Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury

THE GIRL IN THE FUNERAL PARLOR Sam Weller

When I was twenty, I got a job delivering flowers. Three days a week, I drove a maroon-colored Chevy van, the words FORGET ME NOT painted on the sides, down barren two-lane western Illinois county roads.

There was a solitude to the job that I liked. As soon as the van was loaded and I drove away from the flower shop, no one could tell me what to do. Sometimes, on busy days, I would be gone for three, four hours, maybe longer. Talk radio and a supersized soda kept me company, and I just lived in my head.

I delivered to offices all over town for all their celebrations—every week someone threw a faux fiesta, marking ersatz holidays like Sweetest Day (seriously, do we really need a Sweetest Day when we have Valentine’s Day?).

Then there were Saturday mornings at churches, where weddings were set up; Saturday afternoons included dropping off arrangements for the following day’s services.

I also delivered to rickety bungalows in our small city, brick apartment buildings in the center square, and lonesome houses miles outside of town. In winter, when it’s dark early and ghosts of snow drift across the rural highways, it’s always a little eerie. After driving down a gravel road to some farm, I’d have to step out into the subzero windchill and go up to the dark house. Sometimes, a dog with an apparent case of rabies would bark after I knocked. I’d wait a minute or two, hoping no one was home except Cujo—then I could just leave. But a light inevitably would blink on. I’d hear heavy footsteps; several dead bolts, one after another after another, being unlatched, and the door would open a sliver. A pale face would peer out.

“Yes?”

“Flower delivery!”

In those moments, out there in the stubbly frozen hinterland, facing some stranger in shadow, I shivered, wondering if I would ever be seen or heard from again.

Without a doubt, though, I found delivering to funeral parlors the weirdest of all. My job was to lay the flowers around the casket. Averting my eyes, I’d crouch and set up the floral sprays and plants quickly around the body and never once look. Sometimes, with a casket spray arrangement, I would actually have to place it on the closed bottom half of the coffin itself.

It felt odd being there, alone with the dead. Here I was, a community-college kid studying English lit and living with his parents, arranging flowers over the mortal remains of the departed. They never knew me while they lived, and I felt like I was violating them in a way. It just felt wrong.

On one of these occasions, at the old Peterson Funeral Home, I encountered Catherine Courington. She was dead, yet more alive than anyone I’d ever known.

It was a morning in June, when specks of sunlight shone brilliantly through oak leaves over the funeral home, casting a champagne glow. The van was packed from end to end and perfumed heavily with fountains of crimson pansies, white lilies, plum peonies, and waxen orchids. The labels on some of the flowers were marked:

The Peterson family had run that funeral home for more than a hundred years, in a Victorian built atop a hill in town that led down to the Rock River. A cupola topped the three-story house, and a winding red-brick walkway led up to a wraparound porch. Hanging geranium baskets twisted in the hot summer breeze. Lead-glass windows, thick and wide, were set on the façade, and they were all gauzed over on the inside with delicate lace curtains.

I parked the van behind the house. The old mansion had a back door, reserved for deliveries. I think this was where they brought in the bodies, to prepare them for the services, but I wasn’t certain. An antiseptic odor that I imagined came from cleaning supplies and embalming fluid hung in the air.

With a bulky arrangement cradled in my arms, I went to the back door. It was opened a crack, so I pushed it wide with my foot. I waited for my eyes to adjust from the bright sunshine. After a while, after calling out and no one answering, I ventured into the darkened back hall. Somewhere in the house, a clock ticked. No one was around, but that’s the way it was a few hours before a service. I pictured the funeral-home people upstairs, in their administrative offices, hurriedly tending to final details.

The parlor I found up front was long and rectangular, with brass light fixtures and velvety sofas. The papered walls had a textured swirl pattern of moss green. Paintings hung in crusty frames, landscapes of rivers, prairies, and meadows. Over the fireplace was the main painting—of William Peterson, the first of the family proprietors. He looked stern; his cravat was stiff under his chin. I supposed the room looked exactly as it did when old William ran the place. It sort of freaked me out, being alone in that parlor. It was just me and the body in the casket. It was open for viewing. Old William watched me; it was like an episode of Scooby-Doo, where only the eyes move in the painting. I laid the floral arrangement below the casket.

But something caught my eye—a flash, and quickly gone. I don’t know why I looked, that day, over to the top of the casket. Perhaps it was the shimmer of long blond hair.

I stood and stared. Jesus. Young—she looked my age, maybe a little older. She wore a cardigan sweater, soft-looking and lilac, and a single strand of pearls. Her face had that slight bloating of the deceased, but it was smooth. A horizontal scar ran across the right side of her forehead, angling down into her manicured eyebrow. It threw off the symmetry of her otherwise perfect face. But in an odd way, it made her look more alluring and enigmatic.

Her eyes were lined in black with little sharp points at the edges, her lips glossed light pink, her hands folded across her chest. The top of a black-and-white polka-dot skirt was visible. You couldn’t see her legs. She looked like she had lived in the fifties. Standing there, I stared. The more I looked, the more I itched to touch that soft sweater, run my fingertips down her arm or across her smooth face. I glanced over my shoulder.

I didn’t, or couldn’t, do it.

I looked down at her face. It occurred to me that I wished for something that could never be: I wanted her eyes to open. I wanted her to speak. I wished it. I really wished it. Just say something, anything at all.

After a long while, or maybe it was just a minute, I shook my head to clear it. Then I went back out into the glaring sunlight to grab the rest of the flowers. After setting up the last of the arrangements, I looked at a sympathy card affixed to one delivery: Catherine Courington.

I stared down at her one last time, puffed my cheeks, and exhaled. And I did it. I quickly ran my fingertips down the sleeve on her right arm, and it was as petal soft and fuzzy as I’d imagined.

I turned and left.

Every day that next week, I thought about her. Constantly. I wondered how she died. Sometimes, when I was driving down lonely country roads, passing an occasional car headed in the opposite direction, I imagined our life together, mine and Catherine’s. I knew how we fell in love. I knew how our lives unfolded together, how we’d mark the anniversary of our wedding each year by nothing more than reading passages of our favorite books late into the night. We were soul mates. I knew it at my very core.

Does that sound weird? Probably. But it’s the God’s truth. Haven’t you ever seen a stranger before and something in you is inexplicably drawn to that person? Maybe you knew each other—or were supposed to know each other—or maybe you dreamt of that person, once, long ago? Perhaps, in another reality, an alternative world, if you believe in such things, you did. But in this world, this reality, something kept you apart. Maybe it was as simple as taking one street home rather than the other, choosing one path over another, and fate was circumvented forever because of the most minute of decisions. Is that what happened to me and Catherine?

At night I began dreaming of us. We were seated at a wrought-iron table at an outdoor café. A cathedral bell tolled in the far distance. We sipped coffee and she smiled, revealing a slight chip on her front tooth. We held hands, and I swirled my fingers under her palm, noting the lines, like I was trying to read her future. Her mouth opened. She was about to say something.

Please, say it. Let me hear your voice.

But I always woke before she said a word.

In another dream she emerged from complete darkness, like she was in a large room or even a warehouse without a single window or light source. She walked forward slowly into a pool of stark light, her blond hair buoyant on her shoulders. She walked with confidence and poise, closer and closer. Her eyes were radiant, with that black eyeliner with the sharp points at the edges. She lifted her hand to me. My heart leapt. Please, let me hear you.

As she drew near, her face began to melt, like a gruesome wax figure in a Saturday horror matinee. Her makeup ran down her face in streams of color. Then the rest of her face started dripping, her eyes and nose and lips. The molten wax swirled, morphing. As it began to take shape, I knew what it was. It was one of those Mexican Day of the Dead masks—a white skull painted boldly black, red, blue, and yellow, with little white flowers around the sides. In the center, between the eyes, a painted heart dripped three tears.

She opened her mouth.

I’m listening, Catherine.

But something other than words emerged from her lips. It was dark, at first, small and twitching. As it crawled forth it showed itself. Wings. Black and orange. A butterfly fluttered and flew off into the darkness.

After these dreams, I had to know who Catherine Courington was and what had happened to her. But then another thought struck me, a realization of fate, twisted and thwarted: What happens if you meet your soul mate after she has died?

Late one night, after I woke from one of those dreams, I searched the Internet. I didn’t know why I hadn’t before. I guess I felt odd about it, like it was perverted. I knew it was bizarre. I knew no one would understand, so I told no one about Catherine.

In the basement of my parents’ house, where my room was, I sat in front of my computer and typed her name. I found scores of social-networking pages of girls named Catherine Courington. I went through each page, hoping to find her, to find a photograph, to see her. I was hoping for a video clip, to hear her. But after hours, I found nothing. She didn’t have a social-network page.

I did find an unknown English poet with the same name—Catherine Courington, killed in a horse-and-carriage accident in 1882. She had died before any literary success.

I read a title to one of her poems: “The Clock Ticks Unfair.”

Then I found her. I clicked on the link and the page began to load. It was just a small obituary item:

The next day I delivered flowers in a hurry, moving across town more like a FedEx guy than a flower man. I needed to buy myself an hour so my manager wouldn’t ask where I was.

After looking up the information on Catherine Courington’s mother, I discovered that she lived in a mobile-home park, off a winding highway. I drove out after lunch.

The Fountain Bleu Mobile Home Park sign was faded, and paint was chipping off at the bottom. As I pulled in, a kid ran across the street, chasing a ball. I slammed on the brakes, the van lurching, barely missing him. He was maybe seven or eight, with a crew cut and plenty of freckles. He glared at me.

“Sorry,” I mouthed, and waved. In the side-view mirror, I could see him as I pulled the van forward, standing with his ball, mouth pinched, scowling.

The mobile homes of Fountain Bleu were so run-down that they looked like haunted trailers, with plywood planking and stained bedsheets over the windows. But some had jaunty flower gardens and new shiny mailboxes in front. I found Candace Courington’s mobile home at the end of the street. A Doberman chained to the neighboring mobile home barked, baring its teeth. Across the street, a man working over the engine of an El Camino looked up at me. I nodded. He didn’t say a word or nod back. He wiped sweat from his brow.

Along the walkway leading to the mobile home, plastic flowers spun in the wind. The windows had dusty metal horizontal blinds turned shut. I stepped up to the door and knocked. The guy across the street wiped his oily hands on a towel and watched me. The dog continued to bark, straining against its leash.

The door opened just a bit.

The woman held a lit cigarette in her hand. She had a dome of swimming-pool-blond hair and tired eyes.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Candace Courington?”

“Yes,” she said, looking over my shoulder to the van parked on the street.

“Flower delivery,” I said, extending the arrangement in my arms.

She took it.

“Thanks.” Her cigarette dangled from her lips. She began to close the door.

“I knew your daughter,” I blurted, my words running together, before she could shut the door.

“Oh yeah?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” she said. “How did you know her?”

“High school.” I thought about Sir Walter Scott’s old quote about webs and deception.

“You went to school in New York?” she asked. “What are you doing out here, in Sterling Springs?”

The lies were building. “This is actually where I grew up. My parents just moved there for a few years, and that’s how I met Catherine.”

I had no clue where this was going.

“That so,” she said.

“The flowers are from me.” I tried a smile.

Candace Courington looked at the arrangement. “That’s nice of you.”

She stepped back to close the door. I knew this was my only chance. “Can I tell you a story about Catherine, Mrs. Courington? A story from our days in New York?”

Jesus.

She stared at me for a moment, thoughtfully.

“Sure,” she said at last. “Come in. You want a glass of water?”

“If you don’t mind.”

The mobile home was dark and piles of bills were stacked on end tables, alongside prescription pill bottles. The TV was on, and a woman on the screen was sobbing.

We sat in the living room, on a saggy sofa with the plaid cloth worn thin on the edges. A framed print of that Impressionist painting by Seurat, “Sunday in the Park” or whatever it’s called, hung slightly crooked over us. It’s weird that all the people in that painting, all the well-dressed women with their parasols, and the men with their top hats and the dogs and the kids, and even the monkey, are all facing the lake or away in another direction. But not the little girl. That kid with her white dress and bonnet, right in the middle of the painting, is looking right at you.

Candace Courington fetched me a glass of water from the kitchen. On a coffee table was a magazine, Modern Amputee. I picked it up and looked at the attractive blond woman posing on the cover. She wore a prosthetic leg.

I thumbed through some unopened envelopes next to the magazine. One was addressed to Catherine Courington, 210 E. 5th Street, New York, New York—a phone bill. I folded it and put it in my back pocket. I felt like a douche bag but kept it anyway.

“What’s your name?” asked Candace Courington, returning to the room and handing me the glass of water.

“I’m Josh. Josh Dieboldt.”

“What do you do, Josh? Besides deliver flowers, I mean?” She sat down next to me. We were both sunk so low, it felt like we were sitting on the floor.

“I’m studying English lit at Rock River College.”

“What do you want to do with that?”

“Be a writer, maybe.” I shrugged and picked up the water glass but didn’t drink it.

Candace Courington stared at the ragged brown carpeting. “Catherine was a reader. That girl always had a book in her hands. Ever since she was little.”

She looked up.

“So what story were you going to tell me? How did you two meet?”

Across the street, a car engine growled—an eight-cylinder Godzilla. The guy in the driveway had started his El Camino.

“We just met on the street one afternoon. May,” I said. “It smelled like flowers and garbage, because they stack the trash bags up into little mountains on the sidewalks in New York.”

God, what a bullshitter.

“Catherine loved the city.”

“I know. She did. And I loved that about her. But, anyway, I just saw her one afternoon on a street corner in Soho, and introduced myself. I’d never done that before, but there was something about her. Something familiar and, for me, predestined. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I know this is weird, Mrs. Courington, but it was like I knew your daughter the minute I saw her. It was déjà vu, fate, astral influence, two trains on opposite tracks passing each other in the night and two passengers peering out windows and spotting each other, just for a moment.”

As I said these words, I knew that in truth, two trains had indeed passed each other, but only one passenger was looking.

“You are a writer,” she said, almost smiling. “What did Catherine say about all this talk of fate?”

“I didn’t want to scare her or freak her out, so I never told her. I wish I had the chance now. God, how I wish I could tell her. I hope this doesn’t scare you, but every atom in my being believes we were soul mates.”

Mrs. Courington shook her head. “You should have told her. She believed in all of that, you know, fate. She loved stories where things worked out differently. Alternate realities, she called it. It’s funny. She always had the sense that she’d find her one true love right here in Sterling Springs.”

I was silent. I was that true love.

“I don’t mean to pry,” I said finally, “but can I ask what happened? I was just so shocked when I heard the news.”

She looked at me, startled. She put her hand over her mouth.

“You don’t know?”

“No, I don’t.”

She looked devastated, and really old. “I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it right now. It’s just too much. I’m afraid you have to leave.”

“Sure,” I said, not wanting to leave, but standing up anyway.

“Thanks for the flowers. That was very thoughtful. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

I stepped out into the hot afternoon sunlight, and the door closed behind me. The guy across the street turned and looked at me again. I felt insanely frustrated.

Crossing the street, I approached him.

“Hi,” I said. He wore a muscle T-shirt with the words ALL WOUND UP on it. His goatee was uneven; he had shaved too close on the right side, and it had left a big gouge where the hair used to be. The unevenness was distracting.

“Yeah?”

“I was just wondering,” I said, “How well do you know Mrs. Courington across the street?”

“Well enough,” he said, wiping his greasy hands on his jeans.

“Do you know what happened to her daughter?”

“She’s dead.”

“I know. But how did she die?”

The guy’s eyes grew skinny.

“What business is it of yours, peckerwood?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why don’t you go askin’ her mother? What you askin’ me for?”

“Never mind,” I said, turning back to the van. I climbed in, started the engine, and turned it around. The whole time, the guy continued to glare. He was saying something, too, pointing at me, but I couldn’t hear him because the windows were up.

After work, I went home and straight downstairs. I pulled the phone bill out of my back pocket and unfolded it. I felt guilty for stealing the thing. I stared at the New York City address. I imagined some old gray-stone building along a tree-lined street. The building had a lobby with brass mailboxes set into the wall. The phone bill would have been delivered there, waiting for Catherine.

I tore open the envelope. The bill was several pages. It had an itemized list of the calls made in the last weeks of May. Many were to Illinois, probably to her mother. Dozens were to New York numbers, a few to Newark and Boston, one to Chicago. I thought about going to New York City, going to the apartment building and meeting her neighbors. Find out how she died.

But then I realized it didn’t matter at all. It didn’t matter how she died. What mattered was that she was no longer alive, and I had no chance at all. I thought of the soft fabric of that sweater under my fingertips, her closed eyes and smooth skin, that slight scar and how she got it—and the dreams. I thought of those dreams and how she never spoke to me.

I looked at the phone bill. Jesus. The phone bill. At the top of the first page was her number. I picked up my phone and dialed. The first ring. The second. And a third and a fourth and then the voice mail answered.

“Hi,” she said, her voice strong and clear. “This is Catherine. I’m not here right now, but you know what to do.”

And then there was the beep, and I hung up the line.