Free Backstab by Elaine Viets Page B

lack the simple dignity of a funeral in his Iowa hometown. I think those are indecently quick. After the drama of a St. Louis sendoff, they seem as cold and barren as a northern winter. I got a close-up look when Lyle’s mother Vera died and I went to Marshalltown, Iowa, with him. Vera had the funeral she wanted and his aunts insisted upon: a rosary at the funeral home the night before, a funeral service at her parish church the next day, and stingy ham sandwiches and sheet cake in the church basement afterward. There were no flowers but ours. Vera’s friends donated money to her favorite missionary society. She had a closed casket at her request. St. Louisans like to get a look at you, and a closed casket usually means something horrible. Like your mother shooting your father, and then herself.
    I much prefer the three-day ordeal of a St. Louis funeral. It lets you get used to the idea the person is dead. By the time you finally get to the burial, you’re happy to shovel the dear one into the ground and go on living. After the funeral,everyone comes back to your house and there’s baked ham or roast beef and hearty heavy food like casseroles and mostaccioli, potato salad and chips, and lots of beer and wine. Then you sit around and talk about the dead person and all the funny things and kind things she did, and for an hour or two she lives again, and you know that she will live in everyone’s memories.
    Unless your mother shoots your father. Then everyone murmurs something sad and polite, pats your hand, and disappears.
    Burt had a rousing sendoff at the old Grand Funeral Home on South Grand, which looks like a twenties movie star’s home, all white stucco and red roof tile. The place was packed. They had to open the big double parlor, and there was still a line out to the lobby. All the bigwigs who drank at Burt’s Bar sent big expensive rubbery-looking flowers. None of them bothered to come except for Burt’s alderman and the Mayor’s aide, a fat red-nosed Irishman who ceremonially ate and drank and shook hands everywhere the Mayor couldn’t.
    The people who turned out were Burt’s friends and regulars. Everyone had a Burt story. I found out he lent money to folks in trouble and fed people who were out of work, and had one family eating his chicken and dumplings on the tab for six months straight until the father found work again. It was almost like a party, until the line moved up and I had to approach the casket.
    Standing between her two grown-up daughters, Pat and Rachel, was Dolores, in a badly fittingblack dress. Dolores never wore black. She looked like a stand-in who had been hired to play her. She went through the motions, shaking hands or standing still for a hug, but she hardly seemed to recognize anyone.
    Her oldest daughter, Pat, steered me to the massive bronze casket covered with a huge spray of red roses and white pompons. A red ribbon said
Beloved Husband
in gold script. Burt was lying in there, his head on a white satin and lace pillow, wearing Pan-Cake makeup. My first thought was that he wouldn’t be caught alive looking like this. His hair was combed funny and a rosary was wrapped around his strong hands. He didn’t look like he was asleep. Not unless he slept with his glasses on. For some reason, the undertaker laid Burt out wearing his gold-rim glasses, and they looked ridiculous because his eyes were closed. I kept staring and staring at him the way I always stare at dead people in their caskets, trying to get a fix on them. It looked like Burt, and then it didn’t and then it did again, sort of. It was almost like he was out of focus.
    There was an old woman with frizzy pink hair and a navy-blue dress with rhinestone buttons kneeling by the casket. She said to me, “He looks so young.” But he didn’t. To me, Burt looked so dead. As I peered down into the casket, I saw a bottle of Bud tucked in there, just above his elbow, with a Burt’s Bar opener and a bag of Rold Gold pretzels.