The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [54]
“They’d brought this old fellow with them, who I just assumed was some uncle or cousin or other. I haven’t met them all, it’s an enormous family. So after I told them my plans for the funeral they explained to me that he’s their minister. A Finnish Lutheran minister they carted four hundred miles to intimidate me with. He was in bad shape, too, the poor old bugger. He’d caught cold. They were running around putting mustard plasters on him and soaking his feet and trying to keep him fit to perform. Serve them right if he’d conked out on them.”
Ted was up by this time, walking back and forth in the Sunday-school room. He said there was no way he was going to be intimidated. They could have brought the whole congregation and the Lutheran Church itself on a flatcar. He told them that. He meant to bury his own son in his own way. By this time Greta had caved in, she had gone over to their side. Not that she had an ounce of religious feeling, it was just the weeping and recriminations and the weakness in the face of her family that she always had. Nor was it left to the family. Various Hanratty busybodies got into it. The house was full of them. The United Church minister, the minister of this church, showed up at one point for a consultation with the Lutheran. Ted threw him out. Later on he found out it wasn’t exactly the minister’s fault, he hadn’t come on his own. Kartrud had summoned him, saying there was a desperate situation, her sister was having a nervous breakdown.
“Was she?” said Frances.
“What?”
“Was she—your wife—having a nervous breakdown?” “Anybody would be having a nervous breakdown with that pack of maniacs in the house.”
The funeral was private, Ted said, but that didn’t seem to prevent anybody who wanted from showing up. He himself stood up beside the casket ready to knock down anyone who interfered. His sister-inlaw—with pleasure—or the ailing old minister or even Greta if they pushed her into it.
“Oh, no,” said Frances involuntarily.
“I knew she wouldn’t. But Kartrud might have. Or the old mother.
I didn’t know what was going to happen. I knew I couldn’t show a moment’s hesitation. It was horrible. I started to talk and the old mother started to rock and wail. I had to shout over her. The louder she got in Finnish the louder I got in English. It was insane.”
While he talked he dumped the cigarette stubs from the ash tray into his hand and back, was pitching them back and forth.
Frances said, after a pause, “But Greta was his mother.”
“How do you mean?”
“If she did want an ordinary funeral.”
“Oh, she didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“I know her. She doesn’t have any opinions one way or the other.
She just caved in in front of Kartrud; she always will.”
He did it all for himself, Frances was thinking. He wasn’t thinking of Greta for a moment. Or of Bobby. He was thinking of himself and his beliefs and not giving in to his enemies. That was what mattered to him. She could not help seeing this and she did not like it. She could not help seeing how much she did not like it. That did not mean that she had stopped liking him; at least, she had not stopped loving him. But there was a change. When she thought about it later, it seemed to her that up to that point she had been involved in something childish and embarrassing. She had managed it all for her own delight, seeing him as she wanted to, paying attention when she wanted to, not taking him seriously, although she thought she did; she would have said he was the most important thing in her life.
She wasn’t going to be allowed that any more, that indolence and deception.
For the first time, she was surprised when he wanted to make love. She was not ready, she could not comprehend him yet, but he seemed too intent to notice.
THE NEXT DAY, Sunday, when she played for services, was the last time Frances ever played in the United Church.
On Monday Ted was called into the principal’s office. What had happened was that Greta’s sister Kartrud had got to know the women of Hanratty