My father had some money in an Oppenheimer account that was involved in some sort of class-action suit so he got a check in the mail a year after his death so we took it to our bank. We signed in electronically and were called into a cubicle by a young woman with ruby red painted nails. In fact her nail shade matched exactly the stone on her ring and her lipstick. We spent about a half hour with her filling out forms that would allow us to deposit the money, about forty-five dollars, in my mom’s account. It was the day before Christmas and the calendar on her wall, one with a big white block for each day of the month, had only a magic-marker diagonal line drawn exactly in the same manner through 23 blocks. The 24th had not yet been killed.
She called a screen that had a picture of my father smiling and I asked, “You have that in you files?” She said, “No, I just called up his obituary from the funeral home.” She took the paperwork that I had up to the front office for approval and left us us in her cubicle for about ten minutes. We studied the two pictures of her son and daughter. Both were were wearing a Lancer sports uniform. There were two middle-aged guys outside her office waiting to meet with her and one of them was talking loudly about a woman he had “the hots for.” We had just come from Wegmans and we talked about how we had forgotten to buy Brussels sprouts. The bank employee finally came back with the approval and wished us a Merry Christmas.
We took a chance and decided to stop at Aman’s Farm Market for the Brussels sprouts. They had them and I filled up a big bag wile Peggi waited in the car. The guy in front of me had a cart full of craft beer. He let me go ahead of him and told the cashier, “I only let him go ahead because I can’t stand looking at those things. We roasted them for our family Christmas party and every last one went.
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