by Barbara Paul
(First published in Malice Domestic 1 , Pocket Books,
copyright © Barbara Paul 1992)
Annie broke her arm the day before they were to leave, trying
to drag a trunk down from the attic. The trunk got away from her and
bounced once off her forearm on its unaccompanied journey down the
stairs.
"Why didn't you call me?" Jake demanded. "You shouldn't have
tried it by yourself."
"Oh, you live so far away, and I didn't think it was that
heavy," Annie explained. "Don't fuss so, Jake."
"What did you need the trunk for anyway? We were just going
for the weekend."
"Mama wants to borrow it. She needs an extra one."
Jake thought the accident meant their trip was off, but Annie
wouldn't hear of it. She'd rescheduled all her Friday clients (Annie
was a speech therapist) just to make the trip, and make it she would.
So she was wearing a blue canvas sling on her arm and a brave smile on
her face when he picked her up early Friday morning. Jake wedged the
bonecrunching trunk into the back of his car and they were on their way.
Jake wasn't as sanguine about the trip as Annie. It wasn't the
best of conditions for meeting her family; they were going to a funeral.
Annie's grandfather had died, the nearest thing to a patriarch her
extensive family had had. Jake would have preferred the introductions
to take place under less gloomy circumstances, but no sooner had the
two of them agreed to marry than Annie started talking about taking
him home to meet the folks. Then word came that Grandpa Kirkland had
died.
Home was a town called Wrightsville, a place Jake had been
only vaguely aware of before he met Annie. Annie said everyone from
both sides of the family had been born there, Kirklands and Pooles
alike. She wanted their children to be born there. Jake had said
"Ah" and "Um" and coughed discreetly. Annie went on that people liked
to make jokes about returning to the Old Homestead, but it was heaven
having a place to run to when you needed it, a place where you knew
you would always be welcome.
They reached Wrightsville shortly before noon; the funeral was
at two. "The house is an architectural nightmare," Annie warned with
a laugh, "but inside it's roomy and comfortable." Jake saw what she
meant as he pulled into the driveway. The house had been added on to
many times, with no particular attention paid to matching the styles
of either the earlier additions or the original structure. Most of
the extensions had been tacked on to the rear, where a once-spacious
back yard had provided the most room for expansion.
Jake followed Annie to the kitchen door, where cries of "Annie!"
and "Mama!" rose as Annie jerked the door open with her good arm.
Then she and a large woman wearing a neckbrace were hugging each other
and the latter was calling out, "Annie's home!" Jake stood holding the
door and watching other people crowd into the kitchen. Then both women
pulled back, looked at each other, and said, "What happened?"
"Whiplash," said Annie's mother. "You?"
"Broken arm."
"Aw, baby. Does it hurt much?"
"Yes," Annie admitted. "But I have pain pills. Uncle Tedward!
Cousin Bette! And Young Malcolm!" More hugging.
With a smile, Annie's mother reached out a big hand to Jake,
still self-consciously holding the door. "You must be Jake -- come in,
come in! I'm so glad to meet you at last. We'll sit down and get
acquainted properly once this business is finished."
By "this business", Jake assumed she meant the funeral. He
said, "I'm sorry about your loss, Mrs. Kirkland. It's hard, losing a
father."
"Why, thank you, Jake. We're all going to miss having Grandpa
Kirkland around. But he was my husband's father, not mine. And call
me Mama Sue -- it's easier that way. Annie, take Jake around and make
sure he meets everybody."
Easier than what? Jake wondered.
"Come on!" Annie sang out, clearly enjoying her homecoming.
"Did you bring the trunk?" Mama Sue asked.
"It's in the car -- Jake will get it later."
Jake followed Annie from room to room, pursuing a labyrinthine
path he wasn't sure he could retrace on his own. At least three
generations were in the house, from old folks to running children.
The mood was surprisingly cheerful, as if they were all gathered for
a family reunion party instead of a funeral. Jake met Aunt Dottie,
Young Herbert, Grandma Kirkland (the new widow), Brother William,
Malcolm Senior (who, oddly, had an ear missing), Cousin Oliver, and
a number of others whose names he desperately tried to remember.
There was even a Sister Kate -- whose sister, Jake couldn't quite
figure out. But he understood why Annie's mother said calling her
Mama Sue would be easier; there were also a Mama Marcie and a Mama
June.
Jake's stomach growled; it had been a long time since breakfast.
"Uncle Tedward?" Jake said questioningly to a distinguished-looking
man wearing an eyepatch.
"My name's Edward, so of course I was called Teddy," the man
explained pleasantly. "Somehow that eased over into Tedward as I grew
older. I'm so used to 'Uncle Tedward' now that at times I forget what
my real name is."
Jake looked around for Annie; he seemed to have lost her.
"Uncle Tedward, I wonder if you could point me toward a bathroom. We
were in the car for five hours and -- "
"Say no more, my boy. This way." Uncle Tedward led him to a
narrow door opening off a landing separating two floor levels by only
one step each way. Behind the narrow door was a rather spacious
old-fashioned bathroom.
When he came out, Jake looked for Annie again but still couldn't
spot her. He shook hands with an old man called Grandpa Poole who
peered at him myopically and murmured something that sounded like
"Oh yes, June's boy" and then wandered away. Jake's stomach growled
again. He stopped a child running by, a little girl with a Mickey
Mouse Band-Aid across her nose, and asked her to take him to the dining
room; on his first trip through he'd spotted a sideboard there loaded
with sandwiches.
The girl led him to the food and then darted off. Jake helped
himself to a tunafish sandwich and was chewing contentedly when a man
about Jake's age stepped up to the sideboard and looked over the
sandwiches. He glanced at Jake and said, "You must be The Fiancé.
I'm Young Malcolm." He held out his left hand.
"Jake Dietrich," Jake said, shaking his hand awkwardly.
"Sorry about the left hand, but..." Young Malcolm held up
his right arm to display the wrist splint he was wearing. "I don't
know why, but funerals always make me hungry."
"Um. Tell me..." -- Jake couldn't bring himself to call the
other man "Young" Malcolm -- "...do all these people live here?"
"In Wrightsville, you mean?" Young Malcolm asked around a
mouthful of corned beef.
"In this house."
"Oh, no. Most of us have homes elsewhere, but a lot of us
will be staying overnight. Kate and I are going to stay."
So Young Malcolm was married to Sister Kate. "A long drive
back?" Jake asked, making conversation.
"We live in Meade."
Jake had never heard of Meade. Just then one of the Mamas
came up on the other side of him and started building a Dagwood
sandwich -- Mama Marcie, Jake remembered. She looked at what was left
of Jake's tunafish sandwich and made a tsk-tsk sound. "Is that all
you're eating? Here, try some of these artichoke hearts. Uncle
Tedward made a special sour cream dressing for them." She scooped
two big spoonfuls on to a plate.
"Thank you," Jake said, not mentioning that he hated artichokes.
As he took the plate from Mama Marcie, he noticed half of her left
forefinger was missing.
She saw him looking and gave a rueful laugh. "I did it to
myself. I was watching General Hospital and chopping mushrooms at
the same time and...well, I guess I got a little careless."
Jake's stomach turned over.
"Papa Ross told you that was going to happen," Young Malcolm
said.
Jake put the artichokes down and said, "I, uh, I've got to go
get a trunk out of the trunk."
"I'd offer to help, but..." Young Malcolm held up his wrist
splint again.
"That's all right," Jake said hastily. "I can manage."
"Nonsense," said Mama Marcie, and then raised her voice.
"Somebody here want to give The Fiancé a hand in moving a trunk?"
Several voices answered in the affirmative, and Jake picked out
the healthiest-looking of the volunteers, a teen-aged boy who seemed
to have all of his body parts intact. The two of them went out to the
driveway and wrestled the trunk out of the car. Back in the kitchen,
the boy said, "Where do you want it, Mama Sue?"
"Oh, down in the basement, dear, thank you."
Jake found himself on the wrong end of the trunk going down the
narrow, poorly lighted stairway, but they made it to the bottom without
mishap. Then just as they were moving the trunk against a wall, the boy
dropped his end; Jake barely got his foot out of the way in time.
"Hey, good reflexes!" the boy said blithely.
Jake muttered something under his breath and headed back up to
the kitchen. There he turned to the boy and said, "Er, thanks for your
help, ah..."
"Cousin Rathbone." The boy gave him a cheery grin and headed
back toward the dining room.
Jake turned to Mama Sue. "Did he say 'Rathbone'?"
"Yes, dear. His name's Basil, but no one calls him that.
It's a kind of joke, you see." She and Uncle Tedward were busy
putting meats in the oven to finish roasting while they were all
at the funeral. "Why don't you go find Annie?" Mama Sue asked.
"It's time we were leaving for the cemetery."
Jake found her in the rear living room (the house had two)
talking to the little girl with the Mickey Mouse Band-Aid on her
nose. "And you mustn't run around during the funeral, Little Marcie,"
Annie was saying earnestly. "All you kids -- you mustn't run."
"Mama already told us that," Little Marcie said.
"Well, I'm telling you again. No running! Now, scoot."
The child ran away as fast as she could, and Annie turned to smile
at Jake. "Time to go?"
Outside, the family's automobiles were parked all up and
down the street; still, Jake wondered if there were enough to
accommodate so many people. But before the mob on the sidewalk
could start getting in the cars, a big Greyhound bus lumbered by,
belching black smoke over everyone. "This is too much!" Malcolm
Senior said. "I say we get a lawyer."
"No," a woman Jake couldn't identify chimed in, "we need to
go to City Council and get an ordinance passed."
"The bus station's only a block down that way," Annie said
to Jake, pointing. "They could just as easily route their coaches
along Mansmann Boulevard, but they send them through this residential
area instead. They say it saves time."
Malcolm Senior snorted. "Eleven minutes! It saves them
eleven minutes exactly. And we get stuck with the noise and the
fumes. Well, we'd better get going." Everyone seemed to head for
whatever car was nearest.
"Er, should I drive?" Jake asked.
Only Cousin Rathbone heard him. "Hey," he yelled, "do we
need The Fiancé's car?" Replies of "No" and "Plenty of room"
floated back.
Jake followed Annie into the backseat of someone's Buick,
taking care not to bump her broken arm as he settled in. A fat
man sat wedged behind the driver's wheel, needlessly revving the
engine. The straw-haired woman sitting next to him turned and
smiled. "It's so good to see you again, Little Annie."
"And it's good to see you, Cousin Philippa. It's been a
while." Then she noticed the expression on Jake's face and explained,
"I was always called Little Annie to distinguish me from Mama's sister.
I was named after Aunt Annie."
"Who died just last year," Cousin Philippa added with a sigh.
"We all miss her."
The fat man behind the wheel pulled the car away from the curb.
"Damned stupid way to go, if you ask me," he muttered.
"Now, William," Cousin Philippa said.
"Brother" William, Jake remembered, and asked, "How did she
die?"
"She shoulda had that old furnace replaced years ago," Brother
William growled.
"It blew up?" Jake asked, alarmed.
"Oh no, nothing like that," Annie