after words

 “I got a much different impression of Catherine than I ever have before,” said Kate, as they drove towards town.

    “Me too,” said Merideth. “She always seemed brittle, reserved. I would not have thought she had so much feeling.”

      Kat said nothing.

     “I told you she wasn’t so bad,” said Bill.

     “Yeah but you never spent as much time with her as I did,” said Kate. “Maybe ‘cause I’m older now? Or I wonder if maybe I thought she and Jerry were the same person.”

        “Is that her brother?” asked Merideth. “They look so much alike. Are they twins?”

       “Yes,” said Kate. “And I hate him. He follows her everywhere she goes. He’s always around. Probably wanting money. Dad’s money. ”

       “What does he do?” asked Meredith.

     “That’s a New York question!” said Kate.

     “Gigolo,” said Bill.

     “No, he’s some kind of a salesman. I don’t know what. Probably doesn’t matter. If you can sell, you can sell anything.”

     “He didn’t manage to sell himself to you!” said Bill.

     Kate shuddered. Bobby pulled up across from the Surf. “”Why don’t you all get out. I’ll find someplace to park.”

      “I’ll just go back to the hotel,” said Kat.

      “Mom!”

     “I don’t know these people. It’s become pretty clear to me that I am very far removed from this part of Malcolm’s life. And I don’t think the bad fairy showing up at the christening is all that appropriate.”

     “It would be interesting to see what Catherine made of you, though,” said Meredith.  “I’d give something to be a fly on that wall.”

     “Where are you staying?” asked Bill.

     “The Manissees.”

     “I’ll come by. Lets have dinner later.”

     “When worlds collide,” Bobby said, after they all got out.

     “Yes,” said Kat. “It’s hard on everybody. Even without a murder investigation.”

kat among the pigeons

 “Mom! What are you doing here!”

      “I was married to the man for seventeen years,” she said. “That’s longer than his current wife. I loved him too! I can be here.”

     Kate frowned at Merideth.

     “I didn’t tell her. She came on her own.”

     Bobby was already in the van, but he watched as his passengers paused. Cat was among the pigeons now, all right! Or Kat. He liked her. He had been expecting a Greenwich matron like the ones he had grown up with, but there was more to her. He wondered what she had been doing all these years besides being a divorcee and mother.

     “Oh, you might as well come along,” said Kate.

     “Everybody else and his brother is,” said Merideth. “All we’re missing is Wife No. 2.”

      “I doubt she’s coming,” said Bill. “She moved on to some Saudi prince or something.”

       “My!” said Merideth.

       “Come on,” said Kate again. “Bobby’s waiting.”

      The TV crew grabbed some B roll of them getting into the van.  Then they started walking towards Reverend Paul and the grave plot. He grabbed the urn and  headed for his car, parked at the playground across the street. As he turned the key, he heard the nail gun start up again. It was that time of year.

meanwhile. . .

What the gazebo and the travel trailer have in common," pronounced the President of the Garden Club, "Is that both are dreams that become yard ornaments."

last words

      “What was that about the ribbon?” Bill asked his sister.

      “It’s a Jewish custom,” she whispered. “I looked it up on the Internet. You’re supposed to rend your garments, but people rend a ribbon instead.”

       “We weren’t raised Jewish!”

      “I know, but Dad was. The other thing is quick burial and something about putting dirt on the coffin, but there’s no coffin. There is an urn. It’s inside the podium.”

 

      Reverend Paul looked around the assembled congregation, some of whom sat in stunned silence while others were buzzing. “Thank you, Kate,” he said. “Does anyone else want to share any memories before we close?”

       They waited.

     The widow Addams got up. “I was not planning to say anything,” she said. “I have no prepared remarks. I did not think I could get through a speech. But I have to thank Kate for saying what we are all thinking. Someone killed my husband.” She couldn’t speak for a moment. “I know many of you believe I married him for money. I did not. I married him for love, and it has only now started to sink in that I won’t see him again. Ever. In this world.” She was openly crying now. “I thought I would have many more years with him. Please, find out who did this. He was a good man, a kind man. Good to the island and to everyone who is sitting here right now. He loved you.”

       She paused for a long while to collect herself. “And he loved to entertain you. After we leave here, please come to the Surf for food and drink. Laugh and enjoy yourselves in Mac’s memory. It’s what he would like the best, not a solemn graveside ceremony.”

       Reverend Paul could see that, after all of the drama, he wouldn’t be able to hold their attention much longer. He quickly moved to the “burial” of the urn, though the marker was not yet made and the ashes were not yet inside the urn.  As he uttered the final prayers, the family left, followed by the rest of the mourners.

     

cri de coeur

     And then young Kate was walking up to the podium. She was a budding rose, thought Merideth, to her mother’s full blown flower. And the other Catherine? The widow? Maybe one of those white, waxy looking hybrids, like a gardenia without the smell. 

       "Baruch atah Adonai,” intoned Kate.  Reverend Paul looked startled, but most of her audience seemed just plain puzzled by the Hebrew words.  The girl seemed tense but composed. She glanced at a piece of paper in her hand, and then looked out.

      “Soon after my father died—was killed—someone asked me what kind of man he was. I was not thinking clearly at the time, and I said something about his artistic gifts—and he certainly had those—and his generosity and his great love and loyalty for his family, and his temper. He had one of those too! Usually it erupted when he felt that someone was being unfair—not to him, so much, as to others. He despised prejudice—whether because of sex, race, religion, nation of origin, social class—and tried to break it down wherever he encountered it, in his business and in his daily dealings with people.

     “But it occurs to me that the most fundamental aspect of the way he thinks about things—thought about things—is that he was always searching for patterns. He finds, found, meaning in symmetry from fractals to the periodic table, from ocean currents to the whorl of petals on a wildflower, from a quartz crystal to a brick wall. He was fascinated by this stuff. This was how he built things—like computer chips and houses and businesses—from seeing how one piece made a pattern in the whole.

    “And he was like this about people too. He did not see people as isolated individuals, but as a mosaic of interlocking families and communities. Block Island fascinated him because of this. He was interested in the way the old families were related to one another, how they interlocked and interacted with the newcomers and the tourists who sustained them. How they fit into the wider world. His vision of the Island probably looked something like one of his almost diagrammatic pencil drawings, a combination of tiny shapes that, taken as a whole, shows not only a web of connections, but a schematic overview that takes on a whole different shape.

      “My point is, yes, he was my father, and I loved him and many of us will miss him, but my point is, this occasion—right here, right now!— is greater than my personal grief.

     “My father saw something wrong in the patterns here. And that something is what got him killed. Because he was the kind of man who would try to fix whatever was messing up the pattern.

     “So I ask you, in his memory, to find the break in the web. Find the flaw, the sour note, the rip tide, the anomaly, that he saw and most likely confronted. I know this is not supposed to be what you talk about at a funeral service, but if you love him or care for him, if you love your island, heal it.

    “That would be the best memorial for Malcolm Samuel Addams, born to Lenny and Ruth Addams in New Rochelle, New York, on February 14, 1947. Died on May 29^th of this year. On Block Island, of all the places he had lived, the place he loved the best and had chosen to spend the rest of his life in, in search of community and renewal and the beautiful, natural, rhythms of life here.

    "Baruch atah Adonai.” She took the black ribbon off her shoulder, tore it in half and threw it on the ground, picked up the piece of paper she had not consulted since she began speaking and went back to her seat.

     “I am so proud of my daughter,” said Kat quietly. Tears were running down her face. “And, yes, she is his daughter too.”

in memorium

All three C/Katherines burst into tears.

     Merideth looked behind her. The hammering had been so well timed, she was suspicious that the TV crew had ordered it up. But they looked as bewattled as the rest of the assembled mourners. The sound seemed to be coming from the direction of the middle-income housing project.  She handed Kat a Kleenex.

     Meredith wondered whether the TV people had miked the podium. Were they even allowed to? Was this a public event?  She watched her son slip off, presumably to find out who was nailing and tell them to knock it off.

      Reverend Paul waited until the noise stopped, and then went off script. “People do terrible things to other people. A terrible thing was done to Malcolm Addams. We are grieving him today.” He gripped the podium. “But we should also grieve for the person who did this horrific thing, who has lost his humanity. We may not be able to personally bring him to justice. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.  But this soul-eating crime will be punished, now and in the hereafter. And his life will be as a vale of tears. Let us pray for his salvation in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

    The minister was showing his fundamentalist roots, Meredith thought. She did not doubt his instructions were to keep it ecumenical and light on Jesus.  She saw Bobby lean forward and whisper something to Kate. The Katherine next to her blew her nose with no regard for her makeup. Reverend Paul went on praying for some considerable period of time. Meredith stopped listening and started wondering how someone in the audience could have signaled to someone else with a nailgun and timed the interruption so perfectly. Text on a cellphone? From where she sat, she couldn’t see anyone tapping on their phones.

nail gun salute

Martha’s cab pulled up near the TV camera, and everybody turned around.  A handsome young man got out and opened the door for the Widow Addams.  She took his arm. As they got closer, Merideth was sure she had seen him before, but couldn’t think where. Then she looked at the two faces, as alike as two peas in a pod. No wonder she thought she’d seen him somewhere. They could have been identical twins had they not been male and female.  You couldn’t have identical twins in different sexes, Merideth assured herself. Well, maybe if one of them had a sex change. Certainly siblings; probably twins. The black suits they were each wearing set off their gilt hair, hers just a trace longer than his. But her face was set in unmistakable and unfakeable sadness, while his was serene.

      Behind Danny’s cab, she saw Bobby pull up, and another brother and sister get out. Kate and Bill were both dark, with those silvery eyes, and not particularly tall. They too were very good looking. But they did not have the almost symbiotic appearance of the other siblings. She was not clinging to his arm. Bill was wearing khakis and a navy blazer, and Kate was wearing a black tunic and leggings. She had a black ribbon pinned to her shoulder.

      The two couples sat down. As Reverend Paul began an opening prayer, Merideth peeked and saw Bobby walk around the chairs to take a seat behind Kate. And then Katherine the First sat down next to her.

      “Lord, the shadow of death has fallen over us. Be with the Addams family in this time. Comfort them with your presence. Let them see the light of hope,” Reverend Paul intoned.
        As he said “Amen,” the ratatat of what could only be nail guns echoed through the cemetery.