Teri answered in her quick, light way. “Mondays and Thursdays,” she said. She laughed, a nickering sound such as a young horse might make, and said that Veronica had begun tracking bright objects with her eyes the week before, at which time I understood that Veronica wasn’t like other children. I remembered how Steve had lifted her hand on the porch to make her wave.
Patrick, ever curious about any deviation from the norm, began at once to quiz Steve and Teri concerning Veronica’s disabilities, asking if she could walk, talk, sit up, feed herself, and so forth. The answer to each question was no. Was the condition genetic, Patrick wanted to know. Yes. Though Mindy had been spared, the disorder had played a role in Jody’s early death and had appeared full-blown in Veronica. She had seizures, sometimes a dozen a day, sometimes none. Doctors had advised them against having more children.
“We thought she was deaf for a long time,” Teri said, “but last week she turned her head when I dropped a pan on the kitchen floor.” She gave another whinnying laugh and added, “The doctor thinks she might eventually get back fifty percent of her hearing.” Patrick didn’t question how one could get back something she had never lost, that had simply been undetected.
Steve and Teri were glad to be relocating to Edison Street—“a real neighborhood,” as they put it. They had left a trailer park out off Highway 82, a place nicknamed Honeymoon Hole. “Our honeymoon stretched out to almost twenty years,” Steve said. He knew he had his work cut out for him, buying a fixer-upper like the one across the street, but it was the only way they could “swing the homeowner thing,” he said. They had big plans to “spruce it up,” but it would have to be “slow going because of time and money.” No doubt he wanted to make it clear to Patrick that the landscaping and new driveway wouldn’t be happening next week.
Before they left on Friday night, Teri thanked Rachel again for helping her out “in a pinch” earlier that day. What did she mean, Patrick wanted to know. “Oh, she didn’t tell you?” Teri said. “She kept Veronica for me today when I had to run over to see about something at Mindy’s school. That was nice enough, but then she turned around and asked us over for apple cobbler, too.”
Perhaps the false alarm had related to Mindy somehow, but no further details were offered, and Steve and Teri left shortly after. Patrick closed the door behind them and said, “That Steve sure is a talker. Nice guy.” I heard no reply from Rachel. I wondered if she knew how much Patrick talked before she married him. Or maybe he didn’t always talk so much. Maybe when they were first married she had been the talker. Maybe he had begun filling the void when she fell silent.
She came to my door and knocked a few minutes after they had left. “Aunt Sophie? I forgot to come get your dessert dish. Are you still up?” She must have wondered why I was sitting in my chair staring at the television with the sound muted. Or maybe she didn’t wonder. Maybe Rachel’s thinking is consumed with surviving each day. Perhaps there is no surplus to expend on wondering about an old woman watching television with no sound.
The rain is falling more heavily now. Several more cars have pulled into the parking lot of Wagner’s Mortuary. From the window where I sit, Edison Street looks like an old photograph, blurred by a photographer’s shaky hand and faded over time.
Chapter 6
Vowing More Than the Perfection of Ten
The feet of the fox sparrow are large, with elongated toes and claws, allowing it to dig longer and deeper. The male bird prefers solitude when he sings, retreating to a hidden perch in a dense thicket.
It is not the front door of the mortuary that fills me with awe and horror but the back door. I have read about what goes on in the inner sanctum of a funeral home. When Eliot died, I was oblivious to the details of the funeral industry. It was years later that I read The American Way of Death by Jessica Mitford, a book that informed me of the procedures to which his body had been subjected—by that time, the same procedures already performed on my father, mother, and both of my sisters. Death American style is a gruesome prospect. In Eliot’s case, however, it was no more than he deserved.
I did not know, when I was responsible for planning the funerals of my husband and, later, my mother, that embalming is a custom common only to North America, but that even in the United States and Canada no law dictates the practice. This curious tradition is routinely carried out for one purpose: to prepare the body for yet another curious tradition, that of placing it in an ornate box for the living to “view.” At no time is the family consulted about whether they wish these procedures to be performed on the body of their loved one. The funeral director merely goes about his business, then collects from the family the standard fee. Apparently no one raises a protest.
The steps of “preparing the body” may be summarized briefly. First, it is interesting to know that a mortician learns the craft that is to earn him his fortune by attending an embalming school for a year at any point following high school graduation. Here the student, who may still be a teenager, handles the tools of his trade—the needles, scalpels, forceps, clamps, scissors, basins, pumps, tubes—and is instructed in the proper administering of the customary fluids, plasters, creams, oils, powders, pastes, paints, and waxes. As in medical school, the aspiring “doctor” practices on cadavers. Unlike genuine surgeons-in-training, however, he will never, thankfully, progress to performing his skills on living humans.
There is no way to be delicate about this. In the embalming room the mortician drains the body of blood, by means of a small incision in a major vein or artery, and injects a solution of formaldehyde, alcohol, borax, glycerin, phenol, and water. With needle and suture thread, the lips are literally sewn together and the eyes closed with small caps and a special cement. The body cavities are invaded by means of a long, hollow needle, then emptied with tube and pump and replaced with yet more chemical fluids.
To restore the body to a normal, restful appearance, the mortician, after allowing the body to lie undisturbed for ten to twelve hours, then reaches into his bag of cosmetic tricks. Whether the challenge is to reduce swollen features or plump up emaciated ones, the modern, well-trained mortuary scientist is equal to the task by way of various methods of surgical trimming, padding, injecting, and so forth. He may need to make creative use of splints, wires, drills, anchors, patches, masking creams, and parlor lighting to achieve the desired effect, but the ambitious mortician will go to almost any lengths in his efforts to make available to the family an open-casket funeral.
I sometimes wake during the night with visions of a dark shape hovering over me, something sharp and metallic in his hand. At times I have heard voices: “Let’s push that left shoulder down a little; she’s lying crooked,” or “Hand me the suntan tint; this pink blush shade doesn’t match her skin tone,” or “She looks too glum. Can we stitch up the corners of the lips a little higher?” Once I heard, “Maybe we ought to dislocate the jaw to fix her mouth.” This is a method sometimes employed to keep stubborn lips together. The mortician simply unhinges the jaw and then wires it shut. For less serious cases he may keep the mouth closed by pushing a straight pin through the inside of the lower lip and angling it upward through the two front teeth. I awake from these dreams trembling.
I have written down clear instructions concerning the disposal of my body and have left them in a sealed envelope with my lawyer, to be delivered to Patrick at the time of my death. I have told Patrick that there will be no transfer of money if the instructions are not followed. All of this depends, of course, upon the trustworthiness of my lawyer and of Patrick. Either could find ways to circumvent my wishes.
* * *
It is Friday, five days after my move to the back bedroom, and Rachel is in my apartment with a can of furniture polish and a dust-rag. She has been at work all day and is now finishing with the cleanup from the plaster removal. True to the white electrician’s word, the plaster dust, also white, found its way into my apartment, a fine film over every exposed surface. Patrick had the foresight to cover m
y furniture with old bed sheets. True to his predictions, the rewiring project took longer than originally planned. Patrick prides himself on his ability to prophesy the difference between a person’s stated intentions and reality.
I am sitting in my recliner watching Rachel dust the blinds of the four large windows. She has already polished the windowpanes and vacuumed the sills and the blinds, moving the wand slowly back and forth. Now she sprays her cloth and runs it over the length of each wooden slat, top and bottom. This takes time. She does not hurry.
To the casual observer watching her clean my apartment, she would appear to have no method, but I am not a casual observer. I believe there is a master plan behind her actions. This much I know: She has saved the windows for last. After the blinds she will be done. Then she will proceed to the other rooms of her house, I presume, and by the time she finishes, it will be time, as my mother used to say, to start the whole shebang over. Housework is a discouraging proposition. I have had my fill of it and have stipulated as one of the conditions of my winter hospice the privilege of watching someone else do it.
Except for her normal Friday laundry chore, Rachel has devoted today to my apartment. Her kitchen and dining room have remained untouched. Large sheets of plastic still hang over her cupboards. Patrick asked the white electrician to leave the plastic sheeting up. “We’ll take it down after all the dust has had time to settle,” he told the man. The electrician and his helper cleaned up their mess, after a fashion. They picked up all their tools and disposed of the loose pieces of debris. They vacuumed the floor with their own high-powered machine, which sounded like the landing of an aircraft in Rachel’s kitchen. They plugged the appliances into their new sockets and moved them back into place.
I have walked back and forth between the spare bedroom and my apartment today, tracking Rachel’s progress. The days have gone slowly in my temporary quarters, with much clatter at the other end of the house. I have found the major television networks to be poor substitutes for the TV Oldies channel, which the smaller television does not pick up. Live with Regis and Kelly, The Price Is Right, As the World Turns, The 700 Club—these are samples of the daytime offerings on the television brought in from Patrick’s study. At night it’s the news and Wheel of Fortune and the so-called reality shows.
I have an idea for a reality show. Set up a camera at the back door of a funeral home. Follow the journey of a corpse from its arrival to its installment inside a casket, all pickled, painted, and propped to receive guests. Then film the faces of all the people who come to “view the body” and record their platitudes as they extend comfort to the grieving family. Then set up a camera outside the same funeral home and watch the same people exit. Record their cheerful plans for the next meal, show their eyes scanning the sky to check the weather for tomorrow’s golf game, observe them hurrying to their cars to get on with their lives.
Take care to film the family, also. Zoom in on their faces, amplify the sound to hear every word they speak to one another, follow them home to record private discussions concerning the disposition of money and goods. Note the difference between their public and private faces during these few days of official grieving. Look closely and you will see many dollar signs in their eyes. Finding a family to participate in the show would not pose a problem. Most people are willing to do almost anything for the right price.
The program would be what they call “a hit.” The major problem would be getting a funeral home to cooperate, for if the public were to see the indignities performed in the embalming room and observe the cheap imitations of sorrow, the funeral industry would be out of business in short order. Family members would begin hurling the bodies of their dead relatives into canyons or dropping them into the ocean. Do not speak to me of desecrating the bodies of the deceased. It happens daily in funeral homes all over the continent of North America.
For the past five days my meals have continued on schedule. I assume they have been an inconvenience for Rachel, though I have heard no complaints. On Monday her stove and refrigerator were moved into the garage, where they were plugged into a 220 outlet. The meals have been simple and the desserts have suffered, but they have arrived on time, morning, noon, and night. A few have been purchased by Patrick elsewhere and brought home to be transferred to a plate, then onto the tray, and delivered to my bedroom by Rachel. I do not know where she and Patrick have taken their meals. I have not heard any part of their mealtime conversations—another small part missing from my daily routine, another reason for the week’s slow passage.
Rachel has plodded through the week silently, doing her duty. I cannot imagine having to cook in one’s garage. She is cleaning the last set of wooden blinds now, bending to reach the lowest slats. She is wearing a pair of denim jeans and a sweatshirt with OCTOBER BALLOON FESTIVAL printed on the front and a large colorful hot air balloon pictured on the back. This event was held last month, a few days after my arrival at Patrick’s house. Patrick urged me to go with them to the festival, but hot air balloons in the sky and crowds of people on the ground were of no interest to me.
A week after the festival he brought the sweatshirt home to Rachel, telling her they had hundreds left over and were selling them for five dollars each. Perhaps it was because of the unpopular color, a bright orange, or perhaps because the order had been mixed up—the picture of the balloon intended for the front and the name of the event for the back. Patrick’s generous impulses soared when he saw the bargain, and he bought one for his wife. Gaudy colors and reversed designs do not matter to Patrick, nor apparently to Rachel, for she wears the sweatshirt frequently.
She is finished now. She steps back and turns slowly, taking in the entire room, as if looking for areas she may have missed. It is nearing four o’clock. Danno has already successfully booked another criminal on Hawaii Five-O, and Gomer Pyle has been making a fool of himself for almost a half hour, cheerily countering every exasperated outburst from Sergeant Carter with his usual countrified simplicity. Gomer says, “Shazam, that shore is nass of you, Sergeant Carter!” and Rachel glances at the television.
“I’m sorry we’ve had to put you out this week,” she says. “I sure didn’t know Patrick was planning on having all this work done. Looks like we could’ve done it before you came.”
This is a long speech for Rachel. I also realize it’s as close to criticizing her husband as she is likely to come.
“There is no way to know what a man is going to do next,” I say. “And there’s no reasoning with them when they get something in their minds.”
As if wishing to restore her husband’s good standing, she says, “Patrick says he’s bringing something home for supper. He told me not to cook.”
“You’ve worked hard today,” I say.
Again she looks around my apartment. “Well, it needed a good cleaning.” She moves toward the door. “Shall I help you bring your things from the other room?” Her use of “shall I” sounds out of place. Rachel went to high school in Tupelo, Mississippi, then attended a two-year Bible college somewhere in Alabama, during which time she met Patrick at a Billy Graham crusade in Atlanta. In many ways she’s a typical southerner, yet southerners rarely say, “Shall I help you?” They are more likely to say, “Want me to?” or “Can I?”
I tell her I’ve already returned everything to its place, even though this isn’t entirely true. I still need to move the dresses hanging in the closet. The telephone rings in the kitchen, and she goes to answer it, leaving my door open. She says three words—“hello,” “sure,” and “yes”—and when she hangs up she comes back to my door and tells me she’s going to “run across the street for a little bit.” She closes my door, and I hear her leave through the kitchen door. I assume that “across the street” means Teri’s house rather than the lawyer’s office or the mortuary.
Gomer Pyle ends and a program called Happy Days comes on. Since I have never been much interested in the Cunningham family or Fonzie, I walk to the back bedroom to get my dresses. The
door to Patrick’s study is standing open. Throughout the past five days it has remained closed. In the evenings I could see Patrick’s light shining beneath the bathroom door, but until now I have never looked inside the room.
And now I regret that I am looking, for I see something that gives me a sudden tightness of breath. I reach out and hold onto the doorjamb until the moment passes. I close my eyes briefly, then open them, taking care not to see what I already saw.
I proceed to the bedroom, open the closet and remove the dresses, then start back down the hallway to my apartment, glancing into Patrick and Rachel’s bedroom across the hall. Their bed is only a double size, which must feel crowded. Here Patrick holds forth both before and after the lights are out, speaking his mind about all the pressing political and social issues of the day. I imagine Rachel staring up at the ceiling as she listens to the same opinions she must have heard many times already. Several nights during the past week I have heard the drone of his voice across the hall as I prepared for bed. Their bed is covered by a thin red-corded bedspread, such as the kind one would expect to see on children’s bunk beds. I see the control for an electric blanket sitting on the nightstand beside the clock. I wonder if it is a dual control or if in this matter, as in most others I have observed, Rachel defers to her husband’s preferences.
I move down the hallway, keeping my eyes straight ahead as I pass Patrick’s study. I can’t erase the picture of what I saw, however, and after I return the dresses to my closet, I lie down on my sofa and close my eyes, forcing myself to breathe slowly and steadily. The image floats in the black space of my mind.
The rolltop desk isn’t as large as Eliot’s was, but I think of the heavy cargo so light a vessel may carry. The top was rolled back on Patrick’s desk. I saw a great many papers scattered around. I saw many small cubbyholes and drawers. I can’t help wondering if he keeps it open all the time, or if he, like Eliot, pulls down the top and locks it when he has things to hide. I wonder if Rachel goes into the study, if she moves Patrick’s things around to dust.
Winter Birds Page 6
