Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [119]
“Libby, Libby,” Lewis murmured. “Please don’t worry about all that now. Billie will come through, I’m sure she will.”
Libby curled up in obvious physical pain. Lewis went looking for her mother, for a nurse, for anyone who might know what to do.
THE FUNERAL that took place the following Saturday was well organized, simple, and short. Too short. The drunks were stiff and awkward and restrained in St. Catherine’s sanctuary—or maybe numbness had set in. A lot of people looked as if they’d been crying for days. The room seemed to dwarf them, with its forty-foot ceiling and wide wooden beams. Statues of the saints lined the walls, interspersed with dark, clumsy oil paintings depicting the fourteen stations of the cross. Except for a gruesome, life-sized crucifix, the altar was spare.
Libby was still in the hospital. The doctors were going to let her attend the service, but when she got up to get dressed that morning, the bleeding started again. David stayed with her, and her parents arrived alone at the church. They sat in the front-right pew with Ernie Tola and Frank, who had an unlit cigarette in his mouth. Lewis sat in the left-front pew between Doc Perrin and Joe, who was dry-eyed but trembling. On Joe’s other side was Yvette, a regal-looking woman with white hair.
Julie Swaggart sang “The Lord Is My Shepherd” in a rich, roomy voice. George, the former Round Rock chaplain, who had officiated at Red and Libby’s wedding, led everyone in the Lord’s Prayer and then read a passage from Meister Eckhart:
Hold fast to God and he will add every good thing. Seek God and you shall find him and all good with him. To the man who cleaves to God, God cleaves and adds virtue. Thus, what you have sought before, now seeks you; what once you pursued, now pursues you; what once you fled, now flees you. Everything comes to him who truly comes to God, bringing all divinity with it, while all that is strange and alien flies away.
Doc Perrin spoke the main eulogy, and kept it clean and short for the lay audience: a list of awards and accomplishments. Luis Salazar gave a formal speech filled with hyperbole: “My great friend … the most God-loving man….” Lewis told how he and Red used to drive all over Ventura picking up supplies, and how long it took because Red fell into conversations at every stop. From the pulpit, Lewis spotted Billie Fitzgerald in a black suit sitting in the back bracketed by the Bills.
Libby’s father got up and said how happy Red had made his daughter, and conveyed Libby’s thanks to all their friends for coming as well as her request that any contributions be made to Round Rock’s residential financial aid fund.
All the speakers were so afraid of taking too long, they didn’t speak long enough. The funeral was over in thirty-five minutes.
Afterward, a lunch was held in the town park. Lewis stayed for a few minutes; then he and Barbara drove back to the Blue House and started making lasagna for dinner. It felt good to be doing something, anything, even browning meat and stirring a big vat of spattering sauce. Lewis couldn’t stop thinking or talking about Red. “I got a lift every time I saw him. He was so comfortable to be around. More comfortable than anyone, ever, in my family. He was always so even-tempered, so amused by life.”
Barbara let him talk. “Grief seems to be a form of obsession,” she said when he apologized for going on so. “You have to go over and over everything, if only to fully discover what you’ve lost.”
As soon as the men were served, Lewis and Barbara drove back to the hospital. Libby was sleeping, her mother said, and sedated. So far, there was no miscarriage. They