Funerals for Horses Read Free Page A

repeated, “DeeDee is very upset.”
    “Make him grind it right in front of you. Don’t get what’s already ground. God only knows what they put into that.”
    Blood rose into DeeDee’s face again. “You don’t listen, you crazy old lady,” she screamed too close to my left eardrum.
    “And hurry back from the store, dear—I’ll get up and start dinner.”
    But she didn’t move.
    As Simon sprinted to the market clutching the dollar bill he had pulled from the grocery fund, DeeDee opened each of the kitchen cabinets, stood on a step stool, and hooked her arm behind every stack of dishes and glasses, pulling them out into gravity, and their appointment with the linoleum. When our mother appeared to start dinner, her slippered feet skidded around in the debris. I closed my eyes and pictured a beach scattered with a thousand clam shells, or a wind chime tinkling on the porch.
    But a minute later, as she stood staring into the empty cabinets, the shards crunching under her weight, I imagined the sound my shattering teeth might make if I ever clenched them as hard as I really wanted.
    After a few minutes’ surveillance, and after Simon had returned, puffing from exertion, she turned back to him and asked if he’d remembered paper plates.
    DeeDee would have screamed if in Simon’s place. I would have groused that she’d requested no such thing. Simon simply pulled another dollar from the fund and took off running as my mother dropped the ground beef into an overheated pan with a startling sizzle.
    No one thought about paper cups, and we had to take occasional trips from the table to the sink, to drink water from the faucet. We walked carefully to avoid slipping in the shifting sea of glass and china fragments.
    Three days later I came home from school to find a box full of the stuff at the curb. I felt a great relief, knowing that my mother had noticed, even acknowledged, a situation requiring attention. The pleasure faded as my brother Simon pushed through the kitchen door with the second box. As I hung up my coat, he put the broom and dustpan away without comment.
    “Simon, we don’t have two grandmothers, do we?”
    “Of course,” he said. “Everybody has two grandmothers.”
    I knew there had been such a thing as a Grandma Sterling, but owing to the fact that I’d never seen her, I pictured her dead.
    I asked why Grandma Sterling was never around, though it seemed like asking for trouble. If Grandma Ginsberg went away, I’d be smart enough not to inquire after her.
    “Her choice,” he said with a shrug, and then he whispered, “I don’t think she likes us.”
    And what was my role in all of this? I had none. They’d all been taken. My job was not to exist at all. Though too much alive to play it to perfection, I feel I performed a fairly adept imitation.

EDGE OF THE EARTH

On the drive to Sacramento, I question myself in an endless, hamster-wheel pattern as to whether Sarah thinks of herself as my brother’s widow. Of course, I will not ask. Because if she does, I could no longer be kind to Sarah, and above all I need to be kind.
    I arrive at the house late, too late, really. I can see I’ve awakened her. Her hair, fine and blond like his, flies in many directions, most leading across her face. Her fair skin seems lined and dough-like, the way his did upon waking. With my dark, Semitic looks, I’m sure an outsider would guess me as the wife, her as the sister. I suppose I’d switch with her if the world would allow.
    She’s glad to see me.
    “Ella,” she says. “Baby.”
    She’s never called me baby before, but she’s sleepy, a sort of inexpensive truth serum. And we are bound by a common love, a stronger bond now, as it extends to a common loss.
    She throws her arms around me and I leech her warmth. It’s not fair, really. It’s a trick I learned from Grandma Ginsberg, to draw strength from an embrace without returning any. But I know Sarah will be warm in her house while I’m away,