Organ music swelled sweetly around the flower-scented sanctuary. Fair Oaks First United Methodist Church was packed to the rafters. Mary Bliss sat in the front row, clasping Erin’s hand tight in hers. Erin stared straight ahead. On the other side of Erin, they’d placed Eula’s wheelchair in the aisle. She was half turned in the wheelchair, her head whipping back and forth as she watched people filing into the church, packing the old golden oak pews.
Her eyes fixed on two teenaged girls in blue jeans and halter tops who seated themselves across the aisle. Mary Bliss recognized one of the girls as Erin’s friend Jessica.
Eula glared at them with undisguised malice. “Well, I never,” the old lady said in a loud voice. “Pants at a church funeral. And titties flopping around for all the world to see. Right here in front of God and everybody.”
“Meemaw,” Erin hissed. “Stop! They’ll hear you.”
“Good,” Eula said, smacking her lips with satisfaction. “I’ve got a lot more they need to hear.”
Katharine sat on the other side of Mary Bliss. “I thought you said she’d been sedated,” she whispered.
Mary Bliss just shook her head. She’d spent most of the past two days tussling and fussing with Eula and Erin, and she was so exhausted that her body ached. Up until an hour before the service was scheduled to begin, Erin had flatly refused to attend.
“I’m not going,” she’d told her mother when informed of the arrangements. “I don’t believe in God. And Daddy hated funerals. You know he did. This whole thing’s a farce.”
It had been Josh who’d changed Erin’s mind. He and Randy had come over to the house the night before. Josh had seen the desperation in Mary Bliss’s eyes as Erin held forth on the hypocrisy of organized religion, and how sick and twisted almost everybody in Fair Oaks was.
“Look,” Josh had said, cleaning the lenses of his glasses on the hem of his shirt, “it’s something you do, okay? I mean, you know there’s no Santa Claus, but you still open presents on Christmas morning, right? And you know there’s no boogeyman hanging around on Halloween, but you still dress up and go to parties and trick-or-treat, right?”
“I haven’t trick-or-treated since I was twelve,” Erin said, her lips pressed together in disapproval—or denial.
“You know what I mean,” Josh said, persisting. “Like, when my granddad died, I didn’t want to go to that funeral. It was in this little church down in the boonies, and I didn’t know anybody, and it wasn’t even air-conditioned. But I went because my mom and my gramma wanted me to. And it wasn’t so bad.”
Erin had rolled her eyes. “Not so bad? It’ll be a freak show!” But Friday morning, Erin had appeared in the kitchen, wearing makeup, a flowered sundress, and flip-flops.
“I’m not changing my clothes,” she said defiantly when Mary Bliss greeted her.
“I’m not asking you to,” Mary Bliss said. “I think you look very nice.” Secretly, she thought her daughter’s outfit more appropriate for a day at the beach, but at this point she was ready for any compromise that might keep the peace with her daughter.
“And I’m not getting up and saying anything about Daddy,” Erin said. Her lower lip quivered. “It’s private. I won’t talk about him to all those freaky old people.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to give a eulogy,” Mary Bliss said, secretly relieved. “I’m not going to speak either. We’ll let Dr. Neely do the talking. Is that all right?”
“I guess,” Erin said. She flicked her hair over her shoulder. “I’ll see you at church. Eleven? Right?”
“Right,” Mary Bliss said. She had hoped Erin would go with her to pick Eula up from the nursing home, but again, compromise was the spirit of the day.
The scene at the nursing home had been another kind of nightmare. Eula was dressed and ready when Mary Bliss arrived. She wore a powder-blue dress, pearls that had yellowed with age, and a matching powder-blue turban fastened with a large rhinestone brooch.
“Meemaw,” Mary Bliss said politely. “How nice you look.”
“I see you staring at my hat,” Eula said. “That slanty-eyed girl in the beauty shop gave me a perm and burned the daylights out of my hair. It’s ruint. Just ruint. And don’t think I paid her, either. I want you to call up the immigration office and report her. Have her green card revoked.”
Yun Lee was the Korean-American woman who ran the one-chair beauty shop at Fair Oaks Assisted Living Facility. She was in her fifties and had been born and lived in Atlanta her whole life. She considered her clientele of elderly ladies as her personal responsibility in life, charging only twenty-five dollars for hair color, set, and comb-out, an unheard-of price in Atlanta. And Eula had been trying to have her deported since she’d first laid eyes on her.
“I’m sure your hair will be fine,” Mary Bliss said, patting her hand. “How are you feeling today?”
“Awful,” Eula said promptly. “My bowels are locked up tight. Haven’t had a good sit-down since you-know-when.”
“What does the doctor say?”
“Give me all kinda pills and nasty-tasting medicine. And none of it works. Look at this,” Eula said, thumping her belly. “I’m swelled up like a toad. Cramps and gas something awful. Every minute it feels like I might just explode.”
Mary Bliss stepped away from the wheelchair, in the off chance that Eula was right. “Maybe you should just stay in today,” she said uneasily. “Get some rest. Maybe eat some bran flakes.”
“And have everybody in town talking about me?” Eula’s eyes flashed. She’d lost so much weight, her dentures seemed to float loose in her jaws. “Forget it, sister,” she snapped. “I’m ready and I’m going. And don’t think I don’t intend to tell everybody I see that my son Parker McGowan is alive and breathing.”
“Oh, Meemaw,” Mary Bliss said. She felt helpless. Should she really just walk out and leave her mother-in-law here at the nursing home?
Just then the door to Eula’s room opened. Lillian King sailed in with a cart full of medications.
“Hello there, ladies,” she sang out. She seemed stunned to see Eula up and dressed.
“Well, what have we here?” she asked, feigning confusion. “Where have you fashionable ladies hidden my patient, Mrs. Eula McGowan? All I see are two beautiful women dressed up for a Beverly Hills movie premiere.”
“It’s me, Eula, you old fool,” Eula said, her dentures clicking. “I’ve got burnt hair and locked bowels and it’s all her fault.” She jerked a thumb in Mary Bliss’s general direction. “I’m all decked out like this because I’m going to a funeral for my son who ain’t even dead. This little missy here thinks she can pull the wool over my eyes, but she’s got another think coming, I can tell you.”
Lillian King exchanged a look with Mary Bliss. “Now, Eula,” she said, her voice soothing. “We know you miss your son something awful. But what you have to remember is that he’s in a better place right now. Don’t think of him as dead. Think of him as being in a better place.”
“He’s in a better place all right,” Eula said, wheeling her chair toward the open door. “And it’s not at the bottom of the sea in Mexico. He’s on some island somewhere, drinking mai-tais and whooping it up with girls who are lots younger and prettier than Miss Ice-Britches here.”
Lillian King tsk-tsked.
Mary Bliss just shrugged. “Can you give her anything for the constipation?”
“Maybe a dose of dynamite,” the nurse said. “It’s all in her head, of course. She has her little movement at eight A. M. every day, like clockwork. But she’s been real agitated since she got the news about her son. I was just coming in to give her a little something for the anxiety.”
“She’s being sedated and she’s still this hostile?”
“Oh yes,” the nurse said. “This is a good morning for her. Yesterday when I came in, she had managed to dial nine-one-one. She said she was calling the police to tell them her room had been ransacked and her son was being held hostage by slant-eyed terrorists.”
“Good Lord,” Mary Bliss said.
“She’s delusional,” Lillian King said. “We see it all the time.”
“Eula,” she called, stepping out into the hall.
Meemaw’s wheelchair was halfway down the hall, and she was wheeling toward the front lobby like a woman possessed. She stopped when she heard her name.
“Just one moment,” Lillian King said. “I need to give you your laxatives.”
She turned and gave Mary Bliss a broad wink. “Paxil,” she whispered. “We just tell her it’s her laxative.”
“Well, get up here and make it snappy,” Meemaw said. “The Women’s Circle is having lunch in the church parlor after the show, and I don’t want to miss dessert.”
Dr. Neely had promised a short but touching service. The church organist, William Isler, had asked Mary Bliss for suggestions, but she’d been so distracted, she’d asked him to pick the music.
Her shoulders relaxed as she heard the strains of a vaguely familiar Bach piece. “Sheep May Safely Graze,” she thought, nodding with approval. She glanced over at Erin, squeezed her hand. Erin met her eyes, then looked away.
Eula was busily counting the number of people in the church. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine,” she said, nodding as she ticked off the numbers. Mary Bliss turned to her and made a shushing noise, putting her fingers to her lips.
“That’s the president of the Griffin Bank and Trust,” she informed Mary Bliss, pointing to a white-haired gentleman entering the back of the church. “My son has lots of important friends, you know.”
“I know,” Mary Bliss whispered. “But we’re in church. I think we need to be respectful.”
“Who cares what you think?” Eula said. “That woman with him, she’s his second wife. Used to be his secretary, ’til the first wife caught ’em diddling in the bank vault.”
Mary Bliss heard titters of laughter in the row behind them, and discreet coughing.
Katharine leaned in close to Mary Bliss. “What time do you think those drugs are gonna kick in on her?”
“Pray for me,” Mary Bliss whispered back.
Mr. Isler segued easily into another piece Mary Bliss recognized, a choral piece from Handel. “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.”
“Isn’t this nice?” Mary Bliss asked, trying to get Erin to respond to something. Since her outburst the night Mary Bliss had found her on the soccer field, her daughter had been more distant than ever, leaving Mary Bliss to miss even their fights.
“Groovy,” Erin said. She gave an exaggerated sigh. “I just want to get this over with.”
Dr. Neely drifted up to the lectern and cleared his throat, and the music gradually softened and then stopped.
“Parker McGowan is not gone,” he said, his voice booming through the sanctuary.
“See?” Eula said, digging an elbow into Mary Bliss’s side. “Even that pie-faced preacher man knows my son’s not dead.”
Another barely repressed laugh came from behind her. Mary Bliss wished fervently right then that either she or Eula were the one being eulogized.
She allowed herself a tiny, sideways glance to see who was getting such a laugh out of Eula, and when she saw the source, she thought she could feel her blood freeze.
That man again. Matt Hayslip. He was right here, at Parker’s funeral, wearing a navy-blue suit and a somber expression. Mary Bliss sat up straight, held her head high, to keep from throwing up.
“Parker McGowan is in the company of angels,” Dr. Neely continued. “So although we mourn his loss amongst us, today we gather to celebrate what his life has meant to all of us.”
The pastor’s voice was loud but soothing. He spoke of Parker’s dedication to family, his commitment to business and community. Eula’s head nodded repeatedly, then sank onto her chest. When she snored softly, Erin stared, then grinned for the first time in days.
“Thank God for the miracle of modern pharmaceuticals,” Katharine whispered.