By Robert Sanchez

ouquets dot the wall in scattered tokens of sympathy. Theresa lies in the place of honor, as it were, her veins pumped full of embalming fluid, her gums shored up by dentures she had seldom used in life. Mourners gather in the two front rows, the better to simulate a crowd.

Bernard the widower folds his arms and covers his mouth. Light from a window gives his white hair an aura as his older brother offers advice on how to live "what years you have left." Occasionally Bernard grunts to prove that he is listening.

Bernard’s mother Emily sits directly in front of the body, mourning only her own marriage, now dead thirty years. She replays every harsh word, every disappointment up until her husband’s final heart attack. She nurtures every hurt.

Bernard approaches her. He has gained no weight in two decades of marriage, and his brown suit fits as poorly now as it did the day he bought it. Now he bends down to speak to Emily with his back to his dead wife. "Well, I guess this resolves the divorce issue," he says.

"There are so many unresolved issues," she says. "Why did we have to come here?" Emily is not complaining about attending the funeral, an event long hoped for but anticipated only since the summer when a lifetime of cigarettes and mai-tais began to make their effects known on Theresa. Emily instead refers to the family’s migration from Louisiana to Massachusetts more than a half century ago. "This isn’t home. This was never home."

For this she blames her dead husband, who was anxious to put ample real estate between himself and the family that had raised him. Theresa, at center stage, is momentarily forgotten as Emily remembers old sins, turns them over like garden soil, ensuring that they are forever fresh in her mind.

"Lover Boy finally passed his GED," Bernard says of his daughter Candy’s boyfriend. "He gets his diploma today."

Lover Boy’s only accomplishment until now has been making Emily a great-grandmother. "I never got past eighth grade," she tells Bernard, who has heard the story hundreds of times since he entered high school. "Diphtheria, whooping cough. I almost died, but I had to work. In those days, nobody cared. Somebody should investigate."

Emily is always looking for an investigation. Why did we have to travel north? Why did Joe neglect his parents, fight with Emily, humiliate his children? Why did that teacher neglect to comfort Emily when she missed that word in the sixth-grade spelling bee and was told to sit down? No one thought much of a ragged farm girl in 1922. A board of inquiry should dig down deeply and mine the answers from the dark shafts of her past.

The minister walks to the pulpit, scans the people and the empty folding chairs. For the first ten minutes he speaks of Jesus, His suffering and His promises of paradise. Candy sniffles; Bernard fidgets; Emily dozes. Theresa lies quietly, her hands folded as though contemplating the minister’s wisdom. The minister opens the Bible, lifts the cloth bookmark, and reads from Ecclesiastes.

To every thing there is a season

Bernard had walked two miles to the hospital nearly every day for the last six weeks of Theresa’s life. One day, Emily was already in the room with Theresa.

"God, son, it’s bitter cold out there! Where’s your hat?" If the phone company hadn’t cut off his service, she would have called and offered him a ride.

"I haven’t worn a hat since Fort Dix," he said. When Bernard was in the Army, Eisenhower was still Commander-In-Chief.

"Well, where’s that hat?" Emily persisted.

"It’s still in Fort Dix!" Bernard would never swear at his mother, but the tone was there.

-- a time to every purpose under heaven

Bernard’s brothers had encouraged him to hop a Greyhound bus. They would help him disappear, settle in a friendly town, away from the drunken rants and the flying bottles and the crawling roaches and the grown-up daughter begging for a handout. But none of the brothers had ever walked out on their wives, and Bernard wasn’t going to be the first.

At the funeral, Bernard’s hair is white and unkempt; he’s combed it once today, so why keep doing it? He stares at Theresa, and for once she doesn’t throw a coffee pot at his head or send him to the corner store for a pint.

-- a time to be born, and a time to die

Bernard was born to dream of Kenya and the Sioux, of Mount Fuji and Jupiter’s moons, to gaze at the stars, to admire beauty from uncrossable distances. But he died a little every time a person mocked his dreams.

-- a time to mourn, and a time to dance

When his father died, everyone in the family knew that the brass telescope must go to Bernard. Only Bernard had seen Io and Saturn’s rings, the Pleiades and Alpha Centauri. Point out a star, and he might tell you it’s really the Andromeda Galaxy--billions of stars. Bernard knows light years from parsecs, pulsars from red dwarfs.

He came home from work one day to find Theresa sipping a glass of vodka. "Where’s my telescope?" he asked; she farted and pointed at the bottle.

-- a time to love, and a time to hate

They had married out of desperation when Bernard was forty-one years old and Theresa was thirty-seven. All of his brothers had married and become fathers, so what was the matter with him? Obviously, they had found love, and it was time he found his own.

-- a time of war, and a time of peace

Bernard has no stomach for conflict. If his marriage is a war, then he is a conscientious objector.

"Oh, come on!" A mourner’s impatient whisper seems to carry across the room and nudge the minister into what he seems to have been avoiding for the last fifteen minutes: a eulogy for Theresa. Bernard crosses his legs, then uncrosses them. He swats at a dust mote that rides on a shaft of sunlight. He clears his throat and looks at his watch. Emily fusses with her cane, then lets it fall to the floor.

"We are here to remember Theresa Doherty," the reverend finally says. "Over the last twenty-two years we have had many conversations at all times of day and night. Her hand was never far from the telephone. Given her difficult life, we can only hope and pray that Theresa meant well. We can’t pretend that her life was easy." He picks his phrases carefully, but at least he is speaking about the deceased, and he is being honest. That is progress. It’s a narrow path that divides genuine sorrow from crocodile tears.

But Candy’s tears for her mother are genuine. Her deep, racking sobs seem odd, because she cries alone. Bernard turns to her, but cannot bring himself to touch her. "Um, Candy. It’s okay. Don’t make a scene." A stranger wearing a motorcycle jacket materializes in front of her and wraps her in his arms.

The insurance company lists Bernard’s Chevy Nova as 1982, because its computer won’t recognize cars any older than that. The orange paint hides no sins. Dents and dings are everywhere, and the car looks as though it’s been assembled with a baseball bat. After the hearse, it’s the lead car in the cortege, and could be driving back to the crypt. Four cars follow.

Emily rides with Bernard; the slamming car doors disturb a roach that has been sunning itself on the dashboard, and it scurries to a safe nook at the base of the windshield. "I wish I had my car back," she says, but she has given it to another granddaughter in exchange for work that has never materialized.

The cemetery slopes up a gentle hill; for once, Theresa will be near the top of something. There is no plot for two. There will be no stone showing Theresa and Bernard’s names together, with a blank space patiently awaiting a chisel to note the year of his death. Nearby, "In loving memory" graces a granite headstone. Bernard owes forty thousand dollars for Theresa’s medical expenses, but as he stands at the grave site the burden seems nothing.

Bernard bows his head for the minister’s prayer. The cold breeze feels good as it whips his hair and stings his cheeks. His nerve endings are alert and full of life, yet he has no sense of having his feet on the ground. Emily takes his arm; Candy breaks down and sobs.

On his way back to the car, Bernard skips--just once, so maybe no one will notice. When his pension check arrives, maybe he will buy a telescope. Then he will drive to the country, away from the bright city lights, and dance with the stars.