Arriving in Time for Dinner

Preview It was a cold and wet Friday night in October, the end of a miserable week. It was already dark and the rain was relentless. Chiffon reached into the back seat for an umbrella, knowing it was probably a wasted effort. The wind would probably render it ineffective. She was right. By the time she crossed the parking lot to the door of the funeral home she was drenched and her umbrella had escaped her entirely, aided by the wind. She chose to let it run, rather than chase it through the standing water in the lot. Good luck to it then. It wasn’t doing its job anyway. Once inside, she stopped to assess the damage. She was, indeed, soaked through. Her coat smelled like a wet dog and her hair was dripping water down her face and neck. She headed for a restroom to try to make herself presentable before expressing her condolences to Carol Whittier’s family. It seemed like the least she could do. The restroom was overheated but spacious. She walked through the lounge area. It was inviting, with comfortable plush chairs and a coordinating loveseat. The walls were pale yellow and the woodwork white. Ironically, it was the sunniest looking place she had seen in days. She removed her now heavy coat and draped it over a chair before approaching the mirror. Looking at her reflection she could see the little waves of steam rising from her clothes and body. Her hair was heavy with water and the clumps guided little streams toward her shoulders. She unwound the scarf from her neck and tossed it over a paper towel dispenser. She sighed and stepped into a stall. The rain had run down her neck and soaked her blouse, which now clung to her back and shoulders in ways it wasn’t meant to do. She was wearing tights and they were wet, although it was hard to tell if that was from the rain or from sweat. The fabric was behaving like a second, much less comfortable, skin. The room was so hot! As hard as it was to get the tights down, it was that much harder to get them back up. Now she was sweating from exertion, as well as from the temperature in the room. When she was finally back in most of her clothes, she turned to flush the toilet with her foot (a habit, perhaps a bad one but a habit nonetheless). Her shoe – a rain splattered gray suede – slid from her foot and dropped into the bowl. Feeling light-headed from the heat, she lifted the shoe from the water and brought it to the sink, where she put it before sitting down. She sat for a moment on her wet coat and stood quickly when she felt the wetness penetrating her backside. Sighing, she went to the sink to rinse her shoe. There was no question of trying to dry it even a little. She stuffed some paper towels inside to wick as much water as she could before putting it back on her foot. Looking down at her feet, she wasn’t surprised to see that it looked as if she were wearing shoes from two different pairs. It seemed that the shoe that had not taken a swim was not nearly as wet as she’d thought it was when she was crossing the parking lot. She briefly considered giving it a bath so that it’d be a closer match to its mate. But, she decided that she’d had more than enough water in her attire for the day. She straightened her clothes as best she could, and then gathered her coat and scarf, folded them over her arm and walked out into the hallway, where it was not nearly so hot. In fact, with the door opening as often as it did, it was really quite a bit cooler. Her wet blouse now clinging coldly to her shoulders, she walked toward the room at the end of the hall. She joined the line of mourners waiting to enter there. By the time she reached the guestbook and signed it the wet dog aroma of her coat seemed to have intensified. She didn’t want to greet the family this way. She left the queue to find a seat among the other mourners, none of whom seemed to be as wet as she was. She could see only one empty chair and it was, of course, in the middle of the room. She made her way to it, excusing herself to the people she dripped on along the way. Maybe if she sat for a few minutes she’d dry some as well as compose herself a bit. She rolled the coat up into a bundle and stuffed it under her chair. She could still smell it but at least she didn’t have to hold it. She nodded at the man in the next seat. “Are you a friend of the family?” she asked in an attempt to be both social and polite. “The Whittier’s are my next door neighbors.” “Ah,” Chiffon murmured. “I don’t think I ever really knew where she lived. We used to work together. She was a nice person.” The man was nodding in agreement. “She was very nice. She sometimes brought me cupcakes when she baked. I’ll miss that. The bringing, I mean. Well, the cupcakes, too.” He smiled a tiny smile and then looked guilty that he had done so. She wasn’t really interested in the exchange, but thought that he sounded sincere. “You must have been close, huh?” “We were; she lived right next door.” “Yes, so you said. Well, I’m sorry for your loss.” There was no point in explaining that he’d misunderstood the question. Eager for this day to be over, she reached down and pulled her coat out from under the chair and stood. The line was just as long as it had been a few minutes earlier but it was time to get herself through it. The man mumbled something short and looked down into his lap. She didn’t want to restart the conversation so she pretended not to hear it and moved along the row of chairs, excusing herself again in the tight space as she went. When she finally reached the front of the room she offered her condolences to Carol’s elderly husband and her son and his family. Nice people – and all dry. When she reached the end of the line of family members, she slipped back into the restroom and struggled with those tights again. Finally at the front door, she reluctantly got back into the wet coat and headed toward her car. She was glad that the rain was lighter now; she still had to stop for milk before going home. As she started driving away, the insides of the car windows fogged over with the water she’d brought in with her. There was nothing dry to use on them and she periodically wiped her hand across the windshield in an attempt to see through it. She couldn’t wait to get home and get dry. It had not been a great week. First of all, she’d noticed the wet spot on the ceiling in her living room on Sunday (water, again!). Several phone calls and hours waiting for contractors followed during the week. The leak was fixed but she was left with a hole in the ceiling that needed repair and painting. She could deal with that easily enough but worried about paying for it since she needed tires on her car before winter, as well. And, then, she wasn’t at all surprised to lose her job on Tuesday. It had always been a seasonal one and she didn’t think that she had impressed anyone there enough that they’d want to keep her on any longer than they had originally agreed. Ah, well. By Thursday, she had arranged for another job to replace it. But if this kept up she’d run out of other options pretty quickly. She pulled into a parking place in front of the convenience store window that displayed a huge poster advertising some new lottery game. She didn’t think this was the right time to buy a ticket, though, and hurried through the door that someone was holding open for her.