“Yes, I bet she did.”
“I know I can’t ask, ‘Why me?’ ” he said. The tears were running down his face now, but he didn’t seem to realize it. “We had forty-eight good years together. That’s way more than a lot of folks get. And I know I should be glad she went first, because she never could have managed without me. She couldn’t even fix a leaky spigot!”
“Right, Dad,” Jeannie said, and she and Amanda were crying too now.
“But sometimes I just have to ask anyhow. You know?”
“Yes, Dad. We know.”
Carla wasn’t happy about letting Susan miss school for the funeral. Everybody heard Denny arguing with her on the phone. “She was my mother’s favorite grandchild,” he said. “You’re telling me the kid can’t skip one measly math test for her sake?” In the end it was agreed that she could come but not stay over, in order to be back in school on Tuesday morning. So immediately after breakfast on the morning of the funeral Denny drove down to the train station to meet her. The child he returned with was a much more solemn, more dignified version of the Susan who’d gone to the beach with them. She wore a charcoal knit dress with a demure white collar, and black tights and black suede pumps. Some sort of training bra appeared to be crumpled around her chest. Stem’s three boys eyed her shyly at first and wouldn’t speak, but she herded them into the sunroom and in a few minutes chattery voices began drifting toward the kitchen, where the grown-ups were still sitting around the breakfast table.
Red wore floppy gray corduroys and his dashiki, which was even more startling off its hanger. The sleeves ballooned extravagantly over elasticized cuffs, giving him a buccaneer air, and the slit at the neck was deep enough to expose a whisk broom of gray chest hair. But Nora said, “Oh, didn’t Denny do a nice job of mending!” and Red looked satisfied, not appearing to notice that she hadn’t said a word about the overall effect.
When the doorbell rang and Heidi started barking, they all gathered themselves together. That would be Ree Bascomb’s maid, who had agreed to babysit the three boys. Once she’d been given her instructions, they all filed out the back door—Stem and Nora, Red, Denny and Susan—and climbed into Abby’s car. Denny drove. Red sat next to him. During the ten-minute trip to the church Red said nothing at all, just gazed out the side window. In the rear, Nora made small talk with Susan. How was school this year? How was her mother? Susan answered politely but briefly, as if she felt it would be disrespectful not to keep her mind on the funeral. Denny drummed his fingers on the steering wheel every time they stopped for a light.
In Hampden, the rest of the world was enjoying an ordinary Monday morning. Two heavyset women stood talking to each other, one of them trailing a wheeled cart full of laundry. A man pushed a bundled-up baby in a stroller. The weather had started out cool but was rapidly growing warmer, and some people wore sweaters but a girl emerging from a liquor store was in short shorts and rubber flip-flops.