Shades of Gray

I snuck across the uneven ground to visit Mamma while the paleness of the morning brushed an odd green glow on top of the graves. An uneasy stillness fills a graveyard in the morning. If there’d been breathing there, it would have stopped. The perky red and yellow plastic flowers scattered about seemed surreal, like a painting by Picasso. I knew Mamma would be pleased that it all seemed just a little out of whack.

No grass grew on her grave yet, just dark musky soil that looked like it had been freshly turned in a dare for something to take hold and sprout from below. I got a picture of Mamma twisting and turning up from the ground, looking at me with that “I told you so” way she had when she bragged about her green thumb.

It would be nice to have Mamma back, but like she said often enough, dead is dead. I remember the first time she said that, it was when my kitten died. We got him from the shelter on Monday, and he got his head stuck in a tomato paste can and suffocated on Wednesday. I blamed her for letting the garbage overflow. If she’d kept a better house, the can wouldn't have been on the floor.

Mamma felt bad, but she said I had to face things like that. It was a lesson learned, she said. When I asked if my kitten would come back, she said no, dead is dead. I learned about death quite often over the years. I had two dogs die after the cat, then two grandpas, two grandmas, one daddy, and now one mamma. I guess I know just about better than anyone that dead is dead.

It had been a while since I’d visited my mom. After college I joined the Peace Corps so I could see the world. Mamma said she figured I'd do some lame-brain thing like that. I couldn’t explain to her why I needed to get away, why I wasn’t like her–able to absorb the wisdom that descended upon her as she breathed in the same air, day after day.

I guess Mamma had been sick for a long time and I didn't know it. She said she didn't tell me ‘cause I would worry, and besides she said, there was nothing I could do.

“The world just keeps on a tumbling no matter what. And you go when it’s your time,” she said.

Mamma had a lot of those sayings, and she repeated them to me when the occasion called for it. Like the time I got stood up for my eighth grade dance, and she told me what goes around comes around, and that Johnny Keeper would get his just rewards some day. It only took about a year.

Johnny played the tuba in the high school band and during the homecoming game he was swinging that big old thing from side-to-side, knocking it into my arm every chance he got.

I played the flute. Mamma said that’s the only instrument a true lady could play in a marching band.

We were almost to the end of the song when Johnny swung into my arm and I fell backwards knocking Billy Fossel and his drum right onto the ground in front of Johnny. Johnny fell on top of that big brass tuba and knocked his front teeth clean out. I didn’t have to look to know who was in the stands cheering so loud that everyone craned to see. Later, Mamma made sure I saw the connection between Johnny getting his teeth knocked out during Freshman Homecoming, and him standing me up in the eighth grade.

“What goes around comes around,” she said.

Another favorite saying of Mamma’s, was “never tell a lie.” She said once you start, you can never stop. “Lies take on a life of their own,” she said. “And there ain’t no shades of gray to the truth. There’s just the truth or a lie. Nothin’ in between.”

She compared lies to the blob in the Steve McQueen movie. “They keep growing and growing, until finally they plop out in the open for everyone to see.”

I found out how true that one was the time I lied to Mamma about going out with Jesse Turner. I was a junior, and Mamma let me date, but not Jesse Turner. She said she could tell he was a bad seed. She didn’t like his leather jacket with the turned up collar, or his Elvis haircut. She didn't like the way he hot-rodded all over town in his souped-up Chevy. Mamma said Jesse tried to act like James Dean, and she was sure he was gonna end up the same way. She didn't want me with him when it happened.

When he asked me out I decided to see if maybe Mamma might be wrong, and that there were shades of gray to the truth. I decided to lie.

When I was little, Mamma convinced me my nose turned blue when I lied. I’d stand there with my hands over my face until she made me confess. Later, I figured out my nose really didn't turn colors, so every once in awhile I'd tell a whopper. The Jesse Turner lie was just like Mamma said. It was like Steve McQueen's blob.

Jesse asked me to go to the drive-in. I knew Mamma would say no, so I told her I was going roller skating with Faye Anne Daniels, my best friend. I walked out the front door with my polished white skates strung over my shoulder, slipped right around the corner and got into Jesse's shiny black car. He asked what was wrong with my nose because I had my hand over it. I should have gotten out of his car right then, but I didn't

I could see the trouble coming when Jesse drove past the drive-in on Highway 9 and right to Hallby’s Lake. I had heard about the place outside of town where all the kids parked. Meanwhile, back home, Faye Anne knocked on my front door and asked for me. She knew she was my excuse to get out, but told me later she was being such a ditz that she forgot. I suspected otherwise, ‘cause I saw the way she looked at Jesse. I think she might have been a little jealous.

Faye didn't know anything about your nose turning blue when you lied, but Mamma had other ways of getting to the truth of a thing. Before long, my best friend blabbed all she knew about me and Jesse Turner.

While Mamma shined a flashlight into the back seat of every car at the drive-in, I was parked on a strip of dirt road by the lake, fighting Jesse off while he cooed and clucked like a sneaky mean rooster. When I figured I was about to lose my pledge of virginity, I grabbed my skates and jumped out of the car. The dust thrown up from his spinning back tires swirled around my head and made me cough. That’s when I started worrying about Mamma, so I walked the mile back to the blacktop, then sat on a rock to put on my skates. I figured it would be quicker skating the five or so miles into town, and if I was lucky, I could fool Mamma just this one last time.

After Mamma scoured all the local hangouts and couldn't find me, she barged into the police station and convinced Sheriff Longwell that he had to take her out looking again. He knew all about teenagers and drove straight out Highway 9.

The evening air was cool on my face as I skated up the last hill before town. I’m sure my smile glowed in the moonlight, I was feeling that good. Then the light hit me, and I stumbled too close to the gravel that lined the edges of the road. I lost my balance and fell flat on my fanny. At first I thought a flying saucer had come up over the hill, then I could see it was a police car, with Mamma sitting in the front seat.

She lectured me all the way home. The sheriff didn't say much except to ask if I had hurt my nose when I fell on my butt.

As we drove through town past the movie theater, there on the marquee it said, Steve McQueen starring in The Blob. I think that was the first time I wondered how Mamma got to be so smart.

Graveyards are peaceful places. No one’s arguing with anyone. No one’s mad at anyone anymore. Everyone is through with pain and crying and all the other bad things that happen to human beings. They just rest for eternity under their own little plot of green, usually topped with some stone monstrosity.

Years ago, when I was just a teenager, Mamma made me promise to get the mortuary to do something special for her grave. She had drawn it herself on a small slip of blue paper and tucked it into my hand one night.

“I’m sure it won’t be long now,” she told me. “I want you to see to the arrangements.”

I glanced at the paper, nodded my head, then shoved it in my pocket and forgot it. I knew why she felt so close to the end, it was right after Grandpa Patterson died.

Just that day we’d gone out to the cemetery for our usual Sunday afternoon picnic and to visit our loved ones who’d already gone to their greatest reward. But, when Mamma saw what they’d put on Grandpa’s grave, she completely lost her appetite. I thought the pinkish stone looked okay. It was kinda off by itself. He had made us promise not to put him next to Grandma Patterson. He said it was bad enough that he’d spent more than fifty years with the old witch; he certainly didn’t intend to spend eternity with her. We put him on the other side of Uncle Bufford, who I never met.

Anyway, when we walked up and saw the shiny new marble stone, Mamma’s mouth dropped open and she covered her eyes. “Will you just look at that ugly thing they’ve put on top of your grandpa,” she said.

Now like I said, I didn’t think it looked all that bad, but by this time I had a little more than sixteen years to know my mamma. I sure knew better than to disagree, especially about something important like a headstone, so I shook my head and tried to look sorrowful.

She traced her fingers over the freshly carved letters under Grandpa’s name, then slumped to the ground in one of her “fatal faints,” she called them.

I slowly read what had upset her so. “Here lies Francis Dubois Patterson. Born January 1,1892. Died July 4, 1962.” They named him after his great grandfather, but I didn’t think anyone in town ever knew his name was Francis Dubois. We all called him Frank D.

I thought the name thing was what had upset Mamma, but she kept waggling her finger up at the stone and told me to keep reading. So I did.

“Here lies our friend, he remained loyal to the end. We would’ve treated him the same, even if we’d known his real name. Now come every Fourth of July, we’ll remember when he lit up the sky.”

Now I got it. You see, Grandpa Patterson died because he had a little too much to drink at the 4th of July picnic. But, being the oldest member of the city council, he insisted that he should have the honor of setting off the big display. No one really saw exactly what happened, but everyone agrees that it was just about the best grand finale this town has ever seen. I guess I could see why Mamma would be upset about that being carved on her daddy’s tombstone.

“The mayor’s cousin is the stone cutter,” she said. “Those two never liked your grandpa very much. So not only did that butt of a mayor get a good laugh, his cousin probably made a fortune carving out all those damn words.”

We packed up the chicken and folded the blanket and went home in a funk. That’s when she drew out what she wanted over her grave. And that’s when I promised I would take care of everything.

Over the years, though, Mamma kept changing her mind. Sometimes she didn’t even want a grave. Once she told me to drop her over a bridge somewhere so’s she could float out to sea. Finally, she decided she wanted to be cremated and put in one of those special urns and set on the fireplace. She wrote that one out and gave it to the funeral director.

The morning they scheduled the cremation, I remembered the paper she had given me about what her grave marker should say back when Grandpa died. The thought of having Mamma in a jar on the mantle, spurred me down the road in her old Nash Rambler. I made it to the funeral home in time, but the funeral director said he had to do what Mamma told him to. He showed me a signed contract and everything.

I thought about my promise the day we saw Grandpa’s grave. I thought about never telling a lie. And I thought about an ugly urn sitting on the fireplace forever. Conjuring up the biggest face full of tears I could manage, I told a whopper.

“But Mamma called me from her death bed,” I said between sobs. “She said she was sorry she’d wanted to be cremated and asked if I remembered the paper she gave me after Grandpa died. I’ve kept it all these years.”

I held the tattered paper out for him to see, and secretly smiled at the careful way I’d threaded my lie. I thought of Mamma, and her telling me that there were no shades of gray to the truth. But I disagreed. I didn’t want my mamma’s ashes to blow away in the wind, or be kept trapped in a jar on a shelf. I wanted her to be out there with all her loved ones where I could come and sit on a quilt and eat fried chicken and remember all the wise things she told me over the years. Surely this was a necessary lie. Not a dark black lie, but one tinged with hues of soft dove gray.

The funeral director, who’d known Mamma well, read the paper then grinned. “Like your mamma always said. Dead is dead, and ain’t none of us gonna really care after that. This is a doozy of a request, but since it’s for your mamma, we’ll take care of it.” He walked away scratching his head.

Now as I approach the grave, I’m sure I did the right thing. This wasn’t going to be like Steve McQueen’s blob. Sometimes those shades of gray that Mamma talked about will color any lie into the truth.

A soft wind blows, scattering webs of gray shadow and sunshine. I’m so glad I told the lie that kept Mamma from being a pile of ashes in a jar. I can’t help but smile when I see that they did exactly as she wanted. There’s a grand old oak tree at the head of her grave. About three feet up its trunk, they scraped a heart into its gnarled bark and in neat letters wrote, “Here lies Mamma R.I.P.” Short but sweet, just like my mamma would have said.