Diane Davidson - Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series)

I glanced at Arch. He was intent on the view out the window. The van released another cloud of dust as we turned onto Piney Circle, a dirt road where wood-paneled houses peeked out from behind stands of ponderosa and lodgepole pine.

“So did you know her?” Patty Sue asked.

Alicia’s question. Why did people inquire so suspiciously about your prior acquaintance with a suicide victim? Were they trying to ascertain guilt? If you had known her better, she wouldn’t have done this? If you hadn’t known her at all, you were off the hook?

“She was Arch’s teacher last year and two years ago. I saw her at conferences,” I replied. “Sometimes I saw her in exercise class. That’s it.” I thought for a minute. “She was funny. She could make you laugh talking about how she was going to be a taxing person for the IRS, things like that. And she was a special person for Arch.”

I looked again in the mirror. My son was holding his hands over his eyes. I pulled over onto the graveled shoulder and turned to face him.

“Arch,” I said. “You don’t have to do this. Listen, we can manage with just Patty Sue and myself serving. You don’t even have to come at all.”

Patty Sue and I sat as Arch sobbed quietly. I handed him a tissue. I shouldn’t have talked about Laura Smiley, after all. Arch blew his nose and coughed as people do when they want it to look as if the real problem is sinus congestion, not heartache.

“It’s okay,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Let’s go. Please.”

I said, “You really don’t have to.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I do.”

We turned off Piney Circle and onto Pine Needle Lane. Whoever had named the streets wanted to remind us we were in the mountains. The lane was a dirt road that would take us to Laura’s house. She had lived close to the center of town, in a hilly area once peppered with log cabins. In the Forties, Aspen Meadow had been a rustic retreat from Denver for the well-to-do. Now the largest portion of residents made the hour-long commute to Denver to work. In Laura’s residential area small A-frames and wood-paneled houses built in the Fifties and Sixties were sandwiched between a scattering of remaining cabins. The resulting architectural mishmash made the area not a good investment for the commuters, but a haven for teachers, artists, waiters, and others who could not afford a ritzier neighborhood.

The van shook as we started down the steep, dusty driveway to Laura’s bungalow. The aunt from Illinois had flown in and rented a car. It stood outside the open garage, as she had planned to take a limousine to the funeral. She had left us enough room so that I could just edge the van in next to the garage door.

Fortunately the aunt also had remembered to leave the door unlocked. We pushed in with our crates, boxes, foodstuffs, bowls, and cups.

Once inside I took a deep breath. A professional service from Denver had been in to clean. Their assignment included, Laura’s aunt had crisply informed me, disinfecting and regrouting the bloodied bathroom tile. This was about the fifth time I’d done a postfuneral meal in the home where a person had died. I shivered in anticipation of any lingering smell or sense of death.

But here there was none. Large bouquets of flowers, florist’s mixtures of carnations and gladioli, snapdragons and baby’s breath, crowded the counters in the brightly wallpapered kitchen. Only the cinnamon smell from the carnations and the piney scent of disinfectant lingered in the air.

The house was small. We carted our boxes through the garage into the kitchen, which adjoined a larger dining-living room combination. The guests would be parking around the side near the aunt’s car. On that side there was a walkway to the front door, which opened into the dining-living area. I surveyed the room to figure out how to set up the tables and arrange the flowers between the plates and food. Like an investigator at a crash site, I did not want to think about the tragedy that had happened here. We had a job to do. The living had to eat.

Nevertheless, pacing off the living room for measurement, I kept expecting to feel some eeriness in the house. What was actually discomfiting was that the whole place seemed so terribly cozy. Two of the living room walls paneled in diagonal beetle-killed wood glowed green-gold in the sunlight. Shelves and cabinets dotted the other walls. There was a wall of photographs. Deep blue carpet covered the area where the floor was not wood. In addition to the photos there were painted pictures of snowy mountains and snowy fields and brooks with snowy banks. Laura’s two wing chairs looked newly reupholstered, as did the two old but not antique love seats. The fabric on the furniture and several throw pillows was a print of spring flowers—periwinkle blue, kelly green, sunshine yellow. With the blue rug and rows of wooden shelves and cabinets, the big room was lively with color. Nowhere in sight were the browns and grays and blacks, the filth or lack of care one would expect of a suicidal personality.

The three long tables ordered from Mountainside Rental lay piled like slabs of rock on the blue rug. They would all fit. We pushed the love seats and chairs into conversational groupings, then cracked open the tables and arranged them in a horseshoe shape. Arch unfurled the tablecloths while Patty Sue and I began to unpack the food.

“Listen to this,” I said a few moments later. I had just closed the refrigerator and was perusing the homemade magnets and cartoons with which Laura had festooned the door. Arch and Patty Sue were in the living room setting out silverware and plates in the areas between the flower baskets.

I read, “ ‘This refrigerator is cooler than Dave Brubeck.’ Uh-huh. ‘A woman should be more than a cute dish in the Cabinet. She should be Secretary of State.’ Very funny. ‘The only time I COOK is on the highway.’ Ha!” I turned to the dining room, where Patty Sue and Arch had begun unraveling extension cords for the coffee machine. “How could a funny person get so depressed?”

After a minute Arch said, “Oh Mom, you know. She was always making jokes. ‘A school is for fish,’ stuff like that.”

“Right,” I muttered, then read above the stove: “When is a pig a canine? When it is a hot dog.” By the sink: “I went to plumbing school and told them to make me into Farrah Faucet.”

Patty Sue joined me. Her face was paler than usual. She said, “I feel kind of spooky. Please tell me again what you want me to do. I mean, when the people get here.”

I explained her duties once more, then showed her the bathroom, in case folks asked for directions. To my relief the aunt or the cleaning service had put up an opaque white shower curtain, whose new-plastic smell was overwhelming. It was drawn across the tub. I couldn’t help it: I poked my head around the curtain while Patty Sue checked her lipstick in the mirror. The bathtub was spotless. What I had expected to find I did not know. I hustled Patty Sue out to the kitchen to show her where everything would be. Arch was busy slicing lemons to float in the lemonade pitcher.

When Patty Sue was occupied in the living room opening bottles of wine, Arch said to me, “You know Dad has a new girlfriend.”

I said, “I know.”

I was looking through Laura’s pantry for extra sugar in case we needed additional lemonade. I had brought the rest of the new bag, but the warmth of the day made me worry about the possibility of needing more. The only thing I found was some flour she had put in a canister sporting, naturally enough, a painted flower. Since I knew no homonym for sugar, I gave up.

“Maybe she’ll be here,” said Arch.

“Right,” I said. I turned to him. “The girlfriend. Do you care?”

He stared down at the lemons and I was immediately sorry. I knew his warning was meant to prepare me for not caring, not him.