Doing It at the Dixie Dew Read Free Page A

the linen closet.
    Miss Lavinia wasn’t in bed. The room seemed to be empty. I noticed the window was open and my new lace curtains getting damp from the blowing rain. I ran to close the window and almost tripped over Miss Lavinia. She lay in a twisted lump of pink satin between the bed and the white wicker desk, one arm under and one arm out, a piece of paper nearby. The bouquet of lilacs, white tulips and Mama Alice’s parsley I’d used for greenery was overturned and scattered across the floor. Miss Lavinia’s satin slippers stood beside the bed and her matching robe lay across a chair. Her book and glasses were on the bedside table.
    I touched her shoulder, a shoulder so cold I felt it through the fabric. “Oh.” I pulled back.
    Ida Plum reached around me, took Miss Lavinia’s lace-covered wrist and felt for a pulse. “None,” she said. “Better call nine-one-one. They’ll get Eikenberry’s.”
    The funeral home? Oh God, I thought, Oh … my … God.
    â€œThe phone.” Ida Plum put both hands on my shoulders, turned me around and marched me from the room, aimed me toward the stairs. Then she closed Miss Lavinia’s bedroom door, locked it tight, but not before I’d grabbed the piece of paper off the floor and shoved it in my pocket. I had even started to pick up the flowers before Ida Plum pulled me away. Some things you just do without thinking. It’s like automatic pilot takes over. Then someone reminds you where you are and what has happened.
    In the end, Ida Plum was the one to call 9ll. I stood in the kitchen shivering like a New England winter.
    I pulled the paper from my pocket and read two words scribbled in Miss Lavinia’s handwriting scrawled haphazardly across the page. “That is…” That is what? I asked. What?
    I heard the MedAlert leave the fire station, wailing. The wailing got closer and louder and my grandmother’s expression “loud enough to wake the dead” kept playing in my mind.
    Except nothing would ever wake Miss Lavinia again.

Chapter Two
    â€œThis town loves a funeral,” I said. In the years I’d been away I’d forgotten exactly how much a funeral was an occasion in Littleboro. The funeral home, where the “viewing” took place, was a social gathering and the line of cars down Main Street was a status symbol. “Cars were parked clear down to the schoolhouse,” or, “Honey, I stood in line for over an hour. I’ve never seen such a crowd,” people said at the beauty shop and grocery store. Somehow I couldn’t quite see that sort of picture for Miss Lavinia Lovingood. It was hard to imagine who would be at her viewing or funeral.
    My grandmother, Margaret Alice McKenzie, who raised me, used to say this town went all out for a funeral. Every weekend come pouring rain, blasting sunshine or icy-fingered sleet, there’s somebody out on the bypass selling artificial funeral wreaths. Wreaths with every color flower nature never made and ribbons that accuse or get to your guilt with sayings like “Remember Mama” or “Daddy, Gone but Not Forgotten” or “We Love You, Grandpa.” I try to look the other way as I drive by, though there’s not a ribbon that spells out my sins or advertises my guilt. Not one “Welcome Home, Prodigal Daughter” in the bunch.
    Ida Plum laid a stack of sheets on the kitchen counter, cotton sheets, line dried, ironed. They smelled smooth and old-fashioned and as if somebody cared, a sweet-smelling bed. Had Miss Lavinia even noticed? Had it been a quick death? I felt a little chill remembering and wrapped my arms around myself.
    â€œWould you look at all the cakes?” Scott stood at my kitchen table. “There’s six layer cakes and two pound cakes.” He counted like a child eyeing a picnic. Scott had become, by default, my contractor/go-to guy/general-knowledge person about