May We Be Forgiven

going to get the electric chair?
    They feel the liberty or the obligation to say whatever the hell comes to mind.
    “I’m sorry, I am sorry, so, so sorry,” people keep telling the children.
    “That’s okay,” Ashley says to them.
    “It’s not okay,” Nate says to Ashley. “Quit saying it’s okay—it’s not.”
    “When people say they’re sorry you can just say thank you,” I say.
    We are led into the chapel for the service and sit in pews like at a wedding, Jane’s family on one side, us on the other. Behind us are people who know Jane’s family, people who the kids went to nursery school with, people who knew Jane from the gym, friends and neighbors. The anchorman from Thanksgiving is there, as is George’s assistant, a gay guy who did favors for the kids. He was the one who got them good tickets, backstage passes.
    The coffin is at the front of the room.
    “Is she really in there?” Ashley asks, nodding towards the coffin.
    “Yes,” I say.
    “How do you know they put the right clothes on her?” Ashley asks.
    “It’s a question of trust.”
    Susan’s husband comes up to me. “Do you like the coffin?” he asks. “It’s top-of-the-line. In a situation like this it seems cruel to be cheap.”
    “Are you asking for my approval?”
    I think of Nixon’s funeral. He had the stroke at home in New Jersey on a Monday night, right before dinner. His housekeeper called an ambulance, and they drove him into New York City, paralyzed but conscious. The initial prognosis was good, but then his brain swelled; he went into a coma and died. Nixon’s coffin was flown from New York to Yorba Linda, where people wound through the quiet streets on a chilly night, waiting for hours to see him. I was going to go, make a kind of pilgrimage the way Mormons flock to the mountain or groupies to a Grateful Dead concert.
    Instead, I watched on TV.
    Forty-two thousand people viewed Nixon’s coffin over a twenty-hour period. The fact that I was not among them is something I regret. I watched on television, but I felt nothing. I didn’t have the actual experience, the shared night out in the cold. I only made it to Yorba Linda once, years after Nixon’s death.
    “How do I tell people at school?” Ashley asks.
    “They probably already know,” Nate says.
    “That’s not fair,” Ashley says.
    I pass Ashley some Gummi Bears.
    Jane’s sister sees and hurries over from their side of the room. She sits in the pew right behind me, leans forward, and whispers.
    “Since when do you know about things like snacks?”
    “I don’t,” I say without even turning around.
    I don’t like kids, but I feel guilty; worse than guilty, I feel responsible; worse than that, I think their lives are ruined.
    And me, under stress I reminisce about the stories of a life that is not my own. I suck on a sweet; I pop a couple of Gummis into my mouth, without offering any to Susan.
    “Where are the twins?” I ask Susan.
    “With a sitter,” she says, her Botox so fresh her face doesn’t move.
    An older woman leans in and tugs on Ashley’s hair. “You poor children and your beautiful hair.”
    Music begins to play.
    The rabbi appears. “Friends, family, parents of Jane, her sister, Susan, and her children, Nathaniel and Ash.”
    “No one calls her Ash,” Nate says flatly.
    “How does one make sense of a death such as this, a life interrupted? Jane was a mother, a daughter, a sister, and a friend—and she was also the victim of a crime, denied the natural course of life.”
    “I never liked George,” her mother says loudly during the service. “George was an asshole from the first date.”
    The rabbi continues: “Out of Jane’s death comes a break with tradition; when a Jew dies, no one questions if there will be a ritual washing or a funeral, but what of the body? Jane’s family chose organ donation, so that the parts of Jane which remained strong, viable, could save the lives of others—they did the mitzvah of giving Jane to others. One of the purposes of the funeral ceremony is to help the friends and family adjust to the finality of their loss. And while the circumstances of Jane’s death leave us searching for logic, we celebrate her life and the life she will now give others. HaMakom yinachaim etchem batoch shar avlai Zion v’Yerushlayim. May God comfort you together with all the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem,” the rabbi offers. “This is the traditional Jewish expression of condolence.”
    “Are we