Chapter 1 Summary

After the funeral for her husband Billy, Maeve Lynch arranges for forty or so family members to meet at a bar for the reception. It is a small bar in the Bronx that no one has ever heard of and where they have laid out a long table to sit all forty for lunch and drinks if they want. Most of the family members find it a comfortable place for a funeral reception, though many do not miss the irony of having the funeral reception for a man who died of alcohol poisoning in a bar. Dennis, a cousin of Billy's, sits next to Maeve and deals with the waiters, the owner, and will settle the bill at the end of the afternoon.

Billy's sisters sit at the opposite end of the table from Maeve and a conversation begins about Billy, and what...