Pontoon by Garrison Keillor

she wished she had a pamphlet she could hand out: “This man whom you stare at, who, to you, is a freak and an abuser of food, is also the kindest and cheeriest man in Minnesota. And, yes, a wonderful lover. Attend to your own shortcomings, and give this man the respect he deserves. Thank you.” Oh, what a lovely amorous man. He loved to nuzzle and whisper and stroke her leg. He was a great fat man and in no hurry to get to the acrobatics. He could kiss and murmur and nestle for an hour or two before he got urgent and excited and started undressing her, which other men got to in forty-five seconds. No foreplay for them, just get you naked and in they go and a minute later it’s over. The fat man was languid and tender. And then, bless his heart, when she was naked and the fat man looked at her, he imagined he saw a slender lovely girl before he turned the lights out and began to slip out of his clothes.
    Walt came through the back door with a fold-up gurney, a skinny thing the size of an ironing board, and his helper, Cliff, who looked to be about eighteen. What must it be like to be soyoung and employed to carry the dead out of their bedrooms? She held out a hand to Cliff and kissed him on the cheek. “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to do that.” The choir had stopped singing so she put on Robert Preston singing “Ya Got Trouble” and then noticed that her pants were unzipped. She took off that record and put on a choir singing something dark and slow. And then the phone rang. It rang just as Walt and Cliff emerged from the bedroom with Mother zipped up in a plastic bag and wheeled her out the back door. The shock of seeing this—the house suddenly empty—she picked up the phone and it was Flo saying, “What is going on? What is that truck doing in the alley? Speak up!” and Barbara sobbed, “My mommy’s dead.”
    Flo pulled up in front two minutes later, her hair in curlers, as the truck pulled away in back. She’d been at the Bon Marche Beauty Salon, having it blued. She was hopping mad. She took one look at Barbara and said, “You’re a souse, that’s what you are! You need to get a grip on yourself, young lady. Where is Evelyn?” And then she grabbed onto a chair for support. “Oh dear God, she went to the doctor two weeks ago. She was fine.” She choked and went in the bedroom and found Walt’s business card and came charging out and glared at Barbara and shook her fist. “Sending your mother to be burned up like she was garbage. Why didn’t you just chop her up with an axe and throw her in the incinerator? This is treachery. You ought to be shot.” And Flo called up the crematorium and left a long message on the machine, to get the hell back with her sister Evelyn’s body unless he wanted to be in court that evening. She, Flo, had a nephew in the legal profession who would, by God, make your life pretty damn miserable unless you bring that body back here this instant. Driving around preying on the grief-stricken who happen to be intoxicated too—
    Barbara had never heard her swear before. Flo was a good Lutheran, but she tore into Walt like a dog on a bone. And then Barbara pulled out Mother’s letter and handed it to Flo. Flo read it and sat down. Barbara took the phone. “Disregard the previous message, we’re a little upset here,” she said into the answering machine. “We’ll work it out.” Flo looked up, aghast.
    “You should have burned this. If you had an ounce of common sense, you would’ve put a match to it and buried it in the garden. This is just outrageous. I ought to wring your neck.” And then Flo put her old wrinkled face in her hands and sobbed. “What has this family come to? We’ll never be able to hold our heads up in this town again. A bowling ball! People will think we are fools, no better than the Magendanzes. I wish I had dropped dead rather than know this. Why couldn’t God have taken me first?”
    She looked up at Barbara, her old eyes