The Throat

his left, so that he could squeeze hands with both of us at once. 'Thought it was a good obituary, didn't you? We worked hard on that one, and it was all worth it.'

None of us had seen the morning paper.

'Oh, yes,' Marjorie said.

'Just want to express our sorrow. From this point on the thing is just to relax and enjoy it, and remember, we're always here to help you.' He let go of our hands.

Marjorie rubbed her palms together.

Just Call Me Bill gave a smile intended to be sympathetic and backed away. 'My little girl will be taking you into the Chapel of Rest. We'll lead your guests in at the time of the memorial service.'

By this time he had moved six paces backward, and on his last word he abruptly turned around and took off with surprising speed down a long dark hallway.

Just Call Me Joyce watched him fondly for a couple of seconds. 'He's gonna turn on the first part of the musical program, that's your background for your private meditations and that. We got the chairs all set up, and when your guests and all show up, we'd like you to move to the left-hand side of the front row, that's for immediate family.' She blinked at me. 'And close friends.'

She pressed her right hand against the mound of her belly and with her left gestured toward the hallway. John moved beside her, and together they stepped into the hallway. Organ music oozed from distant speakers. Alan drifted into the hallway like a sleepwalker. Ralph stepped in beside him. 'So you keep on getting born over and over? What's the payoff?'

I could not hear Alan's mumbled response, but the question pulled him back into the moment, and he raised his head and began moving more decisively.

'I didn't know you were one of John's professor friends,' Marjorie said.

'It was a fairly recent promotion,' I said.

'Ralph and I are so proud of you.' She patted my arm as we followed the others into a ballroom filled with soft light and the rumble of almost stationary organ music. Rows of folding chairs stood on either side of a central aisle leading to a podium banked with wreaths and flowers in vases. On a raised platform behind the podium, a deeply polished bronze coffin lay on a long table draped in black fabric. The top quarter of the coffin had been folded back like the lid of a piano to reveal plump, tufted white upholstering. April Ransom's profile, at an angle given her head by a firm white satin pillow, pointed beyond the open lid to the pocked acoustic tile of the ceiling.

'Your brochures are right here.' Just Call Me Joyce waved at a highly polished rectangular mahogany table set against the wall. Neat stacks of a folded yellow page stood beside a pitcher of water and a stack of plastic cups. At the end of the table was a coffee dispenser.

Everybody in the room but Alan Brookner took their eyes from April Ransom's profile and looked at the yellow leaflets.

'Yay Though I Walk is a real good choice, we always think.'

Alan was staring at his daughter's corpse from a spot about five feet inside the door.

Joyce said, 'She looks just beautiful, even from way back here you can see that.'

She began pulling Alan along with her. After an awkward moment, he fell into step.

John followed after them, his parents close behind. Joyce Brophy brought Alan up to the top of the coffin. John moved beside him. His parents and I took positions further down the side.

Up close, April's coffin seemed as large as a rowboat. She was visible to the waist, where her hands lay folded. Joyce Brophy leaned over and smoothed out a wrinkle in the white jacket. When she straightened up, Alan bent over the coffin and kissed his daughter's forehead.

'I'll be down the hall in the office in case you folks need anything.' Joyce took a backward step and turned around and ploughed down the aisle. She was wearing large, dirty running shoes.

Just Call Me Joyce had applied too much lipstick of too bright a shade to April's mouth, and along her cheekbones ran an artificial line of pink. The vibrant cap of blond hair had been arranged to conceal something that had been done at the autopsy. Death had subtracted the lines around April's eyes and mouth. She looked like an empty house.

'Doesn't she look beautiful, John?' asked Marjorie.

'Uh huh,' John said.

Alan touched April's powdered cheek. 'My poor baby,' he said.

'It's just so damn… awful,' Ralph said.

Alan moved away toward the first row of seats.

The Ransoms left the coffin and took the two seats on the left-hand aisle of the first row. Ralph crossed his arms over his chest in a gesture his son had learned from him.

John took a chair one space away from his mother and two spaces from me. Alan was sitting on the other side of the aisle, examining a yellow leaflet.

We listened for a time to the motionless organ music.

I remembered the descriptions of my sister's funeral. April's mourners had filled half of Holy Sepulchre. According to my mother, she had looked 'peaceful' and 'beautiful.' My vibrant sister, sometimes vibrantly unhappy, that furious blond blur, that slammer of doors, that demon of boredom, so emptied out that she had become peaceful? In that case, she had left everything to me, passed everything into my hands.

I wanted to tear the past apart, to dismember it on a bloody table.

I stood up and walked to the back of the room. I took the leaflet from my jacket pocket and read the words on the front of the cover.

Yea, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death,

        I shall fear no evil.

I sat down in the last row of chairs.

Ralph Ransom whispered to his wife, stood up, patted his son's shoulder, and began wandering down the far left side of the chapel. When he got close enough to be heard if he spoke softly, he said, 'Hey,' as if he just noticed that I had moved to the last row. He jerked his thumb toward the back of the room. 'You suppose they got some coffee in that thing?'

That was not the question he wanted to ask.

We went to the table. The coffee was almost completely without taste. For a few seconds the two of us stood at the back of the room, watching the other three look at or not look at April Ransom in her enormous bronze boat.

'I hear you knew my boy in Vietnam.'

'I met him there a couple of times.'

Now he could ask me.

He looked at me over the top of his cup, swallowed, and grimaced at the heat of the coffee. 'You wouldn't happen to be from Millhaven yourself, would you, Professor Underhill?'

'Please,' I said, 'just call me Tim.'

I smiled at him, and he smiled back.

'Are you a Millhaven boy, Tim?'

'I grew up about a block from the St. Alwyn.'

'You're Al Underhill's boy,' he said. 'By God, I knew you reminded me of somebody, and when we were in the car I finally got it—Al Underhill. You take after him.'

'I guess I do, a little bit.'

He looked at me as though measuring the distance between my father and myself and shook his head. 'Al Underhill. I haven't thought about him in forty years. I guess you know he used to work for me, back in the days when I owned the St. Alwyn.'

'After John told me that you used to own the hotel, I did.'

'We hated like hell to let him go, you know. I knew he had a family. I knew what he was going through. If he could have stayed off the sauce, everything would have worked out all right.'

'He couldn't help himself,' I said. Ralph Ransom was being kind—he was not going to mention the thefts that had led to my father's firing. Probably he would not have stolen so much if he had managed to stay sober.