Funerals for Horses Read Free

my mother would do for the kin of a man who abandoned her. Much as I loathed Grandma Ginsberg, I used to openly hope for her longevity, assuming that my mother would die without the constant, unyielding torment.
    Grandma Ginsberg lived in a dank, smelly back bedroom which children avoided as if by precognition, even neighbor children who didn’t know her. Later, after the sports sections began stacking up, we never invited neighbor children anyway.
    When my father left, my mother began to pull the sports section out of the evening paper before bundling the leftovers for the Boy Scout paper drive. Nobody dared ask why until almost two years later, when the papers had been assigned their own closet, then spilled beyond it.
    Simon had the guts, not me. Brave, honest Simon, twelve years old to my six, asked if he could throw them away.
    “Certainly not,” she said. “Your father will be home any day now, and the first thing he’ll want is dinner and his sports section.”
    She swirled out of the room as if in a hurry, leaving me alone with my brother Simon, who twisted a finger around near his head as a comment on her mental acuity. I was shocked and impressed. How can a child admit a parent is unstable? To me it seemed equivalent to suggesting that the ground won’t hold us up, or gravity won’t stick us down to it. But Simon worked off a different set of laws. Simon stepped on cracks. Simon was never afraid to see.
    I often thought it was Simon, not me, who should have been born with the caul.
    In these early years, when I still assumed god placed us somewhere on his long agenda, I wondered if he had simply forgotten it when Simon was born, then sent it along with me as an afterthought, thinking it would at least arrive into the right family. Most say god never makes mistakes, but I was a reasonable child, able to accept that even as his powers outnumber ours, so must his list of responsibilities and details grow geometrically beyond our scope. I would cut him some slack. But to assume the role of chosen one, in a family with my brother Simon—no, that I could never do.
    Simon was the hero. Not just my hero. The hero, period. He couldn’t have held his job any more decisively if he’d been born with the word tattooed on his forehead.
    Now my sister DeeDee, she was the actress.
    DeeDee’s life fell apart the day Grandma Ginsberg called her a whore and a thief.
    Mind you, this was nothing special.
    Pushing into the depths of that back bedroom, you could be her loving grandchild, a wild Indian headhunter, or her whoring bastard ex-husband. Or perhaps the day would yield some new hallucination. Simon always smiled and took it philosophically. I had long since stopped going in.
    DeeDee stormed into the kitchen, where Simon and I sat at the table brushing sand paintings with salt we’d emptied from the shaker, her face red and hot with indignation, tears sliding through her toughest guard.
    Simon grabbed her in a bear hug, and motioned me to come quickly, and we sandwiched her between us until the hitching of her sobs replaced trembling rage. I felt the trembling, the hitch, and wondered why I couldn’t feel pain and rage, as I appeared to be a sentient human, with nerve endings and everything.
    DeeDee,” he said, “you know she always does this. Remember when she called me goyim and slammed my hand in the door? That was way back when she was herself.”
    “I just can’t stand it,” DeeDee said, barely audible. “One grand-mother who hates me, fine—but not two for two.”
    He took her by the hand and we led her into my mother’s room, where Mom lay half-sleeping, though it was after four. Simon explained that Grandma Ginsberg had called DeeDee a whore and a thief. He knew and I knew that she did these things regularly, but for DeeDee’s sake, I assumed, he filed an official report.
    Our mother raised her head.
    “Simon, did you get ground beef for dinner? Run to the store right now, dear.”
    “Mom,” he