Dead Body Language

by Penny Warner

  “And French isn’t an undertaker anymore. He’s a Funeral Designer. The loved ones, as we like to call them, ride in coaches or professional cars, not hearses.” She actually shuddered when she said that last word. It was beginning to sound a little like Brave New World.

  “Matthew, the man over there assisting the client with the ‘Executive Office’ casket? He’s not a cemetery salesman, he’s a Memorial Counselor. We like to think the bereaved overcome their grief more easily when we use less emotionally charged terms.”

  I pointed to a bouquet of flowers. “Don’t tell me—a floral memory, right?”

  “Close! A Floral Tribute.” She held her hand over one side of her mouth and huddled close.

  “Want to know one of my favorites?” She smiled a naughty kind of smile, like she was about to say something really shocking. “You know what they call cremated ashes now?”

  I shook my head, mimicking her naughty smile.

  “Cremains! ‘Cremation’ and ‘remains’ combined into ‘cremains.’ Isn’t that cute?”

  Cute.

  Taking my hand, Celeste led me out of the Selection Room and into the Reposing Room, where a current loved one was reposing on a brown velvet-covered mattress in a dark mahogany casket. The room smelled of fresh pine needles. Floral Tributes.

  “Is Lacy here somewhere?” I looked around, trying to bring the conversation to the matter at hand.

  “We’re getting there. But first, let me show you our selections. According to Mortuary Management, Americans spend more on funerals than on dentists, police protection, or even higher education. We want to offer our customers the best in quality and value—with innerspring mattresses, lead-coated steel caskets, and handmade fashions available in sixty color shades. Each casket is fully lined, with a Permaseal rubber gasket to prevent air seepage and, well, you know—to keep critters from getting in. And we only use Natur-Glo Products—the ultimate in cosmetic embalming.”

  I always thought knowledge was a good thing. But there were some things you could know too much about.

  We passed by a loved one who looked like he belonged in Madame Tussaud’s Chamber of Horrors. I felt myself drawn to look at him in a sort of peek-between-your-fingers kind of way.

  The heavy layer of face makeup gave his skin a deeply tanned look, in contrast to his pale arms crossed and resting on his chest. Gold rings decorated each cold finger of both perfectly manicured hands. His lightly pinked mouth was drawn up in a mysterious smile, as if he were holding a humorous secret between his lips. One eye was closed and peaceful, the other looked as if it were trying to open, with a small slit between the lids.

  And his hair was perfect.

  “That’s Leonard Swec, president of the Elks Club. You remember him? He died Sunday. Heart attack. The funeral’s tomorrow.”

  “Is Lacy here, too?” I tried again.

  “Come with me.”

  I followed Celeste to the Calcination Room, where a “kindlier heat” would turn the loved ones into a kindlier ash. I’d offer a nice description of this room but I wasn’t doing a whole lot of intensive eyeballing. Suffice it to say, the cremain-maker was big, metallic, and hot.

  “But aren’t people in mourning particularly vulnerable to guilt-buying at a time like this?” I said, trying to crack the facade a little.

  “To tell you the truth, we’ve found—and Mortuary Management will back me up on this—the bereaved need to be steered toward those higher-priced caskets to assist in the guilt therapy. Yes, it’s true, they often can’t make those on-the-spot decisions as clearly as they might. But that’s why we’re here—to help them, by offering the best quality for their money. We have products and services for all budgets.”

  I glanced around, then wished I hadn’t. I didn’t know which was worse—watching her lips describe the details of the inner sanctum or seeing something that would give me nightmares for years to come. I looked back at Celeste.

  “… those who are on a lower or fixed income can get a reasonable casket and services for a nominal fee, around two thousand dollars. But most people want the best for their loved ones, with all the extras. Like a burial vault. Some cemeteries insist on them, in case the casket disintegrates and the whole thing caves in.” She shuddered. It was a pleasant mental picture.

  “Anyway, there’s a lot that goes into this. You have to consider flowers, outfits, clergy, honorarium, musicians, soloist, professional cards, guest book, memory cards, and cemetery maintenance charges. Some spend as much as twenty thousand dollars or more.”

  It was my turn to shudder. “God, that’s a lot of money to spend on relieving guilt. And it’s not the kind of product where you can get your money back in ten days if you’re not satisfied, is it? Did Lacy spend that much?” I was determined to bring the conversation around.

  “That’s why we’re developing more preneed memorial estates for people—future grave sites that can be paid for over time and created from your own personal selections. You’d be surprised how many people nowadays want to choose the colors they’ll be wearing for eternity. Lacy certainly did.”

  I wanted to laugh, but she looked so serious, I decided to stifle it. I knew I wouldn’t want to be caught dead wearing puce when everyone else was wearing aquamarine that season.

  “Come on. I’ll take you to the Replenishing Room where we create the Beautiful Memory Picture.”

  “What’s that? Snapshots of former customers?”

  Celeste giggled like a high school girl. “Oh, no, silly. It’s where they embalm the body.”

  I felt my breakfast do a body slam and wondered what I was thinking when I decided to come here.

  “And you can get a peek at Lacy. I think you’ll be surprised at how she turned out.”

  I couldn’t wait.

  But I’d have to. At that moment some guy in a lab coat burst into the room yelling, “Where the hell is it?”

  “Where’s what?” Celeste asked.

  The man in the white lab coat, jeans, plastic gloves, and Dr. Scholl’s looked so pale he could have benefited from a little shot of Natur-Glo embalming fluid. The hip embalmer looked at me, then spoke to Celeste.

  “Could I see you in the hall, privately?”

  Little did he know, if he just turned his head, I wouldn’t hear a word he said.

  Celeste gave me a tilted smile. “Why don’t you wait over there by the Preservation Room for a minute Connor while I talk with Charlie. You can’t go in—no one’s allowed except the dermasurgeons—the embalmers. But you can see pretty well from the window. French had it installed just for tours.”

  I clicked off the tape recorder and bravely moved over to the window while Celeste and Charlie ducked into a room next door. I glanced down the hallway—no one coming. I pushed open the door, remembering what my teacher once said: “Connor, you never listen.” Duh.

  It’s the smell that really gets you. Takes you right back to seventh-grade biology class. The frog-pithing lesson. I got a major whiff opening the door. Definitely medicinal. Formaldehyde? Kindergarten paste? A vodka gimlet? I backed up, closed the door, and returned to the viewing window where, unfortunately, I could still see just fine.

  The room was tiled, with lots of stainless steel, porcelain, and sterile-looking stuff. It reminded me of the surgery unit at the hospital where I’d had my ear-tube surgery. I recognized a number of instruments—scalpels, scissors, augers, forceps, clamps, needles, pumps, tubes, bowls, and basins—and saw a bunch I couldn’t identify.

  But that was no pithed frog lying there on the steel table. It was a pithed stiff.

  I jumped when I felt a tap on the shoulder.

  “Sorry about that,” Celeste said. “It’s always something around here. So how do you like the Preservation Room?”

  “Uh …” was all I managed to get out. I fumbled through my backpack for the tape recorder and switched it back on.

  “This is where the loved one is transformed from a lifeless body to a Beautiful Memory Picture. T
he whole process takes about three hours to perform: spraying, slicing, piercing, pickling, trussing, trimming, creaming, waxing, painting, rouging, and, of course, dressing.” Each time Celeste named a process, a razor-sharp painted fingernail flicked to attention.

  She continued with rehearsed enthusiasm, as if she were a perky guide on her 150th winery tour. She moved into autopilot for the remaining details.

  “Next they add all kinds of fluids, sprays, pastes, oils, powders, and creams to fix, soften, shrink, or distend the tissue. Embalming is really a restorative art.”

  Distending tissue a restorative art? Where had I been? I’d once read in a competitor’s newspaper ad that “any high school graduate can learn to embalm in sixty days or your money back.”

  “Do you give this tour to everyone?” I said, wondering what the dropout rate was.

  “Oh, no. Mainly other morticians from across the country who want to see French’s state-of-the-art setup.”

  Celeste went on to list more fascinating procedures. My eyes blurred as she spoke. I had a choice of looking through that too-revealing window or watching her blather on about fluids, pumps, and God knows what. I tried to think about something else, anything else. If I didn’t concentrare on some sort of distraction, my stomach contractions would be interrupting her speech at any moment.

  “And that’s about it. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

  “You sure know an awful lot about the mortuary business, Celeste. Did you have to learn all this for the job?”

  “No, no. I learned most of this on my own.”

  “Does every dead … I mean, every loved one have to go through embalming?” I asked, not really sure I cared to know.

  At that moment, Sluice Jackson came shuffling down the hallway, halfheartedly pushing a broom.

  “Sluice! Not now!” She seemed to speak insistently, then changed her demeanor. “Wait until this evening, please. Go back out to the garden and finish your work.”

  Sluice gave her a watery-eyed look. “I din’t take it. It wern’t me. I—”

  “Sluice, get back to work!” Celeste interrupted.

  He turned around and shuffled down the hall, mumbling on.

  “He’s a lost soul, poor guy. We try to keep him busy, but he’s still a few nuggets short of a mother lode, if you know what I mean. I’m afraid we’re going to have to get someone else to do the backhoeing soon. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes. Embalming the body—”

  “What’s missing?” I asked, veering her from continuing her lecture. I was suddenly curious about her urgent conference with the Charlie guy. What could be missing from a mortuary? “A body?” I said boldly.

  Celeste giggled. “Heavens, no! Something from the embalming room. I’m sure it’s just misplaced. Sluice probably went in there and, you know … Anyway, as I was saying. Embalming the body is not required by law or anything. It just makes the loved one more presentable for viewing. Look over there. See that man’s mouth that Charlie’s working on now?”

  I looked in the general vicinity of the body lying on the steel table and found a nice shiny screw to stare at instead of the man’s blank, empty face.

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  “His mouth has actually been sewn shut with a needle and thread. The corners are slightly raised to give him the appearance of peace and contentment. Isn’t that neat?” I gave her a tight smile, feeling like my own mouth had been sewn shut.

  She went on relentlessly. “Now the eyes, they’re cemented shut and covered with flesh-tinted eye caps. Then the face is creamed to prevent skin burns caused by leakage of the chemicals.”

  I pulled my lips apart to test them. They still worked. But I’d somehow lost the power of speech. All I could do was nod now and then. She thought I meant for her to continue.

  “See that long skinny thing over there that looks like a giant ice pick? That’s called a trocar. It’s really a hollow needle the dermasurgeon uses to make an incision in the body so they can drain the blood.”

  We were having some fun now. I began some slow deep breathing to calm the uprising in the hull.

  “Then the embalming fluid is pumped in through the arteries with that machine over there.”

  My morning toast curled into a solid ball of dough. I started a subtle abdominal massage as she continued.

  “The embalming solution is made from dye, perfume, formaldehyde, glycerin, borax, phenol, alcohol, and water. Isn’t that something? They use anywhere from three to six gallons, depending on the size of the person. That guy looks like about a fiver.”

  Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out …

  “Once the embalming is finished, we keep him on ice, so to speak, for about eight to ten hours, until the tissues become firm and dry. Then he goes next door to Restoration. That’s where they use plaster and waxes and paints to fill and cover bad features or to repair damaged limbs. Come on, I’ll show you my favorite part.”

  I couldn’t wait. I followed her to the Beautiful Memory Room. Inside was a woman reclining on a table looking as if she were about to rise from a refreshing nap. But I knew better.

  Another woman, with less color in her face than in the deceased’s, was back-combing the peaceful woman’s hair.

  “This is where I used to work before I got into grief counseling. I was a desairologist. That’s a fancy word for hairstylist to the dead. Now you talk about your problem hair. We had to deal with really bad hair days.” She rolled her eyes and adjusted her own puffy ’do.

  “That’s Lacy. How do you like her?”

  I took another look. “I didn’t even recognize her! She looks so different!”

  “The magic of Memory Kingdom. She’s already had her manicure and makeup application. Didn’t Jason make her look so much younger? After her hair’s done, they’ll add the final touches, such as a favorite stuffed animal, a book of poetry, a locket, a special memento, whatever the family wants.”

  I glanced at Lacy and wondered why the sheriff had already released the body.

  “What did Lacy’s family want?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t have any family. But she had mentioned a few things to me, in the event she should pass away. So I’ve included them.”

  “Like what?”

  “Her gold jewelry collection and a special locket. Well, now, that’s about it. How about lunch?”

  I’d made plans to never eat again, and politely declined the invitation, citing urgent newspaper business. I snapped off the recorder and thanked her for the tour, promising it would make a great story on the new, improved mortuary of tomorrow. Then I asked, “Celeste, do you know a woman named Risa Longo? Her name was written on the back of a Memory Kingdom business card that Lacy had with her when she died.”

  Celeste paused for a moment, looked away, then shook her curls. “Don’t think so, but she might have stopped in for information or something.”

  “Did Lacy ever say anything about her, mention her name? Did she ever visit the mortuary in Whiskey Slide?”

  “Not that I can remember. We had some long talks during those days after Reuben died. I counseled her quite a lot. But I don’t think that name came up.”

  “What did you talk about with her?” I asked.

  Celeste tilted her head. “I can’t really say much about that, you know. Professional confidentiality.”

  Kind of an oxymoron to think a former hairdresser keeps her mouth shut at times.

  “But let me know about your aunt. And the article!”

  “I sure will.” I thanked Celeste for her time and left the house of the dead for some fresh air.

  I drove back to my office, trying to settle my stomach as I wondered about the connection Lacy Penzance had to the mortuary. Things weren’t piecing together at all, and I was wasting a lot of time better spent at the paper. I wanted the story—for myself and for the newspaper—but I was running behind on my deadline. And I had a lot of other work to do.

  I got into the office by one o’clock, changed into my 501�
��s and rugby shirt, and checked the messages taken by Miah, who was apparently out to lunch. There was one from Sheriff Mercer, wondering when he should stop by to check out my “disturbed” diner. One from a group of concerned citizens called TOAD—Those Opposed to Amphibian Destruction—demanding an end to “frog exploitation.” And three from Dan Smith since I’d left him this morning. No return number. But I wouldn’t have been able to call him anyway.

  The sheriff was out on a call when I phoned. I left a message for him through Mickey Arnold on the TTY. The deputy typed blessedly quickly, probably because he didn’t bother with capitals and punctuation. In an attempt to sound more official, he used a vocabulary a little beyond his grasp. “Rendezvous.” Couldn’t he just have said “date” when he asked me to the Frog Jubilee Dance? I keyed off before giving him a reply. Chicken.

  I tossed the message from TOAD into the trash and picked up the three messages from Dan Smith. I checked my watch. Lacy Penzance’s funeral was set for four P.M. I’d have just enough time to get home, shower and change, swallow a bottle of Pepto, feed Casper, check my mail—to see if it had been tampered with—and find just the right thing to wear for the somber occasion.

  This was one funeral I wouldn’t miss. Other than my own, of course.

  I’m not big on funerals. I’ve only been to one, when I was thirteen and my grandfather died. It was open casket and I got my first glimpse of a dead body. He looked like a delicate porcelain doll, heavy on the rouge, and not like himself at all. Everyone was crying, including my dad. I’d never seen him cry before. I decided then that I didn’t want to have a funeral if it was going to make everyone so upset.

  But solemn, depressing funerals were becoming a thing of the past, according to Celeste.

  The event at the Memory Kingdom Memorial Park was shaping up to be more like a party than a burial ceremony. Of course, no one was drunk or laughing too loud or trying to pick up a date, as they might have been at a typical party.