The Dearly Departed. Elinor Lipman

long for the machine, which clicked off. He called back. “Hi, it’s Fletcher Finn again. Here’s what I was going to say. I’ll make it quick: I got a call from the police in Saint George, New Hampshire—no, sorry, King George. They found our parents unconscious. Nobody knows anything. I’ve got the name of the hospital and the other stuff the cop said. What’s your fax number? Call me. I’ll be up late.”

      Sunny phoned the King George police. The crime scene, she was told by a solicitous male voice, was roped off until the lab work came back. Sunny pictured the peeling gray bungalow secured with yellow tape, its sagging porch and overgrown lilacs cinched in the package.

      “Are they going to die?” she asked.

      “Sunny?” said the officer. “It’s Joe Loach. From Mattatuck Avenue? We were in study hall together junior and senior—”

      “I got a message from a Fletcher Finn, who said his father and my mother were found unconscious, but that’s all I know. He didn’t even say what hospital.”

      Loach coughed. “Sunny? They weren’t taken to a hospital. It was too late for that.”

      He heard a cry and the sound of her palm slipping over the mouthpiece.

      “It was the damn carbon monoxide. It builds up over time, and then it’s too late. I’m so sorry. I hate to do this over the phone …”

      When she couldn’t answer, he said, “I saw your mother in Driving Miss Daisy at the VFW, and she was really something.”

      Sunny pictured her mother’s grande-dame bow and the magisterial sweep of the arm that invited her leading man to join her in the spotlight. It had taken practice, with Sunny coaching, because Margaret’s inclination was to blush and look amazed.

      “You’re where now? Connecticut?”

      She said she was.

      “Okay. One step at a time. Nothing says you can’t make arrangements by telephone. Maybe your mother put her preferences in writing—people do that, something like, ‘Instructions. To be opened in the event of my death.’ I could walk anything over to the funeral parlor for you. In fact, remember Dickie Saint-Onge from our class? He took over the business. He’s used to handling things long-distance.”

      “I’m coming up,” said Sunny.

      “She and her fiancé didn’t suffer,” said Joey Loach. “That much I can promise you.”

      “Fiancé?” she repeated. “How do you know that?”

      “That seems to be everyone’s understanding. Her cleaning lady wrote a letter to the editor to set the record straight. Plus, there was a ring on the appropriate finger.”

      Sunny cried softly, her hand over the receiver.

      “Can I do anything?” he asked. “Can I call anyone?”

      “I’d better get off,” she said. “There must be some phone calls I should make. I’m sure that’s what I’m supposed to do next.”

      “Just so you know, the house is okay now. They found the leak and fixed it, the town did, first thing. You don’t have to be afraid of sleeping there. I’ll make sure that everything is shipshape.”

      “I think my friend Regina used to baby-sit for your sister,” she said. “Marilyn?”

      “Marilee,” said Joey. “She’s still here. We’re all still here. So’s Regina. You okay?”

      “I meant to say thank you,” said Sunny, “but that’s what came out instead.”

      “You’re welcome,” said Joey Loach.

      Fletcher sounded more annoyed than mournful when he reached Sunny the next morning. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I would have thought you’d have returned my call.”

      “You didn’t leave your number,” said Sunny.

      “I’m sure you can appreciate that I wasn’t thinking about secretarial niceties last night,” he snapped.

      “Such as ‘I’m so sorry about your mother’?”

      “I didn’t know her,” he said. “And at the time of my call I believed she was still alive.”

      Sunny quietly slipped the receiver into its cradle. It rang seconds later.

      “My father’s dead because he was watching television with someone who had a defective furnace,” blared the same voice from her earpiece. “He was as healthy as a horse. How do you think I feel? And on top of that, some backwater police chief delegates to me the task of calling the date’s daughter.”

      Forcing herself to sound composed and rational, Sunny said, “Are you the only child, or is there a humane sibling I can do this with?”

      He paused. “Unfortunately, I’m it.”

      “You don’t have to torture yourself with the idea that this was some blind date that went awry—that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time—because he was there every night. She was his fiancée.”

      Fletcher said, “Unlikely. I never met her.”

      “She had his ring, and the date was set.”

      After a silence, he asked, “Were you invited to a wedding?”

      “Of course I was,” Sunny said.

      Reached by phone, the funeral director said he preferred not to stage a wake in a theater, even if it had once been a house of Congregational worship. Sunny heard his flimsy argument, which was grounded in what she felt was personal convenience, and answered in a shaky voice, “I think it’s what my mother would have wanted. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, and if it requires a little creativity and flexibility on our part, so be it.”

      No one in King George had ever asked Dickie Saint-Onge for creativity or flexibility, so he rose to the occasion, promising to accommodate the loved one’s undocumented dying wishes: a coffin in a hardwood that was stained to resemble ebony, white satin interior, no variation on her hairdo, which should be styled by her regular hairdresser and not by some mortician. Sunny herself would get permission from the King George Community Players to have her mother buried in her Mourning Becomes Electra costume or the black dress she wore in Six Characters in Search of an Author. He would tell the town’s only florist this: no daisies, no carnations, no mums. Say that the daughter wants flowers cut from the vines creeping up her mother’s porch, in combination with the Russian sage by the mailbox. And if they aren’t in full bloom, find wisteria on someone else’s trellis around town. Everyone knew Margaret. Everyone loved her.

      Fletcher announced that he’d be flying to King George on the morning of the funeral with an associate. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get away one moment before that, due to the campaign. Was there an airport nearby?

      “Forgive me for not owning a copy of your résumé, but what campaign are we talking about?”

      “Right now, a congressional campaign.”

      “And you’re too busy to get away?”

      “That’s not what I said. I’m coming up for the funeral.”

      “On the morning of. In other words, your father died and your boss won’t give you a few days off?”

      “Just the opposite: She very much wants to attend the funeral, but we can’t get away until Saturday morning, because there’s a state fair—”

      “What state?” Sunny asked.

      “New Jersey. Sixth Congressional District.”

      “What’s her name?”

      “Emily Ann Grandjean. She wants to be there,” said Fletcher. “For both of us.”

      “How kind,” said Sunny. “Too bad she can’t spare