Party in the Funeral Home

It might have been 1977, or 78.  It doesn’t really matter.  I think the men wore polyester shirts.  We were at that party in the funeral home.  It wasn’t all that unusual.  We belonged to a woman’s club, actually a Junior Woman’s Club (younger than 35 was the criteria) and the club president that year was Phylis.  Her husband, cigar-chomping, mustachioed, paunchy, and ten years older than most of us, with a soft touch to a lady’s bottom when they left his home, owned the funeral home  in town.  Naturally, it was the finest, largest Victorian house on the main drag.  Soft yellow, with white trim, complete with shutters and turrets and a portico to drive under with your car. 

The rest of us lived in the rural surrounding areas of the town, in ranches, bi-levels, and capes.  Phylis and her husband and two little girls lived on the second floor over the funeral home.  Their apartment was larger than our homes, with high ceilings, carved moldings, and traditional, almost opulent furnishings.  It looked like the home of a much older couple, paisleyed and brocaded, tufted and traditional and, well, solid. They were solid.  

We, the gals, had been to her home before, for various meetings, quilting, and crafty projects.  Phylis was very crafty.  She sewed all the clothing for her two girls, made bread, candles, and potpourris.  She was a quilting maven, and we had worked on a large piece to be raffled off for funds to go a local charity that year.   We’d heard that she was being trained to arrange the hair of the customers.  Ew, we all thought.  But mostly, we didn’t think about it.

Anyway, a bunch of us were invited to a Halloween Party at their place that year.  We were all game; our immediate group of eight. Except for Frank.  Turned out Frank was a bit weirded out by the very fact of being in the funeral home.   We drove together that night to the party, he and Lisa, me and Max.  “I’m tellin’ you Lisa, if that weirdo brings up anything about goin’ downstairs, I am outta there!” announced Frank from the back seat.  We chuckled, as we drove up the circular driveway to the parking lot behind the home.

The party was in full swing when we got there. Thirty people at least, milling about the well-appointed living room. In the dining room, the food was being laid out on the long table, a lace tablecloth hanging gracefully to the floor.  The host was making strong drinks and copping a feel whenever his unknowing, bespectacled wife was not looking.  Music was jazzy, old stuff.  Frank asked “What, no Clapton?” and Lisa wandered off to drink a little too much, while the rest of us broke off into small groups.  The evening reached that point where some couples broke off to “get something from their coats” in the bedroom, women cackled on one side of the room, men grouped in the kitchen to shoot the breeze. Luc, our host ambled about quietly re-filling drinks with a heavy hand, the ever present cigar clamped in his teeth.   No one knew what the time was.  The party had reached the level of noise and the preponderance of bright eyes that signified a really good time.  Luc strode to the center of the living room, cigar in hand, amber scotch on rocks in the other, to issue the invitation. 

“Before we eat, who’s interested in taking a tour of the downstairs facility?”   The man was proud of his occupation, after all. 

I swiveled my head just in time to see Frank’s face pale ever so slightly as he hunkered down in the wing chair. “Hey, not this time bud”, Frank said, his eyes shifting around to find Lisa.  Before we knew it, a small group assembled around our host, looking casually eager to tour the premises below. 

It was then I remembered the small, saran and tissue-wrapped package in my purse.  One of my nephews had slipped it to me at a barbeque during the summer.  “Hide it, its good stuff, but don’t smoke it alone”, he’d told me.  Smoke it alone?  I’d never smoked one at all.  I’d hidden it deep in my underwear drawer for months, knowing that Max, who frowned on such things, would have a fit if he knew. 

The group started for the stairs. The “prep” room was in the basement in a separate wing.  We’d be able to slip downstairs to the ladies room, clear on the other side of the building.  No one would miss us.  They’d think we went with the tour.  I found Dee, my blonde partner in crime, and told her to come with me.  I was Peter Pan that night, and she had come as Alice in Wonderland, those darned crazy red striped socks skipping down the stairs to keep up with me.  The ladies room was all pink and white and softly silent, its stalls empty, its ladylike chairs covered in beige silk.  We were giddy with excitement and anticipation.  What to expect?  We had no idea.   We’d spent the sixties working and then had babies. Time to break out!  Time to get wild! Experiment! 

We lit it, we puffed and puffed, not feeling a thing, but pleased with ourselves for being so rebellious.  Oh well, we laughed, at least we tried.  By the time we got upstairs, the group had just come back from the tour, slightly subdued but abuzz with words like metal tables and drains and sinks and apparatus.  Ewww.  Our mates had been on the tour, thinking we were upstairs all the while.  What subterfuge!  We got on the line to get some food.  But, it happened just as we reached the dining room table laden with casseroles, hoagies, large plates of ziti, and pot luck dishes galore.  Oh my god!  It hit us right then!  And my world became…hilarious! 

I began to laugh and then laughed harder, I couldn’t stop.  It was a snorting, suppressed laugh, with shoulders shaking.  I looked up and caught sight of Dee, her pink cheeks about to burst; eyes wide open as though in shock.  I could not contain myself, though Max whispered harshly at my elbow “What is wrong with you?  “Nothing, nothing.” I muttered as I maneuvered my way around the table, and then walked behind him as he made his way to our chairs.  I was a quaking, doubled over Peter Pan, my green velvet shorts and tan top crumpling as I walked, balancing my plate, keeping an eye on my feet as I watched them walking, as though they belonged to someone else, the cute brown suede shorty boots gliding across the burgundy Persian rug. They looked rhythmical, elusive.  I was captivated.  

I reached my chair, my stomach hurting from the belly laughs, sure that my cute painted Peter freckles were now brown streaks marking my face.  Max was fuming and snarling “Pull yourself together!”

Just then, our friend, mild mannered Gary, spoke to me from across the tray table “Is that all you’re eating?”  I looked down at my plate.  There sat a small round of coleslaw, with a few olives rolling around the bare plate.  Where was all my food I wondered?  Oh where was all my food?

Then I howled, a loud, very loud, side-splitting howl …damn that was good stuff!