Page 86 - Vol. VI #1

People (continued from page 10 )
the dusty pictures and worn, green velvet up- holstery. The grandfather had bought expensive furniture a lifetime ago and never replaced it. Roger pulled the Time-Life Book of Cetaceans out of the bookcase and fingered the corner that was chewed by a beagle they’d brought home on a whim. Boscoe. The peeing and chewing got old, and the dog had been relegated to the backyard for most of the time. Before they went on vaca- tion, touring the avocado farms of Michoacán, the grandfather told them that Boscoe had been sto- len by a rival avocado import gang. The old man probably dumped the dog on some back country road. Roger ran his fingers over the soft, ruined corner, trying to remember the velvet ears, the warm canine stink.
The day of the grandfather’s memorial buffet was cold, with a metallic sunshine. Lily had moved
it from Spoon’s Funeral Home to the Sheraton. More festive, she told Alice. More in keeping with how he lived his life, always social, never fune- real. Alice watched Lily dart between the velvet chairs and loaded buffet tables, dressed in navy taffeta. Sunlight barreled through the plate glass windows, the blinds for which the hotel staff had neglected to draw so there was no barrier, no mitigation of the sunlight’s intensity. The ban- quet hall in which everything was set up, rows of chairs, buffet tables with their long white clothes, stands of gladioli and lilies and pale yellow roses, were all blanched in the light. The entire memo- rial was rolled onto a public stage, under the brightest of limelight. Nothing hidden.
“Okay, I got my number,” said Alice. Lily had al- ready drawn a card and was holding it to her chest. The hollow thrum of a country-rock band drifted into the room from the kitchen, where Kelly was working on the refrigerator.
Alice wore sunglasses. Rachel sulked in black jersey. Beside them, Roger’s wife stared into space while Roger, their child slung over one shoulder, talked furnace filters with Cray Wilson, president-elect of the Midwest Avocado Distribu- tors Association. Dozens of the grandfather’s business associates from all over Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois milled around the buffet tables, piled thick envelopes into the basket Lily had set up, and talked produce. The grandfather had been a sociable, interfering kind of person, garrulous and affable, impressing himself upon all who met him. Some of the most prosperous Mexican farmers, the big Michoacán growers ar- rived, cowboy-shirted, bolo-tied, with black arm- bands. They brought wives and children, boxes of fancy avocados, and veladoras with the resigned faces of St. Jude and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Their children chased each other in the glare.
“You two always got the answers, don’t you?” said Roger. A meanness came over him. It seemed
to him like his sisters had managed to defy the invidious household god. Lily’d found bliss with Kelly, itself an exquisite shoving of the finger at the old man, who’d been conservative to his core. And Alice had had her fling with Eric Brendle, created a remote life in Fort Wayne, a successful career, and Rachel.
Rachel! A damp foot had pressed against his leg under the table at O’Charlie’s, bare toes cupping his Achilles tendon. He had felt it, over and over, all night long.
“I’m not playing along,” Roger said. “Do you what you said—burn it.” He took off his jacket and slung it on the chair, then his tie. Then he went upstairs.
Lily blew into the microphone. “Is this on?” she said, tapping it. “I just want to thank all of you for coming. For caring and loving so much!” She stretched out her arms theatrically, then drew her hands to her chest and lowered her gaze. Everyone clapped.
“He wants it,” said Lily. “Poor darling.”
“Then let him have it,” said Alice. “I’ve got enough cards.” ~
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Alice looked over at Roger, who shook his head. Lily had asked them to speak but Alice hated
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