Moonlight Becomes You

“What difference could that possibly make?” Odile asked in a puzzled tone.

“The difference is-” Lane closed his lips and took a deep breath. Certain things were better left unsaid. “I want to know about any guests who are at dinner,” he said. “For one thing, I want to be there to greet them.”

“I know that, dear. I arranged for us to dine in the residence tonight. Mrs. Shipley declined rather ungraciously when I suggested that she and her guest join us at our table. But at least you’ll be able to chat with Maggie Holloway at the social hour.”

“All right.” He paused, as though there was more he wanted to say but had changed his mind. “I’ll be home in ten minutes.”

“Well, you had better be if you want to freshen up.” Odile’s trilling laugh set Lane’s teeth on edge.

“After all, darling,” she continued, “if the rules insist that the guests be dressed for dinner, I think the director and his wife should at least set a good example. Don’t you?”

30

Earl Bateman kept a tiny apartment on the Hutchinson campus. He found the small liberal arts college, situated in a quiet section of Providence, an ideal spot from which to do research for his lectures. Overshadowed by the other institutions of higher learning in the area, Hutchinson nonetheless had excellent standards, and Earl’s class in anthropology was considered a major attraction there.

“Anthropology: The science that deals with the origins, physical and cultural development, racial characteristics, and social customs and beliefs of mankind.” Earl began any new term by having his students memorize those words. As he was fond of repeating, the difference between many of his colleagues and himself was that he felt true knowledge of any people or culture began with the study of their rituals of death.

It was a subject that never failed to fascinate him. Or his listeners, as demonstrated by the fact that he was increasingly in demand as a speaker. In fact several national speakers bureaus had written to offer him substantial fees to be the luncheon or dinner speaker at events as far as a year and a half away.

He found their correspondence most gratifying: “From what we understand, Professor, you really make even the subject of death very entertaining,” was typical of the letters he received regularly. He also found their response rewarding. His fee for such engagements was now three thousand dollars, plus expenses, and there were more offers than he could accept.

On Wednesdays, Earl’s last class was at 2:00 P.M., which today gave him the rest of the afternoon to polish his speech for a women’s club, and to answer his mail. One letter he had received recently intrigued him to the point that he could not get it off his mind.

A cable station had written to ask whether he felt he had sufficient material to do a series of half-hour, illustrated television programs on the cultural aspects of death. The remuneration would not be significant perhaps, but they had pointed out that similar exposure had proven beneficial to a number of their other hosts.

Sufficient material? Earl thought sarcastically, as he propped his feet on the coffee table. Of course I have sufficient material. Death masks, for example, he thought. I’ve never spoken on that topic. The Egyptians and Romans had them. The Florentines began to make them in the late fourteenth century. Few people realize that a death mask exists of George Washington, his calm and even noble face in permanent repose, with no hint of his ill-fitting wooden teeth that in life marred his appearance.

The trick was always to inject an element of human interest so that the people discussed were not perceived as objects of macabre interest but as sympathetic fellow humans.

The subject of tonight’s lecture had led Earl to thinking of many other possibilities for lectures. Tonight, of course, he would talk about mourning attire through the ages. But his research had made him realize that etiquette books were a rich source of other material.

Some Amy Vanderbilt dictums he included were her half-century-ago advice on muffling the clapper on the doorbell for the protection of the bereaved, and avoiding the use of words such as “died,” “death,” or “killed” in notes of sympathy.

The clapper! The Victorians had a horror of being buried alive and wanted a bell hung over the grave, with a string or wire threaded through an air vent into the coffin so that the person inside could ring in case he or she wasn’t really dead. But he wouldn’t, couldn’t, touch that subject again.

Earl knew he had or could find enough material for any number of programs. He was about to become famous, he mused. He, Earl, the family joke, would show them all-those sprawling, raucous cousins, those misbegotten descendants of a crazed, avaricious thief who had cheated and schemed his way to wealth.

He felt his heart begin to pound. Don’t think about them! he warned himself. Concentrate on the lecture, and on developing subjects for the cable program. There was another topic he had been pondering, one that he knew would be extremely well received.

But first… he would have a drink. Just one, he promised himself, as he prepared a very dry martini in his combination kitchen-dinette. As he took the first sip, he reflected on the fact that often before death someone close to the soon-to-be-deceased experienced a premonition, a kind of uneasiness or warning of what was to come.

When he sat down again, he removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and leaned his head back on the convertible couch that also served as his bed.

Someone close... “Like me,” he said aloud. “I’m not really that close to Maggie Holloway, but I sense that she isn’t close to anyone. Maybe that’s why I’m the one who has been given the premonition. I know that Maggie is going to die very soon, just as I was sure last week that Nuala had only hours to live.”

Three hours later, to the enthusiastic applause of the audience, he began his lecture with a beaming and somewhat incongruous smile. “We don’t want to talk about it, but we’re all going to die. Occasionally the date is deferred. We’ve all heard of people who were clinically dead, then returned to life. But other times the gods have spoken and the biblical prophecy, ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ is fulfilled.”

He paused, while the audience hung on his words. Maggie’s face filled his mind-that cloud of dark hair surrounding the small, exquisite features, dominated by those beautiful, painfilled blue eyes…

At least, he consoled himself, soon she won’t experience any more pain.

31

Angela, the soft-spoken maid who had admitted her yesterday, showed Maggie the supply closet where Nuala’s art materials were kept. Typical of Nuala, she thought affectionately. They had been piled on the shelves haphazardly, but with Angela’s help, it didn’t take long to get them into boxes and, with the assistance of a kitchen helper, stowed in Maggie’s car.

“Mrs. Shipley is waiting for you in her apartment,” the maid told her. “I’ll take you to her now.”

“Thank you.”

The young woman hesitated for a moment, looking around the large activity room. “When Mrs. Moore had her classes here, everyone had such a good time. It didn’t matter that most of them couldn’t draw a straight line. Just a couple of weeks ago, she began by asking everyone to remember a slogan from World War II, the kind that were on posters hanging everywhere. Even Mrs. Shipley joined in, despite the fact that she had been so upset earlier that day.”

“Why was she upset?”

“Mrs. Rhinelander died that Monday. They were good friends. Anyhow, I was helping to pass out materials, and they came up with different slogans like, ‘Keep ’em Flying,’ which Mrs. Moore sketched-a flag flying behind an airplane-and everyone copied it. And then someone suggested ‘Don’t Talk, Chum. Chew Topps Gum.’”