The Accordion Wake

I'm Douglas Sanders, thirty-seven years old, and I plan events for a living. Weddings, corporate retreats, retirement dinners. I have never once planned a surprise party in the back garden of a funeral home, and I would like it noted that I resisted.

Okay, I didn't resist much. But I want you to understand how it happened, because by the end of that afternoon I was playing an accordion with a stranger in a gazebo at a funeral home, and if you don't get the setup you'll think I'm weirder than I am.

Troy Billings was turning forty. His wife Petra came to me in September and said she wanted a surprise party, a big one, and that the vibe should be "ironic fun." Those were her exact words. I asked what that meant and she said, "Troy jokes about death all the time. He'd love it. He'd absolutely love it."

So when every venue in Grindell fell through, and Petra's cousin mentioned that her brother-in-law's funeral home had a back garden nobody used on Saturday afternoons, I said yes. I said yes because Petra swore Troy would find it hilarious, and because she was paying me in actual money, which was settled before anything else happened. Invoice number 2231, half up front. I run a clean operation.

The garden itself was actually lovely. A patch of grass with rosemary bushes along two sides, a gravel path, a sagging wooden gazebo in one corner. The hearse was parked at the far end, but we put up bunting and a sign that said HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TROY in big letters, and honestly the sign covered most of the hearse.

The party was set for the third Saturday of October. Two hundred guests were invited. One hundred and forty RSVPed yes. I had a caterer lined up, a sound system rented from a guy in Rakau Springs, and a running order typed out and laminated, because that's who I am as a person.

By the Wednesday before, it was all falling apart.

"Douglas." That was Lia the caterer on the phone. "I've had a disaster. My walk-in chiller died overnight. Everything's spoiled. Everything."

"The oysters too?"

"Especially the oysters. Douglas, they smell like a harbor at low tide."

I winced. "Okay. Okay. What can you give me by Saturday?"

"Maybe forty canapés and a lot of apologies."

I thanked her, hung up, and called three other caterers. All booked. One laughed at me. Then I called the rental guy about the sound system.

"It's on the truck," he said. "It'll be there Saturday morning."

It was not there Saturday morning. At ten fifteen, a different truck pulled up outside the funeral home, and a deliveryman climbed out holding something long and rectangular wrapped in a wool blanket.

"Delivery for a party?" he said, checking a slip of paper. "This says Billings."

"That's the party. Where's the PA system?"

He set the bundle down on the gravel and unwrapped it with the care of a man unveiling a national treasure. It was an accordion. A big, old, gleaming accordion, black with pearl buttons.

"I was told one sound system," I said.

"I was told one accordion," he said. "Picked up from a Mr. Horace Billings. Says on the ticket it's a family heirloom and the birthday boy's uncle insists it be played. There's a note."

He handed me an envelope. Inside, in shaky handwriting, were the words: TROY LOVED THIS AS A BOY. SOMEBODY MAKE IT SING. HORACE.

"Did Horace say anything else?" I asked.

The deliveryman shrugged. "He said the boy's got music in him whether he knows it or not. Then he made me take a mint."

I stood there holding a seventy-year-old accordion in a funeral home garden while my caterer was down to forty canapés and my sound system was somewhere in the wrong district. I laminated a running order for this.

* * *

The guests started arriving at one. Petra had set up a text chain so nobody would blow the surprise. Troy himself thought he was coming to a "wine appreciation thing" and Petra told him to dress nice, which he did, because Troy owns one nice shirt and wears it with the pride of a man who ironed it himself.

By half past one the garden had maybe eighty people in it. The gazebo had been designated the music corner, which meant my cousin's two kids, both grown adults in their twenties I should say, were sitting in it eating the canapés. The forty canapés. Gone by one forty.

At five to two I stood by the gate coordinating arrivals, and that's when she walked up.

She was holding a folded brochure and looking at the sign on the fence like it had personally insulted her. Brown hair, glasses, a conference lanyard around her neck. Mid-thirties, I'd have guessed. She stopped at the gate and looked through it at the crowd, the bunting, the giant HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TROY sign, and the hearse.

"Oh," she said. "Oh no. I'm so sorry!"

"For what?" I asked.

"I didn't realize," she said, and her voice dropped to the volume people use in hospitals. "I'll just... I'm sorry for intruding. I was looking for the symposium marquee and I took a wrong turn and I didn't know this was a... an occasion." She gestured vaguely at the garden. "My condolences."

It took me a full three seconds to understand.

"This isn't a funeral," I said.

She blinked. "It's a funeral home."

"Yes, but the occasion is a birthday!" I pointed at the sign. "Happy birthday, Troy. He's turning forty. He's very much alive. He's on his way here right now, believing he's going to a wine appreciation evening."

She looked at the sign. She looked at the bunting. She looked at the hearse.

"The hearse threw me," she admitted. "And the venue. And everyone talking in low voices."

"That's just Troy's family. They talk low everywhere."

She laughed. Actually laughed, a real one, and pushed her glasses up. "I'm Siobhan Marlowe. Marine biologist, up from Dunedin for a symposium, currently lost."

"Douglas Sanders. Event planner, currently having a breakdown."

"Which part is breaking down?"

"The food died, the sound system went to the wrong town, and my entertainment is now that." I held up the accordion.

"Oh, that's an instrument," she said, in the tone you'd use for a snake.

"It's a loan from the birthday boy's uncle. There was a note."

She read the note. Then she read the brochure she was holding, and her face went through a journey. "The symposium is at the community hall," she said. "Which is four streets that way. I walked past a marquee, saw a garden with bunting, and thought, that looks like the catered event. So I crashed your party by accident, expressed condolences for a living man, and now I'm holding a stranger's note about an accordion."

"You can stay if you want," I said. "There's wine. There's no food, but there's wine."

"I don't want to impose on a private party."

"Siobhan. There are eighty people here and forty of them are related to Troy and will talk to you about eels for an hour. An actual marine biologist might be the most interesting guest we have."

She hesitated, then stepped through the gate. "An eel conversation, you say. I do have stories."

I should explain something. I had been single a long time by then, apart from one brief thing at twenty-four with a co-worker on a festival gig that fizzled out over about six weeks. And I don't know what I expected from that Saturday, but it was not a lost marine biologist in conference lanyard walking into the worst-run party of my career.

"I should apologize properly," I said. "For the record, we have a real sign, and I clearly failed to make it big enough."

"Don't apologize. This is the best wrong turn of my week. I've been sitting in talks about estuary nitrogen loads since Thursday."

"Thrilling stuff."

"You'd be surprised. Anyway." She looked over at the gazebo. "So who's playing the accordion?"

"Nobody, yet. That's the problem. The note says somebody must make it sing. I don't play the accordion. I don't play anything. I can run a spreadsheet on party seating arrangements, that's my musical talent."

She picked the brochure back up and fanned herself with it. "I played piano accordion as a kid. My grandfather taught me. I haven't touched one in... goodness, fifteen years? Since I was eighteen."

"You're joking."

"I'm not. But Douglas, I want you to picture a marine biologist who has not touched an instrument since her teens, in a funeral home garden, at a stranger's birthday, attempting a family heirloom."

"Picture's clear," I said. "I'd also like to say that if you do it, you'd be saving this entire event. The entertainment budget currently consists of that rosemary bush."

She looked at the accordion sitting there on the gravel in its blanket, gleaming like it knew something I didn't.

"Fine," she said. "But if it goes badly, we tell everyone you begged me."

"I will beg you right now, in front of witnesses."

She laughed again and picked up the accordion, and that was the moment my carefully laminated running order died for good.

I ran Troy's arrival in my head one more time. Petra arrives at three. Guests sing. Troy walks in from the front, gets surprised, cries a little, jokes about it being his wake. That was the plan. I had it laminated.

Then the side gate banged open at twenty past two and Troy Billings walked into his own surprise party forty minutes early, wearing his one nice shirt, ironed by himself, holding a cardigan.

"Aw," he said. "Aw, Douglas. You did all this for me."

The garden went quiet. Eighty faces looked at him. Petra looked at me. I looked at the laminated sheet in my hand like it could save me.

"You weren't supposed to be here until three," I said.

"I know, but the barber finished early, and I thought, why not go be with my loved ones while I wait?" He turned a slow circle, taking in the bunting, the rosemary, the hearse. Then he started laughing. Proper laughing, hands on knees. "Oh, this is perfect. A wake for my fortieth. Petra, you absolute legend."

"It was meant to be a surprise," Petra said.

"It was! I'm surprised. I'm so surprised I arrived before my own party." He wiped his eyes. "Honestly, mate, best birthday of my life and it's four hours early. Where's the food?"

"That's the other part," I said.

"The food part of the wake is also dead?"

"Forty canapés. Gone by one forty, mostly thanks to my cousin's kids."

Troy shrugged, which was very him. "Right. I'll do a beer run. Everyone stay, keep mourning me, I'll be back in an hour with the good stuff." He kissed Petra, pointed at me, and said, "Douglas. Sort your entertainment out. And you two," he nodded at me and Siobhan, standing there by the accordion like a couple of mourners with nowhere to sit, "have fun. Try not to plan anything else."