PRESENT TENSE
Chapter Twenty-One
Trudy’s memorial service was held at eleven
o’clock that morning, at the church that Trudy had been a part of since she was
an infant. Rose got a ride to the church with Sophie and her family, wishing
that her mother would be there. Ruth had known Trudy since the two girls had
met at the beginning of fourth grade, but, as was often the case, Ruth’s desire
to work and make money overshadowed everything else—even the funeral of her
daughter’s best friend.
Sophie was silent as they made their way
toward the church. The three of them, Rose, Sophie, and Trudy, had been friends
since they were freshmen in high school. Sophie had gone to a different middle
school than Rose and Trudy, and she hadn’t known many people at the high
school. Three weeks into the school year, she had been sitting alone at a table
in the cafeteria when Rose and Trudy had come in and sat down at the opposite
end of the table. They had ignored her at first, but Trudy’s natural
friendliness had come to the forefront, and she had included Sophie in their
discussion of the hottest guys in the school. The three girls had sat together
at lunch every day after that, and soon they were friends.
Both Sophie and Rose were dreading the
memorial service, not because they wanted to avoid saying good-bye to Trudy,
but because it was yet another sad occasion in a time where it seemed as though
the sorrow never ended. Sophie was grateful that at least there wouldn’t be an
open casket this time; Trudy’s parents had chosen to have her cremated, and
there was no body to view. She had already seen Trudy shortly after she died,
anyway, and had no desire to see her friend’s body again.
They walked quietly up to the church, along
with some of Trudy’s other friends and family members. Rose saw Trudy’s parents
and older brother sitting in the front pew and hurried up to say hello to them.
Jason and Kay Bolt turned to see her. Kay got
to her feet, hugging Rose and Sophie, and gestured for them to sit behind the
family. Trudy, Sophie, and Rose had spent so much time going from one friend’s house
to another’s during their high school years that Kay looked upon Rose and
Sophie as honorary daughters. Certainly, Rose had spent a great deal of time
with Trudy, hiding out from her parents’ arguments, and later avoiding the
dark, quiet house where her father lay dying of AIDS. Rose had often wished
that she was a member of the Bolt family instead of her own because they seemed
so much more pleasant and stable than her own household had ever been. Jason
and Kay had seemed the ideal parents to her, and, although she had learned that
nothing was perfect, she still wished that her family had been a little more
like Trudy’s.
Trudy’s twenty-one-year-old brother, Scott,
turned and gave Rose and Sophie what was supposed to be a reassuring look, but
it was obvious that he mourned his sister’s death. They hadn’t seen him much in
recent years; he was a student at Baylor University in Texas and spent most of
his summers there, too. He had just arrived in Masline the day before, flying
into Ontario and traveling down to Masline for his sister’s memorial service.
Neither Rose nor Trudy had been particularly
fond of Scott when they were children. He and his friends had delighted in
teasing the girls, stealing their Barbie dolls and hiding them, or making fun
of the girls’ childish crushes on celebrities. Once, he had buried their dolls
in Trudy’s backyard and put pictures of their favorite actors on the
"graves" for memorials, then laughed uproariously when the
ten-year-old girls had retrieved their belongings and run to Mrs. Bolt to
complain. Trudy and Rose had retaliated by collecting a jar of slugs from the
garden and stuffing them in Scott’s sneakers and bed.
Later, when the girls had reached middle
school, Scott, an oh-so-mature fourteen-year-old, had teased them about their
crushes on boys and their changing figures, especially Trudy, who had
constantly tried to hide her still-childish features, particularly when
compared to Rose’s blossoming figure. Rose, for her part, had initially been
uncomfortable with her changing figure and had been even more embarrassed when
Scott had found a book on puberty that she and Trudy had been reading and had
read parts of it to his friends, putting on a high-pitched falsetto voice and
imitating the adolescent girls’ giggles.
By the time Rose and Trudy had reached high
school, Scott had grown up a little, and so had the girls. Rose even had a bit
of a crush on Scott, though she had never admitted as much to either Scott or
Trudy. By the time Scott had left for college, Rose had lost interest in him
and had turned her attention to a boyfriend her own age.
Tommy and Helga hurried into the church just
as the minister began to speak, sitting down beside Rose and Sophie. Helga
looked exhausted, as though she hadn’t slept the night before, and her eyes
were still red. Tommy also looked tired, but he sat straight, looking toward
the front of the church.
For the first time, Rose noticed the collage
of pictures of Trudy that had been displayed on a sheet of poster board. There
were pictures of Trudy from infancy onward surrounding a large photograph in
the center, Trudy’s senior picture. Rose remembered the day that the picture
had been taken, because she, Trudy, and Sophie had gone to get their pictures
taken together.
Rose listened quietly to the minister’s
words, remembering when she had first met Trudy. It had been the first day of
fourth grade, and Rose was new in town. Her family had just moved to Masline
from San Bernardino a couple of weeks earlier and she didn’t know any of the
other kids. The teacher had seated the students in alphabetical order and had
refused to acknowledge the DeWitt part of Rose’s last name. As far as the
teacher was concerned, a person should have only one last name, and he had
considered Bukater to be Rose’s only last name. Rose had been seated at the
very end of the first row, right behind Trudy. While the teacher had been busy
seating the other students, Trudy had turned around and started chattering to
Rose, wanting to know who she was, where she was from, and why she had two last
names. Rose hadn’t known what to make of Trudy at first—she had never met
anyone quite so talkative—but soon they were chattering away, and Trudy had
invited Rose to her birthday party the following Saturday. They had become
friends by the time the teacher got tired of their constant talking and moved
them to opposite sides of the classroom.
Trudy and Rose had remained friends
throughout the following years, although they saw less of each other after they
had started college. Rose had gone to live at Elias University, while Trudy had
commuted from home to UC San Diego. When Rose had come home on the weekends,
she had often been busy with Cal, and it wasn’t until November, when Rose had
begun to distance herself from her bad-tempered fiancé, that they had begun to
hang around together again on a regular basis. By that time, Rose had met Jack,
and the seven of them—Rose, Trudy, Sophie, Helga, Jack, Fabrizio, and Tommy—had
formed a close circle of friends.
The minister stepped down, allowing people to
come up and share their remembrances of Trudy. After listening to several
people, Rose got up herself, talked about how she and Trudy had met, and told
the story of Scott, the Barbie dolls, and the slugs, bringing laughter from
some of the people in the congregation. Rose had never thought laughter was
appropriate at a funeral, but upon reflection, she realized that laughter was
probably what Trudy would have wanted, since she had always been such a happy
person herself.
After Rose sat down, Sophie got up and shared
some her memories of Trudy, including the time that the three girls had climbed
the pine tree and tried to scare the trick-or-treaters. Helga and Tommy also
came to the front of the church and shared stories about her.
At the end of the service, the congregation
sang two of Trudy’s favorite hymns, Nearer My God to Thee and Eternal
Father Strong to Save. Rose had congratulated herself on keeping her
composure throughout the service, but she felt herself getting choked up again
as she sang the second song. Sophie cried through both songs and immediately
sought out her family when the service was over.
Rose wandered slowly into the fellowship
hall, where the wake was being held. Trudy’s parents had brought the pictures
of their daughter with them, as the church was to be used for another memorial
service immediately after Trudy’s. So many people had died in the earthquake
that funerals couldn’t be scheduled for separate days, or even separate parts
of the day. There had been a funeral an hour before Trudy’s, and there were
three other funerals scheduled for that day alone.
A buffet table had been set up in the
fellowship hall, with a variety of food spread across it. Rose put a few items
on a paper plate, but she wasn’t really hungry. She always lost her appetite
when she was upset, and funerals were among her least favorite activities. She
had one more funeral to get through, the televised one for all of the
earthquake victims that she would watch with Jack tomorrow. After that...Rose
wished that she could relax and allow the strain of the past week to dissipate,
but time was of the essence. After the televised funeral tomorrow morning, she
would take the bus up to Murrieta to see Cal.