Free The Dearly Departed by Elinor Lipman

resting his folded hands on the paunch bulging above his belt, asked Sunny to attend commencement as his special guest.
    Dry-eyed at last, Sunny said, “Perhaps you recall that I didn’t attend my own graduation.”
    He squinted into the distance, nodded curtly at several alums. “Did you get your diploma? I think Mrs. Osborn mailed it the next day.”
    â€œNo,” said Sunny. “My mother went by herself and picked it up for me.”
    â€œWe called your name,” he said, “and even though we had asked everyone to hold their applause until the end, there was a lot of clapping.”
    â€œSo I heard.”
    â€œIn recognition, I guess you could say. If I remember correctly, your mother initiated it.” He glanced toward the coffin.
    â€œThat’s not the version I got. What I heard was that a couple of girls yelled, ‘Yay, Sunny!’ Something to that effect.”
    â€œYou may be right,” said Mr. DeMinico.
    â€œWhich of course meant that the boys had to boo—”
    â€œJust the athletes.”
    â€œAll I did was make the varsity,” said Sunny. “All I needed was one adult to stand up for me, one adult besides my mother, who thought that maybe having someone with a single-digit handicap would be good for the team and good for the school.”
    â€œI didn’t mean to upset you,” said Mr. DeMinico.
    â€œNow? Or do you mean then?”
    â€œI can’t turn back the clock. I meant now. On this occasion.”
    Behind him, an elderly woman in a black picture hat complained, “There’s a long line. Some of us have been here since twenty to seven.”
    â€œMy fault,” said Sunny, and reached around to take the woman’s gloved hand.
    â€œYou don’t know me,” said the woman, “but I had the same standing appointment as your mother did for our hair—hers with Jennifer and mine with Lorraine—side by side.” Her voice quivered. “A lovely woman. Top-drawer. That’s all I need to say, because you know better than anyone.”
    â€œIs Jennifer here?” asked Sunny.
    The woman looked behind her, leaning left then right. “There she is. Jennifer! Come meet Margaret’s daughter.” She fluttered her hands. “Hurry up. She asked for you.”
    Jennifer had radically chic and severe hair for King George, bangs short and straight, dark roots showing on purpose, blunt orange hair to her jaw. “I liked your mother a lot,” she told Sunny. “She could have switched to a Boston salon—a lot of the local actresses did that once they saw their name in lights. But not your mother. She even gave me a credit in the playbills. I’ll never forget that. She was as loyal as they come.”
    â€œI know,” said Sunny.
    â€œA brick,” said the elderly woman.
    â€œI’ll be moving along now,” said the principal.
    Jennifer reached up to touch Sunny’s hair. “You don’t get this from her,” she said.

    Regina Pope was hurt to see a hairdresser summoned to the front of the line ahead of herself, but she understood: She had married the enemy. Worse, the enemy commander. Mrs. Batten had had to go to DeMinico with a season’s worth of Sunny’s scorecards and make her case. There was a federal law, she’d said, and she knew a lawyer. Sunny showed up at the next practice—all shiny new lady’s clubs and ironed culottes—to discover that no one had told the boys. Captain Randy Pope fashioned the unwritten rule: Make her life miserable. Move her ball. Drag your spikes in her line.
    Sunny didn’t complain. Only Regina knew about the dead carp in her golf bag. Mrs. Batten would have cried, and Coach Sweet would have pretended to disapprove and would have made the boys stand in a row, like at a military tribunal, until one confessed. Over sandwiches in the drab green basement lunchroom, Sunny pronounced Randy Pope an