Lindsey puts her arm around my shoulders, and I turn my face away from Simon and the other pallbearers carrying Mom’s closed white casket to the waiting surrey. I don’t want to do this. I want to run upstairs and pull the sheets over my head, but I put one foot in front of the other and follow behind the carriage. It’s hot and humid, and my footsteps falter on the old cobblestones. Simon takes hold of my arm and steadies me. I am grateful, but I pull away.
It seems to take forever to reach the cemetery. Grandmother’s white vault is open, and Mother’s coffin is slid inside as we bow our heads in prayer. I’m mad at God. It would be one thing if Mom had actually committed suicide. It’s another that she didn’t and that God took her anyway.
“Amen,” I say along with the others standing around the vault. With that one word, it’s over. Mom is truly gone. I am folding in on myself. I do not know how much longer I can remain upright, but I do make it back to the house somehow.
“Can I get you something to eat?” asks a woman from one of the local churches. I don’t even know which one, because Mom and I never set foot in any of them.
“No, thank you.” I kick off my heels and carry them upstairs to my bedroom. I know the polite thing to do is return downstairs. I need to thank people and make an extra effort to talk to distant relatives. I just can’t right now, and I lie down alone instead. I have not slept for more than a few hours here and there for the past five days. I close my eyes, even though I know I will not sleep.
There’s a knock on my door, and I hear Simon. “I’m coming in. So cover up if you’re naked.” He doesn’t wait for a response before he walks into my room.
“I’m not naked.” I sit up and scooch back against the headboard. “If you’ve come to tell me I’m rude and bad-mannered for not returning downstairs to chat with the church ladies, I don’t care.”
He’s removed his black suit jacket and loosened his gray tie. “I’m not going to tell you how to behave at your momma’s funeral.” He sits on the side of the bed as if I invited him. “You look tired.”
“I am.”
“And mad as hell at somebody.”
“I am.”
“And I get the feeling that ‘somebody’ is me.” He unbuttons the collar of his white shirt. He shakes his head. “But for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.”
I lean my head back against the headboard and close my eyes. “I was with you when I should have been with her. I know it’s not your fault, but…” I shrug and leave the rest unsaid.
“And you think you could have saved her?”
“Maybe.”
“Lindsey thinks different.”
I
crack my eyes open and look at him. “Maybe Lindsey wants to think different.”
“You really believe that?”
No, but I’m angry and sad and miserable. “My mother got out of bed to stash her Little Peanut box, but she didn’t make it.” The day after Mom died, I noticed the lid to the coal bin was open. I feel a tiny bit better knowing she rudely shooed me from her room so she could hoard her cake, not because I was annoying her. “She died on the hardwood floor. All alone, while I was down the hall fooling around with you.”
“I thought it might be something like that. If you hadn’t been in the back parlor ‘fooling around’ with me, what would you have been doing?”
“I’ve asked myself that question, and I don’t know.” I shake my head. “But the answer doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything.”
“Mais, locking yourself away does?” He stands and walks to the door. “Your momma was a unique woman. I’m glad I knew her.” He pauses long enough to say, “You should try and join the living. It’s gotta be better than grieving alone.”
Maybe for him, but I prefer to grieve alone. I need to wallow in my misery and guilt, and that’s exactly what I do over the next few days. I eat when I’m hungry and spend as much time as I can out on the balcony staring at the Mississippi through the filter of live oaks. Magnolia and wild honeysuckle scent the heavy humid air, and I swim in it until I am dripping with sweat and forced inside.
A week after the funeral, I turn my attention to business, and the decision I’ve put off making. With Mom gone, my time is free. There’s no reason to find a new Love Guru now. Nothing is keeping me from stepping into my Lulu shoes and picking up where I left off. I know the business I built better than anyone, and there’s no reason why I can’t get the excitement back.
Except that I don’t have any desire to get it back. I don’t have the drive or heart for it. I don’t know when it happened exactly, but over the past six months I fell out of love with Lulu. Out of love with my whole life, really. I’ve said everything I know to say, and in as many ways as possible, about love and life and dating. I don’t have the passion I once did, and I’m okay with that. I open up my fingers and let go. I am relieved and freed enough to look at video hopefuls with a new perspective. Freed to see the excitement and passion in someone else’s eyes.
Unencumbered by the heavy burden that has weighed on me for months, I don’t take long to find the new Lulu. She is creative and driven and has the spark I’ve been looking for, and of course, she’s gorgeous, with great style. I call Margie with the news, but the fine details will be worked out later. The business will be restructured, but I am the president of Lulu Inc. and will remain in that position. I just won’t be involved in the day-to-day, or even month-to-month, decision-making.
When I hang up the phone, I actually feel lighter, and I go to bed knowing I’ve made the right decision. I quickly fall into a healing sleep that has eluded me since the day Mom died. A deep sleep that is interrupted by someone insistently shaking me awake.
“Lou Ann.”
I squint against the hall light flooding my room. “What?” Lindsey is speaking to me, but my head is dull. I just want to be left alone, and I close my eyes. “Go back to bed.”