Free A Permanent Member of the Family by Russell Banks

into doing something she’d prefer to avoid, but decided to let it go. Isabel was probably experiencing a wave of grief-induced mania. A way of not succumbing to grief itself. Sometimes that happened after the death of a spouse.
    They entered a darkened, windowless hallway. There was a plastic folding lawn chair by the door at the far end, and on the chair a small cardboard carton with a yellow Post-it note stuck to it. On the note someone had written Isabel Pelham in red Magic Marker ink.
    â€œI’m reasonably certain that the ashes inside that box are George’s, not mine,” Isabel said.
    â€œGod, I can’t tell if you’re being morbid or funny.”
    â€œBoth.”
    â€œLet’s go. This whole thing is freaking me out a little,” Jane said and turned to leave.
    â€œWait. Check that out.” Beyond the door was a larger room, a showroom of some kind, lit by flickering fluorescent ceiling lights. On a high four-wheeled cart in the middle of the otherwise empty room was a white casket with its lid up. The interior of the casket was lined in rolled and pleated white patent leather. Except for what appeared to be a bowling ball inside an aqua ball bag, the casket was empty. A vacuum cleaner tank and a length of coiled vacuum hose and extension tubes lay on the tile floor beside the cart.
    â€œCheck that out. Don’t you just love Miami?” Isabel whispered. She pulled her iPhone from her purse and snapped four quick photos of the scene. “It’s so fucking surreal here. Everywhere you look. I’m thinking of buying a real camera and taking pictures of everything. Might be a whole new career.” They could hear the muffled voice of a man speaking Spanish in the Comfort Room farther down the hall.
    â€œThat would be Digger O’Dell, the Friendly Undertaker. Comforting some poor widow in the Comfort Room with his hand on her knee. Or maybe they’re in the crematorium. I wonder where that is. Probably the basement.”
    She made a move to enter the showroom, but Jane grabbed her sleeve and stopped her. Jane said, “Jesus, Isabel, let’s go now. You’ve got what we came for.”
    Isabel lifted the small cardboard box from the chair and opened it. Inside was a polished mahogany container the approximate size and shape of an old-fashioned milk bottle. “Like it?”
    â€œThe urn? Yes, it’s . . . tasteful.”
    Isabel held the container by the neck and examined it slowly. “Hard to imagine all of George coming down to just this. Ashes to ashes, I suppose. He was such a big man, over two hundred pounds. Reduced to a pint or so of ashes. ‘Cremains.’ Want to take a look?” she said and started to unscrew the black plastic top.
    â€œJesus, no! Not here. C’mon, Isabel, let’s just go now!” Jane said and walked quickly down the hallway to the door, opened it and stepped into the blinding sunlight.
    Â 
    L IKE A R EALTOR TRYING to sell her the apartment, Isabel took Jane on what she called The Tour, first the condo and then the public areas of the building, and Jane learned that her newly widowed friend was planning to live alone in Miami Beach in the high-rise condominium on Sunset Harbour Drive with spectacular views of Biscayne Bay and the downtown Miami skyline across the bay. There was a pool in the building and a health club. An attractive marble-floored lobby with an attendant on duty day and night and twenty-four-hour camera surveillance. Isabel demonstrated how from her glass-walled aerie she could watch the glittering cruise ships glide silently out to sea. She could look down from the terrace and observe the seagulls and pelicans from above. She could spy with binoculars on lovers and smugglers and partygoers in their yachts moored at the yacht club adjacent to her building. Which was how she spoke of it, Jane noticed, as her building. Previously in their weekly phone conversations she had