Here on Earth

Or so she had thought. Now that she’s face-to-face with the pastures of Guardian Farm her skin feels cold. She wishes she had brought along gloves and a heavy woolen scarf. At this moment, she’d prefer to be a million miles away.

“Don’t worry,” Susie says. She’s noticed the distress on her friend’s face. “He won’t show up at the funeral. Take my word for it. He’s still refusing to do whatever it is he should.”

March gives Susie a look which she hopes will silence her, but it’s too late.

“Who are we talking about?” Gwen asks.

Gwen always does that—listens when you don’t want her to, ignores you whenever there’s something you want her to hear.

“No one,” March tells her.

“A figment of our imagination,” Susie insists on adding. “Or some of us, anyway.”

“Yeah, right,” Gwen says tartly. “Like I know what you mean.”

“She means she’s a know-it-all,” March says, but inside she’s thinking, Lucky for me that you don’t understand. Lucky for you.

They’ve left plenty of time to get to the service, and yet somehow they’ve managed to be late. The parking lot is already crowded when they pull in, and why shouldn’t it be? Judith Dale had a lot of friends, from the library, where she’d been a member of the board for ages, and from the garden club, which did so much to beautify the town, and from St. Bridget’s as well, where she volunteered in the children’s ward two nights a week, reading stories and playing games of Candyland.

March remembers wondering why it was that Mrs. Dale didn’t have children of her own. She’d asked her once, when it was late at night and she’d been sick with a fever and Mrs. Dale had been sitting up with her, spoon-feeding her rice pudding and endless cups of tea.

“That’s not what was intended for me,” Mrs. Dale had told her.

What Mrs. Dale had meant by that, March never quite understood. Was it God she was referring to, or the hand of fate, or the choices she herself had made, perhaps a long time ago? At any rate, there were sides of Mrs. Dale which were secret, and sides which were not. She liked rain, and children, and going off by herself on holidays from which she brought back small tokens as gifts: pretty matches, hair combs, mints with pink and green candy shells. She believed in home cooking and in the supreme beauty of yellow roses, six dozen of which March has ordered for this service. The scent of roses is sweet and ripe and sorrowful, making March dizzy as she goes to sit in the front row of the chapel, between Gwen and her father’s old law partner, Susie’s father, the Judge.

The Judge is tall, six foot four, and so imposing that some people say there are criminals who confess at the mere sight of him. But today, he seems a shakier version of himself; he will be seventy-two next month and his age shows, in his large hands, which tremble, in his pallor and his faded blue eyes. He keeps one hand on March’s, but for whose comfort, even the Judge isn’t certain.

Since there’s not room in the pew for everyone, Louise Justice, the Judge’s wife, is sitting directly behind them. Every once in a while she leans forward and pats March or the Judge on the shoulder.

“This is such a shock,” she whispers, again and again.

Judith Dale left instructions for the service to be simple, just as the marker she chose for herself is to be a plain gray stone. Gwen had no idea how depressing such a service could be. She is sitting up straight, studying the closed coffin. She actually seems frozen in place, her skin white as ice. With her spiky hair and her excess of mascara, she looks fairly ghoulish. Several people who have come up to give March their condolences have avoided Gwen completely, or have shaken her cold hand without saying a word.

Now, while Harriet Laughton is giving the final address, on behalf of Judith Dale’s friends on the board of the library, Gwen leans close to her mother. For one brief moment, March thinks her daughter wants a hug.

“I’m going to be sick,” Gwen whispers.

“No,” March says, even though the scent of roses and the heat inside the chapel are cloying. “You won’t be.”

“I’m not kidding,” Gwen insists. It’s the smell of death that’s getting to her. It’s the very idea. “Oh, boy,” she says, sounding scared.

March and Gwen make their way out of the pew; then March circles an arm around her daughter and guides her into the aisle, toward the door. She can hear a murmur of concern: the voices of Judith Dale’s friends, kindhearted volunteers from the library and the hospital.