or cooler."
I thought he was pulling my leg, but he moved the lever, and I heard a
muffled roar kick on in the basement.
"That's the furnace," he said.
He led me over to a vent in the floor and had me hold my hand above it
and feel the warm air wafting upward. I didn't want to say anything to
show how impressed I was, but for many nights afterward, I dreamed
that we had a thermostat at 93 Little Hobart Street. I dreamed that all we
had to do to fill our house with that warm, clean furnace heat was to
move a lever.
ERMA DIED DURING the last hard snowfall at the end of our second
winter in Welch. Dad said her liver simply gave out. Mom took the
position that Erma drank herself to death. "It was suicide every bit as
much as if she had stuck her head in the oven," Mom said. "only slower."
Whatever the cause, Erma had made detailed preparations for the
occasion of her death. For years she had read The Welch Daily News
only for the obituaries and black-bordered memorial notices, clipping
and saving her favorites. They provided inspiration for her own death
announcement, which she'd worked and reworked. She had also written
pages of instructions on how she wanted her funeral conducted. She had
picked out all the hymns and prayers, chosen her favorite funeral home,
ordered a lavender lace nightgown from JCPenney that she wanted to be
buried in, and selected a two-toned lavender casket with shiny chrome
handles from the mortician's catalog.
Erma's death brought out Mom's pious side. While we were waiting for
the preacher, she took out her rosary and prayed for Erma's soul, which