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green eyes rolled towards me in a dead stare. The blanket starts to slip, and I quickly pull it back over his head. There is only one bathroom on the plane. After I have relieved myself, I stay in there a good ten minutes splashing water over my face and thinking about Miami. My mom has just died and seeing her there in the casket was the first time I'd seen her in almost five years. While I delivered my eulogy yesterday, I imagined her sitting up during the funeral and complaining I didn't call enough~or that last year I hadn't called at all. She always was a temperamental woman. The night before the funeral, I pulled up along the curb of 4744 Buena Vista Drive, my sister's house. Checking the address off my printed directions, I switched off the rental car's engine. I climbed out, got my backpack out of the trunk, and walked up to her door. 
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A wide-shouldered man answered. "Who the hell are you?" I had forgotten about the time difference. 11:30. The kids were probably in bed. "Marty. I'm Clarissa's brother." "Marty?" His eyes roll over my wrinkled black coat and string tie suspiciously. From behind him I hear my sister ask, "Sam, who's there?" "Nobody." She must've told him how I'd abandoned the family, how I'd broken her heart and left her alone with Mom, because he turned back to me and said, "There's a motel down on the intersection of Main and Eighty-fifth. Keep going straight for half a mile and then hang a right. We'll see you tomorrow morning." He closed the door. I began to understand why Mom objected to Clarissa's marrying him eight years ago~at the time she'd called him a "brute,"  |
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