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Show 412 arm around his mother and nodded to the director. The three men moved to the front of the casket and lowered the lid briskly. He saw a shadow swallow up his father's face and then only a gleaming white lid with convoluted brass ornaments. His mother sobbed. Lorin took his hand from his pocket and made a fist and gently punched his brother's shoulder. Stephen's face, in profile, was splotched like a slab of uncooked pork. His beard dripped. During the service Lorin tried to imagine his father in the celestial kingdom. It was hard to do because his mother kept making noises in her throat. She was sitting between him and Stephen, and at first he had thought they were suppressed sobs, but when he had looked at her he could see she was not crying. Then he recognized them as the sounds he used to make himself on long car trips with his family, glottal chirps with the mouth closed, masked by the sound of the engine and the wind roaring past the half-opened windows. He hoped no one outside the family was hearing them. They were on the front row of the chapel, and she was flanked by her children; Katy sat next to Lorin, with her husband beside her, and Sonia sat on the other side of Stephen. Probably the noises didn't carry any farther than that. Stephen was twisting a program, and Lorin felt like reaching behind his mother and jabbing him in the shoulder, but the kid was probably just having another nicotine fit. The eulogy had been given by Carl Winn, an old friend from his father's high-school days, and a man and a woman from the mortuary were singing "In the Garden." Katy was snuffling into a handkerchief. He put a hand on her knee and squeezed, and she smiled. He folded his arms and closed his eyes and tried again, and eventually a waxed, rouged figure in a white suit came into focus, sitting stiffly in a chair in a room that swam with colored lights. The eyes were open and |