I rolled up in front of John’s house to pick him up for the funeral. I love a man in starched cowboy duds, I do. I hope everyone comes to my funeral in starched jeans because it shows a certain awareness of the importance of the occasion. He looked great. Dad would have been so pleased. Or maybe Dad would have called him a damn quitter. John gave up drinking a few months ago and really seems to have his shit together this time. It’s nice to see. He was not a pretty drunk and he wore it like a mean vagrant now and again.

Mom owed us a debt of gratitude for even going to her service at all though. She disliked both of us to the core. It gave me chills to even think of her. The condescending glare. Always looking so damned disappointed. Kind of like Stacy, John’s perennial girlfriend, who was standing behind him.

Stacy didn’t even bother to dress up like a two dollar whore. She had on flip flops for the love of all things good and holy. It matters not a tiny speck of dust that there were rhinestones on the straps. And on the thighs of her jeans, on her bag, and you can call that a tunic all damn day long but we all know it’s just a long ass t-shirt. I rolled down the window.

“It’s a funeral, Stacy.” I blurted out. “Don’t ask me why I look like a million bucks. Why does my brother look like a million bucks?”

They both leaned down to the level of the window and looked struck dumb. And I was just thinking you were born that way, you weren’t struck at all.  I love my brother but he’s dumb as a sack of rocks and now that he’s not drinking, a whole lot less fun.

“I’ll just answer. It’s respect. Even though I had little for the deceased. The question is why did you show up lookin’ like you were just running into the Dollar General to pick up tampons and a package of hot dog buns?”

She looked at me with that look. That look. She snarls up her lip like what’d I ever do to you combined with you smell funny. Why in God’s name did Stacy all of a sudden remind me of Mom. And what in God’s name makes men who never liked their moms in the first place, always date girls who were just like their moms?

“You’re mean,” Stacy said.

“Just get in,” I snarled back.

“Be nice,” John said.

They both got in the back.

“What am I now, your chauffeur?”

“Well,” Stacy said, “since you said you didn’t want me to ride up front last time because of my perfume, John agreed to ride in the back with me today as an act of solidarity.”

“That is a really big word, Stacy. Good work,” I said.

I really can be a bitch. I can admit that. But I just can’t be bothered with certain people.

“I can’t help it that you smell like an explosion of roses and cat piss, and you expect me to sit next to that and drive…with the windows up…in Texas. It is November already and it is still too hot to sit next to that with the windows up.”

I looked in the rear-view mirror and John was looking out the window. Not at her and not at me. He had a cool demeanor that made me a little nervous. Always had. He looked like if it weren’t Mom’s funeral, he wouldn’t be putting up with either of us today. And I didn’t want to add to either of our burdens. And I sure didn’t want him to leave town again. I just wish he didn’t have a taste for cheap ass hussies of the lowest order. And it wasn’t even taste. He just wasn’t going to show up for anyone. If they showed up for him and made themselves useful he wouldn’t tell them to leave unless something else came along. But try to get him to come help when your toilet starts leaking and you’ll be waiting five years. In fact, that is the last time he saw mom, when she called us to come help with the flood in her bathroom a half a decade ago. But what did she expect? We aren’t plumbers. I tore a page out of the phone book and handed it to her and told her to call a professional. You’d think I told her to build a cruise ship all by herself. It’s just, I’m not an emotional support animal. John left and said he’d go get her some fans to dry things up and she told us both to just go on and git. Rude.

I have got to stop thinking that way or I won’t enjoy Mom’s funeral. And I deserve to enjoy it. She was like a walking corpse back then. And now, well…

“The biggest challenge today is going to be not laughing when the preacher says dumb crap like we all loved her and we’re all going to miss her, because mark my words I have not and will not miss that old bitch.”

I checked the rear-view and John was sort of slowly shaking his head left and right. He’d always loved my jokes but I couldn’t tell. This looked like disappointment.

“I mean,” I continued, “what sixty-three year old woman leaves her husband and gets a job? I’m all for women’s lib but good grief. And Dad needed her. His drinking cost him his driver’s license and his liver was going to cost him his life. Of course he was in a bad mood most of the time. Who wouldn’t be? And she just walked away. I don’t know what he would have done if I hadn’t moved back in to help. He was a handful.”

“Oh I don’t know Diane,” John said, “maybe he would have had to get his life organized. As it is you’ve been living rent free for a decade. I’m not sure you need to sound like such a martyr.”

“Rude. Rude. Rude.”

“And what with you getting his power of attorney and changing all the insurance and bank accounts up, well let’s just say I’m not sure Mom is the worst person who ever lived.”

“And I am? Is that what you are saying John? Very funny. I had to buy a better car to take him around to his appointments. And you are the beneficiary of that right now. First, you didn’t have to do any of it. Second, I’m driving your own license-free ass to Mom’s funeral. You are welcome. Don’t be upset with me for wanting a good looking car.”

“Mom never had a car this nice.”

I glanced again. It was definitely disapproval of my maligning the dead. Whatever.

“Anyway,” I went on, trying to broker a peace, “Can you even believe her last words were about neither of us getting the Fostoria glasses? That’s what the nurse said to me when I asked what her last words were. I thought Mom might at least have asked why we didn’t show up to say goodbye to her. As if anyone wants that garbage glass anymore and now we actually have to go drop them at the thrift. We’ll have to drop ‘em and run like we’re leaving a dog turd in a bag like we used to do.”

“I want them,” Stacy said. “I love Fostoria.”

“You aren’t family!” I yelled into the back. I peered into the rear-view again. Stacy looked slapped. John looked like he was simply out of gas. That was the bridge too far. And I drove right over it. I could feel it like a cold front.

“John, I’m sorry.”

“What’s she apologizing to you for?” Stacy muttered.

“Stop the car,” John said.

That was all. And I did stop because when he was young and said stop the car and you didn’t he would jump out. God’s honest truth. Tuck and roll. He was quiet but he did not always appreciate me, or my mouth, or my sense of humor, or my mother’s constant worrying, or our home. He left mad all those years ago and stayed that way. Dad had shoved him against a wall and told him to pay some rent or help out at least and mom didn’t stand up for John at all. She said his drinking reminded her of dad and he might as well go because one drunk was too much. John never really got over it.

And I had gone too far with Stacy. I get it. Plus, like honestly, we were still three miles from town and I was kind of curious to see if he was serious. Don’t have to tell me twice to stop the car. Plus more, if John wasn’t there, at least I didn’t have to deal with Stacy. He got out and she scooted to the edge to follow and remembered she had on flip flops and held her feet above the black top.

“John, really?” Stacy said, perturbed.

“You are not a good person.” John said looking at me. “We are not good people.” Then he pointed at me and said, to Stacy, “You can stay with her if you want.”

“She damn well cannot,” I said.

Stacy got out and slammed the door.

“Rude!” I said.

I peeled away immediately. Because that is what I do. He gets out. I peel away. He walks. He doesn’t talk to me for six months and then we get drunk at Christmas at my place and get over it because we’re family and that is what family does. At least the two of us anyway. But this felt different. I’ve never felt alone. I have always been surrounded by people that didn’t prefer my special personality, but I’ve never felt so…alone. And it wasn’t just about John bailing out. It was something like emotional indigestion. Maybe he’ll fall off the wagon and we can get drunk at Christmas anyway.

Mom’s church was First Baptist. Like all First Baptist churches in Texas it wasn’t anything other than the Baptist church that got there first and then got to traffic on that for the rest of forever. They never call them the First Catholic Church which is kind of funny but who cares because I’m not either of those. I’m not anything. I talk to God a lot. A lot. I curse people and I bless their hearts. I do not say have a blessed day when I mean goodbye, though. Nobody actually means that shit. You’d be hard pressed to call anything about me religious.

There were only a few other cars in the parking lot. Expected that. I walked in, though, and it was empty. I thought to laugh that no one showed up at her funeral. But even for me that seemed too much. Not a living soul. The lights were on. I felt sort of bad that there was only a cheap vase of baby’s breath by the guest book. It seemed funny when I ordered it. I laughed out loud when the sales lady said it was just a filler, when I thought it would be an obvious statement.

I went in and sat down in the middle of the empty sanctuary. I looked at my watch. Fucking empty. And I was right on time. There was not a soul other than any such thing that might be emanating from the urn on the table up front. At least the church put a bunch of vases of cheap sunflowers around the urn so she didn’t look so, so pathetic. Cheap sunflowers from the side of the road were better than nothing. They actually looked, well, sort of joyful. It was weird. Someone must have seen me walk in because a projector began playing a slide show of old photos of mom onto a screen that had been pulled down up front. Clearly Aunt Joan had been good for one thing, finally. And they were cute. I had to admit it. The photos of Mom with her siblings and her own parents were cute. It was nice to see her happy even in childhood, but at the same time horrible to think she had no happy left for us.

The pew creaked behind me. I turned around and John was sitting there looking up at the screen. No Stacy.

“Don’t even ask. We got picked up by a farm truck coming into town. Stacy is at the Dairy Queen. She’s had enough of you for one day and I’ve had enough of both of you for a lifetime.”

“There’s not a soul here, John.”

“I know.”

The photos transitioned into the modern era and we were both stunned. Mom worked at the tax office and somebody had been kind enough to share some snapshots. And then there was Aunt Joan. Between taxes and Joan, I’d rather have a rectal exam but there was Mom up on that screen laughing and smiling with co-workers. Photos of her big hair and her big attitude, mom was happy in the photos. She was almost unrecognizable in a state of joy. And in all the photos her desk had a big vase of common sunflowers or she was wearing a goofy sweatshirt with a giant sunflower painted on the front, or she had a sunflower pin on her blouse. All we could do was watch and wonder why. Why did she hate us and make us all miserable if she had happy to give?

Neither John nor I spoke a word but sat there for thirty minutes watching the photos get repeated over and over. There wasn’t a single solitary photo of me or John save for a big extended family reunion photo from the 1980’s in Omaha. Joan again. The preacher’s secretary had sent an email asking if I wanted to add photos but I ignored it. I’m not sure John even knows how to work an email or a camera.

I looked at my watch again. “They didn’t even bother with readings,” I said. “Just a stupid slide show. Oh well. Tells you a lot about her.”

“It was us,” he said. “It wasn’t her.”

I didn’t even turn around. “Go to hell.”

John got up and walked up to my pew and came and sat beside me. Well, he sat three feet away from me. He clearly wasn’t there to comfort me so much as to not be talking to the back of my head.

“It was us. It was Dad. We were horrible. Look at her, Diane. She’s happy in all those photos yet I don’t have one memory of her smiling. Dad was horrible and we took his side on everything. Everything. And I turned into him.”

“No. That’s not true. Y’all are fun. She was not fun.”

“Fine. Did she ever say an unkind word to you when we were little?”

“She said plenty of unkind things since then.”

“She came to every last football game I played, Diane. She sewed your costumes for all the school plays. She was a dadgum Brownie leader. And room mom. Every year.”

“She was an awful seamstress.”

“See.”

“What?”

“See. You are a natural born bitch. I was a silent brooding shit. And Dad drank every hour of the day. What’s there to smile about?”

“We are her children! It is her job to love us!”

“We were her children. Now we’re just a couple of jerks in a building wondering who the lady on the screen is. And she is just a lady who quit. And when she quit we stopped showing up. And that justified her quitting because I guess she figured we didn’t love her a bit. And now that I can see straight I don’t blame her at all.”

“I don’t know that woman.”

“I wish I had.”

“I can’t believe there’s no one here.”

I looked at my watch again out of nerves more than anything. I was searching desperately in my mind to recovery a memory of her wronging me first. I was looking for any foothold to justify this. This scene. This empty room and empty feeling. John and I both jumped, startled shitless, when the pipe organ busted forth with How Great Thou Art. I looked up around the screen and there was the organ player. I turned around and there were a handful of people in the pews behind me.

“What the hell is going on?”

Aunt Joan waddled up to our pew and looked over at us. “You two are family, such as you are. You’re supposed to sit up front. Anyway, I’m glad you made it. It’s only right.”

“Joan what the hell are you talking about?” I barked. I just couldn’t help myself. She always looked at me and John like we were…well, ingrates. I lowered my tone.

“The service was forty-five minutes ago and nobody showed up at all.” I waved my hand with a dying flourish to the back of the sanctuary as I saw another group of people making their way in. Joan looked at me like I was mad.

I smacked John on the shoulder and he arose. We followed Joan up front. She was shaking her head. We passed a couple and I paused and looked at them. My brain was saying, “She had friends?” but it must have read as pain.

“We just loved your momma,” the woman said. “I’ve never met you two. But she had photos of you two on her desk and I’d know you anywhere.” The woman was holding a single sunflower. I looked around and every person in the sanctuary was holding a sunflower.

“Oh, gosh. Thank you.” That’s all I had. John put his hand on my shoulder and propelled me further ahead.

“Diane?”

“What? Something is not right.”

“Yesterday was the first Sunday of November.”

“What of it, John. Who cares?”

Aunt Joan stood aside at the first pew and ushered us in. “You two idiots have never shown up for your mother once in her life, yet you managed to show up at her funeral accidentally an hour early by forgetting about setting your clocks to fall back.”

The preacher ascended to the lectern from God knows where off to the right. “We all loved Ellen Reynolds so very much. She will be truly missed. Please turn to page 342 in the Hymnal.”

The organ was equally jarring this time. And it was coupled with the craggy voices of fifty or so friends of my mother. I turned and looked at them all like they had appeared out of the ether. I had never laid eyes on any of them before. Not one damn one. John was right. It was us.

“I get the Fostoria,” Aunt Joan whispered in my ear.