[assignment: take a page or two – a scene – of Fun Home and rework it as narrative; I chose pg 27.]
At reception after the funeral — “such a good man”, everyone kept saying, and they were all so kind, so tender. They walked past, shook our hands. The flowers and the casket were nearly as meticulous as if he’d been there, but without him, and with the way he died, the casket had to be closed. That too seemed like a perfect bit of artifice, since he wasn’t there to provide his own usual artifice. They filed past one at a time, townspeople whom I knew didn’t know any better, didn’t know that my mother looking stone-faced, not weepy, just…tired; they didn’t know that she’d asked him for a divorce two weeks before. They didn’t know about the copy of A Happy Death left in conspicuous places around the house. All they knew was what they read in the paper, what they heard from each other at the usual local spots: Man Dies After Being Hit By Truck. Which meant that once again we were just a tableaux arranged by him, even if this time it was in front of his casket, rather than on the porch or around the Christmas tree.