Tenney's Landing: Stories

Where the Devil Lost His Blanket

As the plane taxis away from the gate, I see Gordon standing with our children, Jamie and Sarah, at the big plate-glass window. And even though I know they can't see me, I press my hand against the tiny window next to my seat. The plane lurches along, with alarming creaks and vibrations, and gradually picks up speed. I watch the trees and the Air National Guard hangar whizzing past, and at the moment we leave the ground, I nearly cry out. Partly it's the unreality of taking flight, but mostly it's knowing how far away from them I will be when the plane touches ground again.

We rise above Pittsburgh, circling over the bridges and the three rivers that look motionless and glistening from above, and turn west, climbing into the clouds. Bogota. I say the name to myself. It conjures up nothing.

Somewhere beneath me, in the plane's luggage compartment, Margar ' a Flores lies in her funeral box. And her husband, Arturo, in an urn, packed in a little crate. I know so little about these people whose remains I have inherited, but Margar ' a wrote in her will that I should be the one to take her home. "My friend Elizabeth Tenney," Jackson read from the pages he was holding. Gordon and I sat together on the sofa in his office while Jackson read the will, and Gordon held my hand, as if we were hearing the news of my own terminal illness.

Margar ' a left me a pair of silver candlesticks -- I remember seeing them on her dining room table -- and money for the trip to Colombia and back. "I want my friend Elizabeth Tenney to have some remembrance of me and take me to my final resting place," she had written. Jackson held the will up for us to see, several sheets of lined paper filled with very precise, sloping handwriting.

We sat there looking at those pages for a minute or two, and then Gordon said, "I'll be damned."

Watching me, Jackson tipped his head to one side. "I didn't realize you and Margar ' a were friends." "We weren't close," I said. "It is kind of surprising." I tried to think of who else she might have asked instead, but I couldn't come up with anyone.

Jackson straightened the papers on his desk, looking amused. "Of course, you don't have to go. I can arrange to ship the casket."

"That wouldn't be right," I said, a feeling like shame curdling in my stomach. "I think I do have to go. She chose me."

That evening we called at the Cantwell Funeral Home, where Margar ' a was laid out. It's the only funeral home in Tenney's Landing. Our town has one lawyer and one undertaker. And one aging priest we share with Rownd's Point, a town nearby. Father Rollins stood beside the casket, a velvet-lined mahogany box that was too big for Margaria. She wore a black dress with a white silk flower at the neck, and she looked as if she had only closed her eyes for a moment, preparing herself for a photograph. A strand of her hair had come loose and trailed across the tiny pillow beneath her head. Instinctively, I reached out to tuck it into place, remembering how Sarah as a baby had been fascinated by Margaria's dark, glossy hair, the way she would reach up from her stroller and stroke it when Margar ' a bent down to speak to her. "Pretty," Sarah would say, her small hand patting Margar ' a's cheek.