Mrs. Henderson, repeating his words to me, assured me that he was not an unkind man but only tactless in his disappointment at being cheated out of a ceremony. But she deplored his effect upon my mother, who had become almost hysterical, had declared that she would die of shame if she could not buy the cast-iron roses for her son. And she had implored the undertaker to wait a few days before he buried the child, for we would surely be able to find some way to have a decent and proper funeral.

Exhausted, my grief still tightly coiled as the kernel to my shock at seeing him die, I was vexed and said heartlessly to the neighbor woman, “Oh, why can’t Mamma leave well enough alone!” for I felt that now I could not bear to hear her lamentations, which I knew would be forthcoming if the gravestone had become, as I believed it had, a fixed idea.

Mrs. Henderson replied, “She will forget, Sonie. Never you fear. She’s upset, poor thing, but she’ll get over it.”

“You don’t know Mamma,” I said irritably.

“Oh, I’m not so sure. Here, you take her this bit of upside-down cake and see if you can’t get her to take a little nourishment.”

To my surprise, my mother did not mention the funeral that evening, and in the morning when she spoke of it, I was sufficiently relaxed to feel my loneliness and to think she was right in wanting something better for Ivan than an anonymous grave in a potter’s field.

We had been shown great kindness by the townspeople: they had sent us flowers and notes of sympathy and someone had brought a book of funeral hymns. Dr. Brunson, with well-meaning generosity, had personally delivered a bottle of imported brandy and had said bluffly, “I think at times like this you ought to think of the living.” My mother had wanted to open the bottle at once but I had dissuaded her. These tokens of commiseration offered us only a spiritual crutch, and there was not one name signed upon the cards that I could call out and ask its owner for the price of a headstone. Not even Gonzales who, although he had neither called on us nor given us flowers, had sent one of his children with a note informing us that he would offer his Mass each day that week for the repose of Ivan’s soul.