Jazz Funeral

one-hand-clapping type.”
    She raised an eyebrow.
    “I wasn’t being sarcastic—I just meant she’s quiet. She’s certainly not a freeloader, if that’s what you’re thinking. Nick’s known her only about five years less than he’s known me—and he’s known me a millennium. But she’s not really a roshi and doesn’t claim to be—we just call her that because she’s—you know—holier than we are. She used to manage a club in the Village, where Nick had some of his first gigs. Then she got into Zen, studied to be a monk, and married another one. They split up, and got into some kind of tangle about money that she ended up being embarrassed about in the Zen community. She and Nick ran into each other again at Tassajara, she told him the whole story, and he asked her to come here and be his teacher until she decides what to do next. She designed the zendo and everything.”
    Skip sighed. In matters of meditation, she could use a teacher. Swan came back, gave her the numbers she needed, and then Skip left, thinking Proctor Gaither had been a shade more talkative than was natural.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
    Patty stood in front of the little shotgun on Calhoun near Fontainbleau Drive, thinking it must not have been painted in fifteen years; you’d think no one lived there. The lawn hadn’t been mowed either. Her brothers usually kept up the lawn, but perhaps the house was so shabby they couldn’t do it any more, couldn’t find the heart even to do a few simple things. They couldn’t afford to have the house painted, couldn’t do it themselves—being too tired on weekends, too involved with their own families, maybe too depressed. And no one in the family would accept money from her, not that much anyway.
    But they’d take a few little things, and today she’d brought clothes that she no longer wanted, some food that mourners had brought, an extra ham, a turkey, cakes, things she and George couldn’t eat. Before she left, she would give them money too, and they’d spend it on medicine, doctors, the usual things. They never had extras and they never seemed to want any. Not that they were so satisfied with their lives; they just didn’t connect the notion of themselves and luxury. Even tiny luxuries—she knew one of them would wear the denim dress she’d brought, and one might take the simple silk, but the evening dress would probably be cut up and made into costumes for children’s recitals.
    She was depressed, just standing here, being here, and she hadn’t even gone in yet. A sense of futility hung over the Fournot house, always had, because of the illness. There were six of them, Patty and three sisters and two brothers—her mother had had them all before she knew she had it, or knew she could pass it on to them.
    Her mother had been forty-two when she went blind for a couple of weeks and miraculously regained her sight. She had had a religious conversion before the other symptoms came on—the thing the doctors called “clumsy limb,” the slurred speech that made her think she’d had a stroke, and the facial pain. Whoever heard of facial pain? When her mother would say her face hurt, neither Patty nor the others would know what to say; they thought she must have gotten drunk and fallen down.
    After an endless series of tests and misdiagnoses, one of the dozens of doctors she went to finally realized she had chronic progressive multiple sclerosis. A woman in her church had MS; she was relieved, knowing it was something you could live with. But there were two different kinds, the doctor explained: the kind the other woman had, which tended to relapse and remit; and the kind she, Lorraine, had, which would only get relentlessly worse, and which “ran in families.” Frannie, the second oldest sister, had come down with it eight years ago, at the age of thirty-two. The worse it got, the more her husband drank; he’d left her, finally.
    Desiree took care of her and Lorraine. She lived here, in this small house, with her husband and two children and the two sick women.
    No one came out to meet Patty. She went up the steps and knocked, lugging the clothes and a hamper. Ten-year-old Ashley, home from school, let her in, looking at her sleek hair, her tight Joan Vass pants and matching swingy little top, with the awed eyes of a child who’s never been shopping anyplace fancier than J.C. Penney. “Hi, Aunt Patty.”
    “Hello, sweetness.” Patty bent to kiss her, trading the gift castoffs, nearly