I can only guess who or what my sister is thinking about on our trip to the scene of the crime—probably Daddy and Charlie and chocolate-covered cherries—but when we scoot past one of the graves that’s blanketed in going-away presents on our way over there, what I’m wondering about for the umpteenth time is if I’m being a dope who is ignoring opportunity knocking loudly at my door.
I make an exception when it comes to the boxes of the Stover’s candy that Evelyn Melman leaves once a week on Mr. Lindley’s grave—why the wife of the hardware store owner is sweet on this dead plumber who got burned up in a house fire is one of life’s little mysteries that I wouldn’t mind solving when things die down around here. (Joke!) But if I didn’t have the rule to steal only from people who have and never from people who have not, I could make such a killing at Louie’s Pawn Shop with the parting gifts that grievers leave on the graves of their departed loved ones. Woolly teddy bears in vests, Christmas wreaths with silver bells that I can hear tinkling through the crack in our bedroom window at that time of year, flags waving on the Fourth of July, crocheted afghans during April showers—I guess to warm their departed’s bones—and until recently, many of the tombstones had real gold St. Christopher medals hanging offa them. About the only person I can think of who has left something not so nice on a grave is Mrs. Eunice Hartfield. She propped a laminated picture on the tombstone of her deceased hubby that had a cigarette hole burned into the spot on his chest where his heart should’ve been after she heard at the church knitting circle that her best friend, Mrs. Dorothy Osbourn, was an even best-er friend with Mr. John Hartfield, so I guess that proves the famous saying “Hell hath no fury like a woman scored on” is true once and for all.
And, of course, the other thing I can’t help but think about when my sister and me make our way to Mr. Gilgood’s luxurious mausoleum is that we’re breaking Louise’s #1 Commandment—The Finley Sisters Shalt Not Visit the Cemetery.
Far back as I can remember, our mother hasn’t wanted us to hang out here, but she’s gotten even stricter since the day of our father’s pretend funeral and burial that she wouldn’t let Birdie and me go to. Because no matter how hard the Shore Patrol looked for Daddy’s body after he fell over the side of The High Life the afternoon we went fishing together, they never found him. Not in Lake Michigan, and he never washed up on one of the beaches, either. So that’s why his coffin that got carried out of the hearse by the six men named Paul was full of rocks and not Daddy’s bones.
“Losing your father is a cross the three of us will have to bear, girls, but life goes on. Time heals all wounds,” is the kind of bull hockey that Louise preaches to Birdie and me about every day. “We need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.”
But I guess, like Mr. McGinty taught me, there are times that bull hockey isn’t always bad. “Honesty is the best policy, Tessie, but it’s got no business attending a funeral,” is what he said. That’s because our friend knows that if those sad people who’ve lost their most precious one were told the hopeless truth, which is that once they’re done being numb they’ll start feeling all the time like they got the worst thirst that nothing can quench and know deep inside of themselves that they’re gonna spend every day of the rest of their lives looking for something precious they’re never gonna find, no matter how many times the sun rises and sets, that would be pretty much the same as telling them, You’ll never hear your sweet one’s voice, hug them, and laugh at their jokes again, so why don’t you save yourself a lot of wear and tear and jump into that grave with them and get it over with?
Why doesn’t Louise feel that way?