Susan was stuck there, staring through the windshield across the street. Everything around her continued, the radio boomed an eighties tune that she didn’t hear, her van thrummed below her. She had two packets of Sweet and Low in her right hand, slapping them against her thigh, she was in the middle of sweetening her coffee when it happened.
“Dang.”
Hilson cemetery – right there across the street from McDonalds. Susan was on her way to meet a girlfriend at the YMCA, Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9 AM for a forty minute swim.
She knew exactly how many friends and relatives she had in that graveyard, five assorted aunts, uncles and her father on the Catholic side, her husband called them the ‘blessed dead’ and one friend on the non-Catholic side, the “not so” blessed dead. Maggie. It was nearly a year since she’d died and Susan had yet to return to Maggie’s grave, how could she be surprised that she was sitting here directly across from that cemetery?
Maggie, head wrapped in that damn Chicago Bears scarf looked at Susan with clear blue eyes floating in an emaciated skull:
“Go home Suzy – go on, this will pass.”
Maggie had long passed the stage where she was able to vomit anything up, it was just painful retching now. This last chemo treatment was the worst, Susan was sure she would die that night. She feared it and prayed for it all the while feeling guilty over her emotions.
God, I’m fucked up, she thought as she wiped Maggie’s face.
“I’m serious Suzy!!, moaned Maggie, “Go on home, how am I gonna get any sleep with you here?”
“I will in a couple a minutes Mags.”
Susan tilted a glass towards Maggie, its straw aimed at her face, “drink – they said we have to watch out for dehydration.” Reluctantly, Maggie leaned forward and drew on the straw, her gaze traveling past Susan unfocused. Looking at what, thought Susan? Maggie had started doing this recently, just staring into space. Susan wondered what she saw but was afraid to ask, somewhere she’d read about “the thousand yard stare” but that was for Vietnam vets wasn’t it? PTS victims .. well maybe having cancer qualified her.
Falling back on the cushions Maggie whispered: “I don’t know why you do all this, Suze.”
“Yes you do, Mags; besides it makes me feel useful.”
“Yeah,” she sighed “I forgot this is all about you,” she chuckled. “You selfish bitch.”
Susan snapped back. Unstuck now, she tore the Sweet and Low packages open and poured them into her coffee.
“OK Mags, here I come.”
She reversed the van, took the swizzle stick out of her cup, tossed it and the sweetener packets towards the little wastebasket on the floor. As she crossed the street and entered the gates of Hilson graveyard she took a long drink from her ceramic coffee cup sporting the words “Selfish Bitch.”
Margaret Reynolds was buried about three hundred yards away and to the south from the main gate of Hilson cemetery, her headstone was simple. Name, birth date, date of death.
No flowers or cherubs for Maggie, “None of that fancy shit” she had demanded.
Jim, Maggie’s ex-husband had called Susan a couple of months ago to tell her that the stone was in place. He had still been on Maggie’s only insurance policy when she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and surprisingly he had carried through on his promise and paid for her funeral and the stone.
“Oh, OK– well ” stammered Susan, “I’ll have to get out there and look at it.”
“How are you doing?” she had asked, giving her voice the correct amount of inflection, hoping to telegraph to Jim that she was just asking, don’t think I care, thought Susan. Maggie forgave you bud, but I didn’t. Mercifully he kept his answer generic and the conversation wrapped up without her having to call him all the names that Maggie wouldn’t. She had forgotten the whole telephone call until this morning.
Susan crossed the path and knelt down across from Maggie’s grave.
She brushed grass clipping away from the granite marker, leaning in to blow more of it out the the “R” in Reynolds.
“Oh Mags .. now what?” she sighed.
Gazing across the sea of stones she could see a man riding one of those stand up lawn mowers, it droned on peacefully, tending the lawn needs of the dearly departed. She chuckled to herself at that thought. Soon tears bubbling up in the corners of her eyes, “don’t do this to me Maggie, I gotta meet Beth in twenty minutes. That girl’s got some kinda radar and she’ll be all over me if I show up with red eyes.” Minutes passed as Susan knelt there trying to feel something and nothing at the same time.
“Excuse me!”
Susan spun on her knees, what? An old woman stood not five feet from her, how she had gotten so close to Susan without Susan’s notice was something she would wonder about for days. She was dressed elegantly in a black dress, nylons, dress heels and dark veil. Oh God, I crashed a funeral, thought Susan, she took a quick inventory of her own clothes: grass stained white walking shoes, stretched out Old Navy tee shirt and green running shorts from JCPenney.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”.
The woman in black huffed: “Do you need something?” Not waiting for an answer she impatiently said “Can I help you?”
Susan stood up quickly and did a quick 360 looking for a clue as to what this old lady was talking about.
“I’m just visiting my friend here–” Susan paused as she pointed at Maggie’s grave.
Why do I need to explain this to her? she thought.
The old woman’s face was expertly made up, just the right foundation, blush, eyeliner and lipstick. She was beautiful actually, or at least it was clear she had been in years past, now she was mostly scary as she glared at Susan. Moments passed as they just stood there looking at each other. Out of the corner of her eye Susan saw the lawn mower guy gliding past headstones, looking for all the world as if he had no legs and traveled on one of those Segways. That’s funny, she thought I’ll have to tell Mags about this. Painfully she grimaced at her own grief, I’m not telling Maggie about this or anything else again. Susan broke the silence.
“Shit, I’m sorry — what — do we know each other?”
The old woman said nothing as she stared hatefully at Susan. Finally, her eyes blinked a few times and she turned on her heels, scuttling back to her car. Looking impossibly small behind the wheel the old woman backed up, pulled around Susan’s van and drove away slowly, her lips pursed in an almost straight crimson line, never looking again in Susan’s direction.