“We have three sons,” Lucy’s Dad used to say. “High achievers, every one of them. Great kids. Three of the best boys anyone could have...” “—and a daughter.” * * * The only one of Lucy’s three perfect brothers to make it for Robert’s funeral was Seth. Stanford Law, nineteenth in his class, married two weeks after he finished law school to the perfect Kathleen, who was standing next to him holding ten month old Cara. Seth was here because he believed in family, and he believed in responsibility. Their parents had always told him to look out for the littler kids, and god knows he had tried. He had fished Lucy out of swimming pools when she was little, and the occasional drunk tank during the, uh, flashier parts of her teenage years. He was rock-steady reliable and highly law-abiding and dumb as a sack of judge’s gavels when you caught him outside the classroom. Lucy had tried to explain to him that Kathleen was an entirely plastic person, a flawless Miss Suburbia smile scotch-taped over a heart made from petroleum by-products. She had told him Kathleen was going to leave him for their family orthodontist in ten years, but Seth just couldn’t see it, the poor boob. So, Lucy’d had to go to the wedding and wear the awful pink bride’s-maid dress and content herself with slipping generous extra helpings of vodka into the non-alcoholic punch, with amusing results. The baby was a different story. Lucy had hopes for Cara. Cara had a look in her eye. Zach the Math Diva was sitting his GREs and couldn’t come home from Boston. Of course, of course nobody wanted to interrupt Zach’s relentless march towards becoming the first Nobel Prize recipient with a show on MTV. God forbid. She loved her two oldest brothers, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to smack them across the face with a rolled-up newspaper. Devon was easier to bear, but Devon was on a ship off Antarctica doing research--a six week project to study “size-specific predation in cold water ecologies.” Whatever the hell that was. Devon was smart, but at least he wasn’t smug about it.
"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
Dad stepped forward and threw a little dirt in the grave. Robert’s widow, Millie, was standing at the graveside in a ridiculous poncho. Millie wanted to be a Lady who Lunched in expensive clothes, but only made it to Woman who Munched, ten pounds of potatoes in a five pound sack. A week ago Lucy would have said ditching Robert would be the best move Millie could make. But when they winched Robert’s coffin into the hungry ground, Millie just collapsed. Just caved in around her center, crying in horrible, hoarse sobs. The sick feeling that had been lurking in Lucy’s stomach for days got bad as she watched Millie fall apart. It was the same sick feeling she’d had the day she’d lost the house, or the day they got the phone call about Devon’s car wreck, before they knew he would be okay. Only this time the feeling was 8.5 on the Richter scale. LA falling into the ocean huge. Robert had been shot down like a dog, and somehow it was Lucy’s fault. Somehow she was guilty. Again.
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