a Conversation that could get you killed, pt. I. ch. 8

At the funeral in Hamilton Mrs. Rhodes was disturbed by the amount of unfamiliar faces in the crowd. Quebec and Massachusettes liscence plates lined the streets outside. She had expected an intimate affair, but the funeral parlour was packed and there weren’t enough cheese and crackers in the hall downstairs. Despite his wandering she had clung to the idea that she knew her son. The only thing more painful than losing her only child was the thought that she had already lost him years before.

Was it possible that these strangers dressed in black had come to know her litte Q-tip better than she? She glanced around at the grizzled writers from the gazette, the existentialists in dark-rimmed glasses, the Polish families who had brough her a plastic bag full of pirogies, the girls from Boston in little black dresses, the old Irish bartenders from the pub on Crescent street. Who exactly were these people? Their mocking tears.

She wondered if Q-tip had made love to any of these girls. To all of them? Was he respected by his colleagues? Did the Polish mothers look after him and bake him cake for his birthday? Did the existentialists fill him with anti-Christian doubt? Did he find a father amongst the old Irish bartenders, someone to explain broken hearts and complicated drinks? It had been eight years since she had seen her son. He abandoned her at sixteen and now there was a cold certainty to his never coming back. The procession of strangers filed past her at the open casket. She clung to the bag of frozen pirogies as they offered their hands and bitter words of condolence.