Black Cat Weekly #76

Chapter 7-2

Anastasia stirred honey into her hot chai, moving the milky liquid around in careful swirls. She examined the goddess posters that filled Dziva’s walls, one by one, and wondered which deity should have been guarding Trudi and Mrs. Granger.

“Mrs. G. was looking forward to her birthday party in a couple of weeks. She didn’t seem that sick to me,” Keicia said.

Anastasia had to think a few seconds before realizing that Keicia meant Mrs. Granger, not Erzulie, the Haitian goddess of love. “Me either,” she said.

Anastasia had walked the few blocks from Curren’s Funeral Home to Dziva’s, just below Holy Hill, the local name for Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union. Nine different Catholic and Protestant seminaries and a dozen other religious programs were centered at GTU. She played her usual game of picking out religion or theology students from the other passersby—checking out the spines of their books, noticing their medals and symbolic pins, catching snippets of their conversation. Today she added NOT TODAY, SATAN and GET THEE TO CHURCH, BRO, to the T-shirt logos she kept track of. There was no lack of a sense of humor on Holy Hill.

It was a dry, crisp day in February. The temperature was expected to hit the high sixties, warm even for Berkeley. The kind of day Anastasia thrived on. She’d walked briskly, making a conscious effort to feel her muscles work and to breathe deeply, clearing her head. Anastasia loved living in Berkeley. All the Berkeleys, she thought. If she felt like a successful professional, she could put on her Eddie Bauer shorts and a crisp white shirt and join the yuppie crowd shopping on Fourth Street. If she felt like reliving her hippie days, she could thread a multicolor belt through the loops of her worn jeans and cruise the vendor tables on Telegraph Avenue. She could ride her bike up in the hills behind the university campanile or down in the flats by the marina. Berkeley had something for everyone.

All the BerkeleysMrs. Granger was one of the two people most responsible for Anastasia’s chosen profession. First there had been Mr. Frank Galigani of the Galigani Mortuary outside of Boston, Massachusetts, who oversaw the funeral of her little brother when Anastasia was ten years old; then there had been the best chemistry teacher in the world, Mrs. Millicent Granger.

Mrs. Granger had made science come alive for Berkeley High sophomores. She’d arranged special programs at Lawrence Hall of Science and field trips to science museums all around the Bay Area.

Anastasia’s eyes filled with tears. Mrs. Granger’s visage began to mingle with Mr. Galigani’s as she thought of the day he’d tried to explain why God might have wanted to take Nicky, Jr., before he could even count to one hundred. Mr. Galigani had done a better job than Father Cahill, she remembered, and thus she was now an embalmer and not a nun. Well, maybe it wasn’t quite that simple. In any case, her family had moved across the country to California soon after Nicky’s death. To start over, her father had said, but it hadn’t seemed like anything had changed except the weather.

Anastasia recalled her journey, crisscrossing the country, back to Boston for college and mortuary school, then back to California to be with her aging parents and resume her friendship with Keicia.

“Hello,” Keicia was saying, waving a paper-wrapped straw, metronome style, in front of Anastasia’s face. “Where did you go? Are you in that funk again?”

“What funk?”

“The birthday funk. The what have I done with my life? funk.”

what have I done with my life? Anastasia smiled. “I think it’s just a combination of things. Mrs. Granger coming in, plus no plans for the weekend.”

“Where’s Marty anyway? He can usually get you out of these moods with a little Cole Porter.”

“He’s at a tap festival in Los Angeles, doing his thing. I almost went with him, but Ed needed me for some special work on a teenager.”

“A teenager. That’s got to be rough,” Keicia said, giving Anastasia’s shoulder a rub. “I’d invite you to tag along with me and Paul, but this is film-festival weekend, and I know you like my friends only in small numbers.”

“Not true. I like your friends. I’m just not in the mood for a party.” Anastasia checked her watch. “I’d better get back to work.” She slung her leather backpack-type purse over her shoulder and headed out the door.

“Do something fun, okay?” Keicia called after her. “It’s Saturday night.”

As if the day of the week mattered in the death business. At least Keicia hadn’t reminded her that Valentine’s Day was only a week away. “I will,” Anastasia said anyway. “I’ll have some fun.”

Now what would that be? she asked herself.

Now what would that be?

By five o’clock Saturday evening, Anastasia had fixed Mrs. Granger’s face into a pleasant expression. To give her a more youthful appearance, she’d worked the old woman’s upper lip to protrude slightly and inserted a small roll of paper under her neck to eliminate her jowls. She’d filled in Mrs. Granger’s sparse eyelashes, adding hairs from the woman’s head to a length of tape on each eye, trimming and shaping to the proper length and curvature.

Anastasia remembered her restorative art class, when she’d felt not like a mortuary-science student but a sculptress, forming ears, noses, eyelids, even hands, out of wax and pieces of tape and plastic. More than once in the years since, she’d used that skill—for an ear chopped off in an accident, an eyelid lost to cancer, a hand mangled on the job.

Anastasia hooked up Curren’s new embalming machine. She smiled, remembering when she’d described it to her father on her last visit—her mother had blocked her ears and left the room.

“It looks a lot like Mom’s bread-making machine,” Anastasia had explained. “There’s a canister that holds about two gallons on the top, and switches and controls on an aluminum base.” He’d roared and promised not to tell Ruth and thus ruin his wife’s latest culinary hobby. She had a hard-enough time with her only remaining child in the death-care industry, as Anastasia had taught her to refer to it.

She stepped back from the table to see Ed Curren at the door again, this time in jeans and a light-blue crewneck shirt, looking cool enough for a Berkeley singles-group party, where he was probably headed. Ed let it be known that he was on the scene again and ready to kick it, now that divorce number three was final. Anastasia always wanted to ask Ed how he kept up his cheerful spirit after all these years in such a dark business.

Anastasia worked in four or five prep rooms in the course of a year, but Curren’s was her favorite, partly because of Ed himself, and partly because it was the most modern and well-lighted. Ed had been one of the first to break away from the stark white look, with soothing apple-green-painted walls and tile floor. A special, isolated air-conditioning and ventilation system ensured that no unseemly odors recirculated through the building. Even though the prep room was far from the visiting parlors, Curren’s was soundproofed, so there was no danger that mourners would hear the clinking of metal instruments against the table, the hum of the motorized injector, or the telltale sound of running water.

“Since you’re captive here,” Ed said, pointing to the tubes draped over Mrs. Granger, “I’ll whine a bit.”

“The raves don’t start this early huh?”

Ed gave her a thumbs-up, a wink, and a click of his tongue, one of his stock composite gestures.

“I’ll bet the whine is about the Last Lights, Incorporated, saga. Another visit from their illustrious CEO?” Anastasia asked.

Ed shook his head. “No, the great James Michael McLaughlin himself hasn’t been around here this week, but the bad news is that another independent fell. Last Lights took over Branson’s Brothers Home in Oakland.”

One city away. Anastasia frowned. The chain mortuary was moving closer. She was glad she wasn’t directly affected by this Starbucks-like trend, but who knew? Last Lights might come in with its own staff of trade embalmers and the contract she had with Branson’s Brothers wouldn’t be renewed.

On the other hand, would that be all bad? It wasn’t as if she was just starting out. Maybe she should take Keicia’s advice and see someone about a career change anyway. Or a shrink, which is probably what Keicia was leading up to.

“That’s the third independent funeral home at this end of Alameda County to fall into their hands,” Ed said, still on his own agenda.

Anastasia wondered if she’d missed any of Ed’s remarks while she was mentally creating a new future for herself. She was fairly sure Ed never questioned his career path.

“One more thing,” Ed said, waving a finger at her in a mock scolding gesture. “You’ve been holding out on me. You got a call about a half hour ago from a guy named Sonny.”

Anastasia groaned. “Oh, no. Did he call collect?”

Ed gave her a knowing look. “No, but I guess he wasn’t lying when he said he’s your ex-husband.”

She nodded. “Yes. I mean, no, he wasn’t lying.”

“Tell me more, Ms. Brent. Still waters, huh?”

Anastasia smiled as Ed allowed her to push him out the door. “Some other time.”

As Anastasia took care of Mrs. Granger, moving from one step to another in a process she knew so well, her mind traveled from her former chemistry teacher (yes, she would be allowed to stay late in the lab) to her current boyfriend (she resolved to view and study the film 42nd Street and to give more thought to moving in with him, as he wanted) to her ex-husband (what country was he calling from and how much money would he ask for this time?).

42 StreetAt seven o’clock, Anastasia took a deep breath and said goodnight to Millicent Granger and Trudi Meyers. She’d be back Sunday morning for final aspirations and to then move them to their caskets for touch-ups.

Anastasia carried her duffel bag into Marty’s small house. She’d been with him for almost two years and recently had accepted her own key.

“Just so you can use my floor for practice when I’m not around,” he’d claimed.

She changed into loose flannel sweats and cotton socks, then slipped into the tap shoes Marty had created for her by adding metal taps to the toes and heels of her old flat leather oxfords. Marty, who’d won the title Junior Mister Dance of California when he was fourteen years old, had explained how the metal plate should not be rigidly attached to the shoe but needed to have some flexibility of movement.

“It’s all about the sound,” he’d said, slapping his own tapped feet.

She smiled now as she donned the sweatshirt that went with the lecture—gray, with the message TAP DANCERS HAVE SCREWS LOOSE in red.

Anastasia expected the real thing, official tap shoes, for Valentine’s Day, since Marty had been asking hypothetical questions about size, color, and preferred heel height. Eight-and-a-half, red, and two inches, Anastasia had answered, imagining herself in Dorothy’s ruby slippers.

Marty had studied under the great San Francisco dance couple Stan Kahn and Pat Mason and tapped with a passion she’d never have, Anastasia knew. But for now, his predictions were coming true—tap was engaging and rewarding, better than any other exercise she’d ever tried.