“I guess that would be okay. Just don’t cramp my style.”

My father rolled his eyes and forked into his chicken.

“Do you think I should carry?” Grandma Mazur asked. “Just in case?”

“Jesus,” my father said.

We had warm homemade apple pie for dessert. The apples were tart and cinnamony. The crust was flaky and crisp with a sprinkling of sugar. I ate two pieces and almost had an orgasm. “You should open a bakery,” I said to my mother. “You could make a fortune selling pies.”

She was busy stacking pie plates and gathering up silverware. “I have enough to do to take care of the house and your father. Besides, if I was to go to work, I’d want to be a nurse. I’ve always thought I’d make a good nurse.”

Everyone stared at her openmouthed. No one had ever heard her voice this aspiration. In fact, no one had ever heard her voice any aspiration that didn’t pertain to new slipcovers or draperies.

“Maybe you should think about going back to school,” I told my mother. “You could enroll in the community college. They have a nursing program.”

“I wouldn’t want to be a nurse,” Grandma Mazur said. “They gotta wear them ugly white shoes with the rubber soles, and they empty bedpans all day. If I was going to get a job, I’d want to be a movie star.”

* * *

There are five funeral homes in the burg. Betty Szajack’s brother-in-law, Danny Gunzer, was laid out at Stiva’s Mortuary.

“When I die you make sure I’m taken to Stiva,” Grandma Mazur said on the way over. “I don’t want that no-talent Mosel laying me out. He don’t know nothing about makeup. He uses too much rouge. Nobody looks natural. And I don’t want Sokolowsky seeing me naked. I heard some funny things about Sokolowsky. Stiva is the best. If you’re anybody at all, you go to Stiva.”

Stiva’s was on Hamilton, not far from St. Francis Hospital, in a large converted Victorian sporting a wraparound porch. The house was painted white with black shutters, and in deference to the wobbly old folks, Stiva had installed green indoor-outdoor carpeting from the front door, down the stairs to the sidewalk. A driveway ran to the back, where a four-car garage housed the essential vehicles. A brick addition had been added to the side opposite the driveway. There were two viewing rooms in the addition. I had never been given the full tour, but I assumed the embalming equipment was there as well.

I parked on the street and ran around the Jeep to help Grandma Mazur get out. She’d decided she couldn’t do a good job of worming information out of Sergie Morelli in her standard-fare tennis shoes and was now precariously teetering on black patent leather heels, which she said all babes wore.

I took a firm grip on her elbow and ushered her up the stairs to the lobby, where the K of C were massing in their fancy hats and sashes. Voices were hushed, and footsteps muffled by new carpet. The aroma of cut flowers was overbearing, mingling with the pervasive odor of breath mints that didn’t do much in the way of hiding the fact that the K of C had shored themselves up with large quantities of Seagram’s.