Every Line of the Funeral Bill
I took the slip out of my purse and laid it on the blotter, squared to the edge of the desk. Prairie Rest, gray steel, the Thursday before the funeral, and a signature in blue pen.
Les read it. Then he read it again, and he put his finger on his son’s name the way you would touch a stove to see if it was still hot.
“He came to your house.”
“He did. He said he couldn’t say it in front of Yvonne. I told him I understood.”
Les sat there. I have watched a number of men come to the end of an explanation. Most get loud. Les went the other way. He got quiet, and gray, and I saw for the first time how loose his collar had gone this year.
“We’re behind with the casket company,” he said at last. He was talking to the slip. “They have us on cash on delivery. I put the difference on Yvonne’s. I told myself a widow in that state wouldn’t read it, and that I’d make it up when business came back. I told myself a lot of things.”
“Someone else’s account?” I said. “Les, is there someone else?”
He closed his eyes.
“There might be,” he said. “There might be a few.”
I thought of my sister ironing her husband’s good brown shirt the Friday before he died, and I felt something hot come up under my ribs. For a second I wanted to say something he would hear at 3 in the morning for ten years.
Then Yvonne spoke, and I let it go.
“You carried him out through my kitchen with the quilt,” she said. “You said we weren’t in any hurry.”
“I did.”
“Was that true?”
“That was true,” Les said. “I’d do that part again.”
“Then here is what we’re going to do.” My sister’s voice was her Sunday school voice, the one that did not need to be raised. “You’re going to write me the money back and tear up the $6,045. And you’re not going to send a letter to the others. You’re going to go to them, one at a time, and sit at their tables. And you won’t sit in a family room alone with a widow again. Travis sits in on every arrangement, or you don’t sit.”
“Yvonne…”
“I’m not calling the state board, Les. Not today. I’m giving you the chance to do it right before anyone has to make me.”
He nodded. I think it was the only thing he could do.
Patty called me that night at ten.
Les had told her at supper, she said, all of it, with his fork in the air. She did not cry on the phone. She said, “Jean, do the books. Every funeral for the last three years, line against his own price list. You did Yvonne’s with a pencil at a kitchen table in an afternoon. Do the rest.”