longer, I can forget progeny.
I’m getting ready to head outside and round up the California Latons when Mama calls from her monument company.
“Callie, I thought you and that California bunch were headed up here to pick up Mellie Laton. That mousy little tightwad is driving me crazy. It’s time for my bedtime toddy.”
“It’s just five-thirty, Mama.”
“It’s bedtime somewhere. First, Mellie picked out the cheapest monument on the lot. Then she wanted me to have it engraved with rest in peace. As if I’d ruin the entire reputation of Everlasting Monuments just because she has no imagination.”
Mama’s a colorful woman, partial to neon-pink caftans featuring Hawaiian flowers and tombstone engravings that proclaim He boogied on up to heaven and Saint Peter’s holding the trumpet solo for Leonard Laton.
“Where is she now?” I ask.
“Sitting on my genuine Naugahyde couch in her ugly brown shoes drinking all my coffee and complaining because it’s not Colombian. I’m going stark, raving mad. What I need is a little restorative trip to Tunica. You don’t happen to have five hundred cash lying around, do you?”
“As I recall you didn’t pay back the last hundred I loaned you.”
“This time it’ll be different. I feel a winning streak coming on.”
What I feel is another big hole in my finances. I know I ought to be sensible and say no, but I never can refuse Mama. Ever since Daddy died, I’ve been trying to make up his loss to Ruby Nell Valentine.
Of course, she has to me, too. Even a little hint that I’m blue, and she races to the piano and belts out “Side by Side” in her lusty contralto. Then she hugs me and says, “As long as we’ve got each other, kid, we’re okay.”
I believe her. She’d never win anybody’s Mother of the Year Award, but she has taught me to value the things that really count—family, friends, and a faithful dog.
“All right, Mama,” I tell her now. “But just one more time.”
“I promise.”
Pigs are likely to grow wings and fly before Mama keeps that promise, and both of us know it. But we laugh and pretend otherwise because that’s the Southern way: look on the bright side, no matter what.
One hour, two BC powders, and an act of God later—a big thunderclap that has driven the California Latons inside—I’m in Uncle Charlie’s office at Eternal Rest.
“You look a bit frazzled, dear heart,” Uncle Charlie tells me.
When he hugs me it’s like being embraced by a combination of Santa Claus and a Sicilian godfather who wouldn’t hesitate to cut off the head of an enemy’s prized racehorse and put it in his bed.
“I’m fine, Uncle Charlie.” Not exactly the truth, but I don’t like to worry him. He takes his job as head of the Valentine family seriously.
“If all the Latons are here, we’ll commence.”
“Everybody’s here except Bevvie.”
“And where is she?”
“Hunting big game in the African bush with an arsenal of weapons that would make the U.S. Army green with envy.” Lovie struts into the office sporting a hickey on her neck and a hairdo that looks like it was styled by a Mix Master. Red. Titian number six. Compliments of yours truly. “I pumped the information out of Kevin.”
“Well, good for you, sweetheart.”
Uncle Charlie offers both of us an arm, and if he’s aware of Lovie’s double entendre, we’ll never know. He can win your new Cadillac in a poker game and make you think he’s doing you a favor, wear a fifty-dollar suit and make you believe it’s designer, show off a niece and a daughter with a dubious family tree and make you think we’re blue-blooded aristocracy. “Shall we go into the viewing room and unveil the good doctor?”
The Latons are waiting for us in the sitting area off the viewing room. The rowdy Mims teenagers are lined up like bowling pins behind their daddy, Bradford, the middle-aged jock type, who has his hand on his wife’s shoulder. Janice Laton Mims showed more emotion over her defaced Prada purse than she’s showing over her deceased daddy. Of course, it could be her face-lift. Her skin’s stretched so tight she can hardly blink, let alone move her mouth.
Mellie, too, is composed—her patent leather purse clutched in her lap, lips and legs pressed tightly together. Wearing glasses that went out of style with Herbert Hoover, she looks like she wouldn’t say boo to a fence post.
And I won’t even comment on the doctor’s adopted son, Kevin. A hunk, granted. Lovie naturally gravitates toward brawn.
Uncle Charlie seats Lovie and me in two wingback chairs, then moves to the front of the room.
“Dr. Leonard Laton was a brilliant man and an asset to our town. It’s an honor to assist you in making his journey to the hereafter memorable.”
Leading us into the viewing room, Uncle Charlie sweeps open the casket to display the late doctor in his final splendor.
Janice screams, Mellie faints, and Kevin says, “I didn’t know the old boy still had it in him.”
In plain view on Dr. Laton’s chest is a pair of red sequined pasties.
Uncle Charlie slams the lid shut. While I fan Mellie, Lovie plucks the pasties out of the casket.
“I was wondering where I left those.” Any fool can see she’s lying. These pasties wouldn’t fit Lovie’s fist, let alone the ballistic missiles she likes to show off with low-cut blouses. “I was in the casket trying it out for size.”
“Kinky,” Kevin says, and Janice whacks him with her Prada purse.
“I’m sure Uncle Charlie will get to the bottom of this,” I say. “Meanwhile, the powder rooms are right down the hall. After we freshen up we’ll retire to the reception room for some of Lovie’s good food.”
Janice perks up at this information. No self-respecting survivor would put Kentucky Fried chicken and potato salad featuring mustard on the table when they can have shrimp jambalaya, grits soufflé, and Prohibition punch made by the most famous caterer in Tupelo, if not the whole state of Mississippi.
I leave the Laton sisters in the powder room pressing wet handkerchiefs to their foreheads and putting on hot-pink lipstick that doesn’t match a thing they’re wearing. Then I race toward the kitchen.
Lovie tosses me a bottle of bourbon. “Quick, Callie, dump some in.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.” She’s emptying a vodka bottle into the punch and I pour in the bourbon.
If we’re lucky the Latons won’t even remember their names tonight, let alone that the late Dr. Laton was in possession of a set of red pasties complete with tassels.
Dr. Laton’s funeral will be memorable, all right. But for all the wrong
