I left you my painting. It was a bitch to finish, my eyes just not what they used to be. It’s the Lord’s Supper and it gave me comfort knowing I was painting Jesus as we know Him on earth. I’m almost anxious to see what He looks like in Heaven. It will be one of my defining moments, right up there with Willard Scott putting me on the TV.
Morris Leonard, my great-nephew, will be handling my estate. I know I’ve said I wanted my ashes baked into a loaf of bread and fed to the pigeons, but that was just a load of bull. Morris knows where I want to be buried.
There is one thing, though, that I’d like you to do for me, Jacquie. You’ll need to take a drive to Boise. On my art desk is a tube of geranium-red paint. I want you to paint lipstick on Judge Harrison’s statue. Right in the kisser. That man was a sexist asshole and deserves to be painted like a woman.
Well, that’s about all. The other papers in here are case transcripts I had representing women who struggled for equality back in the old days. You’ll find their stories interesting reading. They paved the way for you to do a woman’s job in what was once a man’s world.
You are a fine woman and I am proud of who you are, Jacquie. You’ve come a long way and you’re ready for the next chapter of your life.
I give you my full blessing. You’ll know what I mean when the moment arises.
With all my love,
Fern Goodey-Leonard
With her head down, Jacquie watched as her tears splattered onto the letter, fat drops of love, gratitude and fondness for a real lady of quality.
“Did you set out the cheez?” Raul asked, his voice respectfully low.
Lucy nodded, motioning to the platter of cheeses and fruits on the reception table. “All that’s left is to light the candles in the chafing dishes.”
Raul and Lucy were the only two in the large banquet room at the Elks’ Lodge. In light of Fern’s death, they’d called a truce and had catered the reception together. Lucy couldn’t recall whose idea it had been—hers or Raul’s.
They’d been at Sutter’s Grocery in the bread department, Raul eyeing the same loaf of focaccia that she’d been ready to nab, when word fanned through the store that Spin had passed away.
When Raul’s and Lucy’s groceries were being rung up in two different lines, their eyes had met and they’d agreed to combine forces and do this one last thing for Spin.
“It looks good,” Raul remarked, his complexion appearing more olive-toned in his all-black suit with black shirt. “What is that over there?”
“Chicken broccoli bake. Simple, but a crowd pleaser.” Lucy gazed at several of the dishes Raul had set up. “What’s that?”
“Pork Chops Olé.”
She examined the hot dish. Its top was sprinkled with melted cheese.
“It’s nothing special,” Raul said. “Any moron could make it. I got the recipe off the soup can.”
Lucy smiled. “Slumming, Raul?”
“C’hew know how it goes. Sometimes simple is better. Spin was a simple lady.”
Nodding, Lucy gave a sigh. They lit the chafing candles to keep the hot dishes warm, and made one last check of all the foods. “Well, I guess we should go to the funeral now. I can drive—”
“No, no—I can drive,” he insisted with a slight bow. “I’m a gentleman and I insist. Besides, c’hew haven’t lived until you’ve experienced a Cadillac with velour upholstery.”
Trying not to let him know that his humor put a lightness in her heart, Lucy said somberly, “All right, Raul.”
Fern “Spindly” Goodey-Leonard’s funeral was simple, yet a classy goodbye from those who’d known her. People had come up from Boise to join all of Red Duck in the Chapel of the Woods Funeral Parlor to pay their fond farewells.
Jacquie hadn’t been able to give a eulogy. She just wasn’t up for it. She had the director of the home read the meager words she had typed on her computer and printed. They were almost an embarrassment. Expressing how she felt about Spin wasn’t easy to convey in a written statement. The feelings in her heart didn’t easily translate into words.
Spin had a plot beside Wallace Leonard in the old Timberline cemetery, not ten spaces down from the town’s famous writer who had committed suicide in the early 1970s.
There had been one time when Spin had had Jacquie take her to the cemetery to visit Wally. They’d stopped into Sutter’s Grocery and bought bouquets for the urn, and Spin had gotten down on her knees and lovingly arranged the carnations and mums. At the time, Jacquie had even asked her why she wanted to be cremated and not laid to rest by Wally. Spin never gave an answer. She just put that familiar smile on her face, crooked lipstick and all.
So now Jacquie knew the whole story.
Spin was a romantic and there was no way she’d end up as pigeon crap on a statue. She wanted to be by her Wally.
The very idea was so poetic that Jacquie had a moment of feeling sorry for herself that she’d come to the funeral alone, without any male prospects in her life to take a journey with over the next fifty-some-odd years. That she even let the thought hit her, for a mere second, was so wrong.
Jacquie slipped her sunglasses back on, her black gloves blurring in her vision as she covered her eyes. She’d been crying all morning and looked like death warmed over herself.
The weather had finally turned cool, with a bite to the air that had arrived overnight.
The graveside gathering began to thin, and people returned to their cars. Jacquie had already said her goodbyes in private, and now she simply smiled at the opening in the ground, where Spin’s dark wood casket had already been lowered. She gave the quietly serene scene her best parting nod
