The Funnies Read Online Free Page B

the one you get driving fast over rolling hills, and I gripped the pew in front of me. Where were my parents? Of course I had never been here without them. I looked down the pew. Nancy was weeping silently into a hanky. Bobby was stoically not. Pierce and Sam were poking each other and snickering. What was I supposed to be doing? Crying? I was seized by a weird, infantile terror, the sort you feel when you dream yourself naked, among strangers. I scanned the church for Rose’s dark, frizzy hair. When I didn’t see her, I checked my watch. A little after eleven. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Bobby was doing the same thing.
    It was all happening too fast: the heart attack, the funeral, the cremation. While everybody else was nursing their grief, getting used to the idea, I had been doing stupid things: sleeping, playing backgammon, walking along the side of the highway in soiled clothes. I was the only one who hadn’t studied for the big exam, and I alone would fail.
    And then Rose appeared, my mother at her side. Mom did not look terribly frail, as I had anticipated, despite her walker and pronounced stoop. She looked angry. Rose tried to take her elbow, but she jerked her arm away. Behind them plodded Andrew Piel, his gray ponytail tucked conspicuously behind the collar of his jacket. There was a murmur in the church as Mom sat down, as if she were not a widow at all, but a bride.
    Her presence was not the comfort I had anticipated, so to calm myself I gave the church another quick once-over. There were more people here than there had been in the yard; it looked like half the town had turned out. I noticed two people I didn’t recognize at all sitting fairly near my mother. One, a plump, curly-haired woman about my age, daubed at her eyes in the third row; the other, a thin, gristly little man in his forties, sat at the far end of the first row. He was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, like he was watching a ball game. I wondered how these people knew my dad.
    Father Loomis strode up the center aisle, stepped deftly around my father, and fixed himself behind the altar, still looking exactly as he did in the Family Funnies: wispy hair, aviator-style glasses. He nodded to each side of the congregation—about a hundred and fifty of us, total—then launched into a little speech. “We are here to witness the passing of a great man. Carl Mix was an artist, a humanitarian, a pillar of both the business and social community…” Blah blah blah. People began to whimper immediately.
    Instinctively, I turned to my mother. For some minutes she sat perfectly still, her little puffball head steady as a boulder on her thin shoulders. And then, like a child, she turned and scanned the crowd, her eyes narrowed in search of someone or something. I managed to catch her gaze, and when she noticed me she smiled and brought her hand up next to her face, then wiggled her fingers in a little wave. I waved back.
    If she had seen what she was looking for, it wasn’t evident to me. She eventually faced front again, and as we all stood and sat and knelt and prayed, she seemed to grow weary and finally leaned heavily against my sister, apparently asleep. Rose did not turn to her. But Andrew Piel did, and put his arm around my mother like he might a pretty girl on a second date. This improved my opinion of him considerably.

    * * *
    After the funeral the cars revved up for the trip to the crematorium. Pierce and Sam had grown closer during the service and now, in the back of Bobby’s car, whispered conspiratorially to one another in a strangely humorless way. Nancy hissed at them, through her profuse and earnest tears, that they were having too much fun, and for once I agreed with her. To accommodate the reclined seat, I had my knees spread as far apart as they would go. I entertained briefly the notion of reaching over the headrest and stroking Nancy’s coarse blond hair.