Vodka Thrills

April is a good month for a funeral, as long as it isn’t your own. It’s not too hot, not to cold, and the black dresses are always on sale from belonging to the winter domain of colors. Sadly, I had a great dress but only two options for shoes to wear to this funeral I didn’t want to attend, black calf high boots or my basic black open toe seven inch high platform toed stilettoes. I’m tempted by the platforms, but rather than stir the pot on the day I bury my favorite uncle, I’m wearing the boots.

The dress is modest, not a sequin on it, just your average A-line made popular in the 1950’s. The only thing not average about it, is that it is in my wardrobe. Off work I don’t fit the stereotype of blonde, plastic boob exotic dancer. I’m 5’7” with a nice set of perky B cups. I have middle of the road green eyes and long black hair. The black hair is courtesy of L’Oreal off isle 2 at my local drugstore.
I don’t see the point in make-up, so just a quick flick of hairbrush and I am ready to go. Ready as I will ever be, anyways. I worked last night and am now up several hours before my normal vampire like wake up. I think they did it on purpose. I just hope the car feels like being woke up this early. It’s a temper tantrum prone car. But you have to cut a car made in 1973 some slack. She’s vintage and I do my best to keep her running.

My car is a VW Beetle. I love the stupid break-down prone thing, so I keep it and it takes me where I want or need to go mostly without issue. We seem to have an understanding, I won’t ask her to go speed demon fast, and she won’t stall out in front of a semi. It’s worked well for many years, even last winter when the brakes went out. That little experience made me glad it’s a stick shift. Nothing like a near death experience to wake you up. Panic attacks are better than coffee for that.

Miracles! It started and stayed idling, I have hopes I might make it on time. My family should be dutifully impressed. They won’t be, but they should be.

Traffic was uneventful, and from the looks of the pick-up filled parking lot, I am absolutely the last to arrive. My brother even managed to make it here before me. I guess I procrastinated longer with the snooze button than I thought.

Being last to arrive is the only way to go to a wedding or a funeral. Why? Glad you asked, because if you’re last it gives everyone else a chance to talk about you behind your back and get it all out of their system before you get there and have to endure the grown-up Southern version of 20 questions. This usually involves a few well tossed comments ending with promises to pray for you and blessing your heart sorts of things. It has led to many a family estrangement, at least here in Mississippi. It may be different up North, I don’t know I’ve never been out of the South to say.

My car safely locked, not that it would be hard to spot if someone tried to steal it, pink VWs aren’t common. Inept as the police are, I’m sure even they could track it down fairly quickly. Time to go inside and face my family. They mean well and are deep down good people, but beyond a family resemblance, I don’t have a lot in common with them. The uncle I’m here to pay respects too was probably the only one I truly meshed with. I’m really going to miss him. Today is all about holding it together and trying to not blow snot bubbles in the nice dress. Snot bubbles don’t look good on anyone.

I wouldn’t say a hush descended when I walked in, funeral homes are always quiet, but it got noticeably quieter. No help for it now, might as well go for it. Crowds snap me into work mode, I’ve been conditioned over the years to circulate a room. It works in many places, not just bars. Don’t believe it? Give it a try. Rule one is always look in demand and pick out the next mark discreetly before closing the conversation. Always keep it about the other person and you’ll be the most liked person ever. I have yet to meet someone that didn’t love to talk about themselves.

I’m not completely sure what went on before I got here, but a single word screamed out loudly and harshly diverted all attention from my tardy arrival.

“Murderer!”

The inaudible whispers started as everyone’s necks popped to try and see into the viewing room. That one word rang out again in a more guttural, feral voice. I instantly recognized the voice as belonging to my mom. This was going downhill faster than I could have ever anticipated today would go.

I caught my brother’s eye, it took no words as he and I started moving toward our mother’s anguished cries.

We rounded the corner of the viewing room just in time to see our reserved, ever so polite epitome of a Southern Belle mother double up a fist and land it squarely on the mouth of her newly widowed sister-in-law. The unexpected blow rocked my Aunt Tammy back off balance. The only thing to catch her was the closed casket containing Uncle Wayne. The flag draped across it started a slow motion slide to the floor. Mom took advantage and slapped her across the cheek. Aunt Tammy’s balance completely went off and she fell full speed backwards into the casket. The casket started rocking precariously on its stand. I stood transfixed for the space of one heartbeat or perhaps two. Time slows down when in shock, then catches back up when it wears off.

My brother, George, not a small man by any stretch and hardened by his time as a Marine medic in combat zones, sprinted to the sliding flag, caught it and threw it back across the space it was supposed to be. No longer neat, but a jumbled mass of crimson and white. Flag attended too, the next turn in perfect ballet fluidity of motion had him with an arm around our mother’s waist and him walking backwards away from the casket and our aunt.

A slight nod in Aunt Tammy’s direction had me in motion with one of the half dozen boxes of tissues snagged from the entryway table next to me. Tissues in hand I offered a balled up handful to my widowed aunt. The split lip she now sported was going to be a doozy of a sight when the swelling fully set it. But for now the blood on her chin and edging around her cautious teeth showing grimace, that I think was supposed to be a smile, was enough to set my already ragged nerves to jangling alarms.

“You ok?” Seems a really stupid question to ask in light of the assault so recently endured. It was the only thing I could find to ask.

Aunt Tammy took the proffered tissues and crumpled them into the lower half of her face. I watched her track my brother’s progress in dragging our mom out of view. The silence was deafening in our little bubble of space. The whispers from the other room had reached party level of murmurings.

Aunt Tammy only nodded at me and patted my arm.

I could hear indistinctly my mother’s voice berating George. Two against one is better odds regardless of where you are, I turned to go, only to feel the light touch of a cool hand on my arm. I stopped and waited.

“I didn’t kill him. I don’t know what they are all saying, but I didn’t kill him. He did that to himself.”

I knew that. It was a suicide. My Uncle Wayne was a veteran that suffered from flashbacks of his time in Iraq. He got tired of them and did what medication and the doctors had failed to do, he stopped them. It’s a crap thing to do everyone around you, but on a gut level I got why.
My mom never would. She raised him after their parents died when she was a teenager, in many ways Uncle Wayne, thirteen years younger than her, was more than a brother he was almost her son too. I decided now would be a bad time to point out the final straw for Uncle Wayne’s decision was finding out his loving wife was leaving him for someone else.

At a loss for words, I just nodded and walked away. As much as I loved my aunt, my mom and her emotional state had to come first.

Rounding the corner back into the crush of relatives, I see George still with a restraining arm around our mother, only now he had her turned into his chest and the restraint was more of a protect her from the world pose. George is big and tall, six and a half feet of former marine and a regulation haircut still in place. His grey eyes met mine over the top of mom’s head and the pain reflected in them took my breath away, so at a loss for what to do, I joined in hugging our mom between us.

The waft of familiar jasmine and vanilla perfume seemed out of place. It’s the scent of a formidable protective woman. Not the weak and broken woman sandwiched between my brother and I. The sound of approaching footsteps reminded me that now was no time to allow anything more than damage control to be first priority. We’d figure out how to fix her emotional state later, but for now, perhaps keeping assault charges from being filed had to come first.

I tensed and turned with my family at my back to face the funeral director who had approached in rubber soled, cheap, faux leather boxy lace up shoes. Chosen, no doubt, for the near silence they had across the industrial, muted blue carpeting. The look on his face was not the same sympathetic one we had been greeted with when arrangements were made. No, this look was one of seething anger veiled behind a scrunched up forehead and drawn tight eyebrows. Times like this make me wish I had a massive display of cleavage to flaunt.