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it cut the mustard?
Shit. No wonder he killed himself
§
"Mom, he's dead."
I didn't think I would wait until the day of to tell her, but she
should have known something was up for me to come to her house on a
Sunday at seven in the morning. She's still in a light-blue nightshirt that
fit her when she was three sizes bigger.
She knows who I mean. She gets up from the dinner table and
holds me. Matt and Freddy are still asleep. Neither of us is crying.
"You don't need to. I'm leaving from here soon. I have to be
there at eleven-thirty. Can we just have coffee like nothing's changed?"
To be honest, nothing had.
She pulls away and looks me in the face, smoothing my hair.
"Just make sure take a pee and lint-roll yourself before you leave."
"I think I can manage that."
"How did he ->"
"Diane wouldn't tell me. She said 'see you then' and hung up
the phone."
From my mother's house, the drive takes two hours and forty-
three minutes. It takes me three hours. I had to make a pit stop.
§
Diane is looking back at me, with a goddamned veil on like
she's Sonny Bono's widow. This is getting a little too surreal, even for me.
I can't believe she went veil shopping.
§
I was surprised to see that it lay directly on the road, West
Main Street. Preddy Funeral Home. A red brick building with white
pillars and a porch, like an old plantation house. It is funny how no mat-
ter how different they look, funeral homes are always so clearly funeral
homes-they're not warm enough to be for any other business or a real
home. The lawns are too neat. The paint is too fresh.
No one wants their dead in an ugly building. That much I've
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