ASHES

Five days in France working on DK's memoirs and meanwhile--in between sound cues while producer/audio engineer messed around on Pro Tools--trying to sort out All Things Becket. 

NORTHERN BOUNDARY NEWS:
The dispute continues but have managed to shut the guy up by saying my father died. Am vaguely interested in seeing how long a property developer thinks might be a decent enough period of mourning before he starts cranking out the nine million emails with "SEE New Attached Surveyors' Reports" again. Still quiet after a week though so Mr. Sanders rises perhaps slightly in my estimation. I've got my team over there hot on the case, in any event, and will do nothing until I am physically there, hopefully in a few weeks, and can see for myself how keen I am to lose 44 feet of frontage. This will have to be all sorted before I put the house on the market. Which certainly won't happen this week or next or even this year but--have to be ready. Which brings me to the next subject on the Becket Agenda.

PEG:
Called me in tears yesterday, must have been 4:00 AM her time. She misses Daddy. I know this. We all do, of course, but when you figure they were together for almost 66 years--whatever they had, they made it work, and now her companion is gone. I do get it. So, I started to say soothing stuff about Daddy but it turns out what's upsetting her at the moment is that she finally--after in fact four years of  saying "I've GOT to get down to Fairfield to get my teeth cleaned!" she finally, actually picked up the phone and made the appointment and, for a change, didn't cancel it. Dr. Pablo Cuevas is her hero because he's the only one who every managed to make her dentures and make them fit and not hurt. She even writes to his mother to say how brilliant her son is, the woman and is in fact on Peg's Blue Book list [SEE EARLIER POSTS] of recipients. 

So, Dominick drove her down (2 hrs), Bonnie being too nervous, and Dominick took Google Maps directions instead of mine, mistake, so whether they got lost or the traffic was unbearable or both, in any event the drive, it seems, was the first thing that Peg was in tears about because, as far as I can figure out, time had passed, trees had grown, buildings have been torn down, and she didn't recognize anything along Route 8 anymore. Then there were "at least a hundred and fifty cars in the parking lot!", also cause for concern, and then it seems Dr. Cuevas found she has an infection. 

"And--and--he wants to call you!" Peg sobbed, and added that she'd done nothing for two days but cry over this.

I reassured her that this is normal, that her GP is in touch with me too. Although I am ever so slightly worried because--well. Because. Who knows. But I would never tell her this. Anyhow while Peg talked and hiccuped I googled Cuevas to find his number and email and the first entry I see is "Pablo Cuevas - Sex Offender". What?? Clicked everything, madly, seems this guy's in Trumbull too, but that's right near Fairfield, I think, so well. Christ. Could it be? Am frantically reading stuff like  "...positive identification cannot be established unless a fingerprint comparison is made.." and on and on and then found some Pablo Cuevas soccer player in South America and then finally finally saw a "Brighten Your Smile" or something and there he was, our own DDS Cuevas (Pablo, I love you) but stayed cross-checking for another few minutes to make sure. Anyhow I've emailed him but it's Sunday, no one in the office, so have no further info yet. ("Say, Pablo, while we're on the subject, what's sex in a dental chair with an anaesthetised person with no teeth really like?")

ASHES:
Daddy was cremated last week and returned to Dery's Funeral home yesterday. They will make an appointment to bring the ashes out to the house. I am fairly sure everyone will feel better knowing he's come home, even in that unfamiliar state. I don't know what Peg has in mind, meaning what she'll do with them. Mantle? Fridge? She kept her Aunt Elise in the exercise room for four years, I don't want that to happen to Daddy. I was up there one day poking around for a bag of Alex's old baby clothes and happened to see four tins of various sizes, floral pattern, on the bottom shelf of a bookcase. "Susie" said one, and on the others three names I've forgotten, but one had the word "cat" in parentheses, which was the clue. Ah, I said, ashes! Elise's pets, clearly, which maybe had traveled up from Bronxville with her when she'd moved in with my parents the year before she died, at 92. 

My eyes then lit on a four litre plastic container, like Wall's family-size ice cream would come in. "Dr. Elise L. Renning" it said, in not particularly attractive penmanship. It took me fifteen seconds or so to process that the remains of my great aunt were in that box. I flew down the stairs.

"What is Elise doing in the exercise room?? Why hasn't she been--I don't know--buried!"

Peg regarded me blankly for a moment. My mother has and always has had, an--occasionall--endearing tendency to reside in her own world, a factor which no doubt makes her the great writer that she is. Still. How can forget an aunt sitting in Tupperware between a treadmill and a Nordic Tracker. I repeated my question, with more urgency this time and included the helpfull reminder that Elise was dead and in ash format and not some apparition in white lab coat sitting on the bookcase up there dangling her legs. Finally it all clicked.

 "I know. I know. Don't tell me," Peg said, shaking her head, "and I feel kind of badly about it, too. Elise wanted her ashes scattered over the back garden in Bronxville, where Josh is, but by the time she died the house had been sold and I couldn't see myself ringing the bell and saying 'Do you mind terribly if I throw my aunt's ashes over your rhododendrons?' So I don't know what to do with her. What do you think?"

"I think she should go back to Minnesota and be buried alongside her parents and her family where she belongs."

"Great. Perfect!" Peg said, like it's a novel idea to be buried with the people you loved in the state you loved.

I went to TJ MAXX and bought a brown naugahyde stationery box big enough to hold Aunt Elise In Tupperware and the four tins of cremated pets. They all fit together perfectly, like a kid's puzzle, and I brought Elise in her new brown box downstairs to the front hall in preparation for outer wrapping for the Minnesota leg of the journey. Almost immediately, the overhead light blew. We replaced the bulb. Out in the kitchen, where my mother was starting dinner, the broiler suddenly frizzled, then died. My son, aged 13, appeared from the other end of the house to say his Nintendo machine had stopped working (no bad thing), and that when he tried to use Grandma's computer, it flickered on and off for a bit, then went black. From the front garden, we heard the lawnmower stop; my father came in a few minutes later, annoyed, having been unable to get the thing, brand new, started again. I knew exactly what was going on.

I drove back to TJ MAXX and purchased another stationary box, this time a bright what we used to call Puerto Rican Pink one, in a silky fabric. I then went next door to Michael's Crafts and bought two yards of inch and three quarters black satin ribbon, after which I drove back home over Washington mountain and carried my new purchases, along with Elise, back up the stairs to the exercise room, where I set about creating The New And Improved Aunt Collection. I found a team photo of her playing basketball for Rochester High School. Her medical degree, which I rolled up and affixed with gold paper seal. A photo of her as a little girl in Kasson, Minnesota. A photo of her mother, who'd died when Elise was only sixteen. Two greeting cards with poodles on them, her breed of choice, a cat toy, a hand-penned Bon Voyage note from me, her great (really great) niece, tucked everything into the new pink box amongst the ashes containers I had already installed--then wound the box with the black satin ribbon, gift-like, with a beautifully-tied bow at the top and pinking-sheared two ends. Perfect! Don't you see? Elise hated brown! She didn't want to be in an ugly brown fake leather box, she wanted to be in a pretty bright pink and black one, to match the colours in her bedroom an bathroom back in Bronxville!  

Well may you  laugh, but it was all crystal clear to me. And PS. the computer, in the presence of the pink box,  immediately started working again, ditto the lawnmower, mircowave (did I emntion the microwave?) and Nintendo. Although we had to buy a new broiler.

I bubble-wrapped the pink box, then did so in brown paper, addressed it to cousins in Minnesota who ran a florists in Rochester (having warned them to say it was coming so they didn't tear it open thinking it was Fruit of the Month or something), drove it to the Hinsdale Post Office where the man asked me if I wanted to insure it and if so for how much. I let three people go ahead while I stood there deliberating, wondering how much Elise was worth, even $37.95, the top rate, seemed insulting somehow, since this was after all a woman who had not only been Golda Meir's gynecologist for awhile but Indira Ghandi's too, and finally decided to not insure her at all and put my faith in the U.S. Postal system crossing my fingers that Elise didn't end up in lost property in perhaps Baton Rouge. I am pleased to report that Elise traveled safely to Minnesota where she then rode around in the trunk of Bud and Wim's Chrysler for four months until the ground in Maple Grove Cemetery had defrosted enough to get a hole dug.

It is therefore with just a tad of curiosity that I await to see what my mother does with my father's ashes. I had in mind a burning Viking ship--I read you can buy miniature balsa versions specifically for this purpose, I think they're about five feet long and cost about £300--and thought of launching it over here into the North Sea (rather than Center Pond in Becket, say) but as I'm certain he'd want to be buried with my mother and I can't see her rashing to impale herself on the dragon's head, puttee-fashion, it'll probably be--yep. Back to Ye Olde Exercise Room.