Unless you have some sort of psychic ability, ghosts decide when they want you to see them. Which is good, because I don’t think I’d want to walk around seeing dead people on every corner. Just when Jettie had decided to let Gabriel see her, she was seeing a whole lot of him. Ever poised, he wrapped an afghan around his waist and held a perfectly civil conversation with her. The utter mortification forced me to block most of it from memory. I know she brought up the phrase “steam cleaning” a lot.
Gabriel promised to call and made himself scarce. There was practically a Gabriel-shaped hole in the door.
“Where have you been?” I asked her, hands on bare hips. “I haven’t seen you for four days. And then you just waltz in without so much as a how do you do? Am I going to have to ground you to get you to spend time with me? It’s that boy you’ve been seeing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jettie huffed. “Your grandpa Fred is becoming an ass in his post-old age. We spent the last three days fighting. Do you know how difficult it is to win a conversation with a man who no longer fears death?”
I nodded. “As a matter of fact, yes, I do.”
“If we’re going to talk about boys, can we discuss the fact that Gabriel only wears pants on every other visit here?” Jettie asked.
“No. Instead, I will change the subject and announce to you that there is a new potential addition to Half-Moon Hollow’s ghostly population. Grandpa Bob died on Tuesday. Grandma Ruthie said there was some sort of medication mix-up.”
“The hell there was.” Jettie cackled. “Fred says it’s all over the golf course. Bob Jessup died because he couldn’t quite make out the dosage on his ‘little blue tablets,’ and he took too many. Apparently, it was their anniversary, and Bob wanted to rise to the occasion.”
“Oh … oh, just, oh.” I shuddered, clapping my hand over my lips. “I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. Is Bob still wandering around out there?”
“Oh, no, he’s moved on. He just made a quick stop at his son’s house to say good-bye. He happened to run into Sago Raines, who’s been haunting the place for years. They talked for a bit before he went into the light. Sago was down at the golf course spreading the news faster than you can say ‘erectile dysfunction.’ “
“Lalalalalalala.” I sang, pressing my hands over my ears, but even that couldn’t keep me from hearing her.
“I just wish I could get to Ruthie long enough to tell her every dead soul in the Hollow knows her dearly departed had to have pharmaceutical help to—”
“Enough!” I cried. “First, you and Grandpa Fred, and now—just enough. I’d pierce my own eardrums, but they would just grow back.”
“Ageist.” Jettie sneered.
“Exhibitionist,” I retorted.
“I don’t think you can afford to throw any naked stones here, pumpkin.”
I nodded. “Touché.”
4
Because of the lifelong mating urge, werewolves do not adjust well to being widowed. In some cases, a surviving mate will die of mourning pains.
—Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were
Perhaps sensing that Bob’s could be her last grand-dame funeral, Grandma Ruthie wanted to bury Bob in style. NATO summits were less tense than the planning of this shindig. Bob’s adult children claimed that Bob, an avid fisherman, wanted to be cremated with half of his ashes spread into Lake Barkley and the other half interred with his late first wife. Grandma Ruthie, incensed that she might be upstaged, insisted that Bob’s intact remains be buried adjacent to her “compound” of husbandly burial plots down at Oak View Cemetery. She made such a scene at the funeral home that Bob’s shell-shocked offspring let her have her way, plus total control of the funeral program from the “Amazing Grace” opener to the “It Is Well with My Soul/Old Rugged Cross” closing medley.
There was only one place to host this weird-ass parody of grief: Whitlow’s Funeral Home, where Grandma Ruthie had been mourning husbands since 1957. In fact, three generations of Whitlows had helped Grandma Ruthie bury her spouses. And apparently, none of them knew anything about decorating. Honestly, who finds dark wood paneling, blue velvet upholstery, and 3-D pictures of Jesus comforting?
With her “frequent flyer” status, Grandma Ruthie was treated like a queen from the moment she walked in the door. She never settled for the rattling Coke machine and sprung couch in the sadly worn family lounge. When the stress of public mourning became too much to bear, Grandma Ruthie retreated to the senior Mr. Whitlow’s private office, where he stocked her favorite brand of butter cookies and an ample supply of bottled sweet tea. Membership has its privileges.
Visitations were held on the evening before the burial, giving the community the chance to offer condolences to the bereaved and give their real opinion of the deceased outside the bereaved’s earshot. Grandma Ruthie was ensconced in the front row of the chapel, sending petulant looks at Bob’s children. She was still pouting over their last-minute refusal to let her take over the memorial video or the photo board. Somehow, they seemed insulted that Grandma wanted to focus on the last five years of Bob’s life, omitting his first marriage to their late mother and the existence of his children and grandchildren. She did get her vengeance by making a memorial Wheel of Fortune puzzle board spelling out “Ruthie Loves Bob” and putting it in the lid of his casket. Bob was a huge Wheel fan.
Based on the craftsmanship, I suspected my sister, Jenny, had a hand in this.
Grandma Ruthie simply did not understand why she was not being given the authority and respect due a widow. She claimed to have given Bob some of the happiest years of his life. The fact that Bob had been unconscious or hospitalized for most of that time seemed irrelevant.
Grandma Ruthie, and Jenny, for that matter, were a little miffed at Mama for her resolve that I be involved in the funeral. I would have been touched by Mama’s insistence on my having the opportunity to mourn Bob, but I’m pretty sure she just wanted help policing the buffet at the visitation. I didn’t eat, after all, so I wouldn’t mind keeping the platters full. The main problem was that Grandma insisted on using her good silver serving pieces (from Wedding No. 2), which were mixed in with stainless-steel pieces from the funeral home. You’d think by now I’d be able to sniff out metal that causes me to burn and itch, but every time I moved a utensil, it was like Russian roulette. So I stuck with plates.
It is an unwritten law that a person could not be decently buried in the Hollow without the presence of deviled eggs and some form of homemade pimento cheese. My cousin Junie’s hot-dog bake is also usually present. It’s essentially diced hot dogs, Tater Tots, processed cheese food, and cream of mushroom soup baked until crusty. Still, it’s preferable to homemade pimento cheese.
Of course, for humans, nourishment is needed to sustain them through the gauntlet of social interactions. If you met anyone in the deceased’s family once, you are expected to bring a casserole for the bereaved and spend at least twenty-five minutes at the visitation. This meant that if I wanted to cross the room, I was going to have to talk to every person I had ever met in my entire life. And I had no idea how many of them might be packing stakes.
Not everybody in Half-Moon Hollow knew I’d been turned, but many of those who did looked at me with a combination of fear and revulsion. I’ll admit that I spent much of my living time being annoyed at my human community, but being separated from them now was lonely and isolating. The only place I felt safe was at River Oaks, and then a group of high-school kids wrapped my entire porch in hanks of dried garlic. It was an incredibly lame and yet surprisingly effective way to make me afraid in my own home.
For this reason and so many more, I specifically asked Gabriel not to attend the funeral. I did not feel this was the appropriate occasion to introduce him to my family. When he asked which occasion would be appropriate and I stayed stonily silent, I think it hurt his feelings.
I could see now that I might have been better off with my sire nearby. After a few training sessions spent trying to hone my mind-reading talents, Gabriel and I determined that it only worked on humans. Most humans … some humans. Sometimes. It was pretty inconsistent. Still, after finding out how many people secretly disliked me inside their heads, not being able to see inside my fellow vampires’ was kind of a comfort.
According to the swarms of thoughts and scents pecking at my cortex, some of those attending the funeral knew I was a vampire, but they were nice enough not to mention it. Or at least to mention it quietly behind their hands in a way that was not noticed by the other mourners. Such is the delicate social web of a small Southern town. I knew that they knew. My family knew that some of them knew. They knew I knew that they knew. But none of us said anything, because that would cause unpleasantness. And we are nothing if not pleasant … when other people are watching.
Zeb and Jolene were lurking among the crowd, earning attendance points for Zeb and his family but avoiding actual contact with anybody. Lucky bastard. Jolene did, however, bring a huge sandwich platter and a gallon of macaroni salad from her uncle’s shop, the Three Little Pigs. I was ninety-nine-percent sure that meant Grandma Ruthie now liked her better than me. Mama Ginger was hovering over the mini-quiches and glowering in Jolene’s general direction.
Fortunately, Mama Ginger had been “too ill” since Zeb’s announcement to contribute anything to the funeral buffet—everything she made tasted like blue cheese and glue. You’d think she’d be thrilled that her son was marrying a good girl with a local family, who wouldn’t ask her son to move far from hearth and home. Plus, with her flashing lupine eyes and auburn hair, Jolene was beautiful in that fierce “some people walk in the light” way that just seems unfair to those of us whose genes aligned in a less spectacular fashion. Instead, Zeb said that upon hearing his engagement announcement, Mama Ginger accused him of letting “little Zeb” do all of his thinking for him. Floyd had nodded in agreement, but it was in more of an envious, congratulatory way.
Much like the iceberg that doomed the “unsinkable” ship, the visible workings of the Lavelle-McClaine wedding plans were only the tiniest glimpse of passive-aggressive maneuverings below the surface. Being truly disliked for the first time in her life sent Jolene into some sort of prolonged panic state, where she did almost anything to try to get Mama Ginger to like her. This, of course, just irritated the hell out of Mama Ginger. She would not bond with Jolene. She simply refused to, just as she’d refused to shop for mother-of-the-bride dresses with the clingy bride. She would not meet Jolene for lunch to discuss floral arrangements or seating charts. She faked a gluten allergy to get out of tasting the wedding cake.
I hadn’t seen Mama Ginger since I’d started keeping night hours. Henna-haired and built like a neurotic fire hydrant, Zeb’s mother was wearing her “burying dress” of clingy black Lycra, Bedazzled with intricate patterns of tiny gold-tone studs and rhinestones. There was a matching hat, but Mama Ginger wouldn’t dare cover her colored, curled, and coiled coiffure, which, as a hairdresser, she considered her own best advertisement. Mama Ginger, who never left the house without full pancake makeup and eyeliner, usually ambushed me with one of the fifteen nubbed lipsticks she kept in the bottom of her purse to “give me a little color.”
Eager to avoid a scene in which I would be left with a linty coat of Risqué Red, I backed away. The movement caught Mama Ginger’s attention, and before I knew it, I’d made inadvertent eye contact. Bah!
“Jane!” Mama Ginger squealed. “Oh, honey, come on over here and give me some sugar!”
Across the room, Zeb’s eyes widened as Mama Ginger enveloped me in a hug that would usually have left me smelling of Jean Naté and Virginia Slims, except this time, the scent of lady-grade tobacco was dramatically understated. Zeb shot me an apologetic look and then turned his back and busied himself with some punch.
Coward.
“You’re so skinny! You need to get over there and eat something. I worry about you, poor single girl, always on some crazy diet. You need someone to cook for, honey. That will put some meat on your bones.” Mama Ginger mercilessly squeezed my cheeks with her carefully painted acrylic nails. “Now, how are you, baby doll? Tell me every little thing!”
“I’m fine. Mama Ginger, did you quit smoking?” I asked, sniffing her again.
“Yes, I did!” she cried. “How did you know?”
“Um …” Don’t say smell. Don’t say smell. I spotted a pack of nicotine gum in her purse and nodded to it.
Mama Ginger giggled. “You’ll never believe this, but I went to that Madame Zelda over on Gaines Street.”
“The ‘mesmerist/tarot reader’ who offers palm readings for five dollars from her den?”
“That’s the one. She does a special course of ‘Smoke-Free Sessions.’ It’s five hypnosis sessions for two hundred and fifty dollars. Pricey, but it’s done the trick.”
Mama Ginger had left at least two packs of Revlon-stained cigarette butts in her wake every day since I’d known her. In fact, she once lit up in the middle of her annual physical, right after her doctor told her that she was at risk for seven kinds of cancer. People take bad news in different ways.
I could only guess that the faint cigarette smell still lingering on Mama Ginger was nicotine that had seeped into her DNA.
“I’m chewing this silly gum.” She sighed, rolling up her sleeve to show me a nicotine patch on her arm. “And I only smoke after meals, but really, I’m feeling much better. I can walk all the way to the mailbox without a break.”