7.
Alex
~ Keith Summer's funeral was to be a quick and painless affair. Like pulling out a splinter out or ripping a band aide off, it was best done quickly and gotten over with as soon as possible. Maggie Summers didn't kid herself that her brother was exceeding popular and would have a line of friends and former lovers waiting for him.
"No. No." She whispered quickly. "Just a quite service. I don't even want it in the paper."
"Traditionally-" Mr. Wilcock started to say before Alex gave the old man a harsh glare. Death was always a booming business and it was in the nature of the mortuary to get every last cent they could out of the bereaved.
"We don't need to put it in the paper." Alex said curtly. "And we can use the smaller room. "Maggie just bring some nice pictures from home. Ones of him fishing. He always liked that."
"We can do a video slideshow." Mr. Wilcock started to say and Maggie shook her head.
"I don't want anyone to look... to look at Keith in the coffin." Maggie whispered to Alex instead of the ghoulish mortician.
Alex nodded.
"No makeup. I don't want to see a fee for that. Also, no embalming. It's not needed. Keith is going into the ground and refrigeration will be fine." Alex said coldly.
"Embalming is-" Mr. Wilcock explained hurriedly, but Alex raised a hand to cut him off.
Oregon passed a green law that said bodies could go into the ground without being embalmed, but funeral directors liked to mislead families that it was against the law or the rules of the cemetery to do so.
Alex knew better. It was exactly why he showed up today. To help Maggie pick out an inexpensive casket, a decent headstone that wasn't too overpriced, and all without being cheated in the "business of death". Keith had some life insurance but it would barely cover these final expenses. Maggie hadn't questioned why he'd met her there with Keith's final death certificate. Why he'd rushed the autopsy in Portland so they could have him buried back home as soon as possible.
Why he wouldn't let the funeral home people bully her into spending all of the ten thousand dollars Keith had left her in insurance money. Money that would quickly be blown away on a casket, headstone and plot. Alex had tentatively suggested cremation but Maggie shook her head.
They were all buried here. All the Summers clan. Her grandparents, parents, her crazy Aunt Margo. Even the great-grandparents who built the Queen Anne house on the old highway were buried here and Keith would be to.
"Might as well... pay for my plot to, Sheriff." Maggie said sadly. "While I'm at it."
Alex spent the rest of the morning on the sad and never ending detail of death. Maggie selected a simple headstone for Keith and a matching one for her when her time came. She was only 43 and never married. She lived alone and suspected she always would. It was best she be ready to be put to rest next to her brother when her time came.
The rest of the Summers family weren't nearly as humble as Keith and Maggie were forced to be in the graveyard. The Summers family used to be well off and respectable. At the turn of the century was when they started to bury their dead and imported a marble obelisk from back east to have it tower over all the other headstones in White Pine Bay's little cemetery. That was before the depression, the Second World War. Before the great boom of American industry seemed to leave White Pine Bay behind.
The Summers family had a little hardware store in town, along with a gas station, but it wasn't enough. In the late 50's or was it the early 60's? The family mortgaged the big house and gas station and built the motel.
Terrible idea. They were never able to catch up on the mortgages and more the fifty years later, Keith lost everything. Maggie was the only one who owned anything now. She still owned and ran the tiny hardware store that was doomed to be put out of business forever when the big box stores went up in a few months.
Or maybe she wouldn't. Who knew. Maggie was resourceful and people in this town were loyal. Her location in historic downtown didn't hurt and she could always rebrand and sell something else. Although it would be hard to picture Maggie Summers opening a cute shopping boutique. A place the likes Norma Bates might visit.
Alex blinked and let himself indulge a little on the fantasy of Norma Bates. It had been a week since he'd seen her last. When she'd let him into her house. Maggie's grandmother's house, in fact to fix her fireplace. He'd come to explain Keith suicide and had expected things to be uncomfortable, but it hadn't been. She'd treated him as though she'd expected him. Almost as if he were late and needed to be slightly chastised. She even made him coffee. Out of an old fashioned percolator. If Alex hadn't known better, he could have sworn he'd traveled back in time somehow. As if stepping over Norma Bates' threshold, into that large, spacious house, sent him back to some fanciful era that no longer existed. If it ever existed at all.
Alex, a skeptic of most things, didn't believe the overly sweetened black and white movies. That things were better back in the good old days.
In reality, they were just different. They were slower, quieter and father didn't always know best. No, he'd take his modern existence over nostalgia any day. At least there was honesty in the world today.
Still, he wouldn't mind at all coming home to a pretty wife like Norma. Someone who didn't wear yoga clothes to everything. Who dressed nicely and would gently scolded him for being late. Who wore those lovely dresses and matching sweaters. Who would make him that good coffee in the morning and tell him not to eat the donuts at the station and that she made him a nice breakfast and his uniform was already washed and ironed and smelling clean for him to wear.
Alex felt his chest hurt. A painful sorrow, deeper than the sorrow of death, came rushing over him. He was in the cemetery while Maggie explained to the funeral director where she wanted hers and Keith's headstones to be placed. Maggie was Keith younger sister and Keith was Alex's age.
Alex had no wife, no one to morn him after he died. He was alone just like Keith. Just like Maggie. He might as well pick out his own plot and prepare for death while he was here. His life was no less depressing. He was just as alone.
As if on cue, as if sensing his sudden panic attack, his phone buzzed angrily at his side and he reached for it. An unknown number flashed on the caller ID and Alex was quick to grumble an aggressive "Romero" when answering it.
"Hi, Sheriff, it's Norma Bates." Came a breezy feminine voice. She sounded carefree and almost happy. As if she always called him and hadn't shooed him out of her house a week ago.
"Mrs. Bates." Alex swallowed hard and stepped away from Maggie and Mr. Wilcock who were arguing about the laws of embalming agin. Alex would have to step in soon.
"I'm sorry I had to ask you to leave the other day." Norma said quickly as though reading his thoughts. "My youngest son Norman would have been home from school and I didn't want him to see the police car in the driveway."
"Oh." Alex said.
"Or..." Norma said her voice slower and more careful now. "Well, a man in the house. Not with his father having passed away only six months ago. You understand."
Alex felt a heavy weight practically lift off his shoulders.
"Oh." He said. "No course." Of course she didn't want her teenage son to see some strange man. A cop, no less, in his mother's house. Being served coffee and passing the time with her on the couch in front of the fire. Six months wasn't nearly long enough and there was the stress of moving and starting a new business to contend with.
"I- I understand." Alex stumbled and felt himself smile.
"Listen, I actually called because I have a favor to ask." She said.
'Anything.' He thought to himself breathlessly. His mind racing back to the fantasy of them in a timeless bubble of 1950's domestic life.
"Well, the boys found a bunch of old letters and Christmas cards addressed to the old owners of the house and motel. They were all stored in the attic. Some of them are from the 1920s. The Summers Family? You told me what happened to that man." She said carefully.
Alex turned back to look at Maggie. At all those long dead Summers.
"Are there any other family members who might want them? I'd hate to throw them away. There's baby books to and family photo albums from-" she was saying.
"Maggie Summers is Keith's sister and an old friend of mine." Alex said forcing his voice to sound cheerful. "I think she would love to have all of that."
"Really?" Norma sounded hopeful. "I feel so bad about what happened to um... what's his name."
"Keith." Alex said.
"Right. Keith." She said. "I want you to tell... um... Maggie that she's welcome to come get it."
"I think... under the circumstances..." Alex said slowly. "I should get them."
"Oh." Norma said. "Right. You're right. You're right of course." She sounded embarrassed.
"Um." Alex looked back at Maggie who gave him a pleading look. "I'll be there in a hour? Still plenty of time beat the school busses?"
"Oh." Norma said. Her voice sounded a little heartbroken. "That was so rude of me. Dylan gave me a real lecture about it. I'm not good about making friends. I was even worse in Arizona."
"Let me take care of some business here and I'll be right over." Alex said.
Sorry it took so long to update. I'm in the middle of changing jobs and it's been a stressful month.