How It All Goes Down
- We open on Judd Foxman, our humble narrator. He's on the phone with his sister, Wendy, and she has bad news: their father, Mort, has died.
- Although Mort was an atheist, Wendy says that he requested that the family perform the seven-day Jewish mourning ritual called "shiva" in his honor.
- Mort had been diagnosed with stomach cancer a year and a half earlier. By the end, "his broad shoulders [were] reduced to skeletal knobs" (1.20).
- Wendy tells Judd that the funeral is tomorrow, and Judd needs to drive to the family home in Elmsbrook in the morning.