Blue Smoke

what she could, contacting the priest while Bo called his father. In a little desk in the spare room, papers were competently organized in a file drawer. Insurance, burial plot, a copy of the will, the deed to the house, the title to the aging Chevy Reena learned Marge Goodnight had driven to church and the grocery store.
    The priest arrived so quickly, with a face so solemn Reena deduced Marge had been a prominent member of the parish.
    She began to see more of Bo here. The tidiness of the house was certainly Marge. But its upkeep was undoubtedly his doing. There was none of the slapdash repairs, the jury-rigged details she often saw in the homes and apartments of seniors.
    As Judy had said, he paid attention. He took care.
    He handled the details, made the calls, spoke with the priest, made the decisions. Once, she saw him falter and moved over to take his hand.
    “What can I do?”
    “They, ah . . . They need to know what she should wear. For the funeral. I have to pick something.”
    “Why don’t I do that? Men never know what we want to wear.”
    “I’d appreciate it. Her stuff’s in there, in the closet. You could wait on it. They haven’t . . . I mean, she’s still in there.”

    “It’s okay. I’ll take care of this.”
    Maybe it was surreal, to go into the bedroom of a woman she’d never met, to go through the closet while a body lay in the bed. Out of respect, Reena stepped to the bed first, looked down.
    Marge Goodnight had let her hair go slate gray, and had kept it short and straight. No-nonsense then, Reena decided. Her left hand, with its wedding ring set, lay outside the covers.
    She imagined Bo had sat there, held her hand while he said his good-byes.
    “It’s too much for him,” she said quietly. “Picking a dress for you is just a little out of his scope. I hope you don’t mind if I handle this part.”
    She opened the closet, smiled when she saw built-in shelves and cubbies. “He built these, didn’t he?” She glanced over her shoulder at Marge. “You like things organized, and he did the work. It’s a good design. I may have to hire him to do something similar for me. What about this blue suit, Marge? Dignified, but not stuffy. And this blouse, with just a little bit of lace down the placket. Pretty, but not too frilly. I think I’d have liked you.”
    She found a garment bag, hung the outfit inside, and though she realized it was unnecessary, selected shoes, then underwear from the bureau.
    Before she left the room, she turned to the bed again. “I’ll light a candle for you, and have my mother say a rosary. Nobody says a rosary like my mama. Safe passage, Marge.”
    R eena took two hours’ personal time to attend the funeral. He hadn’t asked her to come. In fact, she thought he’d deliberately avoided asking her. She sat in the back, not surprised the Mass was so well attended. Her brief conversation with the pastor had cemented her conclusion that Margaret Goodnight had been a fixture of the church.
    They’d brought flowers, as friends and neighbors do, so the church smelled of lilies and incense and candle wax. She stood and knelt, sat and spoke, the rhythm of the Mass as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. When the priest spoke of the dead, he spoke of her in personal and affectionate terms.

    She’d mattered, Reena thought. She’d left her mark. And wasn’t that the point?
    When Bo walked up to the pulpit to speak, she didn’t think Marge would mind if she admired the way he looked in a dark suit.
    “My grandmother,” he began, “was tough. She didn’t suffer fools. She figured you should use the brains God gave you, otherwise you were just taking up space. She did a lot more than take up space. She told me that during the Depression she worked in a dime store, made a dollar a day. Had to walk two miles each way—fair weather or foul. She didn’t think it was that big a deal, she just did what she had to do.
    “She told me once she thought she’d become a nun, then decided she’d rather have sex. I hope it’s okay to say that in here,” he added after a ripple of laughter. “She married my grandfather in 1939. They had what she called a two-hour honeymoon before they both had to go back to work. Apparently, they managed to make my uncle Tom in that short window. She lost a daughter at six months, and a son in Vietnam who never saw his twentieth birthday. She lost her husband, but she never lost, well, her faith. Or her independence,