Funeral Hotdish Read online

  “What difference does it make? Dope is dope,” Ralph pronounced.

  “Where did it come from?” Joya wanted to know.

  Now Ralph was full of information. “It’s that Crabapple kid—he’s the pusher. You know, we went to the sheriff about him last year when we first heard he was pushing dope, but the sheriff didn’t do nothing. We’re waiting to see if he does anything now. He better.”

  “This is so sad,” Joya said. They all commiserated together about what a shame, what a loss.

  “Boy, I never thought I’d hear something like this out of Northville,” Joya declared.

  “Neither did I,” her father said.

  “What is this world coming to?” her mother wanted to know.

  “I hope they put that punk away,” Joya offered.

  “They better,” her dad said again.

  “I’m sure they’ll get him this time,” her mother declared.

  “Yeah, sure,” her father scoffed.

  As Joya hung up, she cringed at how ominous her father’s voice sounded. He had good reason to hate the sheriff before this, and now—oh, for Ralph Bonner to say “I told you so” when a pretty little girl was dead. That had to be killing him. He wasn’t the kind of man to let this lie. His lifelong buddies weren’t, either. The sheriff better take care of this because who knows what they’d do to him. Make him pay one way or another. See this crime was punished.

  But Joya’s heart wasn’t on revenge, it was on sadness for the loss of a sweet young girl who shouldn’t have died. It astonished her that this could have happened. In Northville, of all places.

  The hearts that were broken belonged to people she knew and loved. Nettie, who’d already lost so much and now this. Poor old Gertie, whose grief had to be unbearable. Her mom and dad. Neighbors. Cousins. Her mind swept the few streets of Northville, and Joya couldn’t imagine a single citizen who wasn’t heartbroken.

  Even if there’d been time—even if she could have gotten off work on the spur of the moment and could afford a last-minute flight to Fargo, Joya wouldn’t have gone home for the funeral. Not now. Not with the biggest story of her life staring her in the face.

  She’d send a condolence card and next week she’d call Gertie, and for now, she’d say a prayer for Amber.

  Chapter Five

  Wednesday, October 20, 1999

  Gertie Bach was always the first to arrive at the church basement the days the Judith Circle handled the funeral dinner.

  As Circle president, she was in charge and took her responsibilities seriously. By the time everyone else arrived two hours before the funeral mass, she’d have everything set out for the makings of the casserole they always served.

  But nobody was expecting Gertie today—not when it was Amber they were cooking for. That hadn’t stopped Gertie from coming even earlier than usual. At seven a.m. she pulled up to the side of St. Vincent’s Catholic Church—the tallest building in Northville, next to the water tower.

  She’d driven the eight blocks from her two-bedroom home without the usual anxiety she felt lately whenever she was behind the wheel. She’d have to give up the car soon, but really, she’d never had an accident and the few close calls weren’t her fault, anyway. Losing her independence, losing her mobility, becoming one of those old people who has to be hauled around everywhere, always bothering someone…Gertie dreaded that day. Whenever she put the key in the ignition, she said a special prayer to St. Christopher to get her wherever she was going without hurting anyone. Today there wasn’t a single soul on Main Street during her trip to the church, which was a blessing, since Gertie was operating only on autopilot.

  She had gotten into the car in her driveway without bemoaning, as she did every single day, that Leo Marx hadn’t put in his garden this year, which was a sure sign he was ready to die. She’d started the car without her prayer and if St. Christopher—who wasn’t even officially a saint anymore, but Gertie didn’t care—were indeed watching over her, he was disappointed he wasn’t called on to help today.

  Gertie pulled out of the driveway without seeing the Johnson boy’s car parked at Linda Myers house again, and her not even divorced yet. She’d made the first turn without noting the White Church was almost through the regular painting that gave it its name. She was halfway down Main Street without noticing the drug store remodeling she’d been monitoring all summer. She never saw the two pickups she could have hit in front of Harley’s Hardware that always opened early for the farmers. Her friend Rose had a prize-winning garden across from the church that was in full bloom—the Peggy Lee roses were particularly wonderful this year—but Gertie didn’t see a single petal. She hadn’t even looked in the car’s mirror to realize she’d forgotten to comb out her roller curls. She looked like she was on her way to the beauty parlor.

  Gertie entered through the church basement door and made her way immediately to the back steps, climbing slowly to the sanctuary. This was automatic, too, since her memory banks knew these steps like a pair of old shoes. Once her cane hit the marble floor of the main church, its echo brought her back to the present moment.

  She found herself at the back of the massive, ornate church where she’d been baptized eighty-two years ago, a church she’d cleaned and tended and fussed over all these years, from which she’d buried her parents and would herself be buried, not too many months from now.

  Her eyes widened and she made a pitiful sound from the back of her throat, because she didn’t know how she’d gotten here. For a second or two— a blissful, lovely, comforting second or two—she couldn’t remember why she’d come this morning.

  She wouldn’t get any more gifts like that today, when all the pain came flooding back. She slowly, noisily, thumbed her way down the center aisle and over to the side altar where the Virgin Mary balanced on a pedestal. Gertie could never look at that statue without seeing the carved marble altar that used to surround Mary, an altar torn away in a modernization from Vatican II that she neither understood nor favored. The Virgin’s shrine looked so bare to her now.

  Nine candles were already burning beneath Mary’s statue when Gertie put her three dollars into the metal box and lit hers. Even at this moment, she knew she couldn’t properly kneel, so she half-sat, half-kneeled in the first pew. She closed her eyes and got no farther than “Hail Mary, full of grace,” before the tears came again.

  Gertie Bach said her own private rosary through sobs and sighs before she opened her eyes. She took her time, because she never said the rosary in the rote way many did, the sing-song way that comes naturally when you’re saying the same prayer fifty times. She said each word as an individual prayer to be certain the Blessed Mother was pleased with her efforts.

  The Catholic Church has some lovely prayers, but the one that speaks to its core—the one that is only Catholic and is the first prayer a member of the faithful utters in a time of need—is the Hail Mary. Gertie had never once worried that her Protestant friends thought Catholics were a little nutty over Mary. She knew the truth. The Mother of God didn’t create this church. She didn’t name it or give it its rules. No member of her gender had any real decision-making rights in its hierarchy. But the Mother of God was the one who got things done and every Catholic knew it.

  So Gertie prayed from her heart to the Blessed Mother for the soul of Amber Schlener.

  It was getting on eight a.m. when she made her way down the back stairs to the church basement’s kitchen.

  Maggie Bonner arrived promptly at eight, astonished to see Gertie in her bib apron. “Oh God, Gertie, we don’t expect you to be here today. You have to be with the family.”

  Gertie waved her off and kept organizing the ingredients like a general getting her troops in order. Maggie deposited the plastic sacks full of fresh buns from the bakery on the service counter, and walked over to her old friend.

  “Gertie, I’m so sorry.” She took the woman in her a
rms. “Joya sends her love. She’d be here if she could.” She kindly stretched the truth.

  Gertie tried to hide her face, hoping her eyes weren’t too red and the tears would hold back. But the crying she’d already done this day—done last night at the wake, done the day before when she sat with Nettie, done since she first heard and collapsed on her living room floor—that kind of crying leaves an unmistakable swelling around the eyes.

  “I know,” Maggie cooed, as she rubbed her friend’s back. “It’s so hard. I just can’t believe it. It’s such a shame. She was such a special girl.” They were the identical words Maggie had whispered to Nettie the night before at the visitation in the high school gym. Oh, that had been terrible—all those teenagers wailing in grief. All those townsfolk crying in agony. Maggie had never been to a visitation where emotions were so raw, so wrenching.

  Gertie kept nodding against Maggie’s shoulder. And then, as though her breath came from the pit of her lungs, she straightened up to her full five-feet-five-inches, wiped her nose with the handkerchief from her apron pocket, and gave a closed-mouth smile. “Come on, we have a lot of hungry people to feed today. We need to buck up.”

  “You’re sure you want to be here?” Maggie probed again.

  Gertie gave a definitive nod. “It’s the last thing I can do for her.” Her voice caught.

  “Of course. Of course.” Maggie smiled and wiped her own tears with her fingers.

  There was another reason. Being here in the basement preparing dinner meant Gertie couldn’t go out to the cemetery to bury Amber. Circle members always shed their aprons and climbed the back stairs for the funeral, but the minute the casket was out the front door, they came back down to finish the meal that would be ready when mourners returned to the church.

  Maggie herself was glad she wouldn’t have to witness that unbearably sad moment when Amber was put into the ground, so she could imagine how much Gertie wanted to avoid it. Better to visit the grave later, when it was all filled in and grass was growing over the mound of dirt and the headstone was in place—it was hard enough then. Maggie had no doubt Gertie would visit Amber in the cemetery a mile out of town. Just like Maggie visited her own people, who’d been buried there since 1897.

  Maggie blanched as she noticed Gertie’s roller-curler hair. The old woman was so distracted, she’d never realize the mistake, so Maggie stepped in to fix the problem: “The least I can do for you today is comb out your hair, dear friend.”

  Gertie looked puzzled, but one touch of her head and she realized. Maggie grabbed a comb from her purse and quickly turned the roller shapes into a nice hairstyle.

  “Are those all the buns?” Gertie covered her embarrassment and got back on track.

  “No, I’ve got more in the car, but I couldn’t carry them all in one load. We ordered five hundred. Do you think that will be enough?” Gertie thought it would.

  “I’ve also got my Jello-O salad and my cake.” Maggie started for the door.

  “Did you bring your pickles?” Gertie did a mental inventory of Maggie’s contribution.

  “Oh damn, I forgot my pickles. I better run home and get them.”

  “No need. If the others come through, we’ll have enough. Besides, there’s a couple jars left over from the Esther Circle, but I’m sure those girls won’t mind if we used them today.” Maggie agreed.

  Over the next half-hour, the other eight women of the Judith Circle straggled in, each bringing her own cake or pan of bars and Jello-O salad. Every woman arrived with a jar of her homemade pickles, much to Maggie’s relief. All blinked in surprise when they saw Gertie with her apron over her black dress, but Maggie signaled them not to make a fuss.

  Even though the entire circle understood the usual hotdish recipe was being tripled for the first time in memory, they were astonished by the mound of ingredients Gertie set out on the counter. Each woman walked through the kitchen, marveling at how gigantic sixty pounds of hamburger looked, or how twenty-seven cans of tomato paste all set in a row resembled a battalion.

  Each and every one said a few words about the shame of it all and the pain of it all and those things you say when you don’t know what to say but need to say something.

  Gertie shook the dime jar to get everyone’s attention. “This is no time to lollygag, ladies. We have a lot of work to do.” Everyone hopped to and took on a job.

  “What is that?” the newest member asked, pointing to the mason jar half full of dimes.

  “Gertie, tell her the story,” Maggie yelled, hoping the distraction would help the old woman.

  “You watch today. An old woman in a flat straw hat will come in and sit at the back table. She’ll eat three plates of food and stuff rolls in her purse. Don’t you pay any mind. That’s Cissy German. She comes to every funeral. She always leaves us a dime. The dimes go in that jar. It’s our ‘tip jar.’” Gertie almost giggled as she finished.

  Maggie started cutting the nine pounds of bacon into small pieces. Angie Krump grabbed the eight bunches of celery for dicing. Norma Stine started opening, by hand, the twenty-four tall cans of tomato juice because Wanda Bach was already using the electric opener on eighty-four cans of soup. That left the onions for Mary Entangle, who complained she always got this job, and nobody bothered to tell her that if she wasn’t always late, she’d get a better task.

  The rest of the circle took over the dining room, setting out paper placemats with napkins, forks, knives, and glasses. Salt and pepper shakers were scattered on the tables, and nobody was too happy to see most of them needed refilling—another item to raise at the combined circle meeting next month. The silk flowers K.C.’s dad had donated years ago went out, each sitting on a paper doily. So did the mismatched collection of toothpick holders—one a tiny beer barrel, another a wee lantern, one a shot glass with the words “Las Vegas.” Gertie, for one, hated them. They looked tawdry on a funeral lunch table, but nobody dared leave them off and nobody had bothered finding the pretty collectible ones that were classier.

  General Motors could learn a thing or two about assembly-line precision from watching the Judith Circle get ready for a five hundred-plate funeral dinner.

  As busy as they were—as solemn the occasion—any notion that these women did their assigned tasks in silence is nonsense. Except when she’s actually measuring an ingredient or double-checking the recipe, silence isn’t a normal part of a woman’s cooking routine. If she’s alone, she’s likely to be talking to herself, reciting the steps she’s taking or counting out the measure and scolding herself when she spills the flour—“Oh, you sloppigoose.” But when she’s with a group, this is the time to “visit,” to be polite about it, or gossip if not.

  Their first choice was not to talk about why they were here or how awful the next few hours were going to be or how could poor Nettie ever pull through this, so they talked about the things that gave them a reason to keep going.

  “Did you know I’m going to be a grandmother again?” Mary offered the news that always brought joyful congratulations. “My third!”

  Angie said that was nothing, she already had seven, which set everyone to counting. By the time they were done, they figured the grandmothers in the crowd—excluding Gertie and her sister, Wanda, of course—could claim a total of sixteen. The younger women, who had a total of twenty-one children yet to raise, were silently praying for the relief of grandmotherhood.

  Maggie reported she expected Joya home for Christmas. Norma said they weren’t going to Arizona this winter because Bernard’s dad wasn’t doing well. Angie said her family planned a winter reunion and she expected seventy-five. One of the town girls reminded everyone there was a wedding dance this weekend at the Legion Hall and knowing it was the Schultz clan, everyone expected a good time and a plentiful bar.

  A farm wife said her husband was beside himself because corn prices had fallen again. “He says what good is it to spend four dolla
rs a bushel growing corn when it’s selling for three dollars?” Everyone voiced their agreement.

  Gertie used to have her own contributions to these brag-fests, even though she’d never had children of her own. But she could tell about “my Amber,” the girl who fulfilled all her mothering fantasies. She’d cared for Amber since she was born, as Nettie fought off the depression of her husband’s death and then searched for jobs to support them. Gertie had been there through the knee scrapes and the first bike ride; she read her books and then collected books for the voracious reader Amber became. She’d taught the girl to sew and crochet, stood up for Johnny when no one else would, supervised Amber’s homework, and never missed a basketball game. “You should see the dress my Amber is making,” she bragged while making one funeral dinner. “My Amber is learning to make pierogies, and she’s pretty good,” she bragged at another. Everyone knew Amber wanted to teach third grade because Gertie had told them. Again and again. She and Amber had started collecting the new state quarters—they already had Delaware, New Jersey, and Connecticut—and Amber vowed to collect all fifty over the next ten years and use them to teach her third graders history. North Dakota’s State Quarter wasn’t scheduled to be released until 2006, and Gertie hoped she’d still be here to see that happen.

  But that didn’t make any difference anymore. Now, those stories were done. Now she had nothing—and nobody. If she let herself dwell on that, she knew her heart would stop.

  Gertie knew it was coming, and she vowed she wouldn’t listen when the women got around to talking about what everyone in town was talking about. I’ll just close my ears, she said to herself, as she turned red meat into browned hamburger.

  The women in the dining room—women out of earshot of Gertie—started it. But eventually, everyone joined in. And of course, Gertie listened.

  “I don’t even know what Ecstasy is,” one of them said, and neither did anyone else, but somebody heard it was supposed to make you “feel good.”