Promoted. To Glory.

I know I’ve been away. Mea culpa.

There has been a death in the family. That is what Miss Cousins told me when she called me at home. The Secretary died as quietly as she lived. She uncharacteristically missed an appointment on Saturday afternoon and her telephone rang unanswered. Simple things, really, and to most people no warning bells would ring.


Miss Cousins called Lourdes—who had a key—and Lourdes and her husband went to check. They found her reclining on a sofa with a book in her lap. She had died of a stroke the night before. Lourdes called 911, which is what you do evidently, and her husband wept. The Secretary had been a longtime employer and friend. (Yes, and friend.)


I was going to miss her, I realized, for her remarkable ability to be a cipher while looking after so many people and details. She knew every detail there was to know about Miss Cousins, and she ran the office with a Teutonic efficiency that she really did make look effortless.


Miss Cousins looked after the funeral with brisk sensitivity to detail and decorum. The Secretary had attended the Unitarian Church sporadically and the office immediately sprung into action with arrangements. Calls were placed, decisions were reached and we banded together—Miss Cousins, Jane, and me—like an odd little family.


We made arrangements for flowers and food, of course, but also the details of gathering friends (no family, really, except a few nieces and maybe 1 nephew) and looking after her personal affairs. Ardie Beebe sent an enormous arrangement to the office, and another to Miss Cousins at home, plus another to Jane. I didn’t get a personal delivery but I did put the large spray he sent to the office near my desk.


In the absence of our Major Domo we were a bit rudderless. Jane asked me to “look after things at the office for a few days” and it all sounded very temporary. The Secretary was not exactly a citizen of the Great Wired World. Her notebooks and calendars were precise and clear. Appointments, events, reminders—anything to do with Miss Cousins’ professional life, personal needs or her office—were as easy to follow as a map.


The funeral itself was a relatively modest affair. There were some lovely words spoken—a heavy-set niece spoke movingly about her late “Aunty”—and the minister spoke of her “generous soul” as well as her “selfless approach to life” and I thought they were odd comments. I only found at later that the church had been left money. A gift that touched many, as it turned out.


The wake was a boozy affair held by Miss Cousins. The apartment was packed with people, caterers, floral arrangements, food, drink, and a steady stream of guests in and out. Ardie and his sister Beebe Grade were there (I admit it; I stared at her for a while and it was like looking at a famous person) as well as numerous people from the professional guilds. Lourdes sat with Miss Cousins the entire time, and they seemed to fare better together.


It was around 3AM when Ardie finally stood up and stretched and said it was time to call it a night. Besides, he said, we had business to look after first thing tomorrow.


The Secretary, you see, had left Jane and me “a little something” and legal matters can’t be postponed. We were expected downtown at 2pm to learn what secrets were contained in a will, written only 7 days before by The Secretary.


Where there is a Will, there is a War.