Every Line of the Funeral Bill
On the back of the general price list, in small print, there was a paragraph I read three times. It said: Cash advance items (items we pay for on your behalf, such as the cemetery’s grave opening, the newspaper notice, certified death certificates, and honoraria) are passed along at our cost. We charge no service fee on cash advance items.
I called Vince Rieger at the cemetery from her kitchen phone. Vince is 74 and has been opening graves at Prairie View since 1988.
“What did you bill Stroud’s for the Goodwin opening, Vince?”
“Eight hundred fifty. Same as always. Why?”
“Just checking a number.”
“Jean.” There was a pause. “That’s a bad kind of checking.”
“I’ll tell you when I know, Vince.”
I called the weekly paper and the state’s vital records office. The obituary notice had run $310. A certified death certificate costs $15, and Yvonne had ordered six. Add the pastor’s $200 and the organist’s $100.
I added it twice, the way I used to add a claim before it went to the adjuster. Every line off his own lists, with the casket Yvonne had circled, came to $10,045.
The invoice in front of us said $18,045.
“Jean,” Yvonne said. “That’s exactly eight thousand dollars.”
“It is,” I said. “And with Art’s policy at $12,000, you wouldn’t owe a dime. You’d be owed $1,955 back.”
She did not say anything. She got up and went to the sink and ran water over a clean cup, just to have something to do with her hands.
Here is where I have to tell you what I did not do, because people have asked.
I did not call the state board, though I knew the number. I did not call a lawyer, though Alton’s cousin in Seneca does estates. I did not call the paper or post a word anywhere.
I’ll tell you why. First, Patty. My baby sister has been married to that man for 34 years. A state letter would make him a headline by Friday and put my two sisters on opposite sides of a courtroom. Second, I was not sure. A careful woman does not accuse a man of cheating a widow until she has heard him try to explain it.
And third, I wanted Yvonne in that room. She had spent days believing she could not trust her own memory. She was owed the sound of a man’s voice running out of explanations.
So I phoned Les, sweet as pie, and asked if the two of us could come by Thursday morning at 9 to go over the account. He said of course. He said, “You girls come on in. We’ll get it all straightened out.”
I thought: Maybe we will.
On Wednesday night at eight o’clock, somebody knocked on my kitchen door.
Alton had already gone to bed with the radio on. I turned on the porch light, and there on the step stood Travis Stroud with his cap in one hand and a manila folder in the other. He is 32, with his father’s height and his mother’s soft eyes, nine years in the business after a stretch in the Guard. He looked like a boy who had been sent to the principal.