The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [104]
We had better luck with the funeral director. A pleasant enough person, a Mr. Kleinschmidt, broad-shouldered and athletic and a go-getter as most funeral directors are, he took us through the possibilities, and Chloé decided on a closed-casket viewing and a cremation. Then we were ushered into the cavernous casket showroom downstairs. Some of the caskets, particularly the ones with brushed aluminum exteriors, looked like huge kitchen appliances dedicated to obscure purposes. They didn’t appear to be caskets at all. Though I had offered her money for the funeral costs, Chloé didn’t want my money. She was prideful. She made arrangements for installment payments, but I examined every charge that Kleinschmidt put on the bill, down to the dime.
For the closed-casket viewing, Kleinschmidt had something in mind. He walked over to a cherrywood casket and pointed to it. “I can give you something of a bargain on this one,” he said. “But I’ll have to explain something about it.”
“It looks nice,” Chloé said, a bit uncertainly. “What’s the deal?”
“Well,” he said, “it’s used.”
“Used? You mean they buried somebody in it?”
“Oh no,” he said. “We would never do that. No, this is the casket we used last time we had a viewing, prior to the cremation. The body is laid out in it, and then removed and cremated. All the inside cloth and padding is removed — okay? — and replaced. It’s just the wood that’s the same. So it’s not really used, not the way you might think. It’s never been buried.” He waited. “In the ground.”
“I dunno,” Chloe said. “A used casket.” She turned to me. “Diana, whattya think?”
“I think it’s all right,” I said. “I don’t think Oscar would’ve minded.”
“I guess not.”
“Good,” Mr. Kleinschmidt said, “that’s settled. Now we need something for the cremains.”
“The cremains?”
“Well, that’s the word we use. You know. The . . . ashes. The urn.” We followed him to the back of the room, where there was a display of these commodities in an alcove. It looked like a sculpture collection of Bakelite canisters and wooden boxes. One of them was green ceramic of some sort, with a bronze dolphin frolicking on the side.
“Not that one,” Chloé said. “I don’t think Oscar liked dolphins.” She waited. “Well, he never met one.” She pointed. “That one. That’s the one I want.” She had indicated a polished and gleaming mahogany box about a foot and a half in each direction like a knickknack box that happened to be a bit too large for the dresser. “He’d like that one,” she said.
Just about then Chloé’s forehead began to get damp, and she put her hand on my shoulder. Her eyes, which are unusually bright, had gone stoned-or-bored-gauzy. I was about to ask her how she was feeling when her eyes rolled up, and she fainted. I grabbed her around the shoulders in time before she hit the floor.
Kleinschmidt and I managed to haul her upstairs, he carrying her by the shoulders, while I took her legs. It wouldn’t do for Kleinschmidt to carry her alone. We laid Chloé out on the sofa. He pulled out some smelling salts from his desk. “Happens all the time,” he said. “Men and women. You’d be surprised.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” I said.
After she came to, she rubbed at her scalp and said, “Hey.” She tried a smile. “Hello, again. Diana, I was just wondering where Oscar was. I guess I was wondering that when I passed out.”
“He’s dead,” I told her. “Oscar died, Chloé.”
“Oh, yeah, I know that. I meant his body. You know: what’s left of him.”
“Downstairs,” Kleinschmidt said. “In the rear of the building.”
“Can I see it?”
“Why don’t you come back after lunch?” Kleinschmidt suggested. “We’d need some time to get it ready.”
“Okay,” Chloe said. “I could eat about a month of cheeseburgers anyway. Gotta keep my strength up, right?”
I took her to a restaurant where, I’m glad to say, she ate like a horse, shoveling it all down, cheeseburgers, fries, salad, and a chocolate malt. She didn’t even stop to talk. “I’m nauseous in the morning but by lunchtime I’m starving,” she said, munching on a ketchup-covered french fry. I liked almost everything about her, including the