastic deep pools of blue in which a girl might seriously consider drowning.

“When I'm making a picture, nothing else matters to me. I don't think about anything else. If I could, I'd have everyone live on the set and shoot around the clock. I suppose this seems pretty callous in light of all that has happened.”

Faith made an appropriate noncommittal murmur.

“It will hit me later. When it's in the can. I don't want to think about Sandra now. Or that old guy, whoever he was.”

He'd gone to the fridge and taken another bottle of water, then returned to the table.

“Maybe I'm a hypocrite. Pretending what I'm doing is so God Almighty important that I don't have to think about other things. My wife. My kid.”

The man had clearly been on the couch, and Faith was certain she was a stand-in. She nodded and asked a question. The role called for it."Your wife?"

“Yeah, Evelyn. We've been married for years. Goipg public is not good for her image or maybe for mine, either. But everybody knows:' Everybody did not know. Cornelia didn't and Faith was sure Sandra Wilson hadn't known, either.

“Hypocrisy" Max was continuing to associate freely. "The Scarlet Letter is a story about hypocrisy—maybe that's what drew me to it in the first place. I never read it when I was a kid. I picked it up a couple of years ago and it blew me away. All the phoniness. All those people pretending to be something or someone they weren't. The townspeople. Chillingworth. Even Hester. She put the letter on, but she didn't feel guilty. She'd have done the same thing all over again, even though she was married. And Cappy, I mean Dimmesdale, he didn't get caught, but he was guilty—not so much for the adultery as for the cover-up. He didn't deserve her. Hawthorne knew that. That's why he killed him off. The governor's sister, the witch, is the only truth-teller. I see A as the perfect metaphor for the hypocrisy of our time—the Watergates, the Irangates, the fucking of a whole country.”

It would be the rain forest soon, Faith was sure.

“And the environment. Yeah." He'd closed his eyes. "When we move up from Hester and Dimmesdale in the forest, we'll go high enough to show a dump or some nuclear power plant. Something toxic." He'd opened his eyes and focused his gaze on Faith for the first time. "Anything like that around here?" He hadn't waited for an answer, but bolted out the door. "Thanks for making me think of the idea—oh, and the food is great.”

After he'd left, Faith considered once and for all abandoning her Reed/Chillingworth theory. This was a man who would never have done anything that would get in the way of making his picture—unless, of course, he had an ingenue PA who could replace the star. Maybe Faith wouldn't totally give up on it yet. There was still the strong possibility Evelyn was the intended victim. f there was ever an example of an obsessive personality, it was Maxwell Reed. f he thought Evelyn was having an affair with Cappy, that might have goaded him into thinking the picture would be even more of a masterpiece with Sandra. He might not actually have planned to kill the one he loved, just make her very, very sick.

Alden's last rites were moving right along. Tom had managed to get Dan Garrison to participate, asking him to read a psalm, Psalm 90. Dan read well and did justice to the beautiful words: "For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." He continued on, soon reaching "Thou hast set our iniquities before thee; our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.”

On the other side of the aisle, two rows ahead of Faith, Audrey Heuneman stood up when Dan said " `secret sins.' " She was a petite woman with short light brown hair, always well dressed. She was standing very straight and very still. She looked taller. Dan stopped, momentarily startled, then went on with the reading. Audrey seemed about to speak. Sitting at her side, James's face was an enigma—was it pain, sadness, embarrassment? Perhaps all three. His wife reached for her coat and left the pew, walking rapidly down the aisle. James followed immediately. The front door closed with a bang behind them.

The thrill-seekers had gotten their thrill.

Ten

It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

Every bone in Faith's body wanted to follow the Heunemans down the aisle, even as her mind was sensibly alerting her to the further scandal that would cause. The funeral was already destined to join such other historic notables as Peter Smyth's—the casket lid fell off when the pallbearers tilted slightly to the left—and Susannah Prebble's—her daughter wore a crimson beaded cocktail dress.

Faith had a pretty good idea of what Alden Spaulding's "secret sins" might have been in regard to Audrey Heuneman. The Bartletts hadn't been watching as closely as they thought.

Instead of dashing off to test her theory, Faith had to remain where she was through Tom's eloquently circumspect eulogy, which segued from involvement in civic activities immediately to ah, sweet mystery of life—and death. By the time they all rose for the last hymn, "I Cannot Think of Them as Dead," she was ready to scream, not sing.