In
the tub, bubbles on her shoulders and drooping onto
the floor, someone on the radio singing about flowers
opening slowly, she soaks the scent of her dead
husband from her body. Her eyes are wide open but not
really seeing anything. She has a fist between her
breasts. She remembers when she used to measure her
life in days—a weekend together, three days until
the trip—but now it's in hours. 32 hours since she
waved at him from the balcony and told him to drive
safely. 27 hours since the police called. 6 hours of
riding around in cars, signing papers, identifying,
confirming, being taken by someone from some office
to her sister's home, clean, orderly, sedate.
She
visits the undertaker, and insists on the following.
A simple, elegant pine box without metal attachments.
A black satin lining. She wants him dressed in the
black tuxedo he was married in, but no shoes or
socks, and she wants the button undone behind the
bowtie so that he can breathe. She tells the
undertaker the story of their wedding reception, late
into the night, into the morning, and her husband has
shaken too many hands, laughed at too many bad puns,
heard too much music, and she sees him go for some
peace in the little room at the back of the hall,
where she follows him, walks in while he is stretched
back in a small high-armed sofa, button undone, no
shoes or socks, his beloved gin and tonic in one
hand, the other in his black hair, crowning his face.
And
the rings, she wants their silver and onyx rings to
be in there with him. His on the finger, hers in the
inside jacket pocket.
I
have just been talking to my wife Marjorie on my cell
phone—she was prating about some Impressionist
exhibition she says we must see at a gallery in New
York City—when this woman walks into my funeral
parlor. She is genuinely sad, I can tell, and the
truth is that not everyone who comes in here is
sad. Some are a bit too practical about all the
arrangements that are necessary in order to bury a
relative properly, and some are just glad that the
old bastard is dead, but this woman misses the dead
person—probably her husband—and is only barely
maintaining a facade of control. The clothes are
fine, especially the copper sling-backs, but it's in
her face where I can see that she's on the verge of
coming apart: a bit too much make-up, a kind of
cloudiness in the eyes.
"May
I be of assistance?" I ask.
"Ah,
yes, thanks ... I wanted to make arrangements for,
well, I wanted to see what you have ... Well, my
husband was, well, he's dead now and I wanted ...
"
"Certainly,
we can make all the necessary arrangements, Mrs.
...?"
"Oh,
Williams. Joan Williams."
I
suggest the possibility of cremation, and she says
no, she could never do that. She could never destroy
him like that, burn up everything quickly and
forcefully.
"Why
would you recommend such a thing?" she asks, not
accusatory, just surprised.
"Well,
Mrs. Williams, I am not recommending
it, just trying to detail for you what your options
are. Many people prefer the simplicity and directness
of cremation. If I may inject a personal opinion, for
example, my wife and I have decided on
cremations."
I
leave the thought with her for a moment, and while
she mulls I am seeing flames licking up the length
and breadth of dear Marjorie's soft body.
"I
think I would prefer just the standard burial. You
know, the coffin and the funeral and all that."
"Yes,
certainly, Mrs. Williams. Whatever you wish. We can
make some selections now, if you would have the
time," I say.
She
agrees, and as we look through the catalogues in my
office, I imagine Marjorie lying there amid those
satiny folds, hands planted with cold firmness on her
chest. I will take advantage of the lid covering her
lower torso by putting fishing rubbers on her, or
perhaps shoes that are a size too small and on the
wrong feet, so that she is crimped and goofy-looking
for eternity. I will kiss her on the lips and
experience indifference as a refreshing, exhilarating
alternative to "What are you trying to
do?". I will run my finger along the line of her
jaw without complaint.
After
Mrs. Williams leaves, Marjorie calls again, and I try
to explain to her, again, that I have already been to
the observation deck of the Empire State Building,
when I was in high school.
"James,
if you are in New York City, you have
to go to the Empire State," she says.
She
insists on calling it that, as if the word Building
is too crude for someone of her cosmopolitan
sensibilities. I say that, yes, indeed, a person can
go to New York without visiting the Empire State Building.
I make a few suggestions.
"Don't
be ridiculous, James. That area is crawling with
muggers and rapists. Definitely not."
I
summon patience from a reserve that I had thought was
already exhausted, and suggest calmly that perhaps we
could narrow our chances of attack by not walking
around naked at 2 in the morning with thousand-dollar
bills sticking out of our asses.
"Well,
James, if you do not want to discuss this like an
adult ..."
She
says we will resolve this later, and I click her off.
She
cries on the plane on the way to New York City for
the dispersal of the ashes. She acknowledges to
herself the influence of the obvious—her husband,
dead, burned, his remains
(as they called it) flying compactly in her carry-on
bag beneath the seat in front of her. She dissipates
the simple fact with extraneous details about the
sappy movie, that third glass of wine.
In
the end she couldn't bear to have her husband interred
(as they called it). She didn't like the sprawling
lack of control of a buried coffin, the lack of
completion, the cold suffocating earth eventually
caving in on him after he had finally been laid
to rest (as they called it).
She
stands on the observation deck. There is a warm,
steady wind, the kind that has always made her close
her eyes. There is a small happy family toddling
around near one of the telescopes, oblivious to
everything except what they see and point to. There
is a couple touching.
She
has him in her largest handbag. She is wearing under
his trenchcoat only her black silk minidress. She
hugs herself. She remembers how it felt with both the
top pulled down and the bottom pulled up around her
waist, him kneeling there on the kitchen floor and
her backed up against the counter, his tongue on and
in her and his arms raised, hands on her breasts for
support, the heel of one of her hands in a bit of
water on the counter and the other one sometimes
running through his black curly hair, sometimes
grabbing at it, and she was thinking, God, don't take
us one at a time, take us both now, send whatever you
have into this kitchen, down on our poor heads, and
take us while we are connecting like this.
The
lid is stiff. She finally unscrews it, and in the
same motion dumps the urn's contents out into the
air. Something like a cloud is formed, and then
disappears suddenly. She looks down at the urn, runs
a finger around the rim, and tastes him for the last
time.
Later, at home, there will be flowers in the urn, bright ones in all colors.