Sweet Life Read Free Page A

forever.
    Death at last dragged him away in early October while Angie dozed in a chair. A nurse shook her awake. When she opened her eyes, she knew and grabbed the nurse’s wrist. The nurse said I’m sorry , taking the words right out of Angie’s mouth.
    The manager of the bank, who once employed Bert and now managed his investments, called and declared how the entire staff stood behind her in her loss. He would personally attend the funeral, provided it didn’t take place on Saturday.
    Angie’s sister, Bernice, and her husband, Michael, went along to help with the funeral arrangements. Bernice took charge, filling the vacuum of Angie’s silence while Michael tapped his knee with his wide fingers and stared out the window.
    Bert’s private nickname for him had been “Mick Mouse.” Not because of his long
    nose and furry moustache or because of his placid nature, but because he didn’t have enough gumption to risk taking out a loan and starting his own carpentry business. Bert’s late father had had not only enough gumption to manage his own cab company, but enough to later shoot himself after it went into receivership.
    Johnny, the only one left in Bert’s family, owned a bakeshop in Scotland. He flew in from Glasgow the day before the funeral, spending the night with Michael and Bernice. This was his second trip to Vancouver Island, the first being for his brother’s wedding when Angie was a shy and reserved nineteen-year-old. Knowing little of her at the time and too much about Bert, Johnny decided their marriage wouldn’t last beyond three years. It embarrassed him to hear Bert flaunt the thirteen-year difference between his and Angie’s ages, see him preen like a Boy Scout who’d earned a merit badge.
    Even during his impending demise, Bert had taken charge. A lapsed Presbyterian, he forbade any clergy, prayers or hymns during his funeral. His coffin would remain closed; the last glimpse anyone would have of him would be a photograph: a healthy man in his prime, smart in a suit and tartan tie.
    During the funeral Angie furtively reached behind to scratch through the stiff, black dress Bernice had bought for her. Bernice used a steady supply of tissues and pushed one at Angie, who accepted it with the implied rebuke: Why haven’t you cried, what’s the matter with you? Angie twisted the scrap in her hand and forced herself to listen to the eulogy.
    “…made his home on Vancouver Island...successful….”
    The monotonous drone snaked across her shoulders. She wasn’t aware of her surroundings again until a locally famous tenor started on Danny Boy . Johnny wept unabashedly while Angie stared at his beefy hands resting across the red and green kilt. She imagined those hands squeezing bread dough; the way Bert’s hands had squeezed commission cheques.
    She could ask Johnny to take her to Scotland with him. She saw herself in a white apron selling shortbread and at twilight, walking down a cobblestone street to her own honeysuckled cottage. If she rushed home now and packed a suitcase, she’d be ready in time. After all, what would she be leaving? A house, too large for one person, and a sister, also too large.
    After the funeral the mourners huddled beneath umbrellas in the cemetery while a cuffing wind flung sporadic rain against their legs. A stiff spray of red roses covered the casket; the sodden ends of its long ribbons sputtered against the wood. Michael fiddled with a tape recorder because the man hired to play the bagpipes had come down with the flu and had sent a tape. The forlorn notes of the absent bagpipe coiled about Angie’s legs and when she tottered, Johnny steadied her with one hand under her arm.
    “I could feel my brother’s spirit rush past me on its way to heaven,” he averred later by the coffee urn at the reception.
    Angie, who found her own cup and saucer heavy, didn’t think to remind him of Bert’s apostasy.
    Johnny looked down at her, the wee mite he likely wouldn’t see