chloe handbags

Genevieve and I had taken an early Eastern Airlines shuttle from Boston to New York's LaGuardia airport so we could meet up with Matthew, who was on Fire Island with his latest boyfriend. Genevieve's self-centered husband, Ken, had a business trip planned, so he told Gee he wouldn't be with her at Daddy's funeral -- that is, until his coworkers shamed him into changing his plans. Ken would be on a later flight.


Since Expo '67, the four of us had only been together one other time, when we had taken Matthew to Columbia so he could have his physical and join the Navy. After being discharged for fooling around with one of his shipmates, Matthew had gone to college in Florida, getting a degree in something like architectural design. I hadn't kept up with him after he'd left home. Although we were going to Daddy's funeral, Matthew seemed happy now. He was finally his own person, doing what he wanted to do, living how he wanted to live, and loving life.

Sometime after we'd returned to South Carolina in 1967, I'd heard that at the beginning of the summer, Matthew had been sent to Charleston so he would be separated from the gay men in the Spartanburg area with whom he'd started socializing. Momma had sought help from the minister at St. Matthew's. This minister had interceded on behalf of another gay man who'd been "reported" to his employer for being gay. Matthew lived with this man at the minister's recommendation; Momma had no idea the other man was gay. She must have discussed all this with Daddy -- which was, perhaps, why he'd treated Matthew so poorly during our World's Fair trip, and why he was always shouting about being a "man."

The plane taxied down the runway with me -- forever the youngest -- in the middle, Matthew by the window, and Genevieve on the aisle. I noticed that Matthew continuously picked at his bottom lip -- a habit he had never broken -- and fidgeted during the entire flight, while Genevieve was calm throughout. For me, the worst part of flying, other than the turbulence, was the landing. It made me all but catatonic.designer handbags buy

Flying home reminded me of what I'd found out about how Daddy'd gotten home that fateful summer. It wasn't his lawyer, but his lawyer's secretary -- Norma -- who'd actually taken care of getting Daddy home... because she was in love with him. She was the same woman who'd gone to Myrtle Beach with us the summer before. I wondered if she knew what he had done. Probably. After all, she had to be a glutton for punishment for marrying him.

While we waited to get off the plane, we joked about how pathetic our hometown airport, Greenville/Spartanburg International Jetport, was, since it didn't have any covered walkways from the planes to the terminal. We put on our sunglasses and pretended we were Hollywood celebrities from the 1950's as we walked off the plane and descended the steps onto the tarmac. Going from an air-conditioned airplane to the outdoors, we were accosted by the heat and humidity as if we had walked into damp mosquito netting. The temperature was in the mid-80s, going to a high of 89, and the humidity was in the 60s.

Mark was there to meet us, wearing a sympathetic smile, happy to see us, but not happy about why we were there. He was still living in Spartanburg with Momma. He'd had a hard time completing college, but ultimately did after attending three different schools. He had also spent the year after our Expo '67 trip lounging in front of the TV and not going to school; he'd had to repeat that school year. Mark had been unable to cope with what had happened. He also had more baggage than the rest of us, having been asked years before by Momma to sign papers to have Daddy committed to the State Hospital. I'd known Daddy had been hospitalized for his drinking, but didn't find out the facts until much later. Perhaps that was why Daddy was so unloving to Mark.

On the ride home, Mark let us know that Bunnie Ann and her family were staying with Norma's mother near Reidville Road, which, thank goodness, was on the other side of town from where Momma lived, and from the cemetery. Mark told us that Bunnie Ann was crying nonstop, which made me think of those women in foreign movies who are dressed in black, wailing and moaning lamentations for the dead as they walk behind the horse-driven wagon that's carrying the coffin. It seemed odd to me that Bunnie Ann would be carrying on while we four were unusually composed. But after what we'd been through with Daddy, perhaps it wasn't so odd after all.

It didn't take long for all of us to split up. Mark dropped Genevieve off at Don and Judy Mansfield's house. Their daughter, Edith, was one of Genevieve's best friends, and Don Mansfield had toasted Genevieve at her wedding and said that he considered Genevieve one of his daughters. As such, Genevieve thought the Mansfield's were more like family than her own.

Matthew was going to stay at Momma's condo with Mark since Momma was still in Florida nursing her father back to health. I spent time with friends from college. I was a family of one -- which was how it had been for many of the years while I'd lived in Spartanburg after our parents had split up.

Later, when I got to the funeral home, Daddy's casket was closed. Seeing his coffin hadn't stirred anything within me. I felt the need to see Daddy one last time. His death didn't seem real to me yet, and I knew that if I could simply view him, then I would believe he was dead.

I mentioned this to Genevieve while we were at the funeral home, and she agreed with me. She, too, needed to see him one last time. We both made enquiries but were given the runaround by the staff. Having been brought up in the South, and feeling that we were beginning to act like Yankees by demanding something, we next asked Genevieve's husband, Ken -- who had arrived in time to come to the funeral home -- to intervene on our behalf. As the youngest in the family, I had no say, and in the Bible Belt, women are subservient. So we decided not to cause a scene.

After Ken viewed the body, he told Genevieve, who relayed the information to me, that Daddy was still in a body bag, his body was decayed, and after the autopsy they hadn't sewn him up so that he would be presentable. Ken didn't simply recommend that we not view Daddy's body, he was adamant that we remember him the way he was when we had last seen him. This made Genevieve sigh, as the last thing she remembered was Daddy saying to her that she needed to pluck her nasal hairs. Funny, that would have been exactly like him to use a medical term.

We resigned ourselves to accepting Ken's recommendation. But I couldn't help thinking that my imagination had conjured up Daddy far worse than the actuality. No, I didn't see him as Humpty Dumpty all broken in pieces, but as a twisted and tortured, vile and rotting body shoved into a black plastic bag. At least we knew the results of the autopsy: Foul play had been ruled out.