"What're you talkin' about?" Marie frowned.

"I bought it through the union. It's a benefit. I figure we gonna all die some day, right? So we need a place. You know, so we can stay together. The union got this burial committee. Frankie Jacobs is on the board so I ast him to get me a good deal."

Nobody said anything. Albert looked worried. Tommy walked onto the center of the plot and stared at the ground around him. "I figure I'll be here. Marie, you'll be next to me. Then Stony right under me and Albert next to him under you, over there."

"I wanna be next to Stony," said Albert.

Tommy lay down on the ground, put his hands behind his head and crossed his legs. "Not bad," he laughed. Marie ran back to the car. Albert walked over to his father and lay down next to him. He crossed his legs and put his hands behind his head like Tommy.

***

Going home everybody was silent. Tommy was angry that nobody was crazy about his present. Stony thought about Mott the Bear. Albert wondered if dead people had to eat.

"Tommy?" Marie looked at him.

"Yeah?" he sulked.

"Long as we're here, could we see Mama?" Marie's voice was thin and sad, cutting off any wisecrack Tommy wanted to make.

"O.K.," he said, after he'd driven half a mile. He turned off the highway at Paterson and drove through a residential area until he hit the entrance of Saint Ambrose Cemetery.

"Stop a minute." Marie got out of the car, walked into the monument and flower shop and came out with a small cross of lilacs and tiger lilies. Tommy drove into the cemetery past clusters of gravestones that jutted out of the earth like rotten teeth.

"I'm gonna stay in the car," Tommy mumbled. Marie didn't answer but got out and walked to her mother's grave. She was weaving slightly like a stunned cow. Tommy watched her for a while, then turned around to his sons. "Go with your mother." He nodded in her direction. Albert was sleeping with his head on Stony's lap. Stony pretended to be asleep. Tommy sighed and lit a cigarette.

Marie walked to the gray headstone and carefully placed the floral cross on the earth at the base. Her head was spinning as it did every time she came here. She knew her mother was watching her in heaven. She touched the carved lamb on the top of the stone and read the epitaph for the millionth time in the last six months:

Farewell my husband and daughter dear.
I am not dead but sleeping here.
As I am now you soon shall be.
Prepare for death, and follow me.

Marie sank to her knees in the soft earth—grass staining her hot pink slacks. Her face contorted into a trembling pout. She raised her fingers to her lips as if in prayer. "Oh, Mama." She closed her eyes.