altered my courses,
flicked open the dam of my instinct.
—Shepherd’s Pie
Francy's mother came up from the States for the funeral, which was, to my surprise, organized by the Chapel of the Holy Lamb—the Schreier’s church. Apparently, Francy and John had at one time belonged to the group, although Francy had never mentioned it to me. When I found out, I wondered if Carla had nabbed Francy in the A&P and my friend had been too polite to say no. Anyway, I had known her for three years, and I was reasonably sure that she hadn’t attended during that time.
Francy’s mother was a small, defeated-looking woman with no eyebrows. She had painted them on, which gave her caved-in face a look of unutterable surprise, even when she was crying. Her mourning attire was vintage American trailer-park and her permed hair was pale lavender. I introduced myself to her outside the Chapel and she immediately backed away.
“You’re her, ain’t you?” she said, rather loudly.
“Her? Who her?”
“The witch. The one who led her away from the Lord. Get away from me.” She turned and scuttled past a group of Lamb-ites, disappearing into the interior of the Chapel. Several people turned to stare at me, and I met the eyes of Carla Schreier, who smiled brilliantly, then turned to say something to her stocky husband, Samson. He looked over too, and I couldn’t help feeling that I was the subject of her remark. Could it have been Carla that made Mrs. Delaney so hostile towards me? Had she called me a witch? Why would she do that?
George, who had been standing by my side, touched my arm. “Grief affects people in strange ways, Polly. Don’t take it personally.”
“How could I not take it personally? The mother of my best friend just called me a witch.”
“The mother of your best friend just called me the whore of Satan,” said a deep voice from behind me. I turned and threw myself into the arms of Ruth Glass, the angel-voiced lead of Shepherd’s Pie.
“I thought you were on tour,” I said.
“I was, but Rico called me on the road and told me what happened. I cancelled a booking in Timmins to get back here, so I could pay my respects. Francy was a good friend. I’ll miss her. Maybe you could help me write a song for her, later.” I squeezed her arm and nodded. It would have to be later, though. I wasn’t ready to write about Francy yet. Not until I knew what had happened.
Several of the funeral-goers had noticed Ruth and were whispering and moving in. Ruth gets a lot of press, and she’s a big woman, easy to recognize. Eddie came over to say hello, and once again I felt Carla’s eyes. I looked over and then looked away, quickly. It was a smile, all right, but it wasn’t a very nice one. I wondered what I’d done to deserve it. Maybe someone had reported to her the disparaging remarks I’d made about her baking.
“Hey, Eddie. How are you doing?” Ruth said.
“I’m okay, Miss Glass,” he said. His black eye had faded a bit, but he still looked haunted. He probably wasn’t sleeping well. His face was pale and he looked like he had lost weight. “Thanks for the postcard, eh? I showed it around at school.”
Ruth put a hefty arm around his shoulders.
“Boy, you’re getting big,” she said. “You’re taller than your dad, for Pete’s sake. When are you going to stop growing?”
His face got even paler and he squirmed away. “Soon, I hope,” he said awkwardly and walked back to where his parents were standing.
“Did I say something wrong?” Ruth said to me quietly.
“Well, he’s been kind of jumpy lately. He was pretty involved with Francy and John. This thing hasn’t been easy for him.”
“I guess not. God, everybody’s here, eh?”
Everybody was. Rico Amato, immaculately dressed, leaned on his vintage Caddy, chatting to Aunt Susan. With them was Spit Morton, wearing an actual suit of questionable lineage which made him look like an undertaker from the fifties. Freddy, also in formal attire, stood behind him with a placid smile on his face. I guessed that Spit had decided not to press charges and they had made up. I saw Morrison and Becker lurking in the background, both in civvies, and several other locals who had turned out for the spectacle, although I would bet that they hadn’t known Francy to speak to. People had started to move inside, so I figured that the service was about to begin.
“You’d think that the Holy Lambers would have a thing about suicide,” I said to George, who had taken my elbow to steer me through the crowd like I was a shopping cart. “I’m surprised this is such a public do.”
Otis Dermott, just in front of us, turned to blow a wave of sweet, rye-breath into my face. “We’re all equal in the eyes of the Lord, Polly Deacon,” he said. “Francy Travers may have died by her own hand, but she’s in the arms of the Lord, now.”
“Did you know her well, Otis?”
“Knew John better. When they was coming regular to chapel, we used to socialize a bit. Didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to him, though. She sent his body up north, I heard.”
“That’s where his parents are,” I said.
“I know. Thing is, they’re in a home, eh? Barely holding on. Don’t know why she didn’t just bury him here. Would’ve been easier.”
“Maybe it was too painful for her.”
“More likely she knew she wouldn’t get much sympathy as the grieving widow, eh?” Otis leered and winked. I wanted to hit him, but George squeezed my arm gently.
“Steady,” he said in my ear.
“’Course, they married right here, must have been ten years ago. Lot happens in ten years. She was plenty in love with him then.”
“Did they meet at the Chapel?”
“Nope. Francy came up here from the States on a fellowship mission when she was a teenager. Was a nanny to the Schreier’s kid, Eddie. He’s calmed down a lot, now. He was a little demon back then. She met John somewhere in Laingford and when he started courting her, she got him to come to our meetings. Things happened pretty swift after that.”
I was flabbergasted. Francy had told me none of this. I mean, she’d once mentioned that she was a nanny up here, but she never told me it was for the Schreiers. Why not? Was she ashamed of it? More likely, I thought, I’d come on so strongly anti-Christian that she’d just left that part of her life closed to me. I felt a wave of shame for being so insensitive. I’d betrayed her. There was so much about her I would never know, now.
I couldn’t believe that she’d never told me about the Schreier connection, although I suppose I could have figured it out if I’d thought about it enough. Eddie and Francy were pretty close. I’d chosen to see it as something vaguely sexual, though. Some loyal friend I was. I turned to George.
“Did you know all this?” I said.
He shook his head. “I didn’t know her at all until you met her.”
“Francy isn’t related to the Schreiers, is she, Otis?”
“Heck, no. Church connections, that’s all.” We had stopped moving to talk, and we were the only ones left on the steps.
“We’d better hurry or we’ll miss the testimonials,” Otis said. We followed him in.
The Chapel of the Holy Lamb is built in the middle of a grove of pines in the heart of Cedar Falls farm country. Next to the road, there’s a big billboard with BELIEVE IN JESUS written on it in huge black letters. It is not a mild reminder, it’s a command. The building is squat and boxy, sided in pale, peach-coloured vinyl. Gathered around its perimeter are those squat, pointy-headed cedar trees, which Aunt Susan calls Holy Shrubs. The shrubs were painfully