"They're glad she's gone," Dad once whispered about one dead woman who lacks a name in my memory. "You can tell. No restraint. Crying like this," he looked behind us at two women in black, their sobs near moaning, "is for show or when the dog dies." This was at a Funeral Parlor we sometimes attended when his mortician friend Tobin had nothing scheduled at his place on our night out. We were on our knees almost every Friday night that year, in between the recently deceased and their audience.

"Look," Dad said, pointing with his brow, "either the family went nickel and dime or the casket has been switched with a floor model. See the little scratches. And look at the uneasy way she's set, poor woman." Sometimes he gave me a moment for study, then leaned close enough again for me to smell the citrus residue of his shaving cream and lime cologne. "Maybe they dropped her."

He would say a silent prayer then make an air cross between his head and shoulders before getting up to greet the sorrowful family. He could be a little remote with the more dramatic mourners, unless they were the known poor or clients of Jimmy Tobin.

His family and the Tobins had been friends back in Ireland long before my father was born. They had been farmers and neighbors for generations before moving, one after the other, to the States. My Dad was only eight years old when his father died. After that the Tobins half-raised him as one of their own. They fed him at their table and played with him through their rooms while my grandmother worked for them as a cook. They fostered in him an appreciation of the funeral trade while he was still too young to work at it. He grew up seeing its worldly opportunities for contacts and gentility and probably anticipated a sponsored future in the Tobin's family business. Then he met my future mother and, eventually, he asked her to marry him. Maybe he should have been more explicit with her sooner, regarding his career plans. When he eventually did explain them, she said that she would not share a house with the dead or live with a man who touched them. She told him that he had to make a choice between undertaking and her. I don't think he ever got over it.

During our time at the Parlors, I understood the concept of death but never emotionally considered the nearby deceased as really gone. Their condition struck me more as a sort of severe disability that made them somehow inaccessible in their displayed flesh. Except for their prone postures and closed eyes, most didn't look very different from anyone else. As an easily distracted boy, I knew how hard it was to stay still, and half-expected corpses to fidget with the strain. That was probably due to the mortician's skill. The dead did not discomfort me nearly as much as the undertakers did. I saw them as a kind of spooky escort service, accompanying the deceased to some mysterious destination. That was before I acquired a more practical view of the trade both from attending my grandfather's funeral, my mother's father, and from listening to Dad. He was a close judge of the craft but rarely spoke of this particular interest in front of my mother.

My attendance at wakes began after my sister Meg was born, in the spring of my sixth year. Friday nights had always been Dad's own, to "stretch his legs" he said, without expense, despite having worked all week as a custodian at City Hall. He was on his way out one Friday night, as Ma was clearing the dishes, when she told him, "Take Patrick."

"Why?" he asked.

"He's your son."

He stood quietly for a few seconds, chewing his gum and watching her at the sink. "It's my night off."

"And tell me," she said, her scrubbing picking up speed, "when my night off is. If I got paid by the hour, never mind nights, holidays and Sundays."

"Go to the bathroom and wash up," he told me, interrupting her, with a peeved look, like the whole thing was my idea.

So we began our Friday night walks. In the beginning, he had a grouch on about it. There were no stops and little conversation unless he picked up a coin he found. He had a great eye for loose change.

"See that," he would say showing me the nickel, dime or quarter pinched between his thumb and forefinger, "that's because I pay attention," and put it in his pocket. He never picked up pennies.

We often chewed spearmint gum, a half-stick for me and a whole one for him. When I needed to, he let me take a discreet pee behind someone's bushes while he walked ahead. Strangers beeped their car horns at us. Dad returned their greetings with a quarter-circle wave of his arm. When I tried this he said, "Stop that," but he kept doing it. We kept along our common route for several uneventful weeks before he decided to take a chance on me.

The second Friday was the same as the first, aimlessly strolling around the city. The third Friday it rained, to my relief. I was bored. On the fourth Friday following we stopped across from a big white house on High Street. There were lots of cars out front and a lighted sign on the lawn. This was at the time of day, in late spring, when the neutral light evokes everything without shade or glare. The moon was barely a white scratch under a pinking band of cloud. We stood beneath a broad maple tree while Dad twisted out his cigarette under his shoe. We looked at one another as he took a folded black necktie out of his jacket pocket and started to arrange it around his upturned collar.

"I want you to be a good boy and do what I tell you," he said. "Can you do that?"

I nodded. He finished the tie to his satisfaction, took my hand in his and we crossed the wide street.

On the other side he led me down the front walk and up the steps past three men smoking who greeted my father by name, "Michael." No one ever called him Mike. Past the front door was a short hall with a thick red and gold carpet. There were the sounds of many people talking softly like company after bedtime. I looked at the sudden brightness above us and pointed straight up at it as we walked underneath. Hanging over our heads were what looked like three hoops of shining diamonds, their circles tapering smaller in descension.

Dad followed my finger directing upward. "Chandelier," he said. "Don't point."

There was a large open room on either side of the hall. Both had entrances wide enough so that four or five people could have entered abreast. We looked in one crowded room, then the other. There was little furniture, no television nor family pictures on the walls. I couldn't see much else or hear anything distinctly in the polite murmur of strange voices. We walked ahead, past the knobby white spindles of a staircase banister that climbed away from us, to a swinging door at the end of a hall. I heard men laughing.

"Wait here," Dad said, pointing his finger at me, "don't move," and positioned me under the stairs. He went through the door into a room gray with smoke and someone called, "Michael," sounding happy to see him.

Behind me was a closed door with gold letters on it. I looked out at the diamond light again. A man walked into the hall from one of the side rooms so I stepped back, listening for footsteps, scared until Dad came out and took me by the hand. We left the way we came, out past the smoking men who told us goodnight. Dad held on to me all the way down the tarred walk and only let me go after we had crossed through traffic and continued on our way.

The last daylight was fading fast so that the insides of occupied homes were becoming brighter than the out-of-doors. Families revealed themselves at evening meals and motionless before the pale illuminations of their televisions. It surprised me how many people watched theirs without a lamp on, which my mother told me was a shortcut to blindness.

Flowers bloomed from trellises and pots that hung in porticos and deeper porches shadowed with screens. Dogs charged out from their yards to bark behind us, or to yap along fence lines before they retreated, suddenly indifferent. I lagged behind, distracted by the sight of a family eating a late dinner with their white cat wandering over the tabletop. Our cat chewed off the heads of birds and pawed dead mice across the linoleum. The thought of a cat's breath and feet so near a family's food gave the supper I had eaten earlier an uncomfortable turn. I jumped when Dad gripped my shoulder and reset me ahead of him. My feet began to catch more of the brick sidewalk's unevenness, causing me an occasional small lurch as I resisted looking into any more houses for fear of another dining pet, though I could think of nothing else.

"Come here," my father motioned me toward him with his hand.

I turned and he was squatting six steps behind me, his tie gone and his shirt collar open again.

"Come on," he motioned me forward with his hand.

I stepped closer to him. His thin face was calm.

"See what I found?" There was an upright quarter in his fingertips. "This is good luck," he said and held it out for me.

I looked at the coin.

"Go on, take it."

I did and examined it on both sides.

"We can do this again," he cocked his head back the way we just came, "but it has to be our secret. Understand?"

I nodded.

"Good." He stood up and we started to walk side by side. I first thought that he just wanted me to carry the coin for admiration, then realized, as we went on, that he meant for me to have it.

"Your mother wouldn't approve and the baby is taking enough out of her," he said. "We'll keep it to ourselves."

I wasn't going to tell any of it, not a word about the quarter, the table cat or his abandoning me under the stairs. We walked the rest of the way home in silence. I felt the round money turn from cool to warm in my fist and moisten so that I had to wipe it on my shirt. I looked up at him several times and caught his eye once. He didn't look any different but I took the coin as a sign of his pleasure, even if I didn't understand why he gave it to me. We arrived home after dark and just before he opened the door he laid a finger to his lips. I nodded my agreement then ran in the house to hide my fortune.