Revival House (2 page)

In any case, I have more pressing matters at hand, things more important than my foolish tender heart being drawn and quartered by one beautiful-but-callous Ms. Lawson. The more important task that has fallen to me involves figuring out how to keep the family business from extinction. The responsibility causes me not only distress but also the most spectacular headaches. There are times when all I can do is lie on my bed with the shades pulled and an iced sleeping mask over my overinflated eyeballs. I blame the business, of course. Tension, stress, bullshit, whichever you prefer to call it. It is a demon with many names.

“Hey, Caleb, man,” Four says as I watch Scarlet lace up her cherry red Doc Marten boot. Enthralled by the heavy curve of her lower calf, I don’t hear half of what my friend says. He strikes me on the bicep. “Hello? Dude, I said you need a gimmick. You know, something to pull customers in, something no one else has.” He throws his pudgy physique down on the bench next to me, swiping Scarlet’s scuffed boot off of the seat.

“You mean like your fucking idiotic zombie shuffle,” Scarlet thrusts her arms out in front of her, shifting her weight from side to side, “and that raggedy-ass costume you wear?” She hangs her basket of black roses on her milky soft forearm, and snorts at Four. Beauty and grace even in the most mundane of actions. Her sparkling black-lined sky-blue eyes roll around the Market, one exquisite pierced eyebrow raised in evaluation.

“Oh, you want to talk about raggedy costumes?” Four says pointing at Scarlet’s flowing shredded black dress. “What do you call that thing you’re wearing? It’s not exactly a designer ball gown.” As if Four knows anything about fashion. Sometimes that boy embarrasses me. He pokes at one of the prosthetic scabs decorating his heavily made-up visage. He always complains that the stage blood becomes itchy once it begins to coagulate each morning around ten o’clock. It will later melt and run down his face in rivulets of sweat.

“Actually, it’s Armani,” Scarlet says, with a quick sardonic smile, pulling a stack of ‘Severe Savannah Ghost Tours’ brochures out of her basket from beneath her black spray of flowers.

Jealous of their easy give-and-take, I am crushed like a brittle eggshell. Spellbound by her luscious blood-red lips, I melt into her light-filled cerulean eyes.

“Caleb, sweetie, I’ll talk to you later,” she says to me, as if speaking to a disappointed child, “but for now, I must scare up some business of my own.”

She calls everyone ‘sweetie.’

She smiles at me, blows a quick kiss, and shoots Four a nasty glare.

In her glower I see all the smoldering desire I wish she’d direct at me. Envy gnaws at my throat and twists my stomach.

My darling turns to distribute her tour schedules to the heavy-set Yankees milling around the Market.

I lift a hand, catch her kiss and lock it within the most secret chamber of my heart feeling it lift my spirit, a fraction of a millimeter for the briefest of moments. (You see why I had enemies within the confines of the military academy? I was the Oscar Wilde of BC, minus any type of Lord Alfred, of course. I used to verbalize such poetic statements until I had the silence punched and kicked into me.)

The mid-morning light penetrates the black lenses of my Oakleys, twin needles of sunshine touching off a crushing pain just above my left temple. The urge to vomit gooses my entrails and my head spins toward the ground. This is the infamous prodromal announcement of another migraine. I ignore it.

“She is such a bitch,” Four says, staring after Scarlet. He pulls a pack of cigarettes from the inner pocket of his oversized Confederate uniform coat, causing the faux hump on his back to shift a little too far to the left. He looks like he either has one large shoulder pad or an extra neck growing beneath his jacket. “Fucking SCAD Bees. That’s what the ‘bee’ stands for, right there.”

Yeah, I know, ‘bitch’— I’ve heard it a hundred times before, ha ha.

He laughs at his own joke. He always does. It hurts my ears and makes me want to punch him in the throat.

SCAD, in case you don’t know, is the Savannah College of Art and Design. It is the biggest art school in the nation. Their anemic sports teams are called the Bees. Scarlet is a senior at the school, majoring in Film Production. Leading ghost tours is a part-time venture for Miss Scarlet, whereas Four, much to the Mercer family’s extreme disappointment, is content to make a career out of the pursuit.

Chapter 3 – Caleb

Savannah’s ‘Undertakers’ Row’ does not appear in any guidebook. Sandwiched between pre-Northern Aggression mansions and art school facilities stand stately and historic funeral parlors dating back to the 1800s, when elaborate services were all the rage among the city’s wealthiest yellow fever victims. The poor dignitaries who had spent their last moments above ground in breath-taking antebellum mansions now occupy long forgotten graves, paved over and obscured by convenience stores and coffee shops.

Undertakers’ Row runs the length of five city blocks, stretching north from Forsyth Park to Montgomery Street, and it has been my home forever. My family, for the past, oh, two hundred years or so, has operated the Exley & Sons Funeral Parlor, located at 121 Hall Street, just steps away from picturesque Forsyth Park. Generations of Exleys grew up in the elegant hall which houses the parlor. The funeral business is ingrained in me as deeply as it was in my great-great-great granddaddy, who started the practice. Alas, in recent years, business has been on a steady decline. As the most recent recession lingers, people opt for cheaper services, cheaper caskets, and less embalming. It’s a discouraging state of affairs, to say the least.

You see, I am the very last of the Exleys. As such, the parlor is destined to be my very own someday. Its future resides within my own skeletal loins.

Mr. Davis runs his thick sweaty fingers along the glossy veneer, leaving a snail trail of anxiety and indecision. A tear drops onto the casket’s lid with a muted plop. I bite my lip and listen to his uneven breathing for a long moment. Captains of industry are not immune to the long icy fingers of grief. Not even those captains who have been declared mutiny upon by their once faithful and steadfast crew.

“Sir, your wife deserves this,” I say, studying his generously jowled and leaking visage, sneaking a look over at Uncle Sterling, who’s watching with great interest. “The Montrachet is the finest product on the market, incomparable. You wouldn’t want your lovely...” Shoot, what was her name again? I know I should know this. I’ve known this family since I was a child. And, besides, Mrs. Davis had been the predominant subject of the most incendiary conversation for the past three days, much longer than that if you count the steamy rumors that whizzed around town prior to her premature demise. Blame the spear-through-the-temple headache for my lapse in memory.

“Lorna,” he whispers.

“Lorna, of course,” I say, nodding. I clear my throat and set my lips in a grim line, showing him that I fully appreciate the gravity and delicacy of this complex situation. I wish Sterling would do something besides glare at me. I can feel his eyes burrowing into my ear. “Mr. Davis, you kept Lorna so well in life, giving her that stunning house on Greene Square, driving her around in fancy luxury cars, all the elaborate parties...” He winces. I probably should not remind him of all the money he’d wasted on her over the years. I’m sure he’s feeling some measure of regret.

Guilt— I need some good old-fashioned guilt, a different sort. “Sir, I know you wouldn’t want the mother of your amazing children to spend eternity reclining in anything less than the finest of all rest chambers.” In reality, his children are not amazing at all; they are spoiled brats who have always stomped on the backs of others less fortunate, scrambling to the top of the heap called humanity, getting anything and everything they wanted. They lived a few blocks away, on the other side of the park, and, as children, we’d see each other at the playground every now and again. We’d played a few times, but shy as I was, I was intimidated by their bossy and boisterous behavior.

I tap the over-priced mahogany casket lid, a bit too loudly, like a used car salesman touting the brand new paint job on an over-priced beat-to-death lemon. Sterling winces at the sound.

“Daddy,” Harrison Davis summons his distraught father over to the corner of the showroom which houses the more modest twenty gauge steel boxes. Recently named partner at one of Savannah’s oldest law firms, Harrison cuts an imposing authoritarian appearance in a somber black suit and gray tie. He was just one of the boys that Four routinely distracted from flushing my head in the lavatory at BC.

Harrison is far less emotional than his daddy. I can read the anger in his face, though, highlighted blue and amber by the late afternoon sunlight filtering through the dusty stained glass transom over the window. I do not know whether my sales tactics are getting under his skin or whether it’s his own mother’s scandalous behavior that has his blood up. Either way, his hostile demeanor indicates that I am unlikely to get an optimal sale. The two Davis men whisper back and forth while I avert my eyes, trying to listen in as I long for a cigarette, avoiding Uncle Sterling’s blistering stare. Perhaps a nicotine rush would cure this skull-boring headache. Looking down, I notice my black Lobb lace-ups need a shine.

More and more often, this is the manner in which things proceed, with the urgent and hushed private conversations, carried out in a far corner, following my guilt-inducing sales pitch. I’ll have the grieving party standing over at the solid mahogany velvet-lined Montrachet, checkbook in hand, believing that their loved one deserves nothing but the best, forever and ever, and then some level-headed younger relative, well-versed in the scriptures of Internet shopping, will butt in and completely ruin my deal. Of course it upsets me greatly, but not because it affects my job performance reviews. I couldn’t give a damn about those; I know exactly where I stand with my uncle. I am more disturbed because over time, our business, our very livelihood, is eroding right before our eyes. If Sterling doesn’t do something to increase business soon, I will be forced to do something rash. Like get a real job. Leave my childhood home behind. Get a normal car.

A real honest-to-goodness, shit-strewn grown-up life.

We can’t have that now, can we?

“We’re going to pass on that one,” Harrison says, nodding his too-large head at the Montrachet. “In fact,” he says, tilting his chin up at me, as if daring me to strike him, “we’re going to purchase Mama’s casket elsewhere and have it shipped here. I am certain you won’t have a problem with that, seeing how there’s an FTC ruling regarding the use of caskets bought from outside sources and all.” His smile opens like a slash made with a razor.

Ah, yes, the FTC’s Funeral Rule. Everyone seems to know about that these days, not just these wise-acre lawyers. Uncle Sterling says twenty years ago you could talk people into assuming second mortgages on their homes just to afford the most expensive caskets and services, and the parlor came out of almost every funeral with a more than respectable profit. Sadly, those days have passed. The Internet has made everyone an expert on what is and what is not subject to negotiation in the financing of a loved one’s funeral.

I am not in favor of technology in the hands of the masses.

As I scribble down notes regarding Mrs. Davis’s service, I imagine myself throwing a right hook to Harrison’s side-view mirror of an ear and following it up with a front snap kick to his protruding Adam’s apple. In case you’re not in possession of this knowledge, the crunch of ear cartilage beneath one’s knuckles is one of the greatest pleasures in life. The inward snap of a trachea is heavenly. That’s in my own humble opinion, of course. You see, when one is a slightly effeminate and ghoulish stick figure at a boy’s military academy, one either learns to bend over without complaint or to cause grievous bodily harm to those expecting one to do the former. Seeing as I have a great fondness for the fairer sex, I, of course, chose the latter of those two very limited and distasteful options. I do possess a black belt in the art of tae kwon do.

As I sit behind my desk, slipping miscellaneous papers into a file folder and cursing myself for having run out of Marlboros, Uncle Sterling hobbles into the showroom. He goggles at my blank face, as if trying to surmise what had happened with the recently departed Davises. He’s going to whack me, I just know it. I brace myself for the blow.

“No,” he says, lurching closer and closer. “Don’t tell me,” he says, raising a hand toward me in a stop gesture.

Perhaps it’s for the best that I am not a poker player.

“What in Hell’s wrong with you, boy?” he says, stopping to shake his cane at me, six feet in front of my ornate mahogany desk, which does not look unlike the ornate and imposing Montrachet itself. And that cane which does not look unlike a shining palm tree with a nude woman for its trunk, and which is for use after business hours and inside the house only.

Instead of rounding my desk to thump me with his cane, Sterling throws his portly frame into one of my two navy blue velveteen guest chairs. I watch the irritation melt his face into a doughy mask. “Oh, I know it’s not your fault, boy,” he says, wiping his brow with the crisp white handkerchief he pulled from his ugly brown waistcoat.

Not my fault? Really? A gasp escapes my oral cavity and my eyes widen.

“The Davis arrangements should have been an optimal sale, considering our families have known each other for generations. But...” He stuffs the handkerchief back into his pocket, making an unsightly bulge in his vest. “That’s just the nature of the business these days, I suppose.”