My grandmother always says that bad things happen in threes. In the last week of April, the Yankees lost, I failed a math test, and my uncle Tony sat dead of a heart-attack.

At the wake, we ate, and wept, and ate. Tony lay among polyester carnations and chrysanthemums. The flowers looked too much like flowers, they smelled like nothing, tiny barcodes strangled the stems. My father, hands on my shoulders, steered me to the coffin. A bottle of Febreze stood beside it. Island Aloha. Shrimp, cannolis, and cocktail sauce crowded my plastic plate. Tony wore a tuxedo and a Yankees cap. A sticker shone from the brim.

Aunt Jane had been in the living room. She was watching The Kardashians. Tony sat down beside her. “You wanna watch the game, Tony?” she asked, into his shoulder. Tony did not respond, because he was dead.

She told us this after the wake, over fish, fries, milkshakes and beers. Over her head, above the bar, Friends played on a widescreen TV. Sitting across from her, my father and his mother acted like they listened, they shook their heads and sighed, but looked up.

“Who could have known? He felt fine. He came down, I asked…‘how do you feel?’ He felt fine.”

“You never know,” said my dad.

“No, you never do know,” said my grandmother.

“And he sat there next to me. I thought he was in space. I thought he was just watching TV. I thought—you know how he’s always in space?”

“Yeah, Tony…”

“I thought his mind had just walked away. And I’m sitting there next to him, for five minutes. Ten minutes. He’s just watching the TV…Kim was crying, for her earring,” Jane said, and started crying herself. “She had just dropped her earring in the lake.”

“He was always in space, Tony,” said my grandmother.

“Then I smelled it…and that’s when I knew.”

“Sorry—what?”

My father blinked and looked back at Jane. Chemtrails of purple eyeliner were streaking down her face. They were blotting her fries. They were blooming into purple flowers on her white plastic plate.

“I asked him to rub my feet,” she said, through sobs.

They brought coffee, chocolate lava cake. They brought strawberry-vanilla ice cream and french fries under ketchup. The more they brought the less I wanted. I could only pick at my plate and look away. A car commercial played on the flatscreen TV. Jane cried into a nine-dollar milkshake. My grandmother turned to me. “Eat,” she said, eyes trembling, head bobbing in a pond of recollection: “It’s what he would have wanted.”

We drove back across the Meadowlands, across a stretch of billboards and tall yellow weeds. The radio played 1010 WINS. The road was a steady thrum that plucked at our nerves. My grandmother spoke in stops and starts.

“He was so sweet, Tony. He was stupid, you know, but he was sweet.”

“Yeah,” said my father.

“That was his problem, I think. Too sweet.”

“I think his weight was his problem.”

“I gave him concert tickets. Have I told this story?”

“Yeah.”

“I gave him concert tickets for Led Zeppelin. I buy him two tickets and say: bring your brother. Years later, you told me, Danny, that the tickets were for the night before. What do I know about concerts? What do I know about Led Zeppelin? But Tony, he doesn’t cry. He doesn’t come back and complain. You know what he does?”

“I know the story,” said my dad. “I was there.”

“Have you heard this story, Julian?”

I looked at her and lied.

“Your uncle, he walks around the parking lot. Then he walks around the block. Three hours later, he comes back, I ask him, ‘how was it?’ He says, ‘Ma, it was great. Thank you.’ And he gives me a kiss on the cheek.”

The radio murmured “Margaritaville.” A breeze came through and italicized the weeds. Test Strips for Cash read a post on the side of the road.

The funeral was two days later. We huddled below the Cross; in air choked with perfume, incense and cologne. The pews creaked under American weight. The priest spoke into the microphone, his voice rendered a chorus by the acoustics. I pulled at my collar. I put my shoes on the kneeler. My grandmother hit my arm, and I put them back on the floor.

“We come here today to honor a loved one,” droned the priest from the pulpit.

Beside the coffin: Tony’s portrait, eleven feet high, so pixelated it could be a Seurat. His features dissolved in grain. Watermarks—Will Jakob Wedding Photography—covered his face and his hands. Tony wore a tuxedo with a rose in the breast. His smile was a gash in his beard.

“…To cherish the laughter, and the love, and all of our shared memories. We are gathered here today not only to grieve the loss of Matthew Medina, but also to give thanks…”

An altar boy pulled at his cassock and leaned into his ear; there was a flurry of whispers. The priest cleared his throat, and went on.

“We are gathered here today not only to mourn the loss of Anthony Rosos, but also to give thanks to you, Lord…”

Tony used to go to the supermarket with a manila folder of coupons. He used to laugh so hard at jokes before their punch-lines that he would actually, literally, start to cry. One Christmas Eve, he tried to show us all his vintage Playboys, and groped through the slick, hot pages as we watched from the couch, in utter disbelief.

“In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.”

We bowed our heads and kneeled. I wound my fingers, closed my eyes, and, an introvert, had nothing to say. My grandmother’s voice murmured. With one eye I watched her. Her eyes were turned past the stained glass, past the rafters and the rooftop vegetable garden, to God. Her lips rippled, like a heartbeat on a hospital screen.

The service ended, the coffin was lowered. We went to drop off my grandmother, and she invited us up, “for coffee.” Instead, we found a table set for dinner; a pot of sauce on the stove; and a bowl of ice on the table, under a paper towel. We sat in leaden silence. My grandmother stood at the stove. A crucifix shone near her head; without looking down, she stepped over the glue traps on the floor. She turned off the burner and brought in the pot. We took some pasta, spooned out the sauce – and sat there with our hands in our laps.

After a while, I bit into a pasta. The piece was boiled to mush.

“How is it?”

“Great,” I said. “Thank you.”

My grandmother smiled, nodded. Her bowl was empty and unblemished.

“What about you?”

“Oh, more for you guys,” she said, and continued chewing gum.

We sat in silence for what felt like three weeks.

Stuffed animals—American Girl Dolls, Cabbage Patch Kids, for some reason, Alf—covered one table. Pictures of her grand-children, printed out at the library, and put in CVS frames, covered another. The bowl of ice had turned to water. The paper towel floated on top.

The clock cuckooed. My father started and looked at his wrist. There was a tan-line where a watch should be. “We should probably get going,” he said, and I nodded. But neither of us moved.