by Jason Mott
“So when do we get to the part where you ask me what I do for a living?”
“You spend all day breaking rocks, does that make you a hammer?” I reply. “I don’t think so. I think the better question to ask someone is this: Do you like what you do?”
“A lot,” she says.
“Then that’s enough for me.”
“And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“You write books. It’s what you do. But is it who you are?”
I want to answer, her question sends me into fits. My throat goes all tight and a cold chill runs over me. Too many memories. Too much death and pain in my brain that’s suddenly trying to claw its way to the top, all triggered by a simple question about who I am as a writer. I’ve found that the best way to beat back moments like this is with a fistful of liquid courage. As we pass an outdoor bar I eyeball the liquor lining the counter and all I want to do is have a good drink because when I look over at the tables placed around the restaurant I see her: the reason I write, the reason Hell of a Book handed me all my dreams and wrapped them in pain at the same time.
She’s in her mid-fifties, and she’s wearing a hospital gown, and her eyes are slightly sunken, and her skin is a little saggy from sudden weight loss, and she looks clammy, and tired, and sad all at once. She looks over at me and she tries to smile but it’s too much for her to manage so she manages only a thin grin and even that is gone almost as quickly as it began. There’s an IV stand next to her and it drops clear chemicals down into the IV bag, which funnels them down the plastic tubing and into the back of her hand, and I can almost hear it making that drip, drip, drip sound and it hurts my ears and my throat tightens even more and my mouth goes dry and my lips feel like they’ve got glue on them and all I want is alcohol.
Nobody else sees the woman in the hospital gown. She’s just for me.
“I’m never really sure what I am,” I manage to say to Kelly. “It’s hard to tell what’s real some days.”
I’m able to make it over to the bar, where I order a shot of whiskey and I down it almost before the bartender can finish pouring it. When I look back over my shoulder, the woman in the hospital gown is gone.
“Hit me again,” I tell the bartender.
He does.
Kelly looks at the newly emptied shot glass.
“You know what they say about writers and alcohol, baby,” I tell her.
“That it’s cliché?”
“You ain’t just whistlin’ ‘Dixie.’ But clichés gotta start somewhere.”
Just then, her phone rings. She steps away and answers it. A little rude, but she’d mentioned earlier in the evening that she was on call for whatever her job was and that the call could come at any time. So I don’t stress too much. Besides, I’m busy making sure that woman in the hospital gown doesn’t show up again. A man’s got to have limits when it comes to the world of the imagination. Sometimes you’ve got to put your foot down and say, “Sorry, you haunting vision of something that doesn’t exist anymore. I’m afraid you’ll have to come back and play later.”
So that’s what I did.
I’ve just ordered a third shot of whiskey by the time Kelly makes it back over.
“Hey,” she says, “I’m sorry, but that was work. I’ve got to go take care of something.”
“Ah,” I say. “I get ya.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” I say, feeling my teeth tighten. “Don’t sweat it, Dollface. You think I’m all wet and you want out. It’s okay. You’re not hurting my feelings.”
“No,” she says. “That really was work. And I told you not to call me Dollface.”
“Sure it was,” I say, fully able to see through her ruse. “What are you, a pilot or something? No, that’s not possible.”
“Why can’t I be a pilot?”
“Because pilots always let you know early on that they’re a pilot. Never met a more arrogant and insecure group of bastards in my whole life.” I wave my hands dismissively—at least, I think I do; by now the whiskey is doing a little dance inside my head; I should have eaten more at dinner. “It’s okay,” I say. “You’re not hurting my feelings.”
“No,” she insists, “that really was work.”
“Whatever,” I say. “It doesn’t matter. It’s better this way anyhow. You’re interesting.”
“What’s wrong with interesting?”
“I’ve got a condition.”
She stares at me for a moment as I order yet another drink. As I lift the drink to my lips, she snatches it from me and pours it out. Then she takes my hand and says: “Let’s go.”
* * *
—
Renny’s black town car. Parked outside a funeral home. The sign out front reads wormfud funeral home.
I’ve never understood the need to call them funeral homes. They’re neither funerals nor are they homes. And since the funerals themselves do not reside within the location, they cannot accurately be called funeral homes.
Yet we do anyhow.
“I don’t want to go in there,” The Kid says, suddenly sitting in the back of the car with me. He was polite enough to wait until Kelly stepped out before appearing and deciding to let me know about what he likes and doesn’t like about the current situation.
“You don’t have to go in,” I say.
“Yes, I do,” Kelly says.
Of course she thinks I’m talking to her.
“Give me just a second,” I say. “I need to make a phone call.” I close the door of Renny’s car and claim the privacy.
“Listen, Kid,” I begin. “I appreciate that you’ve got a thing about funeral homes—most people do—but the fact of the matter is that I’m going in there. You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. You can leave whenever you want and crawl your way back into the wacky confines of my imagination.”
“I’m not imaginary,” The Kid says.
“Of course you are,” I say. “That’s why nobody else can see you. You’re a figment of a fragile mind—my mind—and I know it. Therefore, I have some power and authority over what you say and do.”
“I’m not imaginary,” The Kid repeats. He adds an edge to his voice. A little roar that I imagine is scary to kids his age.
“Then why can’t anyone see you?”
“Because I don’t want them to. Because my mom taught me how to be invisible. How to be safe.”
“No such thing as invisibility or safety in this world, Kid. Just reality.” I stare him down like he owes me money. Like more than anything else I just want him to pay what he owes and go away.
The Kid’s jaw clenches. He looks in the direction of Wormfud Funeral Home. “Okay,” The Kid says. “You don’t want me around. That’s fine. I’ll let you go in there by yourself.”
I can’t help but laugh. “That’s your threat? I’ve been asking you to leave me alone all night and now you’re threatening to give me what I want?” I toss the kid another laugh and step out into the night.
“Everything okay?” Kelly asks.
“Yeah,” I reply. “Just a phone call with an unbelievable person.”
Then I take her hand and smile as she leads me into the funeral home.
* * *
—
Inside the funeral home, my skin is crawling. Everything is painted in neutral colors and there are paintings and placards placed around the room designed to calm me and to remind me that death isn’t a bad thing. Meant to convey the message that death is just an event that happens and, while it certainly needs to be taken with a dose of somberness, it doesn’t have to be sad.
The greatest lie ever told.
* * *
—
Kelly and I are standing in front of a large pair of wooden double doors. There’s a sign above the doors that reads preparation room.
“Funeral director.”
“That’s an undertaker.”
“I suppose so.”
preparation room.
“But I thought you said you liked what you do for a living.”
“I love it.”
“But you’re an undertaker.”
“Funeral director.”
preparation room.
“I’m guessing that’s not where the Keebler Elves make such delicious cookies,” I say.
“Nope,” she replies.
“That’s swell, Dollface.”
preparation room.
“That’s just swe—”
I fold in half and dry heave myself into oblivion.
* * *
—
We’re inside the preparation room and Kelly is dressed for preparation. She’s wearing a blue smock and a surgical mask over her face. On the table in front of her is a dead body. It’s the body of a middle-aged man. I can’t tell what killed him. No gunshot wounds, or stab wounds, or strangulation wounds, or anything along those lines. It just looks like someone pulled his batteries out.
As for me, I’m standing on the far side of the room with my back against the wall and my arms pressed flat against it and I feel like I’m on the top ledge of the Empire State Building. At any moment I could go falling and maybe I’ll never stop.
It’s irrational, I know. But I’ve never been one to claim to be rational.
“I was right about you,” I say as she picks up a large scalpel. “You really do it differently, don’t you?” She takes the knife and begins carving on the dead body. “You’re just going to jump right in there, huh?”
“Assholes and elbows. That’s what my dad used to say.”
“That expression feels a little strange right now.”
She has the nerve to smile. As if she were just working behind the counter at Starbucks and I’d come in to order a cup of joe.
As she works, there’s this wet, squishing sound. She’s changed tools from the scalpel to things I can’t identify and fluids are draining through the table drain and I don’t want to think about what those fluids are and I don’t want to hear the sound of them running down the drain. All I want right now is to be anywhere else on this planet but here.
It’s when she picks up the cadaver’s hand and snaps one of the bones in the fingers that was curled into a fist that all thought of her as a viable love interest goes flying out the window.
“I never felt the need to know how sausage was made,” I say. “And now I realize I never wanted to know how funerals are made either.”
More bone snapping.
I turn my head.
“So how’s a pretty girl like you wind up in a place like this?”
“Well,” she says between snaps and cuts and draining sounds, “when I was a kid, my aunt gave me a book about ancient Egypt. Mostly, the book was about the ancient Egyptians and their connection with their dead. Embalming, reverence for the deceased, the afterlife, all of that. And, well, for whatever reason, I became fascinated with it. Then I stayed fascinated with it.”
“So what you’re saying is that ever since you were a little girl you’ve always wanted to be an undertaker?”
“Yep.”
“That may be the scariest thing I’ve ever heard.”
She laughs. And her laugh is light and vibrant. It’s a bluebird singing the aria of an entire universe trapped inside its small, delicate chest.
“I’ve never seen anyone react quite like you to the embalming process before,” Kelly says.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say as I run my hand over the wall behind me, lovingly. Because, at this particular moment, this wall is the only thing in the world holding me up. How can I not love it the way I do?
Another bone snaps.
I close my eyes. I try to will myself away. There are images coming up inside my mind that I don’t particularly care to be a part of and they won’t go away—a woman in a hospital dying, my father’s chair sitting empty in front of a television that goes unwatched but still plays his favorite movie.
My legs tremble. They want to run but they’re too weak. They want to collapse but they’re frozen stiff. Everything inside of me is pushing and pulling at every other part of me. It’s all on the verge of exploding and imploding.
I want to call out for The Kid. I don’t know why, but if he were here now, I think I could get through all of this. It’s now that I understand his threat. Imaginary or not, there’s something about The Kid. There’s something about the fact that I’m the only one who can see him. There’s something about the things that he makes me think about. He’s a part of me and if he’s not here I can’t really connect with myself.
“Recite a poem for me,” Kelly says.
“What?”
It’s enough of an odd request that it gets me to open my eyes.
“Tonight, during the reading, you said that you used to be into poetry,” Kelly continues. “Recite something for me. People still do that type of thing, don’t they? Maybe it’ll help distract you.”
She doesn’t stop working as she makes the suggestion. Nope. She’s still in that cadaver literally up to her elbow. But she is also waiting for me. Patiently. Maybe even caringly. This woman, whom I only just met, whose last name I still don’t know, seems to care about me. When I’m not even sure I care about myself.
How very amazing.
I search for a poem and find none.
“I seem to be drawing a blank,” I say just as Kelly snaps another finger. I expect her to let me off the hook, but she doesn’t. She only flashes me a smile and then continues working, continues waiting, continues believing in me and my ability to think up something that will distract me from the terror I feel inside. She believes I can save myself if I try hard enough. She believes I can be me, here, now.
I’m not sure anyone else has ever really believed that about me before.
And then I hear the sound of a heart monitor beeping. It’s very soft, very far away. But I hear it. That digital pulse singing like some fairy-tale bird that has fallen in love with a metronome.
. . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .
The sound gets under my skin. All I can do to calm it is pace back and forth. But even that’s not helping. The sound wells up inside of me.
. . . beep . . . beep . . . beep . . .
I look over at the cadaver again. It’s not the middle-aged man. It’s someone else. A woman. A beautiful, delicate woman that I don’t want to recognize. Her from the outdoor restaurant earlier. My mother, perhaps.
All of a sudden, the poem is there:
“That we were frightened by your death—no . . . it is that your harsh death darkly interrupted us, divided what-had-been from what-would-be: that was our concern; coming to terms with it will accompany everything we do: Today; tomorrow. Again and again. You have gone on. . . . But you were frightened too.”
I didn’t write that poem. But, then again, none of us ever do.
I look over at Kelly. She’s staring at me. I can’t tell what her expression is. And since I can’t tell what her expression is, I can’t bear to look at her, so I look away. And that’s when I see it.
On one of the gurneys behind her, dangling out from beneath a large, white sheet, is a small, black hand. It’s the darkness of the hand that catches my attention. It’s impossibly black. As if it has captured the pigment of an entire nation.
“Who’s that?” I ask.
Kelly’s eyes follow mine. “Nobody,” she says. She walks over and adjusts the sheet to cover the hand.
But I know what I saw. I walk up to the gurney and reach for the sheet.
“Stop,” Kelly says.
“Why?”
“Th
e rules,” she says. Then: “Plus . . . you don’t want to see that.”
I make sure to move before she can stop me. I pull the sheet off.
There, lying on the gurney, is The Kid.
He looks smaller. Blacker, if that’s possible. But his skin is tinged with some other hue. But I can look at the skin only for a moment before the horror of it all catches me.
Bullet holes. Eight of them, blooming through The Kid like some macabre flowers. Chest, legs, arms, head. He is covered by this terrible wreath.
“Kid?” I whisper.
Kelly covers the body of The Kid. “I’m sorry you saw that,” she says.
“What happened to him?”
“You haven’t heard?” Kelly asks. “It’s all over the news. The shooting. This is the kid from the shooting.”
And now I remember the talk of the shooting. The talk of some kid somewhere who caught the wrong end of a bullet. The talk of the police. The talk of excessive force. The talk of Black lives mattering, and Blue Lives mattering, and All Lives mattering. Now I remember the pundits and politicians. The talk show hosts and celebrities. The presence of this always. Now I remember all the screaming, and crying, and rallying, and arguing, and the memes and the thoughts and prayers, and the talks of regulation and investigation, and the bumper stickers, and gun rights laws. Now I remember it all.
I can remember all of that, but I can’t remember actually seeing The Kid in any of the noise. I can’t even remember his name. Isn’t that strange? I’m sure someone must have said his name at some point in all of those reports. I’m sure he must have been a hashtag. A t-shirt. A rallying cry. I’m sure the Black bodies from before must have called out his name but I can’t say exactly which belongs to The Kid.
In his death, he’s just The Kid.
“Are you okay?” Kelly asks.
All I can do is leave. So I do. I run out of the room without looking back.
I race out of the funeral home and into Renny’s car.
“Hotel,” I say.
“What about your lady friend?” Renny asks.
“Take me to the hotel. Please, Renny.”
