Ship Happens

James Beaumont came around the corner like a yacht pulling into harbor. He was a large man. Not tall large. Wide large. The sort of large that starts at the belt buckle and expands outward in all directions, stuffed into a white suit that had been tailored during a more optimistic era of his waistline. White shoes. White belt. Gold pinky ring. A tan so even and so orange it could only have come from a bottle or a deal with a vengeful god. His hair was slicked back with enough product to lubricate a transmission, and he smelled like cologne that cost either four dollars or four hundred, impossible to tell.

“Brother,” he said, extending a hand the size of a catcher’s mitt. “Jim Beaumont. But everybody calls me Jimbo.”

Of course they did.

“Chad Cruz.”

“Chad. Chad.” He said my name twice, like he was tasting it. His handshake was aggressive and moist. “Brenda tells me you lost your aunt. Let me start by saying, from the bottom of my heart, I am so sorry for your loss.”

He placed his other hand on top of our handshake, creating a hand sandwich that I had not consented to. His eyes did something they probably practiced in a mirror: a squint of compassion followed by a slow, meaningful nod.

“Now, Chad. Can I call you Chad?”

“You already did. Twice.”

“Chad, I want you to know that here at Willow Grove, we believe every life deserves a celebration. Not a funeral. A celebration.” He released my hand and placed his palm on my shoulder, steering me down the hallway. The palm was also moist. “Your aunt Matilda...”

“We weren’t that close.”

“Your aunt Matilda,” he continued, unaffected, “deserves to be sent off with dignity. With class. With the kind of farewell that says, ‘This woman lived.’”

He guided me into an office that looked like a Rooms To Go showroom had a baby with a church. Dark wood desk, leather chair, framed prints of sunsets and lighthouses, and, mounted on the wall behind his chair, a flatscreen TV playing a loop of clouds drifting across a blue sky. Beneath the TV was a bronze plaque that read: Every Sunset Is Someone’s Sunrise. I was pretty sure that wasn’t true, scientifically, but this didn’t seem like a place where science had much pull.

“Have a seat, my friend. Can I get you some water? Coffee?”

“I’m fine.”

“Water it is.” He was already pouring from a pitcher on his desk. He set the glass in front of me on a coaster shaped like an angel wing. Then he sat down, opened a leather binder, and pulled out what I can only describe as a laminated menu.

It was, in fact, a laminated menu. Like at Denny’s, except instead of a Grand Slam you could order a mahogany casket with brushed nickel handles and a satin interior. The “Eternal Comfort Collection” started on page one. There were packages. There were tiers.

“Now, I like to start with our Serenity Package,” Jimbo said, pointing to a glossy photo of a casket that looked more expensive than my car. “This is our most popular option. Solid hardwood, hand-finished, hermetic seal, adjustable bed...”

“Adjustable bed?”

“For the viewing. You want Aunt Matilda positioned just right. Natural. Peaceful. Like she’s sleeping.”

“She’s not sleeping. She’s dead.”

Jimbo didn’t blink. “Of course. But the illusion of sleep, Chad, that’s what brings comfort to the bereaved.”

“I told you, we weren’t that...”

“Now, the Serenity Package includes the casket, embalming and preparation, use of our chapel for the service, a memorial video slideshow set to the music of your choice, and a complimentary guest book. All for twelve thousand, nine hundred and ninety-five dollars.”

Twelve thousand. Nine hundred. And ninety-five. Dollars. For a woman I’d spoken to maybe eight times in the last decade, half of those at other people’s funerals, where her primary contribution to conversation was telling me I looked thin and asking why I wasn’t married, in that order.

“That’s, uh... that’s a lot.”

“It’s an investment. In memory. In legacy.” Jimbo leaned forward. The chair protested. “But I hear you, brother. Budget’s important. That’s why we also offer the Tranquility Package.”

He flipped the laminated page. The Tranquility Package was nine thousand dollars and included a slightly less impressive casket and no memorial video.

“And for the more... economically minded family, there’s the Peaceful Passage.”

He flipped again. The Peaceful Passage was sixty-five hundred dollars and the casket in the photo looked like it was built from the same material as IKEA shelving.

“What’s below that?”

Jimbo’s smile tightened. Just a fraction. The way a salesman’s smile tightens when you ask about the clearance rack.

“We do have our Simple Farewell option. That’s our most basic...”

“How much?”

“Thirty-two hundred. But, Chad, I have to be honest with you, brother to brother.” He leaned even further forward. I could smell his cologne mixing with the lilies and it created something that should be illegal under the Geneva Convention. “The Simple Farewell is... it’s simple. No chapel service. No preparation. Just the basics. And your aunt... Matilda deserved more than basics. Didn’t she?”

He looked at me with an expression that said he believed in me, which made him the second person this month, after Megan’s self-help book, and just as misguided.

I opened my mouth to respond, but the lobby door opened and a voice cut through the building like a knife through angel food cake.

“Where is he? Where’s the nephew?”

Tiffany Figueroa-Walsh entered the office the way weather enters a trailer park: without warning, without mercy, and with a strong likelihood of property damage.

She was mid-forties, blonde in a way that required monthly maintenance and an adversarial relationship with her natural hair color, wearing a black dress that was technically funeral-appropriate but also technically cocktail-ready, because Tiffany scheduled grief between brunch and Pilates. Her sunglasses were pushed up on her head. Her purse was designer, or at least designer-adjacent. Behind her trailed a man in a gray suit carrying a briefcase, who had the haunted look of someone who billed by the hour but earned every penny of it.

“Chad.” She said it the way you’d say the name of a disease you’d been diagnosed with. Not surprised. Just disappointed it had come to this.

“Tiffany.”

I’d met Tiffany exactly three times. Once at a Thanksgiving where she’d spent the entire meal talking about her kitchen renovation. Once at a cousin’s wedding where she’d complained about the napkins. And once at my mother’s funeral, where she’d pulled me aside to ask if Mom had “mentioned anything about the silver tea set.” She was Matilda’s niece through her late husband’s side of the family, the side that had opinions about thread counts and wine pairings and what constituted an appropriate amount to spend on a casket for a woman they also hadn’t called in years but were considerably better at pretending they had.

“Can we speak privately?” She glanced at Jimbo like something on the bottom of her shoe.

“Sure.”

We stepped into the hallway. The man in the gray suit followed. He positioned himself slightly behind Tiffany’s right shoulder, briefcase across his body like a shield, and said nothing. He didn’t need to. His presence said it all: I charge four hundred dollars an hour and someone here is paying it.

“Chad, I’m going to be direct with you.”

“Okay.”

“Auntie Tilly and I were very close.”

This was a lie. I knew it was a lie. Tiffany knew I knew it was a lie. The lawyer probably knew it was a lie. But it was a lie that came with documentation, and documentation beats truth in the same weight class every time.

“She and I spoke regularly. Weekly, in fact. And she made her wishes very clear regarding her estate.” Tiffany paused to let this settle, like a prosecutor before introducing evidence. “The condo, the furnishings, her accounts... Tilly wanted those to stay in the family.”

“I’m family.”

“You’re geographically family, Chad. You’re the person who happened to live forty minutes away and still couldn’t be bothered to visit.”

That one landed. Mostly because it was true.

The lawyer stepped forward and produced a document from his briefcase with the practiced smoothness of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, except the rabbit was a will and the trick was making Chad Cruz disappear from the inheritance.

“Ms. Figueroa’s estate plan, executed fourteen months ago, designates Ms. Figueroa-Walsh as primary beneficiary of all real property, financial accounts, and personal effects,” the lawyer said, in a voice that could make a bedtime story sound like a sentencing.

“All of it?”

“Substantially all of it, yes.”

“Substantially.”

Tiffany shifted her weight. “There are a few items Tilly set aside specifically for you.”

“A few items.”

“We can discuss those at the condo. I’d like to go through things there, make sure everything is accounted for.” She checked her phone. “Shall we say two o’clock?”

I looked at Tiffany. I looked at the lawyer. I looked at the framed photo on the hallway wall of a single footprint in the sand, which was supposed to represent God carrying you but currently represented me getting walked over.

“Two o’clock. Sure.”

Tiffany smiled. It was the smile of someone who’d gotten what they came for and was already mentally redecorating. She turned to leave, then stopped.

“Oh, and Chad? The funeral arrangements. I’ll handle those. I want to make sure Tilly gets the send-off she deserves.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Jimbo’s waiting in there with some options. You should really look at the Serenity Package. Top of the line. Matilda deserves the best, after all.”

Something flickered behind Tiffany’s eyes. The briefest calculation: how much is my grief performance going to cost me?

“The best,” I repeated. “She’d want the memorial slideshow. The music. The adjustable bed.”

“Adjustable...?”

“For the illusion of sleep, Tiffany. Jimbo will explain.”

I walked back toward the office, stuck my head in the door. Jimbo was still seated, laminated menu open, water pitcher sweating on the desk.

“Jimbo, my cousin Tiffany is going to be handling all the arrangements. Financial responsibility, the works. She was very close to Aunt Matilda. Like, weekly phone calls close. She’s going to want the best. I’m talking top shelf. Maybe even above the Serenity Package, if you’ve got something up there. She’s not an economically minded type of gal, if you catch my drift.”

Jimbo’s eyes went wide. Not sad wide. Not compassionate wide. Commission wide. The white suit seemed to brighten. The pinky ring caught the light.

“Brother,” he said, standing up so fast the chair rolled back and hit the wall beneath Every Sunset Is Someone’s Sunrise. “You just point me at her.”

I pointed.