ON THE DAY OF THE CREMATION she and Aileen and Franklin and the funeral director were the only people present.
There had been a conversation at the undertaker’s about how the children should be clothed. The choice was hers, the funeral director had said. He recommended the usual white shifts. Most corpses were clothed that way. Good Indian cotton cloth, cut loosely and buttoned at the back like hospital gowns.
“Really? My grandmother was fully dressed, and so was my father.”
“Not for cremation. I took the liberty to look up the history and both were full burials, and they were dressed for a viewing.”
“Yes. You’re right.”
He waited a moment, then said, “So. White gowns?”
She agreed, and he wrote that down.
“And on their feet?” she said.
He looked up from his clipboard. “Barefoot is customary, Mrs. Bradley. What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. But barefoot?”
“Well, I suppose…I suppose we could do white socks. Would that be all right?”
And she nodded.
“White socks, then, Mrs. Bradley. I’ll make a note of that.”
Later in the sample room she’d chosen medium trim with acanthus leaves and bevelled edges on a black plywood coffin, and she’d bought black picture frames and in them mounted the drawings of the children as they had looked in life.
Now the first coffin lay ready on the conveyor belt, and she and Aileen and Franklin sat in the front pew in the small chapel at the crematorium. On the coffins lay the flowers that she’d bought at the Save-Easy that morning. The conveyor belt ended at a purple velvet curtain, and the pictures of the children stood next to a vase with more flowers on a small table to one side of that curtain. The second coffin lay ready on trestles against a wall.
That day at the office the funeral director had said it was not often that they fired two coffins at once. Complete incineration took a while, and they might wish to be present only for the symbolic moments of the first one. Until they saw the flames, he said, and then the gate and curtain would be closed again and the burners turned up to full power.
Now in his black suit and grey vest and grey gloves he stood ready at a panel of buttons. He asked if anyone wished to say a few words, and Aileen looked at her. She shook her head, but then she stood up and walked up to the coffins one by one and placed a bare hand on them and stood for a moment.
When she was back in her pew the funeral director turned to the panel and pushed the first button. The lights dimmed and the purple curtain moved aside and the furnace door opened. The coffin began to move forward, and inside the furnace a moving steel grid took over. When the coffin had come to rest, blue gas flames could be seen, and then the flames grew. In the heat the paint blistered and curled, and moments later the wood itself caught fire and soon all they could see were flames.
The furnace door slid shut and the curtain before it, and a great roaring sound came from within. They listened to the flames for a while, and when the house lights came back up they rose and stepped out of the pew. At the chapel entrance the funeral director had taken off his gloves and he shook their hands.
They drove home to Sweetbarry in silence. The clouds to nor’east had piled up again, heavy and black. Purple at the base, as if squeezed and condensed under the pressure of all the weight above. Gusts of wind and spits of rain against the windshield.
She could see Franklin in the rear-view mirror, in an old wool suit, from when he was a much younger man, and a white shirt and black tie. Clean-shaven and with a fresh haircut that showed white skin on his neck. He nodded at her in the mirror.
They drove on. A misty, grey day. Silver days, her father used to call them. Along the way, tall reeds in the bracken ponds lay beaten flat, and rags of foam lifted off the water and sailed across the road.
An hour later she and Franklin sat in Aileen’s kitchen, and Aileen had made coffee for them. The window was open a crack because the entire house smelled strongly of the fermenting blueberry wine.
“How’s the new batch coming?” said Margaret. “It’s rich enough in here to get high on just the fumes.”
“I know. I keep them covered like babes and I’m airing the place out as often as I can. It’ll be up to twelve or thirteen per cent now. Usually it finishes around sixteen. The flavour is great then but it’s pretty dry, and so when it stops working it’s siphoned off and we add a bit of sugar. In the bottle it keeps getting better all the time.”
Out the window against the dark of rocks and evergreens, small snowflakes were drifting by.
“You see that?” said Franklin. “So early. Is Danny out on his rounds?”
“He is. I did tell him to keep his head down and not to take any chances with the boat. To stay away from John Patrick.”
Just then a police car pulled up, and Sullivan climbed out and put on his uniform cap.
“Oh-oh,” said Aileen. “I don’t like seeing that boy show up like that.”
He came up the stoop and walked past the kitchen window. The door opened and then from the little hallway he called, “Hello? Mrs. McInnis?”
“In the kitchen, Sergeant.”
He came in with his cap off, and he looked at them in their chairs with their mugs on the table. He raised his nose to the alcohol fumes but said nothing.
“Take a seat, Sergeant,” said Aileen. “Want some coffee?”
He shook his head and remained standing. He looked away from Aileen, over at Margaret.
“Mrs. Bradley, I have an urgent message for you. I went to your house first but there was no one there. Inspector Sorensen wants you to know that the parents of the dead kids have come forward. The inspector wants you to stop everything you’re doing in connection with the case. Every last thing, ma’am. Right away. And he’s asking you to be ready to take his phone call at noon today at your number.”
She stood in her bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet and took out the pills. She uncapped the bottles and slid out one of the antianxiety pills and one of the new stronger codeines. She held them ready in her fingers but then put them down on the glass shelf.
He called at exactly twelve o’clock.
“I heard,” she said. “You found the parents. Of both of them?”
“There’s only one set of parents. The kids were brother and sister.”
“Brother and sister.”
“Yes. That’s one test we didn’t do. The truth is, I didn’t think of it. Anyway, they are here now. Somebody, I think a teacher, saw the posted pictures at a police station in Mexico and recognized them. The parents speak English quite well. I understand you’ve had the bodies picked up. Where are they now, so the parents can go and view them?”
“But it’s too late for that! They’ve been cremated.”
There was silence on the line.
“Already,” he said then. “That’s very unfortunate. They wanted to take them home.”
She felt dizzy for a moment. “Well, I…there were public health regulations. Once they were out of refrigeration. The funeral is on Tuesday.”
“Maybe not. You may need to cancel it. Can you come into the city and talk to the parents? Tell them how it happened. Your part in it. Explain about the funeral. Do you have the ashes?”
She heard what he was saying but she was far away, pressing her fingers to her eyebrow.
“Mrs. Bradley?”
“Can I call you back on this? I’ll call you back…”
She put the receiver down on the table and walked into the bathroom and put both pills in her mouth. Bit on them and moved the crumbs under her tongue and then walked into the living room and sat down on the sofa, leaning forward with her eyes closed and her face in her cupped hands.
At some point she could hear sounds in the kitchen, and when she turned there was Aileen walking her way with a folded damp cloth.
“I called but there was always just the busy signal,” said Aileen. “So I came over. Lean back and let’s put this on your forehead. Let me help you, Margaret.”
Three hours later she felt better. She was in her car, driving into the city. Rather than the highway, she took the old coastal route through the small towns. Chester, East River, and the peninsular route from there, the ocean always to her right, through Blandford and Bayswater and Fox Point and Black Point and Upper Tantallon, and on to the city.
She checked into the Westin and sat for a while on the side of the bed with her hands in her lap. It was six-thirty on Saturday evening. Out the window it was getting dark. She could see the reflection of the room, the bed and the lamp on the side table. Herself sitting there, all in black except for the grey blouse. Lights coming on everywhere, pinpoints of light.
When she’d made the decision, she took the elevator two floors up and walked along the hallway. In front of their door she raised her hand and knocked.
Voices from inside, then the door was opened by a man in a black suit and tie. She said her name and the man nodded and motioned her into the room. She could see a woman lying on the bed, propped up by a pillow against the headboard. She wore a long black dress, and as Margaret stepped into the room the woman drew a black veil down over her head and face. On a small white plate on the side table next to the only chair in the room, a candle was burning.
She had brought the framed drawings of the children, and she placed them on the bed and reached to touch the woman’s hand but the woman moved her hand away.
The man said something softly to her in Spanish but the woman ignored him.
They stood awkwardly for a moment, and then the man offered his hand and shook hers and pointed at the chair.
He said, “My wife, Anna, the children’s mother, she is in very mourning. We both are.” He looked at the woman and again said a few words in Spanish.
“She is in very mourning,” he said again to Margaret. “She requests to be excused because a large part of her is not here in this room.”
He studied the small black bowtie in Margaret’s lapel and said something else to the woman. She whispered some words and held out her hand for the pictures, and the man passed them to her. He sat down on the side of the bed with his hands on his black trouser knees. They were strong, well-shaped hands, good hands, much like Jack’s.
The woman looked at the pictures through her veil for a long time while no one spoke. Then she put them down by her side. For a while they could hear her weeping. She sat with her glasses in one hand and with the other using a tissue behind the veil.
“Their names were Hugo and Carmensita,” said the man. “They were young, with so much still to learn about this world. Which is a treacherous world, unforgiving of mistakes and weakness. Even in the case of so much innocence.”
“Yes, it is,” said Margaret. “I don’t know where to begin. The inspector has told you, yes? About the cremation and the planned funeral service?”
The woman spoke some words in Spanish to the man, and he nodded slowly and looked at Margaret.
He said, “Anna wants to know why you are wearing a brazal de luto.”
“Mourning ribbon,” said the woman, and he repeated those words.
Margaret put her hand to her lapel and said, “It is for my son. He died in January of this year. He was in training to become a military pilot.”
“A soldier,” said the woman. “In which war?”
“He died in a peacekeeping mission.”
“A peacekeeping mission.”
“Yes.”
The man and the woman sat waiting for her to go on, but she did not. After a while the man stood up from the bed and went into the bathroom. He came back with a glass of water, and he raised it and wiped the bottom with his hand and then set it carefully on the low table next to Margaret’s chair.
He returned to the side of the bed and sat again with his hands on his knees. The woman now reached and folded up her veil. She had a strong, pale face and black hair pulled back and twisted forward over one shoulder.
“Please tell us about our children,” she said. “The inspector said only what was in the police report. And that they found us too late, and that you were planning a funeral. Please tell us more. For example, why the cremación.”
When she had described and explained as best she could, there was a lengthy silence. The woman had drawn the veil back down over her face, and again she held her glasses in one hand and with the other used a tissue.
Margaret stood up and approached the woman on the bed and offered her hand again. The woman lifted the veil and put on her glasses and took Margaret’s hand. Then she leaned her head back against the pillow and closed her eyes. She reached blindly for the veil and lowered it again over her face. She spoke some words in Spanish to her husband and he nodded and stood up.
“With your permission, Anna is asking for you please to excuse us now,” he said. “She is very sad today. I am also.”