Early Warning

The weather continued calm and clear. As one o’clock approached, Debbie went through the crowd, handing out the programs that Linda had made at the copy center. Mr. Littlejohn, who was going to play the piano, had to walk half a mile to the house. Debbie thanked him effusively, and saw that he understood — he and she were the only two people in control of this mob. Dean, Linda, and Tina set out the rented chairs — not enough — and every bench, kitchen chair, and stool they could find. At one o’clock, Mr. Littlejohn commenced Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.” Everyone stopped talking, came into the living room, and sat down where they could. Debbie took her father into custody — she got him to sit beside her, and she tightly held his hand. Aunt Andy was on his other side, and Uncle Frank was leaning against the wall nearby. Janet had come without Emily or Jared, and she was in the back of the room, keeping to herself. Debbie knew from their talk late last night that Janet was barely holding herself together, but she couldn’t think about that. Aunt Andy quietly took her father’s other hand. When they were all silent, Mr. Littlejohn played the Introit from Mozart’s Requiem, arranged for piano, and much more somber than the Pachelbel. Faces assumed their proper expressions.

Once the music had stopped, a minister they knew socially — a very liberal and cheerful-looking man — got up and gave the sermon. He did not mention “God,” only “our dear Father,” and he said the blandest possible prayers that everyone knew. Then Uncle Frank stepped up and talked about the farm, and Lillian with her troops of devoted friends, and then, all of a sudden, she was spirited away by some stranger, and it turned out to be Arthur, and when he met Arthur and saw them together, he knew he had seen true love. Then Janet came forward and talked for a few moments about Tim, and then Tina came forward and talked about watching her mother her whole life and saying to herself, Oh, that’s how you do it; and now she had seen her mother die, and she had said once again, Oh, that’s how you do it; and she thought of her mother going ahead of her into that unknown kingdom, and somehow felt safer. Then it was Dean’s turn, and he started to talk about being allowed to do whatever he wanted when he was a child, and how that was the best — but he couldn’t go on, and after a few moments, Linda had to come up and take him back to his chair.

Debbie crumpled her paper in her hand and stared at her strangely moving feet in their black pumps as she stepped to the front of the room. As she passed the coffin, she allowed her fingers to run along the dark-reddish edge. Mahogany? It looked like it; her mother herself had picked it out. When she saw all the faces looking up at her, she crumpled the paper even tighter, then looked at the back wall of the living room and out the windows, at the shine of the pool in the warm air. When she opened her mouth, she said, “I am a know-it-all, and have always been a know-it-all, and all these years I spent telling my mother what to do, and either she did what I told her, or she very kindly went her own way and did it differently and better than I would have done. But even as much of a know-it-all as I have always been”—everyone was smiling—“I always knew that my mother, Lillian Manning, knew all there was to know about being a loving mother and a loving wife and a loving friend. I hate how much we miss her already, and how much we will miss her tomorrow and forever.” And then she, like Dean, started to cry, and so she went and sat down, and she could hardly see where she was going through the tears.

Her father got up. Debbie took out her Kleenex and wiped her eyes, of course smearing her mascara. Aunt Andy reached across his empty seat and stroked her arm. Debbie glanced at Uncle Frank, who had gone back to leaning against the wall, and was staring at her father with a kind of hungry curiosity. Yes, they all thought it: How will he survive this?