by Lori Erickson
The drone of well over a hundred voices alive with muffled energy skirmished with a warbled recording of “Amazing Grace.” Finely tailored adults mingled and chatted in small clusters around the large hall. Jewelry sparkled; perfume sometimes danced with, sometimes collided with the aroma of freshly cut flowers. An occasional laugh leapt out of a conversation, and dozens of little dramas played themselves out in the privacy provided by the throng. The gathering could easily have been mistaken for a cocktail party but for three details: the choice of music, the absence of alcohol, and the coffin at the far end of the room.
Ruth had only been to one other funeral, her grandmother’s, which she attended when she was four years old. Now, four years later, she struggled to remember that event, most of it enveloped in a haze and appearing to her only in brief flashes. Her mother cried. The pastor told her, “Nana is with Jesus now.” People hugged. Hands clasped other hands. The air held sadness. None of these impressions bore any resemblance to today’s almost festive affair.
A balding man with a shiny, round face waddled over to the table where Ruth and her mother were signing the guest register and leaned in conspiratorially. “Well, I see you’re here doing your duty, too. What do you think the odds are that the grieving widow will pack up and move back East so we can all enjoy a little peace for a change?”
“I imagine things will quiet down somewhat, but I don’t think she’ll sell. I’m surprised you’re here.” Ruth’s mother handed her daughter the pen then added, “I’m only here because Ruthie wanted to come.”
Ruth carefully signed her name in her best handwriting beneath the many scribblings on the crisp white registry page. Her mother and the man who lived down the street continued their volley of snide remarks and eye-rolling. They ignored Ruth, providing her the opportunity to slip away and explore the crowded room on her own.
Unnoticed by the adults absorbed in their many conversations, Ruth scrutinized the sizeable space collecting and preserving images the way an old woman might select vegetables from her garden to can for winter. Heavy mauve brocade draperies covered the huge windows along two walls of the chamber obliterating any trace of sunlight that might attempt an invasion. No lighting fixtures were visible. Light emerged from hidden sources as if afraid to reveal its origins. Large paintings of landscapes adorned the walls, the simple beauty of nature overpowered by ostentatious hand carved frames.
“Look at her; what an actress,” murmured a woman in a stylish burgundy suit with matching Italian leather pumps and handbag. She and her two companions tried but failed to contain their laughter.
“If she starts to cry, I swear, I’ll vomit,” said the tallest of the three with a voice that crackled like twigs breaking.
“Well, what do you expect her to do at her husband’s funeral for God’s sake,” chirped the brunette with the pearls, “sing ‘Ding Dong the Jerk is Dead’ and fall into the arms of her lawyer?”
“At least that would be honest,” came the dry reply.
Ruth followed the trio’s caustic glances until she spotted the object of their scorn, a threadlike woman draped in a black haute couture dress. The finely clad wisp accepted the outstretched hand of a fellow country club wife and forced a smile as scant and precarious as her spiked heels. She nodded and mouthed a few syllables in response to the offered condolences, but before Ruth could reach her, the widow glanced at her diamond encrusted watch and slithered off into the swarm.
Ruth tried to follow her, weaving through the sea of linen and silk until she caught a glimpse of a familiar face, one she had not expected to see. Jared Pittman, or more precisely his photograph, matted and encased in a simple frame atop a pedestal at the head of his bronze casket. He looked stern and distinguished. Only Ruth saw beyond the façade. She smiled at the image and drew closer.
“I waited for you Saturday. I wanted to buy you an ice cream from the truck to celebrate, and I wanted to give you the card I made. I wanted to tell you a story, too, a funny one like you always tell.” She stopped suddenly, and her bright animated face slowly sank with her heart into a cavernous loneliness. She pressed her palm against the polished bronze box and felt its inflexible chill. Her hand remained there for several minutes, its warmth struggling vainly to penetrate the cold container. “Is there someone you can talk to where you are?”
“Did you know him?” The intruding voice sounded distant although the man stood only steps from Ruth.
She turned and let her hand slide from the casket. She studied the stranger before answering his question. He had large, smooth, tanned hands and a small scar on his chin. Everything about him seemed stiff – his face, his shirt, even his shoe laces. He stood before Ruth rigid and alien until a closer examination of his dark blue eyes revealed a hint of something familiar.
“He’s my friend,” said Ruth, not yet aware that a change of tense is customary when speaking of the dead. “Is he your friend, too?”
“No,” was the stranger’s blunt answer. He looked into the round brown eyes of the child before him and his face hardened even more. With a half laugh, he continued flatly, “I’m just his son.”
The stranger’s expression, detached and dismal, conjured a snapshot from Ruth’s memory. She had seen that same expression the first time she encountered Jared Pittman sitting alone on a bench feeding the ducks in Willow Park. Ruth smiled at Jared Pittman’s son secure in her faith that his harshness would dissolve as his father’s had. The son, secure only in his bitter resentment, removed a printed notice from his pocket. Without looking at it, he crumpled it and let it fall to the floor. Then, Jared Pittman’s son brushed past Ruth and the framed picture of his father without looking at them either.
Ruth retrieved the discarded paper and attempted to straighten it. The name of her departed friend was embossed on the front of the ivory-colored folded page above the raised image of a rose. Inside was a smaller version of the photograph displayed by the coffin and a long paragraph enumerating facts about the deceased’s life and accomplishments, none of which were familiar to Ruth. Nowhere was there mention of his preference for chocolate ice cream over vanilla or strawberry. The prose gave no insight into the expansive imagination that created hilarious stories of dragons, clowns, and talking schoolbooks. No statement credited the power of his laughter with conquering the loneliness of a child without playmates. Phrases like “Executive Vice-President,” “multi-billion-dollar mergers,” “Fortune 500 company,” and “international business ventures” lined the page like an iron gate obscuring a beautiful garden.
Ruth carefully tore Jared Pittman’s picture from the memorial folder and tucked it in the sash of her dress before she too let the paper fall to the floor. When she got home, she would place the picture where it belonged, inside the yellow construction paper birthday card she had decorated with colorful drawings of ducks, a weeping willow, and balloons with smiley faces.
She turned back to the casket, touched the side with her fingertips, and spoke once more to her friend, “I’ll make sure the ducks get plenty to eat.”
“Are you ready to leave?” asked Ruth’s mother when she noticed her daughter had returned to her side.
Ruth nodded. “Can I go to the park when we get home?”
“MAY I go to the park,” her mother corrected.
“May I go to the park,” Ruth repeated dutifully.
“I don’t know how you can spend so much time at that place. There’s nothing there but a few benches and some ducks.”
Ruth and her mother fell into place behind others making their departures. The final chords of “You’ll Never Walk Alone“ faded as they reached the exit leaving only the conversations of the few remaining mourners echoing in the visitation hall. Adrift in a river of adults headed for the parking lot, Ruth could not see the person whose emotionless voice spoke the only words she heard anyone say about her friend all afternoon.
“I worked for the man for twelve years and never saw him smile.”
Lori Erickson is a retired theatre artist and educator whose short fiction has appeared in Still Point Arts Quarterly, Ruben’s Quarterly, and The First Line Literary Journal. She lives in North Central Florida with her husband.
January House Literary Journal 
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