Arden’s face flushed.
“You’re as red as a cardinal.” Jake winked, nodding toward the bird feeder.
“I think I need some air,” Arden said, rushing off the screened porch, embarrassed.
Jake hesitated, but Lolly said, “Go after her!”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Are you?”
With that, Jake raced out the door. Lolly watched Jake scan the dock and grassy hillsides that rolled to the lake. They were teeming with holiday revelers.
Then, in the distance, Arden rounded the bend of the lake, like a fleeing bat. Jake zipped after her.
“What’s going on?” he huffed, gently grabbing Arden by the arm.
“My mother has always had this way of embarrassing me,” she said, turning, her cheeks flushed, her eyes wide. That’s when Jake could tell she had been crying.
“I’m sorry,” he said in his low voice. “I don’t think she means to embarrass you. I think she just wants to shake you up a bit because she cares.”
“Do I need shaking?” Arden asked, taking off in a hurry once again.
“Maybe,” Jake said. “Do you?”
Arden stopped. “Maybe I do,” she conceded.
“Well, your mother certainly has a flair for the dramatic,” Jake said, gesturing ahead of Arden. When she turned, Arden could see the chapel-turned-playhouse—now warped, the doors aged to a faded red, a birch cross still emerging from the roof—standing in front of the lake.
Jake took Arden’s hand and led her into the chapel, the two stooping to enter. Once inside, he led her to a front pew, where they took a seat and stared out the front windows.
“Do you think she’s telling the truth about this place?” Arden asked.
“Do you?”
“Please don’t answer a question with a question,” Arden replied. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just feel a little overwhelmed.”
“I do think she’s telling the truth,” he said, putting his arm around her back to calm her. “But now I get to ask you a question: Do you pray?”
“No,” Arden said.
“Why?”
“What’s the point in praying to something that isn’t there?”
Jake looked closely at Arden, and then out the side window, to the lake shimmering beyond. “Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn’t there, and finding it.”
Arden cocked her head.
“Oscar Wilde,” Jake said. “Even a literate cynic believed.”
A breeze tossed around the delicate flowers planted in the window boxes. “Do you think my mother still plants these boxes?” Arden asked.
“Of course,” Jake said. “She found the black cat.”
Arden stood and raced out the chapel.
“Always on the run!” Jake called.
Before he could exit, he saw Arden’s hand pluck a peony from the window box. By the time he was out of the chapel, Arden had raced halfway around the lake and had already entered the screened porch of the cabin before Jake finally caught up with her. As he entered, Arden was handing the peony to her mother.
“Would you like to decorate graves for Memorial Day, like we did when I was a kid?”
Lolly was touched by Arden’s suggestion, and her tears told her daughter she did.
Later, after Lolly had rested and Jake had left, the three women all put on respectful clothes and sensible heels, packed some Kleenex, American flags, and a slew of fresh flowers they had dug up earlier from Lolly’s garden and they loaded into the Woodie, and began to make their “rounds.”
At Scoops Memorial Cemetery, the three parked under a series of narrow pines that lined the gravel drive. Arden opened the trunk and handed her mother some flowers and her daughter some flags. Arden took a box of Kleenex, and the three began to walk, arms interlocked, until Lolly said, “I think it’s this way.”
“Are you sure?” Arden asked.
The two argued for a few seconds, before they set out over the soft grass, wending their way through headstones—some of which were new, marbled, impressive, while others were worn, cracked concrete.
Cemeteries along the lakeshore of Michigan were not lush, lavish, or large. Graveyards, as they were simply called, were compact and rested on a rolling foothill, a quiet piece of country land next to a pasture, or on the edge of a sandy dune overlooking Lake Michigan. They were not filled with marble headstones. The graveyards and headstones were simple, like the people.
“Here she is!” Lolly said.
MARY FALLORAN
Wife, Mother, Grandmother
Sewer & Adventurer
1884–1971
Lolly bowed her head, reaching her hands out to Arden and Lauren. The three clasped hands and prayed. Lolly nodded to Lauren, who kneeled and planted a tiny American flag by Mary’s grave. Then Lolly bent to the ground on her knees, dug her hands through the wet earth, and planted some peonies. When they were done, Arden handed Kleenexes to Lauren and Lolly.
“Next!” Lolly said, pointing north.
Lauren and Arden helped Lolly stand, and she smiled. As the three walked, arms interlocked like sentinels in a graveyard, Lauren asked, “How long have you been doing this, Grandma?”
“Forever.”