Page 98 of Four Weddings and a Funeral Director
‘Can you come back during office hours?’ he called through the flap. ‘I’m … dealing with a particularly difficult reconstruction job.’
It wasn’t precisely a lie; it was going to take a good deal of effort to return his face to its normal, Santa-beard-free state.
No dice. The door swung with nose-breaking alacrity as MrPompo, whose wife’s funeral Mort had quietly handled earlier that week, shouldered his way into the funeral parlour. Mort leapt back just in time to avoid a Mr Potato Head situation.
Mr Pompo had the windswept look of someone who’d embarked upon a stroll along the beach, thinking it would be a tranquil, picturesque thing like in the movies, and not a situation where the ocean breeze tried to rip your head off. The man’s wig/toupee/curled-up possum had been scattered to the four winds, holding fast only due to the strength of the super-strong glue some enterprising barber had employed in his work. (Apparently the same glue had been used on Mort’s Santa beard.) Mr Pompo’s clothes were similarly buffeted: his tie had been tossed over his shoulder like, as the ditty went, the ears of a regimental soldier, and his shoes poured sand over the carpet with each step. Seagrass sprouted from his breast pocket.
He looked as though he’d been cast into the ocean and then spat back out again by Poseidon, who was apparently picky when it came to his meals.
But most alarming of all was the glitter.
Mr Pompo, unkempt, verklempt and all the other words ending in -empt, was delightfully dusted in bits of shimmery foil and tiny paper cut-outs. The exact same bits of shimmery foil and tiny paper cut-outs that Mort had pored over at Lily’s shop on his last visit, marvelling at how confetti had evolved dramatically from the traditional rice and seeds that he remembered hurling with glee during the quiet, understated weddings of his childhood.
He braced himself for what was to come.
Mr Pompo hefted a funeral urn in one hand. Mort knew the urn well: it was the second-cheapest one the funeral home sold, and therefore the most popular. (The cheapest was a Mason jar,which performed at quite a solid clip as well, especially among the homesteading types.)
‘We just scattered rainbow and unicorn confetti off the cliffs and into the ocean.’
Mort blinked. How did one respond to that? ‘Sounds like a fitting send-off for a sunny, creative individual.’
Mr Pompo’s thick eyebrows abruptly connected in the middle, as though someone had pulled a drawstring behind his head. ‘It wasDulce’ssend-off! There was nothing sunny and creative about her! She was mean as Greenwich Mean Time. Bitter as Angostura bitters! She’d be livid at the thought of her send-off being all sunshine and rainbows.’
The Mort of a few months ago would have been inclined to agree. But Mort had spent so much time recently celebrating milestones of all types – including the wayward funerals courtesy of the switcheroo – that he wasn’t now so sure that people wanted their final moments to be ones of doom and gloom.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked gently. ‘Are you sure she’d be upset?’
‘Of course! Dulce never asked for frippery and froufrou. She was a simple woman. Utilitarian. Never asked for anything.’
Mort thought about what he knew about Dulce, which wasn’t much: she’d been a nurse, then a mom, then a nurse and a mom. She dressed austerely, bought cleaning supplies in bulk, wrote letters to theMirage Daily Mirror, and walked the length of the promenade every day.
But shehadalways worn lipstick. Every single time Mort had crossed paths with her, her lips had been freshly tinted pink.
Perhaps Mr Pompo was wrong about Dulce. Perhaps she’d wanted it all but just kept it inside, like Lily had a habit of doing. Mort thought of all the times that he’d caught her staring off at theWe’re Getting Hitched!neon sign on her wall. Of all thetimes he’d asked her how she was doing, and there’d been a tinge of sadness behind the ‘great!’ she always responded with. Of the way she threw herself into making other people happy, while eating a dinner of mac ’n’ cheese, or skipping showings at Rerunning Up That Hill so that she could work on seating plans instead. Everything she did was for someone else. In fact, the only time she ever asked Mort for anything was when it would benefit another. Like how she’d explicitly invited him to Tink’s birthday – which she’d spent all of her spare, non-wedding time planning.
Maybe Lily needed someone to throw confetti on her behalf. To remind her thatshewas the sunshine in their lives. That she was worth celebrating as well.
But first, he had to head to the urn room to check that each vessel held the remains of a beloved family member, and not an explosion of tinfoil and glitter.
Mort sighed as he wrote Mr Pompo a refund and promised to give him a call if he happened across Dulce’s wayward ashes.
Gramps hadn’t been wrong. Death was never boring. And maybe, he thought, the notion crossing his mind before he had time to question it, maybe marriage wasn’t either.
Wouldn’t Be Caught Dead
Lily
Lily was so wrapped up in putting together a Typeface-Spotting bingo card for Tink’s birthday party (which was somehow tonight) that she didn’t register that the doorbell was blasting ‘Highway to Hell’ until she’d worked her way all the way down to Wingdings.
‘So, where does a girl go to satisfy her appetite for sugared almonds around here?’ came a warm, drawling voice, one seasoned with the spray of the ocean and the long days out in the sun.
A familiar cheerful face popped up over Lily’s desk: one with the same bright blue eyes and high cheekbones as Lily, but framed by darker curls and made all the more striking by a bold Roman nose that Tessa always proudly said entered the room before she did in order to sniff out any nonsense.
‘Tessa!’ Lily’s swivel chair made three solid rotations as she leapt up to embrace the cousin she hadn’t seen since their mutual best friend’s wedding, the one that had inspired this whole start-a-wedding-planning-business dream in the first place. ‘What are you doing here?’
Tessa obligingly let her cousin tilt her from side to side for a solid thirty seconds before she prised Lily’s arms away. She waswearing gloves – a bit odd, given the warm weather, but Tessa had always been a fashionista.
‘Second time’s the charm. I went in next door first. Did you know there’s afuneral parlourright there? The poodles had me absolutely confused. Who puts daisy-chain garlands on a mortuary poodle? And then there was thisguy. Hot, but weird, a bit like … did you ever watchBlack Books? He was like Bernard, but if Bernard had grown up in the Addams family.’
