by Jon Bauer
Her body smells clean and smooth. My head in near her shoulder but frightened to burrow right into that neck — the sounds of activity beginning outside. Me lying here, never closer to her even though she’s never been further away. The room still and quiet and restful, the pictures of family on the walls — sunlit sunshine days shining out from the frames, full of airborne confetti and smiles and teeth. The captured moments we put up to make life look comprehensible. Palatable. Celebrated.
I lie here with her in this certain type of silence, an unfamiliar quiet inside me now too. Only the occasional car and voice outside puncturing the sense that the world has stopped.
Eventually I go downstairs and out into the back garden, dropping her soiled clothes on the grass. I come back from the front dragging hedge debris with me, dumping it in a heap next to her wet clothes, then going back for more hedge.
When I’ve finished there’s a trail of leaves from the front garden to the back. I pile it all up then get an old, empty cardboard box of fertiliser from the shed and tear it into strips still greasy from the chemicals. Chemicals which glow blue-green when I light them.
The hedge won’t go up though, it just pops and smokes so I’m back in the shed kicking around until I find a faded red petrol can with a little left inside it for the lawnmower. The vodka making me stagger and stumble.
I douse the bonfire then add the best part of a bottle of olive oil from the kitchen to slow it down. A swig from the vodka then I empty that on too, disgusted at the taste and my drinking and hiding.
I take a stick from the pile and light the petrol and oil mixture covering the end of it — chuck it on and whoof! I smile at that. Start adding the stolen pictures of the families and brides and couples, their faces burning slowly away and the fake gold on the frames peeling off in a green flame. Fool’s gold, like family is.
I use another stick to pick Mum’s wet clothes up, putting them on the fire where they hiss and complain. Another link with her going. Her slipper smoking on top of it all.
As the fire starts to struggle I head indoors looking for more to burn. Gathering up our real family pictures — the one of Robert in those orange overalls. Everyone loves this picture, from that day he had — the one in the video. I grab the photo of me and my new bike on the front path. Me and my first day at school. Broken Robert strapped into his chair, chocolate cake all over his mouth. The other Robert, dressed in his new school uniform on his birthday, Mum’s arm around him and both their heads chopped off. That picture of Dad doting on Mum while she’s just looking brightly, confidently into the camera lens. And the one of us at the photographer’s, that eight-year-old in his scratchiest clothes, a swirly oil backdrop behind him.
I touch a blackened finger to his face. That boy is running around inside me somewhere still, his head comically oversized for his body. He’s the little fuse in our family that snapped. The most sensitive part of the circuitry, so that the whole family stopped working afterwards. He was the only one expressing that which was otherwise unexpressed in the family. So that he is our family’s anger. Its brokenness. Its neglect.
What am I then?
And I don’t know. Except that I’m all that’s left.
I get out of my wet clothes and put them on the fire too. The morning sun feeling kind on my skin but I can only think that she can’t feel it. That she’ll never see another dawn. She can’t smell this smoke, the way it takes me back to autumnal Sundays and sweaters and dusk. Dad sweeping leaves then using his hand along with the rake to dump them on the fire, almost choking it out. Having to stagger away from the smoke, his cheeks puffed out, eyes clamped shut. Swearing under his breath, laughing. The sound of dishes clattering in the sink and the feel of Monday morning and school already in my stomach.
I went through so much of childhood with that Sunday night stomach.
The shed windows are looking at me, a smudge in the dust from where Mum bumped her head the other day looking up at the clouds I was pointing to.
That’s it now then, just the smudges the living leave behind.
I lie back on the grass, out here under our patch of sky, a wispy cloud up there, right in the top of the blue, bumping space maybe. It looks like bone seen on an x-ray. I watch it getting whittled slowly away as it heads east, and I’m trying to make something out of the shape before it’s gone. The way Robert would. The way he did.
She’ll never see another cloud.
27
The sunshine tells me how irrelevant my loss is. Not a cloud in the sky. I sit and smoke an acrid cigarette while spotty young undertakers prepare to take her away. Men who look like they should be loitering in snooker halls or where drugs are sold. They tell me about the fire at the chemical plant, like it’d be big news to me on a day like today.
‘I know, I was up.’
They nod in understanding. Of course, their faces say.
We wait for the doctor to come and tell me what I already know. While he’s inside, just another day’s work for him, the men smoke cigarettes. Standing there on the pavement like beacons of death, announcing it to the street with their cheap suits and black ties, knots tied narrow and small — taken off over the head at the end of the day, never undone.
The doctor comes out the house looking like he only stopped by to pick up cigarettes and milk. He tells me how to get the proper death certificate, then tears off a form he’s filled. The undertakers get a copy from him, the pink. I get the blue. The doctor keeps the white, heads off in his swish car and the death men go indoors with a trolley and a bag.
I wait out the back, poking at the fire.
‘Excuse me, would you like the rock and the video tape to go with her?’
I nod and he backs away before he turns, goes inside again.
I’ve searched high and low for her will but she’s not done me that courtesy.
In the shed I stand looking up at the bike, then lift it down, dislodging dust that gets in my eyes, floats in the sunlight. I carry the bike out and hold it ceremoniously over my head, a noise escaping me as I chuck it on the fire, sparks flying up.
I hear a car door slam, and one of the almost-flat bicycle tyres lets out a lacklustre pop.
I walk round the side of the house as one of the men is returning from the van, Mum in there on her back, in a bag, looking up at nothing.
I’m presented with a clipboard, a multilayered pad of printed paper on it, the sheet already completed in advance so I don’t have to wait too long. Even these men have finessed the art of tiptoeing around grief. Their finesse needed all the more because of how unpractised their customers are. Every day these men work with people who are navigating something furthest from everyday.
We stand by the van and I feel like it’s vibrating or humming slightly. An electric fence. I sign something and one of them asks me where she was when she passed. He says it like that, passed. Like it’s a test.
‘In bed.’ As if it’s any of their business.
He gives me the pink then puts the pad in the car and quietly shuts the door, comes back.
‘It’s just that she has water in her,’ he says, the smell of cigarettes coming off him. Both of them eating me with their eyes.
‘Is there something else you need me to sign?’
One of them breaks the silence eventually.
‘No, that’s everything thank you, sir.’
Sir.
‘Sorry again for your loss,’ the other says as the van’s suspension creaks under the weight of them getting in. ‘We’ll be in touch regarding your funeral wishes.’
Two slams, fractionally out of time. Maybe in a year or so those will happen in unison. They’ll have worked together long enough then, even their doors will be in time.
The engine starts and I jump, a black cloud coming out the exhaust, the engine clattering under the polished bonnet. I watch as she moves away, the driver’s face getting bigger for a second as he leans into the side mirror to get a look at me.
I watch her go.
The shrinking van climbing away up Hawke Street Hill, its indicator coming on at the top. They’ve probably already got the radio on. Nobody in the traffic knowing there’s a dead body among them. The sun shining. My mum and all that water wobbling around in the back.
I head for the house but can only face the back garden, plonking myself down by the fire, taking off my t-shirt, letting the sun and embers warm my skin. The hedges slowly giving up their moisture and burning, a low-lying wet smoke cloaking the lawn. The bike charred but holding its shape.
My mobile phone wakes me up with its ringing in my pocket. It takes me a moment to work out where I am, having passed out last night in my old sleeping bag, in the shed. I rummage for the phone in case it’s Patricia but it’s someone from the undertaker’s, phoning from the front door.
The fire’s still smoking, the bike blackened now in the wreckage, its spokes popped off the rim, just a sticky stump left where the saddle was.
I don’t invite the undertaker in but leave him outside in his sombre suit while I venture into the house and put the kettle on, rinse my face in the kitchen sink, flatten my hair and come back out the front with two chairs from the dining table, set us up in the front garden, feeling guilty for having Mum’s good chairs outside. Cups of tea steaming up at us.
Without a will I have to guess. I opt for cremation, scatter her with Dad and Robert. I’m betting more women are cremated than men. One last vanity. Better to quickly burn than slowly rot.
I’m still sitting here staring into space, an empty chair in front of me and the undertaker’s untouched mug of cold tea at a jaunty angle on the grass when a police car pulls up.
I finalise the joint I shouldn’t be rolling, tapping its end repeatedly on my fingernail to pack down the contents. The police door opens, I slip my creation into my shirt pocket and cross my legs. Uncross them.
A guy in a suit gets out and locks the car, coming towards me with his face in this shape. He’s clean-cut, in his forties, nice-looking and knows it. A plain-clothed shark.
He checks the number on our gate but comes through where the hedges used to be, stepping over the stumps and looking back at them in that exaggerated way. Calling me mister so he can pretend he’s being respectful even though the power is all his.
He doesn’t shake my hand, shows me his ID which I don’t focus on, only gaze at it like it’s an exam and I just turned the paper over.
‘Is there a reason why you didn’t respond to my telephone messages?’
‘I’ve been ignoring the answering machine.’
He gives a nod of having understood more than I’ve said. ‘Would you prefer some privacy, perhaps if we go inside?’
I shake my head.
‘Mind if I sit then?’ he says and sits.
‘Cup of tea?’ I say, pointing at the undertaker’s leftovers.
The detective looks at me then bends down and picks up the mug, finger and thumb, puts it where he can’t knock it over. He wouldn’t want to blow his image.
‘First of all,’ he says. Here we go, my insides feeling like someone just stuck a vacuum cleaner up my arse and switched it on. ‘I want to offer my sympathy at this difficult time.’
‘Fine. What’s this about?’
His suit is this rich blue. He looks very good. I don’t. I adjust my posture again, stand enough to pull my trousers up. He opens his little book. Cops love props. A posh pen appears from his inside jacket pocket.
Click-click.
‘Just a few questions about the circumstances of your mother’s death, I’m afraid. Procedural things in most cases, but you understand we have to do it. Probably nothing to worry about.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘There’s just some inconsistencies we need to iron out.’
‘Terminal cancer must be among your tougher cases to crack.’
He puts out a placating hand, manicured nails. ‘Before you say anything I have to inform you …’
While he’s doing that official, right-to-legal-representation speech, I have all these conflicts going off inside me. Part of me isn’t scared — Mum’s dead and who gives a stuff what the government or the police or procedure is. Nothing trumps death, it’s the lowest common denominator.
Part of me is terrified.
‘I’m aware your mother had cancer but am I right in saying you told the undertakers she died in bed?’
‘No.’
He fidgets forward on his seat, looks at me, waiting.
‘You think I killed a dead woman, officer?’
‘We’re not at the accusation stage. She appears to have water in her. Reason enough to ask some preliminary questions.’ He pauses, gives me a look. ‘Let’s just get the facts down, shall we, try not to cross any unnecessary bridges? The autopsy should clear up any confusion. If there’s water in the lungs then …’ I could bury him in the back garden. Take him out back and beat his head in with the shovel, bloody up his sharp blue suit. Or chuck him on the fire along with that bike.
‘I haven’t agreed to an autopsy, nobody said anything about an autopsy. She had brain cancer.’ My body goes to stand me up but I turn it into a fidget, straighten out my trousers again — sit back, cross my legs.
He watches this then takes out a form, almost a conjurer’s flourish in the gesture, his voice all monotone again. ‘I’m obliged to inform you that you do not have to sign this form but if you refuse an autopsy we’ll be forced to lodge a request through the courts which will almost certainly be granted but usually also necessitate a delay to the burial of your relative and result …’ I could drown him in the bath ‘… increased sentence in the event that a prosecution were to proceed. Subject to a conviction. The delay can also make it more difficult for the autopsy to deliver a clear picture of the cause of death, which could cloud any resultant criminal proceedings. I’m obliged to remind you that you are under caution but that you have the right …’
I look at him, the feelings sloshing in my belly, distracting me. Meanwhile he’s got the form held out to me on top of his closed book, the pen offered in his other hand.
I leave it all dangling there in the space between us, my arms folding. ‘It doesn’t much sound like I don’t have to sign this form.’
His gaze never wavers. ‘You aren’t accused of anything. This is not yet a criminal investigation. But if I were in your position I’d sign it, answer some questions and I’m sure we can have everything settled. I’m not here to make this difficult time more arduous. Prosecutions are rare but we have to go through the process.’
He puts the form down on the grass beside him and plonks his ID on it to keep it there — hangs on to his little book. ‘We’ll leave the autopsy to one side for a second, shall we? Focus on the events around your mother’s passing. Were you with her when it happened?’
No, I wasn’t. I was on the phone like a coward. I left her in her final moment of need. ‘Yes.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Yes.’ I stuff my scratched-up hands in my pockets, the pain making me wince.
‘And where was she at the time?’
‘In the kitchen, with Professor Plum.’
He presses the button on his pen once to retract the nib, taps it gently on his lips. Nice lips. I take out the little joint and tamp it down on my nail again. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
He shakes his head, waiting during the little opera of my lighting it. I struggle to do it smoothly, then put the photographer’s lighter away and blow the smoke over my shoulder but the breeze brings it back past me and into his face. He lifts his nose a fraction, taking in the aroma. I look at him, my heart kinking in my chest — take another drag, wipe nothing from my trousers, recline back in my chair, spellbound by my own petulant stupidity.
He gazes at me for a while. ‘If you could explain the events immediately leading up to your mother’s death and the actual moment. Leave nothing out.’
I flick the ash, watch it fall. ‘I’d been out.’
‘With?’
&nb
sp; ‘Do we have to involve her?’
‘Your best bet is to tell me all the facts.’
‘You can come back for that after the autopsy, can’t you. You don’t have anything until after the autopsy.’
‘And if you have nothing to hide …’
‘I came home, about one-ish, the chemical plant was ablaze — arson?’ He shrugs in reply. ‘Mum was on the kitchen floor, throwing up.’ I take a drag and don’t bother trying to keep the smoke from him. He uses a hand to waft it away, a vein showing up at his temple and for some reason the sight of it calms me a little. ‘I called an ambulance but while I —’
He looks up from his notebook. ‘You called an ambulance?’
‘I rang them but she, while I was on the phone …’ My body tries to stand me up again.
‘Did you call from your home number or a mobile?’
‘Home.’
‘I’ve got that, haven’t I.’ He’s rifling through his book, a bit flustered now.
‘You told me you left a message.’
‘Yes. Good. What time would this have been approximately, the ambulance.’
‘Dunno.’
‘Well, was it soon after you arrived home?’
‘Sorry, I was drunk.’
‘And stoned?’
I smile confidently at him but a blush rains on my parade. I stub out the joint prematurely, put it in my pocket so he can’t collect it as evidence. He watches this, pleased.
‘Mr Rossiter and’ — he consults his book — ‘Mr Marchant say they collected her body from upstairs in her bedroom. How did her body come to be upstairs if she died in the kitchen?’
It sounds funny hearing that those men are a mister and have a surname. I expect them to be Kev and Jonno or something — a squalid apartment and a pregnant, smoking wife each.
‘I carried her upstairs and washed her in the bath. I didn’t want her buried in a mess. I know that’s illegal.’ I offer him my wrists. ‘You better take me away, officer.’
‘It’s detective.’ He shuts his book and does that long blink. ‘There are certain options available to me in this situation. The law empowers me to make certain judgements. You might want to remember that. I could take you into custody pending the autopsy. I’m pretty confident your mum drowned, and on that basis I could delay the …’ His lips are moving but all I can hear is the tinnitus of panic. Everything falling away inside me at the image of those bubbles coming out her mouth. The way I had to keep closing her eyes ‘… that this is a bad time for you, of course, I’m prepared to give you some leeway but my patience isn’t endless.’
