by Joan Barfoot
All that’s visible above solid plastic and dense plaid blanket is Phil’s rigid, untroubled face. His pores are large. His forehead is unlined. He needs shaving. She reaches out to his cheek with the back of her hand. What does she expect? Something less like cold porridge than this.
She ought to know better.
But touch, that’s the point: to incise into memory his magic tricks, the clever sleight of hand rendering her finally unhorrified by skin; causing her to wonder at the rabbits he could pluck from her with his dextrous fingers, the scarves he knew how to draw from her body’s sleeves, the several ways he could cut her in two.
Ah, was it really so good? Never mind, it’s what she’ll remember; intends to remember.
Warily—bravely—she raises plastic and blanket, and peering downwards sees a Y-shaped railroad track of bright careless stitching heading from naked, broken, newly hairless chest towards the darkness below, perhaps also now broken and newly hairless. Someone else might want to examine those parts. Nora maybe. Some evenings lately, Sophie has watched Nora across the table or across the living room, sitting with elbows propped under her chin, or legs curled beneath her, and thought, Phil has travelled there, there and there, all over that woman, that Nora, and vice versa. Sophie was more bemused by this than jealous. In a way it created connections between her and Nora, pulling and pushing ones, attractions and repulsions.
Hard to know if these connections counted if only one of them knew.
It’s surprising how unstiff Phil is. The time for rigidity has passed, Sophie knows this, but she is still startled, trying to draw his arm into view without dislodging too much the camouflaging plastic and blanket, to have it come free without resistance. It’s very heavy, though. The limbs of other dead people Sophie has touched were often astoundingly light; like picking up baby birds.
She has helped carry dead bodies, she has wrapped them in plastic and cloth, she has helped bury them, without much time and with very few words, even less ceremony than with Phil, this body going up tomorrow in flames.
A purplish-grey fattiness has settled around his upper arms, his forearms, his wrists and, she sees, turning over his hand, on the fleshy part of his palm, and at the base of his fingers. The lines and creases there are filled out by this freshly risen doughy substance under the skin.
But the skin itself—here it is, her impulsive, vital, second-day purpose dreamed up in the night. This skin remains roughened, there are calluses at the tip and base of each finger, nicks and scars from old tool cuts and scrapes. She can stroke the palm and its thrilling abrasiveness.
Here is Phil’s heart line, sliding from the side of his palm to the space between middle finger and forefinger: not very long, or very deep. Here is his life line, slicing hard across his palm in a curve from the very base of his thumb to a point between forefinger and thumb. She should tell Beth, who has on idle evenings read all their palms, a typically frivolous entertainment picked up in long hours in hotel rooms and backstage, waiting for her interminable pageants and competitions to start—she should tell Beth it’s all nonsense. Otherwise Phil’s life line would have to come to a premature end.
Does this make the heart line false, too?
Tinier, intricate, criss-crossing lines speak of ambitions and aptitudes, skills and terms of desire. Phil worked with his hands, used dangerous tools with speed and great skill. His fingers smelled of wood; not like the outdoors kind of woods, not piney underfoot or arching and dark overhead, but of cut, chiselled and carved wood that bled resin into his flesh. These lines, calluses, scars, rough now-discoloured pads at the base of each finger, pregnant with clean raw wood scent, they touched Sophie, caused her skin to rise up and fall back. “You understand,” Phil said, “I love Nora, but in a friendly, calm sort of way. Not like this,” as he wrapped this large hand under a breast and lifted it up, up to his mouth.
She moves around the gurney to the other hand, the one stroking her face, her round belly, her voluminous thighs. This hand is surprisingly different. Both its heart and life lines are deep and long and slightly meandering. There are smaller lines that do not appear on his other palm, and a few seem to be absent. The callused bumps at the base of each finger are more pronounced. So she has two hands to memorize: either a full depiction of Phil, or two separately incomplete ones.
Nora’s the artist, she’s the one who takes shapes and ideas and visions and does something with them. Sophie will be the engraver, etching each ridge, hollow and line of Phil’s hands, the length and breadth of each finger, each curve and bump, into memory. For what purpose? Maybe to bear in her mind like a keepsake; maybe only, after all, the way other people hold on to significant restaurant menus, birthday cards, movie stubs.
No. More than that.
These moments in this frigid room will have to last her a long time. She has very deliberately made herself not good at remembering detail. She can perform detail, she’s good at that, but not with the exact shapes, scents, movements and sounds that bring certain recollections to life. They have to creep up on her unexpectedly, or in the dark. Memorizing Phil’s hands could dangerously sabotage that trick of forgetfulness.
Martha Nkume’s hands were leathered. If her destiny had ever been legible in clear lines of life, love, preferences and ambitions, it no longer was by the time Sophie knew her. In that place only newborns and the youngest of toddlers were soft and unknowing.
It’s Martha’s hands that went on waking Sophie up in the night; it’s Phil’s that could for days and nights at a time erase, soothe, smooth away Martha’s fingerprints. Now what?
Now she will be able to close her eyes and conjure Phil’s hands; with luck even replace one dream with another. She replaces each hand carefully under the plastic, she smooths the plaid blanket. She takes a last look at his face but it is empty and strange and has nothing to say that wouldn’t be unfamiliar to her, and probably grim. She is not inclined to lean down and kiss him.
It’s hard to turn away, but in another way not. Like before, lifting off after two years on the ground, when she leaned her head against the plane’s window and looked for the last time at the troublesome landscape below, its capital-city traffic jams giving way as the plane climbed to dense patches of green and then great swaths of brown emptiness that she knew were not truly empty, and then she was above the clouds and it was over.
Although it was not.
She is surprised, because she has forgotten about him, to find Hendrik Anderson waiting outside the door. That plaid blanket he placed over Phil, that cozy touch, who would think of doing such a thing except a man accustomed to taking details into account, and to considering the hidden, unspoken, undemanded comforts of others? And he trusted her, if not necessarily to behave well, at least not to behave excessively badly. He must have had faith, or anyway a hope, that she would not cause really serious harm, even though he must know at least a little of the serious harm people can do. He has been worried, but gives her the gift of not asking, and that surely signifies large spirit, great heart. They climb wordlessly back up the stairs, his hand under her elbow, and whereas a few months ago she would have flinched sharply, now she does not. At the top they pass into public space finally. She can feel his relief. “Would you care for a coffee?” he asks. “I expect you’re chilled right through from that room.” And so she is. Chilled right through, as he says.
Nora likes to warn, “Watch out, those people are greedy for anything they can find out about us,” although she also says, “Whatever they don’t know, they make up,” so Nora’s unhappy either way. And the alternative is pushing through those tremendously heavy wooden front doors into the daylight, to Nora and Beth. “I’d like that. Thank you.”
He surely doesn’t invite any random mourner for coffee. Perhaps she looks either far more or much less solid and sane than she feels; or he’s drawn to over-sized redheads, or he is lonely, or bored. “I have some forms that need signing,” he says.
Oh. “All right. I can do
that.”
He is leading them to another door, this one tucked to the right and recessed slightly. Of course—he must live here, she hasn’t thought of that, but then she has thought little of him at all except how to get her own way. Now she wonders how unnerving it is to sleep so near the permanently at rest, how unappetizing to eat a few rooms distant from vats of whatever it is that replaces cooling blood in dead bodies. In high-school biology classrooms various creatures floated about sightlessly in jars of formaldehyde. “Pickle juice,” kids called it, removing its sting. But no doubt the infusions and chemicals used here are more complex and sophisticated. Not that it matters. “Does my living here make you uneasy?” he asks. How did he know?
It is another different world, though, a real home, on the other side of the door: all light and air, with hardwood wain-scotting and floors, pale yellow walls, dark-green-upholstered sofa and wing chairs that Phil, for one, would have admired, not to mention the tall pewtery-blue drying cupboard full of books and CDs. “This is lovely,” she says.
“It is, isn’t it? It helps to be on the premises when you run a business that doesn’t have regular hours, but mainly I’m here because it’s just a hell of a gorgeous old building.” He is looser here, freer. Well, in these rooms he’s a man who belongs in the T-shirt he’s wearing. Not to mention that no catastrophe occurred downstairs, and he must feel relieved.
The sofa and chairs in this living room have high backs and wide arms and deep cushions, although the sofa has an unmatching dark-blue crocheted blanket folded over its back, reminding Sophie, although it’s quite different, of the plaid one this man spread protectively across Phil’s poor ruined body. The drying cupboard is pegged rather than nailed or, far worse, glued. A refinished old bench runs along the base of two back windows, loaded with blooming begonias. “Phil would love this,” Sophie hears herself say.
“Why’s that, then?”
“He knew good furniture. He built and designed furniture, you know. Did you ever meet him?” She is reminded of grey, stitched Phil below. Obviously that’s not the same as meeting him.
“I saw him around town. I’ve seen you, too, but I guess we’ve had no occasion to meet.” He smiles in boyish fashion. “I tend to go out of town if I want to kick over the traces. If I hung out at bars here getting snapped up every night, it’d be hard to be credible trying to console the bereaved the next day.” Is he suggesting he didn’t know Phil because Phil was in bars every night getting snapped up? Well, all right, sometimes Phil was. Still, considering she’s among the bereaved, he sounds a little too casual and lighthearted.
“Make yourself comfortable and I’ll get our coffee.” He disappears through a doorway to, presumably, the kitchen. Sophie drifts to his rear wall of windows, with its benchload of begonias. He has a large backyard, although not as enormous as Phil and Nora’s, draped in maples and sectioned here and there into gardens—shrubs, perennials, low, flowing ground covers. There are two Muskoka chairs and a table, very cozy and companionable. He must have a companion, then?
In another life, she and Phil might have been together like that, sitting outside in Muskoka chairs viewing their gardens. In another life, maybe they will be.
She has no belief whatever in other lives. And Phil appears to have drifted off. When did that happen? Perhaps while she was downstairs scrutinizing his hands. At any rate, he’s not overhead, or anywhere else, in this room.
Hendrik returns with a tray, a pot of coffee, two mugs, cream and sugar, setting it on a piecrust table between the wing chairs. Those plump hands of his will, like hers, touch Phil’s flesh, turn it, shape it—best not to think about that. “I’m sorry,” he says, “the cupboards are bare or I’d offer you something to eat. I meant to go shopping, but things happened and I ran out of time.” He stops. “Sorry. I didn’t mean how that sounded.”
“I guess when somebody dies, there’s no telling all the effects.” Sophie stops, too. “Sorry. That didn’t come out right either.” All she meant was, everything from Phil’s absence to Hendrik running out of time to shop, from the huge to the infinitesimal, from loss of skin to a shortage of snacks, is entirely fascinating.
“Then let’s not apologize any more, let’s just agree we won’t take offence and blunder on.”
Smiling feels peculiar, requiring muscles that haven’t been used much the past couple of days. “Okay,” she says.
“Are you crying?” he asks, leaning towards her and frowning. Is that how it looks when she imagines she’s smiling?
“No. Thanks, I’m fine.” She runs through some of the tinier lines of Phil’s palm, she examines his fingerprints.
“Would you like to talk about him?” Hendrik’s voice turns formal; more as it sounds on the other side of the door.
“No, really, I knew him fairly well, but basically as an employer.” St. Peter, St. Sophie—just like Beth she could star in one of Nora’s depictions of pronoun-based theology.
“You work for the artist as well, don’t you? The widow, I guess.” There’s no inflection, positive or negative, in his tone, so there’s no telling what he thinks of Nora, or her work, or her attitudes, or the fame she briefly but vividly and perhaps permanently brought to this town.
“Yes. I take care of most of the household details and the finances”—has she just suggested Phil is a mere household detail, his send-off from the planet simply one of her fiscal chores?—“so she and Phil, well, Phil up till now, can concentrate on their work.”
“Do you like doing that? And living here?”
“It’s a job. I don’t know, really. Do you?” One way to dodge complicated questions is to turn them around. Also she is interested: what does Hendrik Anderson think, how does he feel, about his work?
He shrugs. “I’m used to it. My family goes back three generations here, which means knowing all the old-timers and everyone’s personal histories and family connections. There’s a lot to be said for knowing a place in your bones.” Funny. That’s exactly how Phil put it: that he knew this town, unfathomably and unreasonably but fervently, in his bones. “And I like the idea that sometimes I can make sorrow easier to bear. You can’t take grief away from anyone, but sometimes you can lift it a bit. Make it easier or more comprehensible, whatever seems required. And I like being able to acknowledge the people and the lives that I know and the ends of their stories. Respecting all the family and community and how it unfolds, in the end.”
How gentle he sounds and, yes, respectful. A different way, certainly, of regarding this town. “I don’t expect,” he says, “that your experiences would give you much affection for people here, though. What some of them did was disgraceful. But,” his shoulders rise and fall, “they are what they each are. Sometimes there are reasons. Not excuses, of course.”
How remarkably tolerant. Still, he is right: people always have reasons, if not good excuses. He must wonder about her own. “Thank you for letting me downstairs. I’m very grateful. Why did you?”
“I guess because you seemed determined and sure of yourself. And we may not have met, but I know you’ve been places and seen things that make you different from other people. I mean, that your reactions would be different.” Does he mean he takes her for a hard woman capable of striding casually through the dead? Probably not. That’s not quite what he said. “And I guess I felt bad. On the phone, discussing the arrangements—any arrangements are fine, they’re entirely up to the loved ones, but I was on the verge of bullying you. It’s just that ritual can be important to grieving, so I was urging more ceremony instead of recognizing that people tend to know what they need.” A dubious proposition, it seems to Sophie, although a kind and responsible one.
If she told him about Martha Nkume and Mary and Matthew, would he have any idea what she was talking about? “It’s okay. Nora was sure what she wanted. I was just passing it on. I knew what you were saying.”
Who sits in the other chair out in the garden? Why is Hendrik Anderson serving her coffee in his sunny qua
rters, talking to a woman he’s barely met and who is unhappily and intimately connected, today, with his work? How mysterious and surprising and exhausting other people’s purposes and intentions can be. “I should go,” she says, putting her mug down sharply. At the house phones will be ringing, chores and names must be dealt with and then ticked off her list. Also, she is no longer entirely comfortable here.
And she needs time to remember Phil’s hands, carefully trace all those bumps, scars and lines so that she doesn’t drift in the practised direction of forgetfulness.
“Then,” and Hendrik stands too, “I’ll get those forms that need signing.” Oh right, her chore. “And please be sure to call if there’s anything at all I can do.” She is being shepherded from his apartment through the door into the wide carpeted hall of the funeral home proper. That other different world. He dips briefly into what she takes to be his office and returns with papers attached to a clipboard. “Sign here,” he says, “and here, and here. And that’s it. These are your copies. Or the widow’s, rather. Let me know if you think of anything else, I’m happy to do whatever I can.” Happy?
Will he return now to his gardening, or is there work to be done even on a body that won’t be seen again, and is to be burned?
Maybe he’ll take time to go grocery shopping.
At the heavy front door Sophie says, “Thank you. For the coffee. And everything else. Trusting me.” Stooping, she touches her lips to his cheek. An odd gesture, perhaps, although who is to say at this point what sort of gesture is odd? He accepts it, at any rate, just as gravely, and out she goes through the door he holds open, into the heat of the day. When she looks back she sees him watching, nodding at her before he closes the door, and unreasonably she feels for a moment as if he has turned her away, shutting her out of a cool, dim, friendly space.
Nine
