Shame - Darcy Vebber

Alice was sorting through the mail, dropping the requests for money - all or almost all from animal protection groups - into a dark green metal waste basket. She kept the coupons for the big box stores that had opened up outside Pinetop in one hand and she put the condolence cards, unopened, on the table in the entry where the family had been putting mail as long as they had been in this house. She thought the girls might want to open the cards. She wasn't sure what she wanted with the coupons but there was something. She had been thinking about it only the day before.

She had a list of things that needed to be done. Most of them involved a death certificate -- taking the certificate from place to place to show, to leave behind, to be placed in files. The funeral home gave her multiples. It seemed crazy at the time. Multiple death certificates and a flag. Mark was in the Army Courier Service, she had explained to the girls. During the Korean war. It wasn't a secret. Sometimes he mentioned that he had once lived in D.C. That was then, what he had been referring to. He was in the Army, served the requisite time, was discharged, came back to Arizona. They helped him pay for law school.

He had done nothing to be ashamed of. Sometimes the grief rose in her like bile and sometimes it was like a wave of pain crashing in to her from behind. Often it was this, the memory of this serious boy out of the Courier service and on his way to law school, unaware of so much even after his years in D.C. that brought it on. He was thin then and wore glasses because he was terribly near sighted. He had thick dark hair, deliciously soft to the touch, and full lips. She knew a thousand things he did not and she was only nineteen.

She felt Lisa behind her just before she heard Kathy coming up the walk. Caught, she thought, quickly putting down the coupons. At what? she wondered. Her heart was bumping in her chest. The thing about the coupons was that she saw ads in the Republic for new things, new furniture, new appliances, things untouched, fresh and she wanted those things. If she had her way she would have set this whole beautiful old house on fire and let it burn. She imagined the three of them on the street out front, watching. Warming themselves. Then she turned to see what Lisa wanted, what Kathy was bringing in.