The sun hadn’t come up yet when Mom backed the U-Haul out of the driveway and we took off for Armadillo. I didn’t know you could burn rubber in a U-Haul. Mom pressed the pedal to the floor and drove through the sleepy neighborhood at least twenty miles over the speed limit. She missed Dad and obviously didn’t care if she got a ticket—she just wanted to get to wherever he was, quickly. Since they’d always done everything together, I figured he missed her just as much.
Once Mom merged the U-Haul onto the interstate, any hope I had of the move being just a bad dream was gone. So I decided not to think about it. I wouldn’t think about how I’d been forced to leave all my friends behind so my parents could run a rest stop for stiffs. I turned on the radio and gave Mom a brilliant fake smile. She looked surprised at first, then relieved, and gave my hair a tousle with her free hand.
Minutes passed like hours as I watched the asphalt roll under us and the horizon turn pink ahead of us. When the sun finally filtered out the last of the purple dawn, and the sky was as blue as the pool at the Y, we pulled into the Starvin’ Marvin off exit 36, halfway to Armadillo. Mom filled up the U-Haul while I bought breakfast to go—two cherry colas, two ham-and-egg biscuits with cheese, and two Hunk-O-Choklit bars.
My biscuit was so dry that when I tried to talk crumbs spewed out of my mouth and flew all over the inside of the cab. Mom found this hilarious, but distracting. Since it took real concentration on Mom’s part to eat and drive at the same time, we agreed to eat our biscuits and slurp our cherry colas in silence.
When I was ready for dessert, I tried to guess which end of the Hunk-O-Choklit bar I should start on. Hunk-O-Chocklits were my favorite candy bars: thick as a brick and chunky too, but with pockets of gooey chocolate cream inside. Because the name was molded into the bar, I always ate Hunk-O-Choklit bars from the H down, for good luck. So, like a thousand other times before, I opened the foil wrapper. But this time, instead of finding the “H” like always, I was faced with a “T.”
No big deal, I thought. That’s being superstitious—playing a little kid’s game such as which way to eat a candy bar. I took the bar out of its wrapper and turned it around so the H stared up at me, begging to be eaten. Then I rewrapped the foil around the T end and pretended I’d gotten it right the first time.
Determined not to think about this sign of bad luck, I slowly bit into each letter—H, U, N, and K—and listened to my teeth cut through the crunchy bits and felt the gooey part ooze out onto my lips. But when I reached the O, I realized I’d never asked Mom where in Armadillo we were going to live.
“So, Mom,” I said, then paused to let my teeth sink into the center of the O. I let the candy melt into a soft puddle on my tongue, so when I spoke again I sounded like I had a bad cold. “Whad’s our new houde like? Id it big?”
Mom thought for a minute—another omen I shouldn’t have ignored, because it meant she was choosing her words carefully. “Well, we’re not actually living in a house.”
I chewed the consonant blend CH and swallowed, unaware of the impending doom. “An apartment will be fun. Especially since we won’t have to worry about mowing the lawn.”
“There’s still mowing to be done, Kev. Landscaping, too. We want the funeral home to be neat and attractive. Outside appearances make an impression.” Mom was down to the ice in her cola, and the air in her straw made a loud slurpy sound. “But between the three of us, we can keep it up.”
Suddenly I felt warm and generous toward my mother. After all, Dad had said I wouldn’t have to be around the bodies. And Mom was trying hard to start her new career. “I wouldn’t mind doing some yard work for you after school. I could just ride my bike home afterward, if it’s not too far.” I took a big bite this time, all of O, K, and L.
“That’s what makes this so great. It’s going to be so convenient living there.”
I popped the last IT of the candy bar in my mouth and imagined the possibilities for making new friends in our apartment building beside our new family business.
Mom wadded her candy wrapper and stuffed it in the empty Starvin’ Marvin sack. “Yep,” she said, in the kind of lilty tone people use when they’re pretending you knew all the time about something, except they know you really didn’t. “I think living in the funeral home is a great idea.”
My breathing stopped. She’d said “in.” Living in the funeral home!
So much for warm and generous feelings. My parents had lied to me. Not telling the whole story was the same as a lie. And they didn’t tell me because they knew I wouldn’t like it.
Anger exploded in my mouth like gunpowder. Words shot out so fast I didn’t even know for sure what I’d said—but I knew it was bad, because Mom flinched at the impact. She glared at me with one of her Don’t-Mess-With-Me-Kevin-Andrew-Kirk-Or-You’re-Gonna-Get-It looks. As she eased onto the Armadillo exit ramp she laid down the law: There was no need to live anywhere else since the funeral home had a nicely furnished second floor with two bathrooms and a kitchen better than the one in our old house, and I’d better not say anything to discourage my father since our family was taking a big step moving and starting a new business and he was nervous and worried enough as it was, so I’d better swallow it up and get over it.
Her words floated around me like the hairs our old orange cat used to shed—small enough on their own to be easily ignored, but incredibly annoying in large numbers. I wanted to swat them out of my face. I wanted to pretend Mom hadn’t just told me we were going to live in a house full of corpses. That was the weirdest thing I’d ever heard in my life. How could I eat dinner knowing someone was decomposing just below the kitchen floor? How could I invite friends over—if I could even find friends now? Who’d want to hang out with someone whose houseguests are in rigor mortis?
Mom ended her speech as we passed the Armadillo city limit sign and pulled up to the red brick pillar and lighted placard welcoming us to the Paramount Funeral Home. My father was there with a shovel and a wheelbarrow full of mulch, planting pansies at the base of the sign.
He was having the time of his life. No one seemed to care that this was the end of mine.