Going to the Chapel by Janet Tronstad Read Free Book Online Page B

restaurants sometimes do that, but that’s if they have something peculiar like chicken costumes or those red fish-head masks.
    I’m not that wild about wearing a black suit all the time, but I’ve got to tell you I’d rather wear that than a fish head.
    I’m almost through the lobby before it occurs to me that Mr. Z might also be making suits for the dead people. Maybe that’s why he has a system all set up with a tailor and everything. I wonder if, when I leave, a dead person will wear the suit I leave behind.
    “Do people have their own clothes when they come to be buried?” I ask Mr. Z.
    “We pride ourselves on having a well-dressed clientele,” Mr. Z says as he opens the door to the back room. “We don’t let clients go on view unless they are appropriately attired.”
    I decide I should buy some clothes with my first paycheck. I haven’t thought much about preparing for death, but I can tell you this, I don’t want a Mr. Z somewhere deciding what I wear for the—you know, my big day. These black suits can’t look that good no matter how much Pearly Pink makeup someone uses on your cheekbones. Besides, if I die anytime soon, I want to look as if I was a fun person while I was living. Maybe Cassie would promise to ask Aunt Inga to bury me in this pink suit I’m wearing now.
    I never knew a mortuary could have so many forms. There are two rows of file cabinets in the back room, which is also the break room. One whole side of the room is covered with this big white board that you can mark on. It has the work schedule on the right side and the funeral schedule on the left side with little numbers here and there as though someone calculated a worker to funeral ratio.
    I am not sure I like having my name there, but Mr. Z marks me in for the day anyway. There is my name in big black letters not two feet away from the listing of who is up for their final viewing. I wonder if Mr. Z ever gets the rows confused and puts an employee on the dead list or a dead person on the employee list. Wouldn’t that be creepy if I came in some day and my name was on the wrong list?
    I don’t like thinking about the board so I look down at the basket of forms Mr. Z has given me to file. Onebasket has forms the family has filled out describing their wishes for the services at the mortuary. The other basket is signed contracts for financial arrangements.
    I take a peek at one of the financial forms. Yikes. I can’t afford to die yet, that’s for sure.
    I decide to file the Request for Services forms first and leave the financial stuff for last since it’s a little alarming.
    I am halfway through filing the requests when I notice that some of the forms have little handwritten notes at the bottom. Here’s one of them: A Mr. Weston asks that his wife’s hair be dyed blond for the ceremony. “She always wanted to be a blonde,” he wrote. “I regret now that I didn’t encourage her to just do it. I regret a lot of things I didn’t encourage her in.”
    As I’m reading Mr. Weston’s note, I have one of those moments of understanding. That note could be coming from my husband fifty years from now—not that I even know who that will be, but I do know myself. I know I am impulsive about some things, but they are mostly the small things like deciding to paint my toenails purple.
    When it comes to important things like my relationship with mother, I have never done anything impulsive. I wanted my mother’s approval so much I could barely move when I saw her. I certainly never had the nerve to ask her what she thought about me or why she never took me to live with her. I was a coward with her. Not knowing if you are loved can make you feel so insecure you don’t do anything. Would it be that way for me around my husband unless I knew he really loved me?
    Would I someday be like Mrs. Weston and not even have enough confidence to dye my hair a differentcolor without fretting about it and wondering if the person I loved would like