T.S. was well content to sit between the two women he loved most.
Father Stebbins conducted the ceremony with a majestic and tasteful demeanor that surprised both T.S. and Auntie Lil. In his skillful hands, the sometimes ghoulish ceremony of wafting incense around the coffin was transformed into an ancient and vital farewell to the dead. His eulogy, of course, was peppered with cliché after cliché. After all, a leopard doesn't change his spots. But, somehow, it all seemed entirely appropriate. More to the point, he kept it short.
In fact, when he sat down after only a few minutes of speaking, T.S. stared at Auntie Lil in some puzzlement. This was not the Father Stebbins that they knew. But his reason for brevity soon presented itself.
A small woman had been sitting quietly in the front row. She was the kind of woman that was easy to overlook. She wore a simple blue dress and sensible shoes. Her face was plain and unadorned; her hair a dull brown cut in a functional bob.
No one, in fact, would have been likely to notice her had she not risen and walked to the podium when Father Stebbins was done.
"My name is Julia Hansen," the woman began. Her voice was hushed but it had great strength in it. "You don't know who I am, but I will be forever grateful to all of you for what you did for my mother. You were the most loyal and loving friends that she could ever have had and I see now that she was right about New York City.
"You have shown a great deal of love toward a woman you hardly knew. So I'd like to tell you a little about her. My mother was not alone in this world. She was, in fact, loved very much—by her husband and by me. She lived most of her life on a farm in North Dakota. And I think that she was very happy. But after my father died, there was nothing that my husband and I could do to stop her from moving back here to New York. I don't even think that I tried very hard to stop her. I remembered too well how, when I was a child, she would read about all the new plays on Broadway and how excited she would get when, sometimes, she even recognized the name of a friend. She would take me to every touring production that ever came through town. I knew that my mother had never, ever stopped loving the theater.
"And, I guess, she never stopped missing New York. One day, she told us that she was leaving and that was that. I guess she was afraid that we would try to stop her. Or that we would come and get her against her will. She would never even let me know where she lived. Her Social Security check went right into the bank. There were times when I couldn't understand her secrecy, but I think that I understand it now. She had a life here. She was Emily Toujours. She could come back and start over again. And, most of all, she could be near the theater she loved. I think of her sitting in the dark of the audience, dreaming of what might have been. She still loved us, I know. Every month, she would call me and tell me that she was okay. She always described the shows she had seen and her memory was so vivid—it was almost like being there with her."
She stopped for a moment to regain her composure. In the soft light of the church, there were many people who saw Emily in her daughter's determined face.
"My mother will be very much missed," she continued. "Not just by you, but by me and my family. When she didn't call last week, I knew that something was wrong. But I didn't know where to begin. You can't imagine the hurt that a person can go through in just a few hours of not knowing. I was lucky. A few days later, I found my answer in the newspaper.
"But if not for you, the police tell me, I might never have known what happened to her. It would have been too late, they say. She'd have been buried as a number. Instead, I've come to New York to bury my mother. And she will be buried here, because I know it's where she'd want to stay.
"But I've also come to New York to thank you for giving me my mother back. To thank you for giving my family the opportunity to grieve her. And, most of all, to thank you for caring what happened to my mother, both before and after she died."
The woman stopped and looked out over the church very slowly, as if seeking to memorize all of their faces. She sighed and the sound was caught by the microphone. It moved through the church like a shadow.
T.S. reached for Auntie Lil's hand. He knew now that their latest journey was nearing its end.
"My mother's real name was Eleanor Perkins," Emily's daughter concluded. "And she was once a most extraordinary woman."