The Funeral Makers Read Free Page B

inspecting the damage done to the seam in her pants.
    â€œâ€˜Oh, Mama’ what?”
    â€œHaven’t you ever been young?” Amy Joy pulled a thread and it snapped.
    â€œYes, I have been young, but I don’t think Chester Gifford ever was. That man was in trouble when he was a toddler.”
    Amy Joy took two slices of bread from the bread box and popped them into the toaster. She found some homemade rhubarb sauce in the refrigerator and unscrewed the cap. She poured it directly from the jar to her plate, then licked the drippage with her tongue. She waited for the toast.
    â€œI don’t believe it,” said Sicily. “I don’t believe you would resort to that fattening stuff after our mother-daughter talk the other day about diets.”
    The toast popped, Amy Joy buttered each slice, then spooned rhubarb onto one. She bit into the combination.
    â€œAll right, Amy Joy,” said Sicily, putting on her sweater and shouldering the strap of her purse. She pointed to Marge’s room.
    â€œI’ve got a sister in that room dying of beriberi. And I leave you here to see to her last needs, and instead you’re gadding about the backyard with Chester Gifford.”
    Amy Joy finished the first toast and smeared the second with rhubarb.
    â€œLet me tell you how things stand.” Sicily had found her car keys and was twirling them in her right hand, like they were an oriental weapon. “If you so much as glance at Chester Gifford again, your father will hear of it. And you know what that means, don’t you?”
    â€œYeah,” said Amy Joy.
    Sicily opened the front door. She had the evening paper in her hand to take home and read after a long soak in the tub. Before she closed the door behind her, she looked back at Amy Joy, who had pulled the soggy tissue from her face and was trying to shake it from her fingers and into the trash can.
    â€œIf you spoil this funeral for me, Amy Joy Lawler, I will no longer be your mother. Do you understand?”
    â€œI guess,” said Amy Joy.

THE IVY FAMILY COMES TO THE FUNERAL: THE PACKARD AS A HEARSE
    â€œI sincerely believe that the best decision I ever made in my life was the day I bought the Packard.”
    â€”Junior to His Father, 1958
    At fifty, Pearl McKinnon Ivy was the middle child of Ralph C. McKinnon’s three daughters. She left home at the age of sixteen to attend the Portland School of Hair Styling in Portland, Maine. It was a long way from Mattagash, socially and geographically, and it was there that she met and became engaged to Marvin Ivy, a law student and aspiring politician. Pearl married him, thinking she had bagged a future lawyer, not to mention the possibilities of a governor or, when she dared to think of it, a president of the United States. But Marvin’s acumen was not capable of carrying such a strict academic load, and he dropped out in his second year, before he flunked out. They had been married only five months and Pearl was eight weeks pregnant with their first child. She suffered a nervous breakdown the day Marvin came home and threw his expensive law books, one by one, into the incinerator in the basement. Standing on the stairs and watching what she felt was a deranged man and not a future president, Pearl said later that all she remembered was a faint buzzing, as though a swarm of bees had flown through her head. For two days, she insisted she had gone blind. That she could only see black . It was the first nervous breakdown to be recorded in the McKinnon family. At least Pearl said it was a nervous breakdown, and never moved from her bed for three months, except to go to the bathroom. The day that the community center burned down, she insisted that Marvin move her to a chair by the window. With her feet on a footstool, she spent the afternoon chain-smoking as she watched the commotion of fire trucks and ambulances. Marvin thought it would jolt her back into the joys of living, but