On Thursday afternoon, the coffin came through the living room window because the front door was too narrow.
Nora had spent twenty-eight years teasing Seamus about that door. Whenever a wardrobe stuck in the frame, he swore he would widen it “as soon as I get a quiet morning.” She had eventually filed the promise with the squeaking bathroom faucet, the garage’s third shelf, and the garden wall that leaned without ever falling. Now two men in dark suits had removed the window sash, a neighbor held the curtain at arm’s length, and Seamus was coming home horizontally through the only opening he had never considered repairing.
“Don’t say anything,” Maeve murmured beside her sister’s shoulder.
Nora did not look at her.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Your face was saying it.”
“My face is entitled to think what it likes.”
One of the bearers laughed despite himself. He immediately lowered his eyes, as though he had desecrated something. Nora gave him a small signal that it was all right. For three days, nothing had been serious in the expected way. Seriousness shifted without warning: a shirt still on a chair, a bill in Seamus’s name, a slice of pie set aside in the refrigerator. By comparison, a dead man returning through the window was almost a matter of logistics.
They placed the coffin in the living room between the bookcase and the radiator. It occupied the exact spot where Seamus stretched his legs on Sundays until he blocked the way. Nora stepped back twice, needlessly straightened the doily beneath a vase, and asked the men whether they wanted tea.
“Nora,” Maeve said.
“What?”
“They do this all day.”
“So? They might be thirsty all day.”
The older man accepted. The relief was disproportionate.
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