Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [143]
“Thanks . . . It’s just . . .” She blows her nose loudly on the hand-hemmed linen. “I’m okay now. I haven’t been crying much. Just at first when Mom got the cable, and on the plane. And then with the cremains.”
“Cremains?” Vinnie repeats, baffled.
“Yeh. Ashes, I guess you could call them. See, Mom decided to have Dad cremated over here. Well, like she said, there wasn’t anything else to do, really. Professor Gilson arranged it: he was wonderful. He didn’t know Dad had passed till Mom phoned him, but then he got in touch with the hospital, and him and his students took care of everything. They found me a place to stay and met me at the train; they were just great, honestly. They really thought a lot of Dad. I’m so stupid, I didn’t know what to do about anything, but they helped me, like, finalize everything: pay the bills, and sort out Dad’s stuff, decide what to send home, and what to give away.”
“That’s good,” Vinnie says, trying to prevent herself from imagining the process.
“They took care of everything, really. Except for the cremains. That was kinda weird and awful, y’know. Professor Gilson had them saved for me. I thought they’d be in a big heavy silver urn or something, but it wasn’t anything like that.” Barbie snuffles, stops.
“Nothing like that,” Vinnie prompts.
“Naw. They were in a, I don’t know, a kinda waxed cardboard carton like you get with store-packed ice cream, about that size. Inside it was a plastic bag full of this kinda pale gritty gray stuff. I couldn’t believe that was all that was left of Dad, just a coupla pounds of what looked like health-food soy mix.” Barbie snuffles again, swallows.
“Then I didn’t know what to do with it,” she continues. “I didn’t know if it was legal to take cremains on a plane. I mean, suppose there was a customs inspection? I couldn’t see putting that carton in the suitcase with my clothes anyhow, y’know?” She begins to tear up again. “Sorry. I’m so stupid.”
Barbie’s continual assertion of her lack of intelligence has begun to annoy Vinnie. Stop telling me how stupid you are, she wants to say. You graduated from the University of Oklahoma, you can’t be all that stupid.
“That’s all right,” she says instead. “I think you’ve done very well, considering everything.” Almost against her will, she reclassifies The Barbarian as an innocent peasant—the victim rather than the accomplice of that Visigoth realtor her mother, who is no doubt responsible for Barbie’s low opinion of her own intelligence.
“Anyhow, when I phoned home next, Mom said not to bother,” Barbie resumes presently. “She said what I should do was scatter the cremains somewhere. So Professor Gilson drove me out in the country to a place he said Dad had liked. It was nothing special. Just this little field, on the side of a hill, that one of Dad’s ancestors owned once. It wasn’t a bad place really: kinda quiet. And Professor Gilson said hopefully it’ll never be built over; it’s too out-of-the way, and the land is too steep.
“So I climbed over the fence by these wooden steps they have here, what did he call them?”
“A stile?” Vinnie suggests.
“Yeh. That’s right. Anyhow, I got over it. And I walked up the field a ways, and sorta dumped the cremains out into the long grass and flowers. I guess I shoulda scattered them around more, but I was crying too much, and I couldn’t put my hand into the bag. It seemed kinda rude, y’know?”
“Yes, I see what you mean.”
“Poor old Dad.” His daughter sighs and reaches for the last watercress sandwich. “Mom was right. It was pathetic really, his chasing around the country looking for ancestors.”
“1 don’t see that,” Vinnie says a little snappishly. “Why shouldn’t your father have been interested in his genealogy? A great many people are.”
“Sure, I know. But they’ve mostly got someone worthwhile in their family tree. Like Mom: her side of the family is real distinguished. She’s a D.A.R., and she’s descended from a whole lot of judges and generals. Hiram Fudd, the senator, y’know, he was her great-uncle.”
“Really,” Vinnie remarks.