Jazz Funeral

on all of us.”
    “Well, I’m sorry, I …” Patty realized she didn’t know what to say. How did she apologize for her stepson’s murder?
    Martin gave her a narrow-eyed look that said, “How can you look that good and rich and act that dumb?” Or so it seemed to Patty. She was the oldest; he was the second youngest. She’d left when she married, and missed a lot of his growing up; they hardly knew each other, and she hardly knew Des and Frannie either, she’d been gone so long. The others barely remembered her, she thought. They treated her like an outsider, and yet she tried—didn’t she try? Not that they noticed. She would offer again, but first she must ask the question she’d come to pose.
    Ashley hadn’t heeded her uncle; she was hanging in the doorway, taking it all in, looking at Patty as if she were a movie star. “Is Melody okay?” she said, and Patty thought she saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes.
    But Desiree, the child’s mother, spoke before Patty could, “Yes, precious, Melody’s just fine. You go out and play now.”
    It struck Patty as odd that they weren’t more worried about Melody, about their niece and grandchild, who was only sixteen and missing, possibly kidnapped as far as they knew. She had called Des and spoken to her only briefly, and no one had called her back. No one in the huge Fournot family, full of siblings and in-laws and their issue, had called or come over after her stepson had been murdered and her daughter gone missing.
    The thought flickered and died. She was barely aware she’d thought it before she got busy explaining the actual situation to herself.
    They’re intimidated. They don’t dare come visit me Uptown, and they don’t want to call because George spooks them—they wouldn’t know what to say if he answered the phone. They can’t worry about Melody, because she seems like a fairy princess to them. They’d be worried if they thought she was human, but they just can’t grasp the idea that anything could happen to her.
    Then again … maybe they know something I don’t.
    She asked her question. “I was wondering—has Melody called here? Or turned up, maybe?”
    Her mother snorted. “Turned up? Why, she wouldn’t know the way.”
    Patty felt her face go red. It was true she’d only brought Melody over on Christmas and her mother’s birthday, though Melody adored Ashley, seemed to like the other children as well, to be happy to have cousins. But George thought it depressed her to come, and Patty thought he was right. George didn’t come at all anymore. In the days when he had, he hadn’t spoken for hours after except in monosyllables. Patty found herself stripping and jumping in the shower, or else going swimming after a visit. She never thought about it, just did it.
    She and George slaved to keep Melody in the best school, in beautiful Country Day, with its arches and deep green walls upstairs, its five working artists on the faculty. They gave her a magnificent house with her own room and bath, and all the clothes she had time to shop for. They’d given her music lessons. Her life was perfect, privileged; as parents, they believed in that, preparing her for life—at Country Day, they even talked about that, preparation for life. They made the kids eat lunch with different kids every six weeks, kids they didn’t even know, so they’d learn how to handle themselves in different situations.
    But this was sad, it was dirty and crowded and scary, because illness was always scary, and that of your relatives, those close to you, much more so. Patty didn’t want her exposed to it any more than George did. She hadn’t brought Melody here much; and yet, she had brought her here. She wasn’t some kind of snob who didn’t want her daughter to know her own relatives. It hurt her that her mother thought so.
    “Melody loves to come here,” she said. “She loves you, Mama.”
    Patty didn’t know if that was true, but she knew it was true that she did, did love her Mama and didn’t understand where things had gone wrong between them. Understanding that was what she meant as soon as she said it, she felt herself tearing up, hoped they wouldn’t notice.
    Her mother’s eyes got a faraway look. “I doubt that girl loves anything, really. I don’t think she knows how to love.”
    “If Ashley’s listening, you’ll hurt her feelings. She’s crazy about that child, and you know it.” Patty’s voice was rising, but she felt guilty,