“You should get a real job. Something steady with normal hours. Your cousin Marjorie got a nice secretarial job with J and J. I hear she makes big money.”
Grandma Mazur was standing in the hall. She lived with my parents now that Grandpa Mazur was scarfing down his normal two-eggs-and-a-half-pound-of-bacon breakfast in the hereafter.
“We better get a move on with this dinner if we're gonna make the viewing,” Grandma Mazur said. “You know how I like to get there early, so I can get a good seat. And the Knights of Columbus will be there tonight. There'll be a big crowd.” She smoothed the front of her dress. “What do you think of this dress?” she asked me. “You think it's too flashy?”
Grandma Mazur was seventy-two and didn't look a day over ninety. I loved her dearly, but when you got her down to her skivvies, she resembled a soup chicken. Tonight's dress was a fire-engine-red shirt-waist with shiny gold buttons. “It's perfect,” I told her. Especially for the funeral home, which would be cataract central.
My mother brought the mashed potatoes to the table. “Come and eat,” she said, “before the mashed potatoes get cold.”
“So what did you do today?” Grandma Mazur asked. “You have to rough anyone up?”
“I spent the day looking for Kenny Mancuso, but I didn't have much luck.”
“Kenny Mancuso is a bum,” my mother said. “All those Morelli and Mancuso men are trash. You can't trust a one of them.”
I looked over at my mother. “Have you heard any news about Kenny? Anything going through the gossip mill?”
“Just that he's a bum,” my mother said. “Isn't that enough?”
In the burg it is possible to be born into bumhood. The Morelli and Mancuso women are above reproach, but the men are jerks. They drink, they cuss, they slap their kids around and cheat on their wives and girlfriends.
“Sergie Morelli will be at the viewing,” Grandma Mazur said. “He'll be there with the K of C. I could grill him for you. I'd be real sneaky about it too. He's always been kind of sweet on me, you know.”
Sergie Morelli was eighty-one years old and had a lot of bristly gray hair coming out of ears that were half the size of his withered head. I didn't expect Sergie knew where Kenny was hiding, but sometimes bits and pieces of seemingly benign information turned out to be useful. “How about if I come to the viewing with you,” I said, “and we can grill Sergie together?”
“I
guess that would be okay. Just don't cramp my style.”
My father rolled his eyes and forked into his chicken.
“Do you think I should carry?” Grandma Mazur asked. “Just in case?”
“Jesus,” my father said.
We had warm homemade apple pie for desert. The apples were tart and cinnamony. The crust was flaky and crisp with a sprinkling of sugar. I ate two pieces and almost had an orgasm. “You should open a bakery,” I said to my mother. “You could make a fortune selling pies.”
She was busy stacking pie plates and gathering up silverware. “I have enough to do to take care of the house and your father. Besides, if I was to go to work, I'd want to be a nurse. I've always thought I'd make a good nurse.”
Everyone stared at her openmouthed. No one had ever heard her voice this aspiration. In fact, no one had ever heard her voice any aspiration that didn't pertain to new slipcovers or draperies.
“Maybe you should think about going back to school,” I told my mother. “You could enroll in the community college. They have a nursing program.”
“I wouldn't want to be a nurse,” Grandma Mazur said. “They gotta wear them ugly white shoes with the rubber soles, and they empty bedpans all day. If I was going to get a job, I'd want to be a movie star.”
There are five funeral homes in the burg. Betty Szajack's brother-in-law, Danny Gunzer, was laid out at Stiva's Mortuary.
“When I die you make sure I'm taken to Stiva,” Grandma Mazur said on the way over. “I don't want that no-talent Mosel laying me out. He don't know nothing about makeup. He uses too much rouge. Nobody looks natural. And I don't want Sokolowsky seeing me naked. I heard some funny things about Sokolowsky. Stiva is the best. If you're anybody at all, you go to Stiva.”
Stiva's was on Hamilton, not far from St. Francis Hospital, in a large converted Victorian sporting a wraparound porch. The house was painted white with black shutters, and in deference to the wobbly old folks, Stiva had installed green indooroutdoor carpeting from the front door, down the stairs to the sidewalk. A driveway ran to the back, where a four-car garage housed the essential vehicles. A brick addition had been added to the side opposite the driveway. There were two viewing rooms in the addition. I had never been given the full tour, but I assumed the embalming equipment was there as well.
I parked on the street and ran around the Jeep to help Grandma Mazur get out. She'd decided she couldn't do a good job of worming information out of Sergie Morelli in her standard-fare tennis shoes and was now precariously teetering on black patent leather heels, which she said all babes wore.
I took a firm grip on her elbow and ushered her up the stairs to the lobby, where the K of C were massing in their fancy hats and sashes. Voices were hushed, and footsteps muffled by new carpet. The aroma of cut flowers was overbearing, mingling with the pervasive odor of breath mints that didn't do much in the way of hiding the fact that the K of C had shored themselves up with large quantities of Seagram's.
Constantine Stiva had set up business thirty years ago and had presided over mourners every day since. Stiva was the consummate undertaker, his mouth forever fixed in Muzak mode, his high forehead pale and soothing as cold custard, his movements always unobtrusive and silent. Constantine Stiva . . . the stealth embalmer.
Lately Constantine's stepson, Spiro, had begun making undertaker noises, hovering at Constantine's side during evening viewings and assisting in morning burials. Death was clearly Constantine Stiva's life. It seemed more a spectator sport to Spiro. His smiles of condolence were all lips and teeth and no eyes. If I had to venture a guess as to his industry pleasures I'd go with the chemistry—the tilt-top tables and the pancreatic harpoons. Mary Lou Molnar's little sister went to grade school with Spiro and reported to Mary Lou that Spiro had saved his fingernail clippings in a glass jar.