Cutting Scenes - The Fine Line

The River Jordan
D. Krauss
It was $50,000, about a year's salary. Carl didn't know
about it until three days after his wife dropped dead in the
kitchen. "You have a rider on your insurance policy," the agent
said.
"What?" Carl was sitting on the couch, lost.
"A rider. Most people have them. You'll receive a check."
He did and left it uncashed for another three days. "An
aneurysm," the doctor in the emergency room, pale and worldbeaten
with an expression of distance, had said.
"What?" Carl had been sitting on a gurney, lost.
"It was instantaneous." That was true. She had turned to
him laughing, suddenly stopped laughing, looked a bit stricken,
then fell to the floor.
"An aneurysm? But, only angry people get those. That's what
I should die of."
The doctor shrugged and looked annoyed. "Anyone can get
them. Things wear out," and he walked away.
Carl knew, right then, it was his fault.
"It's not your fault," his son said, draping a big,
carpentry-formed arm about Carl's shoulders. His daughter, half
the look of his wife, especially in the hidden grief of her
eyes, nodded and added an arm and they both mouthed this over
and over while the grandkids made every effort to remain solemn
but the imperatives of youth overwhelmed. It was a closed casket
because Carl and his wife thought a viewing barbaric. The grands
should remember her properly, homemade cookies and backyard
snowball fights, not as a waxed and rouged face, nightmare,
lying empty on a satin pillow.
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