Every Line of the Funeral Bill
“Death certificates?” I asked.
“Twelve, at $40. $480.”
“She ordered six, Les, and the state charges $15. That’s $90.”
“Handling,” he said.
“Jean.”
“I’m not being ugly,” I said. “I’m reading you the list.”
And I was not. I never raised my voice that morning, not once, and I never said the word cheat. June at my church says I was too hard on him, and Kathy down the street says I was too soft. I held a pencil and a legal pad and I asked him to read.
Yvonne had stopped clicking her purse clasp. She was sitting very straight now, and I saw her looking at the framed sign above the filing cabinet.
“That’s one, two, three, four lines,” she said. “That’s about $3,000, Les.”
“$2,900 even,” I said. “$900 on visitation, $810 on the after-hours charge, $800 on the grave, $390 on the certificates. We’re a long way from $8,000. There’s one line left.”
Nobody said anything.
“The casket,” I said.
“Yvonne chose the Monarch,” Les said. His voice had gone a half step higher. “I walked her through the room myself. She and Hubert were on the phone with me. I’d remember.”
“I do remember the room,” Yvonne said. “You had six or seven out, with the lids propped. You had the gray one third from the end. I touched the lining.”
“Yvonne, you were upset.”
“I was upset,” she said. “I wasn’t confused. Les, I was at Art’s side for 48 years. I know what we picked.”
“If you want to talk about what a person picks while she’s in that state…”
“Les,” I said. “Where’s your casket price list?”
He opened the folder to the right page without looking. He had done it ten thousand times.
“Turn it to the Monarch.”
He turned it. There it was, the bronze-finish eighteen gauge at the top of the page, with a photograph of its handles. $6,995.
“Now turn it back to the Prairie Rest.”
He didn’t.
“I’ll read it, then,” I said. “Prairie Rest. Twenty-gauge steel, gray, pale blue crepe. $1,895. There’s a ring around it in my sister’s own ballpoint, on the copy you gave her. She circled it at the arrangement conference.”
I saw Yvonne’s face when I said it. At some point that Wednesday, in a fog I would not wish on anyone, she had taken a pen from her purse and ringed the number, the way she marks a seed catalog, and Les had handed her the folder without looking at the page.
Les stared at the circle.
“That doesn’t prove what she bought,” he said.
“No,” I said. “It doesn’t. What proves it is whatever you actually put in the ground.”
He did not answer. I could hear the heating ducts tick.
“Ask Travis,” he said. He said it too fast. “He sets up the room. He knows what went out.”
“I did,” I said. “Last night.”