4
Because of the lifelong mating urge, werewolves do not adjust well to being widowed. In some cases, a surviving mate will die of mourning pains.
—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were
Perhaps sensing that Bob’s could be her last grand-dame funeral, Grandma Ruthie wanted to bury Bob in style. NATO summits were less tense than the planning of this shindig. Bob’s adult children claimed that Bob, an avid fisherman, wanted to be cremated with half of his ashes spread into Lake Barkley and the other half interred with his late first wife. Grandma Ruthie, incensed that she might be upstaged, insisted that Bob’s intact remains be buried adjacent to her “compound” of husbandly burial plots down at Oak View Cemetery. She made such a scene at the funeral home that Bob’s shell-shocked offspring let her have her way, plus total control of the funeral program from the “Amazing Grace” opener to the “It Is Well with My Soul/Old Rugged Cross” closing medley.
There was only one place to host this weird-ass parody of grief: Whitlow’s Funeral Home, where Grandma Ruthie had been mourning husbands since 1957. In fact, three generations of Whitlows had helped Grandma Ruthie bury her spouses. And apparently, none of them knew anything about decorating. Honestly, who finds dark wood paneling, blue velvet upholstery, and 3-D pictures of Jesus comforting?
With her “frequent flyer” status, Grandma Ruthie was treated like a queen from the moment she walked in the door. She never settled for the rattling Coke machine and sprung couch in the sadly worn family lounge. When the stress of public mourning became too much to bear, Grandma Ruthie retreated to the senior Mr. Whitlow’s private office, where he stocked her favorite brand of butter cookies and an ample supply of bottled sweet tea. Membership has its privileges.
Visitations were held on the evening before the burial, giving the community the chance to offer condolences to the bereaved and give their real opinion of the deceased outside the bereaved’s earshot. Grandma Ruthie was ensconced in the front row of the chapel, sending petulant looks at Bob’s children. She was still pouting over their last-minute refusal to let her take over the memorial video or the photo board. Somehow, they seemed insulted that Grandma wanted to focus on the last five years of Bob’s life, omitting his first marriage to their late mother and the existence of his children and grandchildren. She did get her vengeance by making a memorial Wheel of Fortune puzzle board spelling out “Ruthie Loves Bob” and putting it in the lid of his casket. Bob was a huge Wheel fan.
Based on the craftsmanship, I suspected my sister, Jenny, had a hand in this.
Grandma Ruthie simply did not understand why she was not being given the authority and respect due a widow. She claimed to have given Bob some of the happiest years of his life. The fact that Bob had been unconscious or hospitalized for most of that time seemed irrelevant.
Grandma Ruthie, and Jenny, for that matter, were a little miffed at Mama for her resolve that I be involved in the funeral. I would have been touched by Mama’s insistence on my having the opportunity to mourn Bob, but I’m pretty sure she just wanted help policing the buffet at the visitation. I didn’t eat, after all, so I wouldn’t mind keeping the platters full. The main problem was that Grandma insisted on using her good silver serving pieces (from Wedding No. 2), which were mixed in with stainless-steel pieces from the funeral home. You’d think by now I’d be able to sniff out metal that causes me to burn and itch, but every time I moved a utensil, it was like Russian roulette. So I stuck with plates.
It is an unwritten law that a person could not be decently buried in the Hollow without the presence of deviled eggs and some form of homemade pimento cheese. My cousin Junie’s hot-dog bake is also usually present. It’s essentially diced hot dogs, Tater Tots, processed cheese food, and cream of mushroom soup baked until crusty. Still, it’s preferable to homemade pimento cheese.
Of course, for humans, nourishment is needed to sustain them through the gauntlet of social interactions. If you met anyone in the deceased’s family once, you are expected to bring a casserole for the bereaved and spend at least twenty-five minutes at the visitation. This meant that if I wanted to cross the room, I was going to have to talk to every person I had ever met in my entire life. And I had no idea how many of them might be packing stakes.
Not everybody in Half-Moon Hollow knew I’d been turned, but many of those who did looked at me with a combination of fear and revulsion. I’ll admit that I spent much of my living time being annoyed at my human community, but being separated from them now was lonely and isolating. The only place I felt safe was at River Oaks, and then a group of high-school kids wrapped my entire porch in hanks of dried garlic. It was an incredibly lame and yet surprisingly effective way to make me afraid in my own home.
For this reason and so many more, I specifically asked Gabriel not to attend the funeral. I did not feel this was the appropriate occasion to introduce him to my family. When he asked which occasion would be appropriate and I stayed stonily silent, I think it hurt his feelings.
I could see now that I might have been better off with my sire nearby. After a few training sessions spent trying to hone my mind-reading talents, Gabriel and I determined that it only worked on humans. Most humans … some humans. Sometimes. It was pretty inconsistent. Still, after finding out how many people secretly disliked me inside their heads, not being able to see inside my fellow vampires’ was kind of a comfort.
According to the swarms of thoughts and scents pecking at my cortex, some of those attending the funeral knew I was a vampire, but they were nice enough not to mention it. Or at least to mention it quietly behind their hands in a way that was not noticed by the other mourners. Such is the delicate social web of a small Southern town. I knew that they knew. My family knew that some of them knew. They knew I knew that they knew. But none of us said anything, because that would cause unpleasantness. And we are nothing if not pleasant … when other people are watching.
Zeb and Jolene were lurking among the crowd, earning attendance points for Zeb and his family but avoiding actual contact with anybody. Lucky bastard. Jolene did, however, bring a huge sandwich platter and a gallon of macaroni salad from her uncle’s shop, the Three Little Pigs. I was ninety-nine-percent sure that meant Grandma Ruthie now liked her better than me. Mama Ginger was hovering over the mini-quiches and glowering in Jolene’s general direction.
Fortunately, Mama Ginger had been “too ill” since Zeb’s announcement to contribute anything to the funeral buffet—everything she made tasted like blue cheese and glue. You’d think she’d be thrilled that her son was marrying a good girl with a local family, who wouldn’t ask her son to move far from hearth and home. Plus, with her flashing lupine eyes and auburn hair, Jolene was beautiful in that fierce “some people walk in the light” way that just seems unfair to those of us whose genes aligned in a less spectacular fashion. Instead, Zeb said that upon hearing his engagement announcement, Mama Ginger accused him of letting “little Zeb” do all of his thinking for him. Floyd had nodded in agreement, but it was in more of an envious, congratulatory way.
Much like the iceberg that doomed the “unsinkable” ship, the visible workings of the Lavelle-McClaine wedding plans were only the tiniest glimpse of passive-aggressive maneuverings below the surface. Being truly disliked for the first time in her life sent Jolene into some sort of prolonged panic state, where she did almost anything to try to get Mama Ginger to like her. This, of course, just irritated the hell out of Mama Ginger. She would not bond with Jolene. She simply refused to, just as she’d refused to shop for mother-of-the-bride dresses with the clingy bride. She would not meet Jolene for lunch to discuss floral arrangements or seating charts. She faked a gluten allergy to get out of tasting the wedding cake.
I hadn’t seen Mama Ginger since I’d started keeping night hours. Henna-haired and built like a neurotic fire hydrant, Zeb’s mother was wearing her “burying dress” of clingy black Lycra, Bedazzled with intricate patterns of tiny gold-tone studs and rhinestones. There was a matching hat, but Mama Ginger wouldn’t dare cover her colored, curled, and coiled coiffure, which, as a hairdresser, she considered her own best advertisement. Mama Ginger, who never left the house without full pancake makeup and eyeliner, usually ambushed me with one of the fifteen nubbed lipsticks she kept in the bottom of her purse to “give me a little color.”
Eager to avoid a scene in which I would be left with a linty coat of Risqué Red, I backed away. The movement caught Mama Ginger’s attention, and before I knew it, I’d made inadvertent eye contact. Bah!
“Jane!” Mama Ginger squealed. “Oh, honey, come on over here and give me some sugar!”
Across the room, Zeb’s eyes widened as Mama Ginger enveloped me in a hug that would usually have left me smelling of Jean Naté and Virginia Slims, except this time, the scent of lady-grade tobacco was dramatically understated. Zeb shot me an apologetic look and then turned his back and busied himself with some punch.
Coward.
“You’re so skinny! You need to get over there and eat something. I worry about you, poor single girl, always on some crazy diet. You need someone to cook for, honey. That will put some meat on your bones.” Mama Ginger mercilessly squeezed my cheeks with her carefully painted acrylic nails. “Now, how are you, baby doll? Tell me every little thing!”
“I’m fine. Mama Ginger, did you quit smoking?” I asked, sniffing her again.
“Yes, I did!” she cried. “How did you know?”
“Um …” Don’t say smell. Don’t say smell. I spotted a pack of nicotine gum in her purse and nodded to it.
Mama Ginger giggled. “You’ll never believe this, but I went to that Madame Zelda over on Gaines Street.”
“The ‘mesmerist/tarot reader’ who offers palm readings for five dollars from her den?”
“That’s the one. She does a special course of ‘Smoke-Free Sessions.’ It’s five hypnosis sessions for two hundred and fifty dollars. Pricey, but it’s done the trick.”
Mama Ginger had left at least two packs of Revlon-stained cigarette butts in her wake every day since I’d known her. In fact, she once lit up in the middle of her annual physical, right after her doctor told her that she was at risk for seven kinds of cancer. People take bad news in different ways.
I could only guess that the faint cigarette smell still lingering on Mama Ginger was nicotine that had seeped into her DNA.
“I’m chewing this silly gum.” She sighed, rolling up her sleeve to show me a nicotine patch on her arm. “And I only smoke after meals, but really, I’m feeling much better. I can walk all the way to the mailbox without a break.”
I would be concerned, but honestly, the combination of occasional smoking, chewing, and, uh, patching probably equaled the amount of nicotine in Mama Ginger’s system when she was smoking full-time.
“I never thought I’d quit, never wanted to,” Mama Ginger said, ignoring common sense in her usual selective fashion. “But Mamaw Lavelle’s doctor put her on an oxygen tank, and she screams that I’m trying to kill her if I light up anywhere near her. Hell, if I was going to kill the woman, I would have switched her heart pills for baby aspirin ten years ago.”
I goggled at her. She blushed and gave a tinkling laugh. “Zeb says you have a new job. How do you like it?”
“Fine … Not that I’m not glad to see you, Mama Ginger, but I thought you were mad at me …” I looked in the direction of Hannah Jo, her favorite client and preferred daughter-in-law candidate, who was sulking in the corner with a plate of deviled eggs.
“Oh, Janie!” She smiled indulgently at me, fluffing my hair. “You know I could never stay mad at you, even though you did hurt my feelings. You’re my little angel muffin.”
I’d forgotten about the nicknames. How could I have forgotten the nicknames?
“Besides, I don’t spend much time with Hannah Jo anymore, because … I didn’t know”—Mama Ginger lowered her voice—”that she has a shoplifting problem. Every time we went to the flea market, she walked out with packages of socks under her jacket. Besides, do you know she has cut off her mama? Doesn’t even talk to her anymore. Doesn’t see her at Christmas or Mother’s Day or send her birthday cards. Can you imagine, someone having such a hard heart that they cut off their mama?”
“Wow.” I cringed as realization dawned. “So I guess that means you don’t want her to marry Zeb anymore.”
Mama Ginger sighed. “No, I only wanted Hannah Jo to get to know Zeb because she’s so lonely, and I thought since Zeb’s such a good friend to you, he could be a good friend to her, too. My boy is so generous and sweet and kind. He’d have to be to take up with that one.” Mama Ginger shot a glare in Jolene’s direction.
“Jolene’s a very nice girl,” I said. “She’s very good to Zeb. He loves her very much. I just said ‘very’ three times, didn’t I?”
“You’re sweet to say nice things about someone who’s taken what’s rightfully yours.” Mama Ginger pinched my cheeks again. “But it don’t matter how perky their ass is, no one’s gonna take your place in Zeb’s heart. You’re always going to be his first.”
Ignoring the ass comment, I asked, “His first?”
“Love, silly, you’re his first love. No one forgets his first love.”
I had a vague vertigo sensation as Mama Ginger’s maternal crosshairs focused on me again.
“I’ll see you later, Mama Ginger. I need to get back to … I gotta go.”
“We’ll talk soon, baby doll,” she called as I pivoted on my heel, made a grab for an empty iced-tea pitcher, and focused on the main stage, the front pew.
Grandma was resplendent in her traditional Casual Corner Petites black dress suit, but she had stepped up her game with a black picture hat and full veil. Long ago, she had figured out a secret combination of waterproof mascara and eyeliner that gave her a full Elizabeth Taylor lash that never ran. A black lace handkerchief was clutched to her lips as she stifled a sob.
Where do you even buy a black lace handkerchief? Widows R Us?
If she was this duded up for the visitation, I deeply regretted that I wouldn’t get to see her burial ensemble.
As amusing as this was, the whole funeral process had put me in a bit of a philosophical funk. Despite Jenny’s “offer” to give me a proper burial, there was very little chance that I would ever have a funeral. If by some chance (involving sunlight, stakes, or silver) I did die, the only remains left would be a little pile of dust. Unless someone was quick with the whisk broom, there would be nothing to put in a casket or urn. There would be no buffet, no packed chapel, and, unless Reverend Neel was feeling very charitable, no one praying over me. It was far more likely that I would watch all of my friends and family die. I would watch Zeb grow old and die. I would watch his children grow old and die. Nothing would change. Nothing would surprise me.
These dark, admittedly self-indulgent and depressing thoughts were not really putting me in the best frame of mind to deal with my grandma, who at the moment was sniffling into the black hankie and looking on old friends with baleful, glittering eyes.
“I’ll be fine,” she whimpered. “As long as I have friends and family around me, I’ll be fine.” She looked up and saw me standing nearby. “Jane, those coffee cups need washing.”
Those were the first words she’d spoken to me since she found out that I’d been turned. And they were completely consistent with our BD (before death) relationship.
I thought back to the chapter in Sense and Sensibility when Mr. Dashwood has just died. Marianne and Mrs. Dashwood are overcome by grief. They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in the future. This leaves Elinor to deal with their grasping relatives. Elinor isn’t given the chance to grieve because she’s able to handle all of the grunt work.
I was definitely an Elinor, minus the quiet dignity … or the sense. But I was dependable, overly analytical, and unable to shirk excessive responsibilities. So I gathered the coffee cups and bit my tongue.
“I’ll just take them into the kitchen,” I muttered. “And join the other scullery maids.”
I hefted the tray with one hand and nearly ran smack into my high-school crush, Adam Morrow, a blond, dimpled, and ridiculously clean-cut veterinarian.
“A-Adam!” I stuttered. “Hi!”
At least one thing had remained constant since my living days: I still couldn’t find anything to say to Adam Morrow. While contemplating the back of his neck in sophomore English, I had daydreams where Adam suddenly realized how luminously beautiful I was, inside and out. He would finally realize that I was more than the brainy gal jocks wanted to be paired with on group projects. He’d ask me where I’d been all his life. There was also an imagined prom-night scenario that I won’t go into. And now, all I could do was gawk at him and keep a death grip on a tray of dirty coffee cups.
“Hi, Jane,” he said, smiling broadly. “It’s nice to see you again. It’s been a while.”
“What are you doing here?” I blurted. Woo-hoo, a full, unstuttered sentence!
Adam was carrying a carefully Tupperwared seven-layer salad, though how anything involving hard-boiled eggs, bacon, mayonnaise, and sugar could be considered salad, I have no idea. “Mama sent me over with this. She had dental surgery this afternoon, and she’s still laid up on the pain pills. She’s sorry she couldn’t make it.”
“That was very thoughtful,” I said, accepting the bowl with my free hand. “And heavy. How much bacon is in this thing?”
“Just enough.” He laughed, bottomless cerulean eyes twinkling. “What about you? Are you doing something different with your hair?” he asked, staring at me closely. “Because you look different. Great but different.”
He was staring at me again, as if I were a puzzle he was trying to solve. Apparently, word hadn’t gotten around to Adam about my undead status. So, for reasons I didn’t quite fathom yet, I lied through my pointy teeth.
“I’ve been working out,” I told him, smiling brightly. His interest seemed to perk up even further at the display of teeth. “What have you been up to? How’s the clinic?”
He shrugged those wide shoulders. “Oh, you know, patients who bite me and pee on themselves. It’s a living. How about you?”
I grimaced. “Well, I’m sure you heard that I’m no longer working at the library.”
His cheerfully blank face gave me the impression that he was too polite to acknowledge that I was being gossiped about behind my back. I continued, “I’m actually working at a bookstore over on Braxton Avenue now. I really like my new boss. I’ve never really done retail before, but I get to work around books again, so it’s great. I’ve sort of moved on to another phase of my life. A phase that does not include Story Time and sock puppets.”
Adam chuckled, winking his dimples at me. “You should keep your options open. You never know what might come up.”
Like a bullet wound and an old guy willing to gnaw on my neck to save my life. That was a surprise. At the thought of Gabriel, I felt a little twinge of guilt. It felt very wrong to do anything even remotely resembling flirting. And even worse when Adam blurted, “It’s been—I—I’d like to—would you like to meet up for coffee sometime?”
Well, there went a bigger twinge.
I did a bit of a double-take, sure I’d heard him wrong. “I’m sorry, could you repeat what you just said?”
“Coffee.” He laughed. “Would you like to have a cup of coffee sometime? Catch up, talk about old times, share embarrassing memories, that sort of thing.”
“You mean like when I used to follow you around at middle-school dances, trying to work up the nerve to ask you to slow dance to ‘End of the Road’? Oh, crap. That was out loud. I have to stop doing that.”
“Don’t worry.” Adam laughed. “It’s kind of flattering.”
I laughed, too, but more as a defense mechanism than out of actual amusement.
“So, coffee?” Adam asked pointedly. “Yes?”
There it was, everything I’d wanted as a human laid out on a platter before me. If you’d asked me when I was a teenager, “What would fulfill every romantic hope and dream in your obsessive adolescent heart?” Adam Morrow asking me out would do it. As much as I’d tried to embrace my vampire lifestyle, it was difficult to let that go. It actually pained me when I had to say, “I appreciate the offer, but I’m seeing someone.”
Adam clearly wasn’t used to being turned down. It took him just as long to process the fact that I’d said no as it did for me to realize that him asking me out wasn’t an auditory hallucination.
He finally said, “Well, you can’t blame a guy for trying. I’ll see you around, Jane.”
After watching a deflated Adam making his way through the funeral crowd, I busied myself gathering dirty plates and forks. I’d made it halfway to the kitchen when a sharp poke to my side made me squeal and fling cutlery. Panic and my vampire reflexes had me plucking the falling pieces out of the air.
“Fast hands,” said my uncle Junior, the one who finds sneaking up behind me and startling me the height of hilarity.
“That just gets funnier and funnier every time you do it,” I retorted, poking through his paunch at his ribs.
“Aw, honey, he doesn’t know any better,” Uncle Paul said, shaking his head. “Mama dropped him a lot when he was baby.”
Paul and Junior were Dad’s brothers. I liked both of them, but when I was growing up, they were always so busy with their big, strapping sons, Dwight and Oscar. And they actually managed to move a whopping forty-five minutes away from Half-Moon Hollow, so I didn’t see them except around holidays.
“How’s my shortcake?” Uncle Paul asked.
“You’re seven feet tall, everyone’s shorter than you,” I said, kissing his cheek and following our usual “comedy” routine. “Just wait until old age catches up with you, we’ll see who laughs last.”
“Your mama told us you’ve had some health problems,” said Uncle Junior, who hugged me hard enough to crack mortal ribs.
“I guess you could call it that,” I said, suspicious thoughts beginning to churn in my brain.
“Those deer ticks are everywhere,” Paul said, clucking and shaking his head. “That’s why I duct-tape my pants legs around my socks when I go turkey hunting.”
Had I accidentally walked into a French film? It was as if they were having a totally different conversation. “Yeah …”
“But there are treatments nowadays, aren’t there?” Junior asked. “It’s not supposed to affect your life span or anything, is it?”
“No, quite the opposite,” I muttered.
“That’s great, sweetie,” he said, chucking me under the chin. “I’d hate to think of my niece keeling over from Lyme disease.”
Lyme disease?
“Lyme disease?” I thought it bore repeating outside my head.
“You just let us know if you need anything,” Uncle Junior said. “If those doctors don’t treat you right, we’ll kick their asses.”
“You know, most of our conversations end that way,” I noted.
“And we always mean it,” Uncle Paul assured me. “Now we’re going to say hi to your grandma and then give your dad a hard time.”
I turned and zeroed in on a woman simultaneously serving coffee and simpering. Mama. “I’ll see y’all later.”
I stormed as quietly and subtly as possible across the room. Daddy saw “that” look on my face, caught my arm, and pulled me to a quiet corner. “Honey, whatever you’re about to say to your mama, I’m sure she deserves it, but this is a funeral. Bob’s family, at least, deserves our respect.”
“Daddy, as the only sane member of my family, I love you and respect your opinion. That’s why I’m going to address the situation quietly and calmly in a nice private corner, where I will not make a scene …” The eerily calm tone got Daddy to release my arm before he heard me say, “While I slowly choke the breath from her body.”
By the time he called, “Jane!” in a warning tone, I had already grabbed Mama from a gaggle of tutting church ladies and dragged her into an alcove. “Lyme disease, Mama? Really?”
“What?” Mama asked, the picture of innocence.
“You told the uncles I have Lyme disease!”
“I told them you’d had some health issues,” she spluttered. “They just assumed it was Lyme disease.”
“No one assumes you have Lyme disease,” I whispered. “How do you just assume Lyme disease? I know this hasn’t been easy for you, Mama. I know you’re embarrassed that I’m different. I know it took you months to work up the nerve to be around me without being afraid or ashamed.”
“I’m not ashamed of you,” Mama insisted. “It’s just that everyone makes these assumptions about me and your daddy. I know it’s not true, but it’s so difficult knowing that people are looking at me and judging and whispering.”
“But it’s not even like this makes me the most scandalous member of the family. I’m bothered by the fact that Junie manages to pick up singles without using her hands while she performs at the Booby Hatch. But do I say anything? No.”
It was at that moment that I realized that we were standing next to a podium. A podium with a mic on it. A mic that was on.
Crap.
We turned to find most of the bereaved watching us, horrified. And my cousin Junie didn’t look thrilled with me, either.