through.
Martha wondered if she was the only one who thought about these kinds of things. She could daydream about her funeral for hours, imagining the people from her past that would show up, the ones that would be shocked to hear the news. She worried sometimes that this wasn’t normal, but then she told herself that people talked about death all the time. At least once a month, usually after she’d had to go retrieve something from the attic or the basement, Weezy would say, “I pity you children, if your father and I die unexpectedly. It will take you a decade to clean out this house.”
Once, her grandma Bets had announced at a family dinner that she’d like to be cremated and have her ashes split between her two daughters. Later that night, Martha overheard Weezy and Maureen talking about it.
“That gives me the heebie-jeebies,” Weezy said. “What do you think possessed her to say that?”
“I think she wants to make sure that she’ll always be with us,” Maureen answered. “Judging and disapproving our every move from her urn.”
The two of them had laughed, but Martha was disturbed. Maybe she’d like to be cremated too. Then she could be with her family, instead of underground, and they could take her with them wherever they went. But then what would happen after all of them were gone too? Her ashes would be passed around, and then, eventually, generations later, someone would say, “What is this thing?” and they’d get sick of taking care of the urn, probably find it creepy, and put it in the garbage. So maybe cremation wasn’t the best choice.
When she was younger, she’d seen a mausoleum in a graveyard and asked Weezy what it was. “Can we get one of those?” she asked. To her, it seemed like the perfect solution, to be with your family, above-ground, so that no critters could get to you. It was just like a little house. But Weezy had told her no.
“You’ll grow up and have your own family,” she’d said. “And you’ll want to be buried near them too.” But that seemed impossible to Martha at the time, to grow up and have a family of her own. She’d always secretly thought that she could buy a mausoleum after her parents died, but then for their fiftieth birthdays, Bets had given each of her parents a plot in Saint Ambrose’s graveyard.
RUBY KEPT BRINGING PRESENTS for her father—a blanket, a CD, a new movie for him to watch. Mr. Cranston never seemed to like any of the things that she gave to him, but she seemed determined to keep trying. Once she brought him an iPad, and insisted that he try to play Angry Birds.
“Here, Dad, put your finger here and then shoot the bird like this.”
“What? Why am I doing this?” he asked.
“To try to kill the pigs,” Ruby explained. “I know it seems strange, but I think you’ll really like it. It’s totally addicting.” Ruby had a tendency to sound like a teenager when she talked to her dad.
Mr. Cranston humored her, putting his finger to the screen, and then looking surprised when there was the sound of a bird screaming and pigs snorting. “What the hell is this thing?” he asked.
Ruby had just laughed. “We can put it away for now,” she said. “But you should try it later. I really think you’ll like it.” Martha was pretty sure that Mr. Cranston never touched the iPad again, and sometimes it made her sad, how badly Ruby wanted to find something that would make her father happy.
MARTHA HAD STARTED TO DREAM about the Cranstons. She figured it was just from spending so much time there. After all, she’d had more J.Crew stress dreams than she could even count. The number of times she’d woken up in a panic, sweating, because no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t get the sweaters to stay folded and in a pile. Oh, those were the worst! As soon as she managed to wrangle one sweater, another one fell out, and another. Around the holidays, when the store was at its craziest, Martha barely slept.
But the dreams about the Cranstons were a little different. In them, Martha was part of the family. They weren’t stressful at all, except for one where Ruby’s hair fell out and she screamed at Martha. But usually, the dreams were just Martha sitting around with the family, watching TV or eating dinner. They sort of reminded her