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Grandma Ruthie, and Jenny, for that matter, were a little miffed at Mama for her resolve that I be involved in the funeral. I would have been touched by Mama’s insistence on my having the opportunity to mourn Bob, but I’m pretty sure she just wanted help policing the buffet at the visitation. I didn’t eat, after all, so I wouldn’t mind keeping the platters full. The main problem was that Grandma insisted on using her good silver serving pieces (from Wedding No. 2), which were mixed in with stainless-steel pieces from the funeral home. You’d think by now I’d be able to sniff out metal that causes me to burn and itch, but every time I moved a utensil, it was like Russian roulette. So I stuck with plates.
It is an unwritten law that a person could not be decently buried in the Hollow without the presence of deviled eggs and some form of homemade pimento cheese. My cousin Junie’s hot-dog bake is also usually present. It’s essentially diced hot dogs, Tater Tots, processed cheese food, and cream of mushroom soup baked until crusty. Still, it’s preferable to homemade pimento cheese.
Of course, for humans, nourishment is needed to sustain them through the gauntlet of social interactions. If you met anyone in the deceased’s family once, you are expected to bring a casserole for the bereaved and spend at least twenty-five minutes at the visitation. This meant that if I wanted to cross the room, I was going to have to talk to every person I had ever met in my entire life. And I had no idea how many of them might be packing stakes.
Not everybody in Half-Moon Hollow knew I’d been turned, but many of those who did looked at me with a combination of fear and revulsion. I’ll admit that I spent much of my living time being annoyed at my human community, but being separated from them now was lonely and isolating. The only place I felt safe was at River Oaks, and then a group of high-school kids wrapped my entire porch in hanks of dried garlic. It was an incredibly lame and yet surprisingly effective way to make me afraid in my own home.
For this reason and so many more, I specifically asked Gabriel not to attend the funeral. I did not feel this was the appropriate occasion to introduce him to my family. When he asked which occasion would be appropriate and I stayed stonily silent, I think it hurt his feelings.
I could see now that I might have been better off with my sire nearby. After a few training sessions spent trying to hone my mind-reading talents, Gabriel and I determined that it only worked on humans. Most humans … some humans. Sometimes. It was pretty inconsistent. Still, after finding out how many people secretly disliked me inside their heads, not being able to see inside my fellow vampires’ was kind of a comfort.
According to the swarms of thoughts and scents pecking at my cortex, some of those attending the funeral knew I was a vampire, but they were nice enough not to mention it. Or at least to mention it quietly behind their hands in a way that was not noticed by the other mourners. Such is the delicate social web of a small Southern town. I knew that they knew. My family knew that some of them knew. They knew I knew that they knew. But none of us said anything, because that would cause unpleasantness. And we are nothing if not pleasant … when other people are watching.
Zeb and Jolene were lurking among the crowd, earning attendance points for Zeb and his family but avoiding actual contact with anybody. Lucky bastard. Jolene did, however, bring a huge sandwich platter and a gallon of macaroni salad from her uncle’s shop, the Three Little Pigs. I was ninety-nine-percent sure that meant Grandma Ruthie now liked her better than me. Mama Ginger was hovering over the mini-quiches and glowering in Jolene’s general direction.
Fortunately, Mama Ginger had been “too ill” since Zeb’s announcement to contribute anything to the funeral buffet—everything she made tasted like blue cheese and glue. You’d think she’d be thrilled that her son was marrying a good girl with a local family, who wouldn’t ask her son to move far from hearth and home. Plus, with her flashing lupine eyes and auburn hair, Jolene was beautiful in that fierce “some people walk in the light” way that just seems unfair to those of us whose genes aligned in a less spectacular fashion. Instead, Zeb said that upon hearing his engagement announcement, Mama Ginger accused him of letting “little Zeb” do all of his thinking for him. Floyd had nodded in agreement, but it was in more of an envious, congratulatory way.
Much like the iceberg that doomed the “unsinkable” ship, the visible workings of the Lavelle-McClaine wedding plans were only the tiniest glimpse of passive-aggressive maneuverings below the surface. Being truly disliked for the first time in her life sent Jolene into some sort of prolonged panic state, where she did almost anything to try to get Mama Ginger to like her. This, of course, just irritated the hell out of Mama Ginger. She would not bond with Jolene. She simply refused to, just as she’d refused to shop for mother-of-the-bride dresses with the clingy bride. She would not meet Jolene for lunch to discuss floral arrangements or seating charts. She faked a gluten allergy to get out of tasting the wedding cake.
I hadn’t seen Mama Ginger since I’d started keeping night hours. Henna-haired and built like a neurotic fire hydrant, Zeb’s mother was wearing her “burying dress” of clingy black Lycra, Bedazzled with intricate patterns of tiny gold-tone studs and rhinestones. There was a matching hat, but Mama Ginger wouldn’t dare cover her colored, curled, and coiled coiffure, which, as a hairdresser, she considered her own best advertisement. Mama Ginger, who never left the house without full pancake makeup and eyeliner, usually ambushed me with one of the fifteen nubbed lipsticks she kept in the bottom of her purse to “give me a little color.”
Eager to avoid a scene in which I would be left with a linty coat of Risqué Red, I backed away. The movement caught Mama Ginger’s attention, and before I knew it, I’d made inadvertent eye contact. Bah!
“Jane!” Mama Ginger squealed. “Oh, honey, come on over here and give me some sugar!”
Across the room, Zeb’s eyes widened as Mama Ginger enveloped me in a hug that would usually have left me smelling of Jean Naté and Virginia Slims, except this time, the scent of lady-grade tobacco was dramatically understated. Zeb shot me an apologetic look and then turned his back and busied himself with some punch.
Coward.
“You’re so skinny! You need to get over there and eat something. I worry about you, poor single girl, always on some crazy diet. You need someone to cook for, honey. That will put some meat on your bones.” Mama Ginger mercilessly squeezed my cheeks with her carefully painted acrylic nails. “Now, how are you, baby doll? Tell me every little thing!”
“I’m fine. Mama Ginger, did you quit smoking?” I asked, sniffing her again.
“Yes, I did!” she cried. “How did you know?”
“Um …” Don’t say smell. Don’t say smell. I spotted a pack of nicotine gum in her purse and nodded to it.
Mama Ginger giggled. “You’ll never believe this, but I went to that Madame Zelda over on Gaines Street.”
“The ‘mesmerist/tarot reader’ who offers palm readings for five dollars from her den?”
“That’s the one. She does a special course of ‘Smoke-Free Sessions.’ It’s five hypnosis sessions for two hundred and fifty dollars. Pricey, but it’s done the trick.”
Mama Ginger had left at least two packs of Revlon-stained cigarette butts in her wake every day since I’d known her. In fact, she once lit up in the middle of her annual physical, right after her doctor told her that she was at risk for seven kinds of cancer. People take bad news in different ways.
I could only guess that the faint cigarette smell still lingering on Mama Ginger was nicotine that had seeped into her DNA.
“I’m chewing this silly gum.” She sighed, rolling up her sleeve to show me a nicotine patch on her arm. “And I only smoke after meals, but really, I’m feeling much better. I can walk all the way to the mailbox without a break.”
I would be concerned, but honestly, the combination of occasional smoking, chewing, and, uh, patching probably equaled the amount of nicotine in Mama Ginger’s system when she was smoking full-time.
“I never thought I’d quit, never wanted to,” Mama Ginger said, ignoring common sense in her usual selective fashion. “But Mamaw Lavelle’s doctor put her on an oxygen tank, and she screams that I’m trying to kill her if I light up anywhere near her. Hell, if I was going to kill the woman, I would have switched her heart pills for baby aspirin ten years ago.”
I goggled at her. She blushed and gave a tinkling laugh. “Zeb says you have a new job. How do you like it?”
“Fine … Not that I’m not glad to see you, Mama Ginger, but I thought you were mad at me …” I looked in the direction of Hannah Jo, her favorite client and preferred daughter-in-law candidate, who was sulking in the corner with a plate of deviled eggs.
“Oh, Janie!” She smiled indulgently at me, fluffing my hair. “You know I could never stay mad at you, even though you did hurt my feelings. You’re my little angel muffin.”
