The Dearly Departed. Elinor Lipman

though the theater was only two blocks from the motel, Dickie Saint-Onge picked Sunny up in his stretch limousine. He asked her about pallbearers and, because calls had come in, about her mother’s favorite charity.

      “I should know,” said Sunny.

      “The ladies like the homeless, and almost all the men support the Shriners.”

      “It should have something to do with the theater—maybe an award at the high school, a memorial scholarship.”

      “For who?”

      “I haven’t thought it through. Maybe a graduating senior who wants to study acting.”

      Dickie took out a pocket notebook and made a notation with a miniature pencil.

      “Don’t announce it yet,” said Sunny.

      “What about pallbearers?”

      “I did that,” said Sunny.

      Dickie took her list and read it aloud. “Very nice,” he said. “I’ve used every one of them before. Dr. Ouimet called me and volunteered for the job. I was hoping you’d pick him.”

      Dickie had a ring of keys, one of which opened the stage door after a half-dozen tries. He left Sunny in a dressing room, alone, sitting at a peeling vanity table, numbly surveying the pots of cracked makeup and dirty brushes.

      “I’ve got to admit,” said Dickie as he returned, “I had my doubts about doing this off-site. But it looks like she was a head of state. And more flowers where these came from. You ready?”

      “Is anyone here yet?”

      “My wife and my mother,” said Dickie. “They come to everything I do.”

      “Do I know your wife?”

      “I met her at school in Albany. Her father’s a funeral director in Plattsburgh.”

      Sunny stood up and quickly sat down again.

      “You’re okay,” said Dickie. “I’ll be right there, moving people along, directing traffic. I’ve got Kleenex, Wash ’n Dri, Tic Tacs, water, whatever helps. Just nod and shake their hands. They usually do the talking.”

      “It’s not that. I should have done this earlier. Isn’t that what people do—have a private good-bye?”

      Dickie walked over to the vanity stool and helped her up, a boost from around her shoulders. “She looks like she’s sleeping. I promise. She looks beautiful, if I do say so myself.”

      “Do I have a few minutes? Before anyone gets here?”

      Dickie took a diplomatic quick-step away from Sunny. “Absolutely. I’ll ask my mother and Roberta to step outside.”

      He looked at his watch, bit his lip.

      “I don’t need long,” said Sunny. She left the dressing room, walked between the maroon velvet curtains that her mother had patched in her pre-leading lady days.

      The coffin was parallel to the orchestra seats and surrounded by potted lilies. Margaret looked small and alone. Worse than asleep—unreachable, irretrievable. Sunny moved closer. She could see that her mother’s brown hair was parted on the wrong side and that her lips were painted a darker shade of red than Margaret had worn in life. The dress was out of season: black, V-necked, long-sleeved, and ending in a point at each wrist. It needed pearls, a locket, a pin, a corsage—something.

      “Mom?” Sunny whispered.

      The footlights and the lilies flashed white at the edges of her vision, and her knees sagged.

      Roberta Saint-Onge, who’d been spying on Sunny from the vestibule, yelled for ammonium carbonate, for a cold, wet facecloth, for a chair, for help, for Dickie.

       CHAPTER 7 The Viewing Hours

      With a firm hand on the back of Sunny’s neck, Roberta Saint-Onge repeated, “Head down. The head has to be down.”

      “I’m okay,” Sunny murmured. “You can let go now.”

      “Head between your knees,” ordered Roberta.

      “You’re hurting me.”

      “How long does she have to stay like this?” asked Dickie.

      “However long it takes for the blood to drain back into her head.”

      “It’s there,” said Sunny. “Let go, for Crissakes.”

      Roberta did, petulantly, as if a referee had called a jump ball and repossessed the disputed goods.

      “You’re still pale,” said Dickie. “You might want to touch up your cheekbones with a little color.”

      “I’ll be okay,” said Sunny. “Give me a minute without the headlock.”

      “This isn’t the first time we’ve encountered this,” said Roberta.

      “I never fainted before in my life,” said Sunny.

      “It’s a shock to the system,” said Dickie. “No matter how close you were or what kind of parent she was or how well or poorly you got along, you only have one mother.”

      “She was a fantastic parent,” said Sunny.

      “Of course she was,” said Dickie.

      “We grew up around it,” said Roberta. “We’re both third-generation funeral directors, so sometimes we lose sight of the fact that it’s so much more than the corporal remains of an individual.”

      “What she means,” said Dickie, “is that we understand very well that it’s someone’s mother or father or husband or wife, and we can empathize, but we’re professionals and we don’t have the exact same physiologic response to the death of the loved one as our client does. We share the sorrow, but at the same time we have a job to do.”

      “Hundreds of little jobs that have to be performed seamlessly,” added Roberta. “Our goal is to be as helpful yet as unobtrusive as possible.”

      Sunny rubbed the back of her neck and asked what time it was.

      “It’s time,” said Dickie.

      “You stay right here,” said Roberta. “Everyone will understand—”

      “I don’t want anyone’s understanding! No one has to know I fainted.”

      “Technically? I don’t think you actually lost consciousness,” said Dickie. “I think you got woozy.”

      “I want to greet people standing up. It seems the least I can do.”

      “There are no rules,” said Roberta. “We encourage our mourners to do what feels right to them and not to worry about”—she flexed two fingers on each side of her face—“doing the ‘right thing.’ For example, the fact that you’re wearing navy blue tonight, and it’s sleeveless? With dangly earrings? Well, why not? There used to be an unwritten rule that anything but black and long sleeves was wrong, but times have changed. If you’d worn red, we wouldn’t have said a word.”

      Sunny got to her feet, gripped the back of her metal chair with both hands, and straightened her shoulders. “Unlock the door,” she ordered.

      Those who couldn’t conjure a distinct recollection of Margaret made one up: Cora Poole, whose late husband owned Fashionable Fabrics, said she remembered, as if it were yesterday, Margaret and Sunny picking out a pattern and powder-pink piqué for Sunny’s senior prom dress.

      “Are you sure?” asked Sunny. “I don’t think I went to the senior prom.”

      “Everyone goes,” said Mrs.