Chapter 9
Pru takes the news about her potential poisoning about as well as one would expect.
She asks what exactly Annabel found, confirms she doesn’t think she drank from the cup, but can’t be sure, and when I say I can’t confirm either, she says “So, somebody put something in a cup I may or may not have drunk from, but I’m fine, and the guy we’re worried about seemingly didn’t drink anything harmful at all?
I have paperwork to file. We can discuss this later,” and then she hangs up.
Annabel wants her to stop by the shop after work so she can smell her breath. Pru’s response to this invitation is a text message containing a thumbs-up emoji and the single word “Lovely.”
Later that afternoon, I park in front of the funeral home with a script in my bag and no plan whatsoever for how to raise the subject to Gabe.
The front door is unlocked. Gabe is at the far end of the parlor, setting up chairs in rows.
“We’re closed,” he says, without turning around. “Unless you know something I don’t.”
“Can’t a person just visit?”
He turns around, sees me, and smiles. My cheeks, against my will, start to flush.
“Service coming up,” he says. “Arthur Dean. Ninety-seven. Kept bees out past the quarry. His granddaughter wants an open mic portion, which I’ve advised against. I always advise against an open mic.” He straightens the last chair. “How’s Damien?”
“Asleep. Annabel says he’s stable, though. She checked him this morning.”
“That’s what Dorcas said at the bakery. And what Jackie said at the hardware store. And Ms. Fitzgerald, at the gas station, although her version had a helicopter in it for some reason.”
“So,” he says. “What calls for a visit? People don’t tend to make social calls at the mortuary.”
“Vivian needs a Macbeth,” I say, opening my bag and pulling out the script. “Englebert wants you to be the Macbeth.”
Gabe looks blankly at the script. It’s a rehearsal copy, spiral-bound, with a scrawl across it requesting it not be removed from the Community Center.
“Absolutely not,” he says, immediately.
“That was a terrible float. Let me try again.”
“You can try as many times as you like. It’s a slow afternoon and I enjoy the company.” He sets the script on an empty chair between us. “Why me? I’m not an actor. I’ve never been an actor. In the fourth grade Thanksgiving play I was cast as a tree. I was directed to be more expressive.”
“Englebert made a case for you. I wrote it down. Do you want it verbatim or summarized?”
“Oh, verbatim. Obviously.”
I take out my note pad and read him the whole thing. Gabe listens all the way through, quietly.
“Giving a eulogy isn’t acting,” he says. “A eulogy is true. You stand up and you say true things. Macbeth kills the king and lies about it. In verse.”
“You’d have the best coach in New England standing in the wings.”
“I’d have a cat yelling at me in front of the whole town is what I’d have.
” He shakes his head, but he’s smiling while he does it.
“Besides, it’s not practical. I run a business where the clients arrive unscheduled.
I can’t promise Vivian anything. She could put my name in the program and I could get a call Friday at five, and then what? ”
“Vivian knows that.”
“And there’s Addie. Rehearsal is every night. She’d be shuttled around all week, and then she’d have to sit in an audience and watch her father forget his lines in a cape, and that’s the kind of trauma a kid carries into adulthood—”
“I would NOT.”
The voice comes from the doorway to the back hall, where the stairs up to Gabe’s apartment come down. Addie is barefoot, holding a popsicle, and has clearly been standing there for quite some time.
“Addie,” Gabe says. “You were supposed to be reading your book upstairs.”
“I finished.” She stations herself directly in front of him. “Dad. You have to do it.”
“I don’t have to do anything. I’m an adult. That’s like the entire point of being one.”
“If there’s no Macbeth, there’s no play. It’s his whole name on it. Everybody else can be replaced but you can’t replace the main guy.” She takes a lick of the popsicle. “And you already know how to talk in front of people. That’s your whole job.”
“That’s—” Gabe starts, and stops.
“And you do voices when you read to me. Your Gandalf is good. Emma says her mom doesn’t do any voices at all.”
He picks the script up off the empty chair and turns it over and looks at the cover for a while.
“One condition,” he says. “And it’s not negotiable. If I need to prep for a funeral, or if I have to host a funeral, if any of that lands on opening night — if a family in this town needs me, then I’m in this room. The dead outrank Scotland.”
“The dead outrank Scotland,” I repeat. “She’ll take that deal. Her fallback is a man in Brattleboro who played Judas in Godspell.”
Addie lets out a small cheer. Gabe points at her with the rolled script. “Line runs happen after dinner. Popsicles are not dinner.”
“It’s not popsicle-s, plural,” she says. “This is my first one.”
“That’s what you said about the last one.”
He walks me out. Addie is skipping up the stairs, shouting something upward to the empty apartment about telling Emma.
“Table work is tomorrow at seven,” I say. “For the record, I knew you were going to say yes.”
“So did I,” Gabe says.
“And you let me flounder?”
“I wanted to keep you here longer.”
I’m most of the way to the car before I let myself smile at that. When I glance back from the driver’s seat, he raises the script to me like he’s giving a toast.
On the way home, I call Vivian, who says, quote, “Tell him the dead have always outranked Scotland. That’s practically the plot.”
* * *
The scene that greets me in the living room takes a minute to parse.
The furniture has been rearranged. The armchair has been dragged to the center of the rug, facing the couch, and the standing lamp has been repositioned behind it at a dramatic angle. On the chair, upright and motionless, sits Maude.
Englebert is on the couch, facing him.
“You’re home,” Englebert says, without breaking eye contact with Maude. “Well? Did he accept?”
“He accepted. One condition. If a funeral lands on opening night, the funeral wins.”
“Naturally the funeral wins. Death has enjoyed top billing since the medium was invented. Everything else is merely the supporting act.” His tail sweeps once across the cushion. “I knew he’d say yes. I selected him.”
“Addie closed the deal, really.”
“Clever girl.” He resettles his front feet. “Now. If you’re going to stand there, stand there silently. We are in the middle of the banquet.”
I look at Maude. Maude looks at nothing. His eyes are half-closed and his tail is hanging off the front of the armchair cushion and he seemingly has not registered my arrival in any detectable way.
“Englebert,” I say. “What is happening?”
“Casting. Gabriel will need a scene partner at tomorrow’s table work.
” He tips his head at the armchair. “Banquo’s ghost has no lines.
He does not move. He appears in Macbeth’s chair, uninvited, and stares at the man who murdered him until the man comes apart.
I ask you, Marigold, have you ever, in your life, seen anyone stare blankly like Maude? ”
Maude, hearing his name, blinks. Once. Slowly.
“There,” Englebert says. “There. Few actors can manufacture that. The vacancy. The patience. He seems as though he has already seen how you die and found it tedious. It cannot be taught. He simply has it.”
“He’s waiting for dinner.”
“Motivation is private. Results are public.” Englebert draws himself up on the couch. “Avaunt, and quit my sight! Let the earth hide thee! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold—”
Maude does not avaunt, whatever that means. Instead, he stares through Englebert at some fixed point roughly four feet behind him, and begins, very quietly, to purr.
“He mocks me,” Englebert breathes. “The ghost mocks me. Do you see it? Macbeth commands and the dead man is amused.” He paces the length of the couch cushion and comes back. “Again. From the top of the speech. Maude — everything you just did, exactly the same.”
Maude yawns.
I sit down on the rug with my back against the couch to watch, because there is truly nothing else in Duskboro or, for that matter, on this entire earth that I would rather be doing.
Englebert runs the speech again at full volume while Maude radiates indifference. At the exact moment the ghost is meant to vanish, Maude stands, stretches each leg with ceremony, hops off the armchair, and exits toward the kitchen without a backward glance.
Englebert stops mid-line. His ears are at full alert.
“Did you see that?” he asks.
“I told you. He wants his dinner.”
“He vanished on the beat. Un-cued.” He stares after Maude. “Marigold. I have been sharing a house with a natural.”
“Englebert—”
“Feed him,” Englebert says. “One does not keep talent waiting. I expect—”
“Englebert,” I repeat.
“What? What can possibly be worth this delay?”
“How did you move the furniture?”
“I have my ways.”
“You don’t have hands.”
“How astute.”
“Englebert…”
“If you must know,” he says, refusing to make eye contact, “Prudence stopped by to speak with Annabel, and she was delighted to help me. You should take a leaf out of her book, Marigold. Some Wardwells are eager supporters of the arts.”
I make a mental note to confront Pru about this later and turn toward the kitchen, where Maude has begun to pout, obviously displeased by my dawdling.