The Pursuit of Alice Thrift

At the fourth or fifth misstatement, my mother barked from behind her handkerchief, “Betty!”

The minister looked up; smiled indulgently at the grieving heckler.

“Her name wasn’t Barbara,” clarified a male voice in the back.

Everyone knew it was the homely pin-striped stranger who’d arrived ahead of everyone else and whose signature was first in the guest book: Raymond Russo, Boston, Mass.

“Betty,” repeated the minister. “How careless of me.” She smiled again. “My own mother was Barbara. I think that must say something, don’t you?”

My mother was having none of it: Her stored grief found a new cause, a new enemy, in the rainbow-embroidered figure of the overly serene Reverend Dr. Nancy Jones-Fuchs, who was told in the recessional, in frigid terms, that her services would not be needed graveside.

Ray was the only one who had thought to slip the Book of Common Prayer beneath his overcoat. My aunt Patricia suggested we honor my grandmother Quaker-style, which was to say, in silence. After several minutes, Ray opened the prayer book. We looked over. He offered it to my mother first. “I couldn’t,” she said. Nor could Aunt Patricia, which left my father, who looked to me.

“I could read a psalm,” Ray offered. “Or just say a few words. Whatever you think she’d like.”

“Read,” I said.

“The Twenty-third Psalm is on page eighty-two,” whispered the funeral director.

Ray’s recitation was from memory, eyes closed, and more heartfelt than I expected. When he finished he said, “I didn’t know Betty, but I wish I did.” His voice turned breezy; he tapped the coffin genially with the corner of the prayer book. “Sorry you have to have a virtual stranger here, Betty, reading the last prayer you’ll ever hear, but I guess I know you at least as well as that lame minister did. Boy, was that annoying. And I think you and I would’ve been great pals if we’d crossed paths earlier.” He looked to my mother, who nodded her permission to continue. “I should be an old hand at this, but I didn’t have the composure to say anything at my wife’s grave. She passed away around this time last year. So maybe this is God’s way of giving me another shot at it. Which reminds me—if you run across Mary up there, maybe you can buy her lunch and tell her it’s from Ray.” He raised an imaginary glass. “So here’s to you, Betty: Ninety-four rocks. You had, what? Like, twenty presidents? Four or five wars? I hope you kept a journal or you talked into a tape, ‘cause I’d love to hear the high points.”

“She did,” said my mother.

“Which?” asked Ray.

“Videotaped. On her ninetieth birthday.”

“God bless her,” said Ray.

“Amen,” said the funeral director.

“Amen,” we echoed.

“Now what?” asked my mother.

EACH LUNCHEON ATTENDEE was called upon to share her indignation: What an insult. What a besmirching of Betty’s memory. Imagine living for ninety-four years and getting eulogized under another name. And who the hell was Barbara?

When the crowd thinned and the cousins drove away, Ray and my mother moved on from ministerial misdeeds to fiber art. I had to remind him that we had a long drive ahead, and that I had to be back at work at six A.M.

“You’re not staying over?” my mother cried.

“We’ve discussed this,” I said.

“One day off for the death of a grandparent?” my father said. “What kind of hospital is that?”

“A five-hundred-bed teaching hospital,” I said.

“The show must go on,” said Ray.

“Call her department. Let them page the goddamn head of surgery,” my mother said. “Tell him it’s an outrage. I need my daughter here.”

I darted between my father and the kitchen door. “Dad,” I said. “Please don’t. It’s not like a regular job. We don’t take sick days. No one asks for a day off unless it’s life or death.”

“Which this is,” my mother said.

Ray took her hand. “Mrs. Thrift? What if we stayed for another coupla hours?”

“Alice makes up her own mind,” she said.

Ray guided her to a dining room wall where they stood in front of “Flotsam and Jet Set.” “Of the ones on the first floor, this is my favorite,” said Ray.

In docent fashion, my mother asked if he could explain why.

“The seaweed. The lobster claw. It reminds me of home.”

“Can you tell that the wood is charred? I think it must have been kindling for a clambake.” She pointed to a crumpled piece of paper. “This was a contrivance on my part, but I’m not apologizing for it.”

Ray moved closer, cocked his head, and read, “Nokia Issues a Profit Warning.”

“From The Wall Street Journal, obviously. Which I found in the trash and not, strictly speaking, on the beach.”

“Do all your canvases tell a story?” he asked.

My mother said they did, but not her story. The beholder’s. Each composition was a Rorschach test. If someone saw, for example, capitalism or disorder or impotence—whatever one would call it—that justified her flexing her artistic muscles to add, for example, a piece of newsprint that wasn’t necessarily organic to the site.

“I’m all for flexing artistic muscles,” said Ray.

“The majority of my pieces are pure fiber. This one’s atypical, and for some reason I felt it belonged here, around food.”

Ray said he’d entered this room solely for the artwork, but as long as he was here, he’d have a few shrimps for the road. What a spread. What generosity. What a wonderful family we were.

I FOUND FREDERICK and my father at the stove, drinking scotch and eating Frederick’s signature spiced nuts directly from the sauté pan.

“Way too much food,” said my father in greeting.

“I told Joyce that people don’t eat after a funeral, but she’s always afraid of running short,” said Frederick.

“How’s this: Next time you’ll pretend to follow her orders, but you’ll only make what you think is the right amount,” said my father.

“Just what Frederick needs,” I said.

“What’s that?” asked my father.

“More authority.”

“Your daughter’s employing irony,” said Frederick. “She thinks I wasn’t as obsequious as I should have been with her boyfriend.”

“Ray is not my boyfriend,” I said.