Roost

by Ali Bryan

  I park by the door and walk them inside. The daycare director approaches.

  “How’s your mom?” she says in a voice that’s just above a whisper.

  I shake my head. She covers her mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” she says touching my arm.

  “I haven’t told the kids yet.”

  “If you need anything, please don’t hesitate —”

  “I could only find four diapers,” I interrupt.

  She waves me off and says, “Don’t worry about the diapers.”

  I call work from the car and share the news. Stroke on a plane. No slippers in the morgue.

  Then I drive by my parents’ house where the swing is still broken and the trees have lost all their leaves. The house looks different this morning. Locked up and less an owner. Quiet and weary after decades of dirty hands and grass clippings and Christmas lights. A package juts out of the mailbox. I park and walk up the driveway, stepping over the cracks in the asphalt as I have since childhood, and I pick up the mail. Along with a package addressed to my father is a coupon for ten percent off furnace cleaning. Will she be cremated? I toss both the flyer and the package in the front passenger seat and drive home.

  When The View comes on, I cry because Elisabeth’s a Republican and Barbara pretends she’s not an octogenarian. She thinks she’s fifty like a dog thinks it’s human. When Glen calls, I explain this to him, between spoonfuls of my second bowl of Corn Flakes.

  “Why are you home?” he asks.

  “My mother died last night. On the plane.”

  “On the plane?”

  “They were coming home from Cuba.”

  “I thought you said she was okay?”

  “She was okay! She had a stroke.”

  “Because she hit her head?”

  “I don’t know Glen, I’m not a friggin’ doctor. I just know she had a stroke. On the plane. Were you calling for something specific?”

  “No, I was just going to leave a message. I think I left my sunglasses there. I’m coming over.”

  We hang up and I yell at Barbara, “You’re fucking eighty!”

  Glen shows up with apple turnovers from Costco and Kleenex with the built-in lotion.

  “I brought you some ginger ale,” he says, twisting off the cap.

  “I’m not sick, Glen.”

  “I know but I didn’t know what else to get.”

  He hands me the bottle and parks himself on the coffee table. “I’m sorry, Claud.”

  He paces around the room when my father calls. Dad’s thoughts are all over the place.

  “Your mom loved carnations. The price of gas went up overnight. Dan has never eaten a hard-boiled egg.”

  I respond with like comments: “Joan wants to be a cat squirrel for Halloween. I think Mom would want a white casket. One of those glossy ones like the cabinets you see in the show homes. There are forty grams of fat in a carrot muffin.”

  Glen gives me an odd look and turns off The View. Dad asks what a cat squirrel is and explains that Mom wanted Stompin’ Tom Connors played at her funeral.

  “What song?” I am only able to recall the Hockey Song and the PEI tourism jingle. Dad does not reply. I hear him ask Dan where his glasses are. Glen holds up a turnover. I nod and he puts one on a plate.

  “Thanks,” I tell him.

  “What was that, dear?” Dad asks.

  “Nothing. Listen, how are you getting home?”

  “Your brother’s renting a car.”

  “Are you sure Dan should be driving? I mean … this soon?”

  “We’re not leaving until tomorrow. We have to make arrangements to have your mother moved first.”

  “Call me before you leave. Okay? I love you, Dad.”

  I pick at the turnover.

  “How is he?” Glen asks, taking a second turnover from the plastic tray.

  “I don’t think he’s slept.”

  Minutes go by. I stare at the ceiling and start humming the Hockey Song. All I know is the chorus. After a few times Glen begins whistling along.

  “She wants Stompin’ Tom played at her funeral.”

  Glen collects LEGO from the carpet. “That’s right,” Glen says, waving his finger. “I remember her telling me that once.”

  “My mom discussed her funeral with you?”

  “No, no. Just that she liked him. What song are you going to play?”

  “No idea. Dad didn’t know. What other songs are there?”

  “‘The Sasquatch Song,’ ‘The Snowmobile Song,’ ‘Margo’s Cargo’ …”

  I glare at him.

  “What?” he says defensively. “I don’t know. Go look them up.”

  I take my laptop out of the bag along with a pink cup and saucer and a fake egg. It is a habit of Joan’s to stow away parts of her tea set so in the event of a natural disaster we can still have a tea party. I google Stompin’ Tom and get a website with his discography. There are hundreds of songs. I scroll down the track lists for something appropriately titled for a funeral.

  “Ever hear of ‘I Am the Wind?’”

  “How does it go?” Glen asks from the bathroom.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What else is there?”

  “‘Just a Blue Moon Away’?”

  “Nope. Never heard of it.

  I keep scrolling and find one called “Rubberhead” and I start laughing because of the irony and it’s absolutely not funny, and because of this I laugh more. My stomach throbs and I cover my face with an afghan. It smells like yogurt, but I keep my face under there because I am completely ashamed and still laughing. When I come up for air, Glen’s emerging from the bathroom and it looks like he has toothpaste on his chin and I am suspicious he’s used my toothbrush.

  He touches my shoulder and says, “It’s going to be okay.” I pull the afghan away. The smell is unbearable and I’ve gained control and I wipe at my eyes, but when I think about the song I start laughing again.

  “Are you … laughing?” Glen says, walking around to the front of the couch.

  I shake my head. I fall into the arm of the couch and the laughter turns into crying because only evil people would find “Rubberhead” amusing under the circumstances. Glen takes the laptop and sets it on the coffee table. He pulls me by the arm up to a sitting position, continues scrolling down the screen, and there, second-last track from the bottom, he finds “Sable Island.”

  “That will work,” I say.

  13

  After supper I take the kids to Dairy Queen. They both order Dilly Bars. I choke down a cheeseburger in three bites. We sit in the parking lot across from a couple in a car with two doors, who smoke out their windows, flicking ashes into the wind. Our car smells like pickles. I turn off the engine and tell the kids about their grandmother. The chocolate around Joan’s mouth looks like facial hair, but my attempts to clean it off are futile from the front seat.

  “How’d she die?” Wesley asks. His eyebrows furl like his father’s when he is contemplating something.

  “She had something called a stroke.”

  “Because she got hit by the boat?”

  “Sort of,” I say, still unsure whether the events are connected.

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s in heaven,” I explain.

  Joan asks, “With Jesus?”

  “Yes, with Jesus,” I reply, turning in my seat to face her. It hurts my neck.

  “Who else is there?” Wesley wants to know.

  “Lots of people, I suppose.”

  “He like Dilly Bars?”

  “Does who like Dilly Bars, Joan?”

  “Jesus.”

  I remove a peanut from my sundae and crunch into it. “I’m sure Jesus likes Dilly Bars.”

  Joan breaks her Dilly Bar stick in half.

  “Is Grandpa going to go to heaven too?” Wes asks.

  “Someday.”

  “But they go everywhere together.” He leans his head against the window and points to an inflatable pumpkin on
top of a car dealership. “We don’t have a pumpkin,” he says. His eyes fill with tears.

  “You’re right.” Halloween is tomorrow or next week. Is it today? “Let’s go get one right now.”

  We drive across the parking lot to the grocery store. I check my iPhone. Right, it’s the 24th of October. Mom has only been dead for one day. The kids have no costumes, but we don’t need to panic about a pumpkin quite yet.

  “What do you want to be for Halloween?” I ask Wes, unbuckling him from his car seat.

  “I want to be …” he pauses and places his finger on his chin. “A pirate!”

  “What about me?” Joan chimes.

  “You already told me you wanted to be a cat squirrel.”

  “No,” she argues.

  “Well what then?”

  “Me want to be a stroke.”

  14

  By the next day, I’m carving pumpkins and cutting costume pieces out of discount fabrics. The kitchen table is taken over by seeds and pipe cleaners and scraps of felt. I’m constantly moving needles and sharp things to the centre of the table where Joan is less likely to get at them. Scattered in between our decorations are notes on the funeral. Times and dates and estimates on everything from catering to caskets. There are lists of psalms and sheet music. “Sable Island” does not make the cut.

  Dan calls. “What if we framed some of her favourite recipes and displayed them at the visitation Friday?”

  “What?”

  “They were sort of her claim to fame.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t do that.”

  “Why not? I think she’d like it.”

  “No.” I take a sewing needle from the wine glass and scrape my teeth.

  “Her pecan and goat cheese salad, beef stroganoff, and blueberry grunt. I already had Allison-Jean print them off on cardstock.”

  “That’s great, Dan. Is she printing off a wine list too?”

  “And what if we had one of her former students give a eulogy?”

  “The funeral’s in four days.”

  “It would be just a few words about Mom as a teacher.”

  “She taught grade two.” I poke my gums until they start to bleed.

  “So? They’d be grown-up now. It could be nice.”

  “Are you nuts? Have you ever been to a funeral?”

  “I’m just trying to make it special!”

  “A recipe for blueberry crisp and some former student’s memory of how she taught them to spell ‘cat’ does not make it special.”

  “Blueberry grunt.”

  “No!”

  “You’re being difficult.”

  “You’re being ridiculous!”

  He sniffs into the phone like he might be crying. I sigh. “You should be the one doing the eulogy. I’ll pick her dress and make sure her makeup looks okay. All she’d really care about is that no one fights and she’s wearing pantyhose. Okay?”

  “And the recipes.”

  “If it’s that important to you, display the recipes. And,” fuck, “do you think Allison-Jean could make Joan a cat squirrel costume?”

  “A what?”

  I give the phone to Joan to tell Allison-Jean what a cat squirrel is.

  After the kids are both in bed, I pour a glass of wine and start one of the tasks I’ve been putting off: sorting through photos. I dump out a Ziploc bag marked vacation.

  They’re not vacation photos, though. They date back to when we were in junior high. When I had a perm and Dan still had a weight problem. In one of them he has a black eye. Darrell Wilson kicked the shit out of him because Dan was fat and was in his way. Darrell Wilson who smoked rolled cigarettes and wore jean jackets and had sex with Miranda Coughlin, who worked at Tim Horton’s, when he was twelve. Sex with someone who had a job! Darrell Wilson with his cauliflower ear who was probably abused and didn’t have his sheets cleaned regularly and ate dinner at a card table. Dan staggering, blubbering, bruising, white flesh hanging. His textbooks scattered over the parking lot. And I hollered after Darrell Wilson, “You have a grandpa for a Dad!” Dan lost weight after that.

  There’s another bag, helpfully Sharpied Photos. It’s full of pictures of my parents, and it is as Wesley said: they went everywhere together. My mother, wearing the same white sneakers over a ten-year period, with my father, his arm around her shoulders, their hips touching, but just barely. She wears walking shorts and sleeveless blouses. On the boardwalk, in a city, on a trip I don’t remember them taking. On the ferry to PEI and perched on the picnic table in Dan’s backyard. The pictures from winter are older. She is thinner and wears a full-length coat with a fur collar. Same pose, but Dad carries a snowball in his hand and his cowlick looks more severe. Always together. What will he do without her?

  15

  On October 28th, a cool day, an old baseball friend of Dad’s drives us to the funeral home for the visitation. I sit sideways behind him to avoid his reclined seat and stare at his elbow, which is bare and crusty and resembles the breading my mom used to put on halibut. Strips of toilet paper hang from the birch tree outside of the funeral home. Kids are getting a head start on their Halloween shenanigans. The director, dressed in grey pinstripes, tries to pull them down, but they blow out of reach, almost playfully.

  “I’ll have them removed at once,” he says as we exit the car. He mumbles something about kids, shakes my father’s hand, and shows us inside. Allison-Jean does not wear one of her signature peasant shirts today because she will be playing the piano during the visitation. Instead she wears a long floral dress and Tabi cardigan. She sets her purse on the bench as the rest of us tour the two rooms where things will take place. My mother has a cherry-coloured casket that matches the funeral home’s piano. It is closed and covered with large pink and red carnations. Is she on her side the way she slept? My father chose ivory satin for the interior to match her pearls. Beside the guest book, her recipes stand in frames.

  Dan takes over discussions with the funeral director and makes small adjustments to the setup. He turns framed photos millimetres to the left or right and tugs on one of the home’s navy velvet curtains so it is drawn the same distance as its companion. Dad and his friend Bill stand by the window, and Bill pats Dad on the back. My father looks down and traces the diamond pattern in the carpet with his shoe, which is not polished and looks dull against the glow of the casket. In the other room, Allison begins playing the piano. A few notes at first. A scale, followed by another, then she plays something I’ve heard my mother hum before but I don’t know its name.

  People will start pouring in over the next half-hour. I think of the kids at Turtle Grove Daycare. Snack time is almost under way. I wonder if Joan has tried to hit anyone today and what games Wesley is forcing on his friends. The piano stops but I can hear Dad continue to hum, from across the room — that’s what it’s called, “Just As I Am.”

  “People are coming,” Dan says, centering his belt. His hair is freshly cut.

  I wait for them. Just as I am. Legs unshaven, skin tag on the back of my neck. New underwear, no mascara. I watch Dan trip as he walks to the other room. He meets Allison-Jean halfway. Their embrace is awkward on account of her pregnant belly, which looks considerably bigger since my mother’s birthday. They love each other. Despite bad haircuts and large pores and window valences covered with cats. His kid-size feet. Her collection of Precious Moments figurines. Just as they are, and it makes me feel alone as I wait for the parade of people who will come to remember Janice. Each with their own stories and memories, some more intimate than others. Of how she devilled eggs or wrote on the chalkboard. How she couldn’t walk in a straight line if she tried.

  I stand frozen, a mannequin in a stockroom, and gaze at my mother’s casket. People have arrived and mill around her and somehow she seems increasingly alive. I go to the bathroom, and when I return a group of my mother’s friends flock towards me like I’m a clearance bin. They hug me and squeeze the tops of my arms. Allison-Jean begins playing the piano again, and my great-
aunt arrives looking like she is from the old country except for the Sketchers Shape-ups on her feet. Hair in a bun, green cardigan, round glasses. Within seconds it is apparent she doesn’t know where she is. She walks past the casket towards the guest book and signs in. A cousin holds her arm.

  “I don’t like beef stroganoff,” she says. “Do they have anything with chicken?”

  By the second visitation I want nothing more to do with my mother’s death.

  16

  The next morning is the funeral. We get up early and I make the kids shower. Dan and Allison-Jean will have their kids dressed in formal wear. We strive for shirts that are clean. Glen picks us up and we go to the funeral as a family. The ride to the church is quiet. Wesley finger-draws unknown shapes on the back window and Joan falls asleep, her head tilted a severe ninety degrees.

  We file into the front pew. Wes looks around the church.

  “Who’s that?” He points to an image of Jesus surrounded by sheep on a wall hanging.

  “That’s Jesus.” I whisper.

  “Jesus is a man?”

  Our conversation is cut short by the arrival of the minister. He gives a welcoming address, prays aloud, and invites us to sing an opening hymn. Then he says a few words about my mother’s life, her service to the community, her family. He talks about the nature of her death: her proximity to heaven when she passed. How Jesus “had only a short trip to carry her home.” I make the mistake of looking at Wes.

  “What does that mean?” he asks.

  “Grandma died on a plane,” I whisper. “So she was already pretty close to heaven.”

  “And Jesus carried her the rest of the way?”

  “Right.” I turn my attention back to the altar.

  “How?”

  “How what?” I whisper.

  “How did he carry her? Like in his pocket, or in a backpack type thing?”

  I picture my mother being carried in a giant Baby Bjorn.

  “Just in his hands,” I tell him. “Now you have to be quiet.”

  Dan is invited to the altar to deliver the eulogy. He lightens the mood by describing the time my mother chased away an aggressive goose during a family picnic. People enjoy this story.