Catalyst

It is the morning of Mikey’s funeral. Mikey’s drawings decorate the casket, and the organists plays tunes from Sesame Street. During the sermon, emotion overwhelms Kate’s father.

At the gravesite, Kate wonders about death: “It is a physical law that energy is neither created nor destroyed. So what happens when people die?” (195). At the luncheon at Kate’s home, Toby asks Kate about their mother’s funeral. Kate tells him she doesn’t remember—when the time came to go to the church she ran away and hid, and no one found her until after the service. Toby tells her that Teri borrowed her car.

Kate knows where to find Teri. She arrives at Teri’s house and finds her swinging a sledgehammer against the kitchen’s half-finished walls, destroying the church volunteers’ work. She seems to be in a trance. Kate is conflicted. She wants to stop Teri, but Teri is 18, and there is no law against destroying one’s own house.

As Kate prepares to leave, Teri, sweaty and out of breath, tells her about selecting the outfit Mikey would wear for the funeral: jeans, a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, and pull-ups, not diapers, because he was big boy. Teri attacks the wall with renewed vigor: “She screams, screams, hits, hits, stops to pant, and then brings down the sledgehammer again” (205).