Funerals for Horses Read Free Page B

walking off the edge of a flat earth. I must assume she won’t begrudge me.
    She pulls me inside, where I tell her I want a complete lesson on where Simon’s clothes were found.
    Of course, I could have gotten that much by phone, but I need so much more. I need a piece of her to take along.
    Then, I say, I will take a good night’s sleep and proceed. But I do not take a good night’s sleep.
    I lie awake all night, on Simon’s side of the bed, because there is only the one bedroom, thinking that I am no substitute for him, and have no right to be here. The moon is nearly full, and a streak of it slides through his bedroom window, falling across the picture. Across Simon’s soft, full cheeks, the fold of extra flesh under his chin, his sandy blond hair, which falls onto his forehead. He is a Tom Sawyer of a businessman. His mustache curls around at the corners of his smile. It is a twelve-year-old’s smile. It always was. When he was seven, when he was forty.
    The only thing my family ever did right was to breed that smile.
    The moon shows it all.
    Thank god the moon is on my side. I’ll need a piece of that, a piece of Sarah, all of myself and all of Simon. Even then, this may be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
    In the morning I am running on my generator.
    Unlike some people, I function beautifully on no sleep, but a sort of auxiliary power kicks in, different from the natural one. It feels sharp-edged and cold. It tends to make people avoid me, even those who would be inclined to spend time around me to begin with.
    Sarah does not avoid me.
    She makes me a pot of coffee and a bacon omelet, and cries as she watches me eat.
    She holds me at the door, as if she’s on to me and knows what I need. She slips me more warm strength than I would think she could spare.
    I walk across the street to my old pickup, like a hike across flat terrain to the edge of the earth.

THEN:
    If the drums had worked, I might still have a sister. The drums did not work. It was a piece of clever thinking on DeeDee’s part, though. I will grant her that. By now, with Simon fifteen, DeeDee eleven, me nine, the age I accepted god’s noninvolvement policy, my mother responded to almost nothing. Only one thing could rouse her out of bed: Grandma Ginsberg’s heated complaints. Who would have thought such a thing could have a purpose?
    DeeDee traded her bike for a set of drums, and, as a courtesy to the family, played them only in the garage. This broken-down structure, far too stacked and littered with yellowing sports sections to house the car, faced out onto the back yard, six feet from Grandma Ginsberg’s window.
    DeeDee never took lessons on the drums; she just pounded. Grandma Ginsberg screamed until her old throat faltered and her voice cracked into a hoarse whisper.
    My mother did not get up.
    Finally I asked Simon, who knew everything, why my mother would respond to nonsense from the old lady while ignoring a real problem.
    “But that’s just it,” he said. “Don’t you see?”
    I wasn’t sure I did, but I hated to appear ignorant in front of my brother.
    In a few months the drums stood silent in the corner of the garage, near the spot where DeeDee took to setting fires. They were only little fires at first, but I sensed a personal game of chicken involved, as if she challenged herself to set a blaze which would tease the borderline of control.
    When the big one came, Simon said it just got away from her by mistake. I’m sure he knew better, but he liked to think the best about people if they met him halfway.
    The big one came at night, with DeeDee running through our room to Simon’s room, yelling fire at the top of her lungs, as though this was news, her face blackened with smoke.
    As my bare feet hit the cold boards of the bedroom floor, the room lit up like a night thunderstorm, only with lightning that stayed. I ran to the window to watch the flames engulf the garage roof. I heard Grandma Ginsberg come apart. DeeDee