Burning Eddy

by Scot Gardner

  Her head rocked forward and backward slowly. A barely visible nod. She didn’t say anything for a long time. She didn’t have to.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you for being honest. Ja, and I have no need to talk to other people of these things.’

  And, I thought, when the time comes for me to keep my promise and play the tape as they burn Eddy’s body, those things would burn with her.

  ‘I took your advice,’ I said as we hugged goodbye on the footpath at the front of No. 4 Concertina Drive.

  ‘Jaaaa?’

  ‘I told Chantelle that I love her.’

  ‘Ho?’ she said. She looked at my face. ‘And what did she say?’

  She took a breath, closed her eyes and crossed her fingers.

  ‘We’re going out.’

  She jumped and spun and punched the air above her head. Her breasts flipped and swayed under her dress until I thought she was going to knock herself out. ‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Good on you!’ she shouted.

  She grabbed my shoulders and kissed my forehead. ‘You are someone to be proud of, Dan-ee-el. You deserve to be happy.’

  eighteen

  M A G P I E

  Eddy died one brittle Friday night in August. The seasons had changed. I’d thought she was going to live forever. She died. In her sleep. I didn’t feel a thing. She died and I didn’t know until Luke phoned. He was one of the first people I’d called when we got our phone connected. I’d called and given him our number, though I never expected he’d have a reason to ring. He told me in husky sobs that she hadn’t answered her door when he’d gone to drop off her vegies. He phoned me before he thought about it, he said. He didn’t know what else to do. I told him I’d be there as soon as I could. Mum drove my car but she didn’t drive fast enough. She’d been driving every day since she got her Ps. She’d dropped Toby at school since he’d started. She’d waited at the bus stop for Kat and me and I’d never noticed how slowly she drove until that Saturday morning. We dropped Toby at Chantelle’s place and Chantelle came with us. Mum looked in the rear-vision mirror every few minutes and held the steering wheel as though it might get away if she relaxed. We said nothing.

  Near Hepworth B power station, I saw a magpie standing over something dead on the side of the road. Something black and white. With its head tilted, it watched the motionless lump and as we got closer, I could see that the lump was another bird. Another magpie that had been hit by a car. The bird that was alive wasn’t looking for a meal, it was mourning. It stood beside the dead bird because it had lost a friend. Maybe a brother or a sister that had shared a nest. Maybe a partner. My heart sank.

  Eddy lay in the hollow of her pillow and I wanted to touch her. Shake her gently. Her teeth smiled at us from a glass on the bedside table. She had a look on her face like she’d just snuggled down and sighed. Sighed and died. She wasn’t there though. Her body was an empty shell, like her soul had escaped on her last breath. With all the grace of a sunset. I smiled.

  I felt sad and happy. Happy and sad. I’d thought that I might have felt her leave. I’d thought maybe an owl might visit again or I’d have some amazing dream or wake up and just know. There was nothing like that. Nothing except I felt like she’d died the way she was meant to. No sirens. No needles and tubes. No watching her fade away. No waiting. It was like I’d walked to her place from school and found that she wasn’t home. It felt like she’d stepped into the garden and left her body behind.

  I thought all that and then it hit me. I’d never see her again. The sadness launched itself from the dark part of my soul and crushed the air from my lungs. My beautiful friend. I fell to my knees beside her bed. The old woman who made it seem like my every dream was only a breath away from reality. I grabbed her hand and squeezed the cold fingers, begging her to squeeze back.

  ‘Eddy?’

  I felt stranded and lost. Alone in the world. It was a feeling that scorched a path in my mind back to the time when Chris died. I couldn’t fill my lungs and couldn’t see through the fog of tears. My best friends always die. I closed my eyes and rested my head on the bed. Fitful and noiseless sobs rendered my body useless. The joy leaked from my bones and turned my muscles to mush. What good is an afterlife? Death is death for those of us left in the world. When Eddy’s death really hit me, for a moment I wanted to die with her. Just leave.

  Mum’s hand was hot on my shoulder. I didn’t remember it arriving but it must have been there a while. I wiped my face on the bedspread and saw Chantelle. She smiled. It was a sad smile. I wasn’t alone. I’d never be alone. Eddy had taught me that. Alone is a state of mind.

  ‘I phoned the funeral directors,’ Mum said, sombrely. ‘There were two in the Yellow Pages and I phoned the first one listed for Carmine.’

  They came and took her body away. A man with a shiny head dressed in a dark suit worked with practised sadness and the efficiency of a waiter at McDonald’s. Did we want fries with that open casket? We booked the chapel at the crematorium for Tuesday morning. The man’s offsider was a tall man-boy with pimples in his beard. He wasn’t that old and I wondered how he’d got into his line of work.

  The sky looked depressed that Tuesday. Grey and heavy, like at any moment tears of rain would drown any hope of happiness for the whole day. Kat was immune to it. Jake’s parents were going out that night and Jake had arranged to stay at our place. Mum talked with Kat about Jake coming over to stay another night instead and Kat went all weird. She was doing housework and making promises and in the end pleading. Mum agreed to let Jake stay. I told Mum that Kat shouldn’t have to stop living because one of my friends had. Mum shrugged and Kat left for Tina’s place and the bus with a smile and bounce in her step — half an hour earlier than she needed to.

  We dropped Toby at school. I tried to talk him into coming but he wanted to be with his friends. He stood on tiptoes in his gumboots and kissed me through the car window. He told me to have fun.

  Chantelle didn’t wear black. Not many people at the service did. Chantelle wore her rainbow skivvy and purple skirt. She held my hand in the car and her fingers were cool. There were twenty-two people in the chapel. I recognised Eddy’s friends Annika, Claar and Tedi. We exchanged sombre smiles but didn’t talk.

  Luke stood on his own, staring at the flowers that surrounded Eddy’s open coffin. His nose was red and his hair plastered flat with stale-smelling grease.

  He shook my hand. ‘Hello, Daniel.’

  ‘Luke.’

  ‘It is a sad, sad day to bury such a beautiful person.’

  I shrugged and nodded.

  ‘Do you want to say something in the service? I told Daryl that you would want to.’

  ‘Nah . . .’ I said, and felt my guts tighten. My only experience of a funeral before that one was the dry-eyed graveside service for my best friend, Chris. I didn’t know what to feel then. All the adults around me had cried like kids and I couldn’t cry. I didn’t cry for Chris until I found that goat in the Lanes’ dam. What if I just fell in a heap? I wasn’t prepared. What would I say? I stuffed my hand into my pocket and felt the tape. Eddy’s tape. Surely the music will say more than a Bible’s worth of words.

  Luke grabbed my elbow. ‘Ja, you must. You’re her son.’

  ‘Nah . . . I’m not her . . .’

  He stared at me and nodded.

  The man with the shiny head interrupted and asked Luke if we were ready. Luke nodded briskly and sniffed. I handed the tape to the shiny-headed funeral director.

  ‘When would you like me to play it?’

  ‘Oh . . . um . . . when they burn . . .’

  ‘At the committal? Sure. Is it ready to play?’

  I nodded.

  The man with the shiny head was Daryl and he asked everyone to be seated. I sat in the front row. Luke sat on one side of me, Chantelle on the other. Daryl introduced a religious man who droned on about Edwina and her safe passage into the kingdom of God. He read something with a whole heap of ‘thous’ and ‘thines’ that sounded like some
one calling a horserace in slow motion. Chantelle squeezed my hand and bit her lip. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t even look sad. She kind of glowed. Rainbow. Eddy had invited Chantelle and me for dinner in July, and had taught Chantelle how to waltz, the two of them laughing and wheeling round the kitchen while the rice cooked. She’d fed us fat sausages, mashed potato and nasi goreng with a fried banana on top. We’d talked about love, Eddy’s favourite topic.

  Mum sat beside Chantelle and dabbed at her nose with a blue handkerchief. One of Dad’s hankies. Mum had never really met Eddy. Eddy was my friend but Mum came to the funeral and cried. I don’t think all the tears were for Eddy. And if I lost it and started crying for my dad, or if some of the million tears I’d locked away for Chris leaked out, then no one would really care. Funerals are good like that, I thought.

  Daryl raised his eyebrows at Luke and Luke drew a breath and nodded. Head bowed, he moved to stand beside the head of the coffin. His glasses fogged and he honked into a red and white chequered hankie before stuffing it into his jacket pocket. He took some paper from his shirt pocket and unfolded it with shaky hands. His mouth twitched and he cleared his throat. Someone behind me sniffed. Luke glanced at the coffin. His shoulders began to shake. He took a breath and pulled at his tie. His scruffy gold and purple tie. He moved the knot from side to side and I could see the white elastic that held it against his collar.

  ‘I . . . I . . .’ he began, and shook his head. For a long while that’s all he did. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. Like a yawn, his sadness was contagious. I wanted to put my hand on his back, rub circles and pat like I do for Tobe. Shush in his ear and let him know it would be okay.

  He put his glasses back on and tried to read from the paper shaking in his hands. Someone behind me sniffed again and I looked over my shoulder to see Claar, with her long red nails, taking a tissue from Tedi. Then a roar of pain bounced off the walls of the chapel. It made Chantelle flinch and it took me a moment to realise it had been Luke. His face had filled with blood and he screwed his notes into a hard ball and slammed them at the floor.

  ‘I loved dat woman!’ he shouted with a spray of spit. He stormed through the gathering and tried to slam one of the heavy chapel doors. It bucked against its springs and settled quietly closed.

  A murmur washed through the assembly and faded to a whisper. Chantelle looked at me. Her eyebrows jumped and she poked her bottom lip out. I sighed. I knew I had to do it. Eddy would have liked it. Well, Eddy would have loved it. I had to talk. There was nothing heroic about it. It felt like hard work making my body move to the place beside Eddy’s coffin. I tried not to look at the body but my eyes had other ideas. They’d put make-up on her and dressed her up for the occasion. The smile still hung on her lips. They’d put her teeth back in but the skin around her eyes had gone slack so she didn’t look like Eddy anymore. Eddy had gone, I was sure of that. The spark that ignited the Eddy-fire had gone to another place. Maybe it had just gone out. Maybe it had moved on like Eddy said it would. A prickly heat crawled up my spine. Just in case, I thought, pretend that Eddy’s sitting in the corner.

  Daryl nodded to me solemnly and his eyes were cold and businesslike. I wondered how many dead bodies he’d seen. I wondered how many funerals he’d stood through. I wondered if he’d buried Chris. I wondered if he had kids and if he could laugh and play-fight with them. I wondered whether pretending to be sad eventually made you sad.

  I looked at my mum, her eyes red-rimmed, calm and full of pride. I looked at Chantelle-the-rainbow and she smiled. I looked across the dejected faces and the flower-scented air stuttered into my lungs.

  ‘Sometimes death is a gift. Sometimes it’s like the end of a good book. You turn the last page and think, Jeez that was a great story.’

  Someone near the back stifled a laugh.

  ‘You don’t want it to end. You never want it to end. When a boy dies . . . when a boy drowns it’s like the pages have been torn from the book and you feel ripped off. The story doesn’t make any sense. It might take ages for you to realise that it was meant to be a short story. A sad story.

  ‘Eddy’s death was the perfect end to an amazing story. The story of her life. I guess you’re all part of the story, like me. I guess some of you are even feeling the way I do. Bit sad. Bit hollow inside and so, so happy that Eddy was part of my life.

  ‘If Eddy’s right and there is an afterlife, you can guarantee she’ll be sitting in a fleecy armchair, smiling at us with a cup of coffee and one of those cinnamon bickies. Those bickies are made in heaven so they’re probably still warm on her plate.’

  There was a rumble of laughter and people shifted in their seats.

  ‘Could you think of a more beautiful, peaceful way to die? To just go to sleep and never wake up? Wouldn’t surprise me if she’d planned it.

  ‘She taught me so many things. So many things about life. About fear and courage and being yourself and love. She taught me about love. She taught me these things without trying. Every day. She lived every day like it mattered. She loved her animals and she talked to her plants. She wasn’t perfect. Who is? I don’t think she’d mind me telling you that she could play a mean tune with her bum.’

  A woman in the front row squealed and slapped a hand over her smiling mouth. The rest of the chapel rumbled with quiet laughter. I looked at the body in the coffin and I swear it was smiling.

  ‘I hope it’s okay to feel a bit happy as well as a bit sad. The book of Eddy had some beautiful moments and a lovely ending. I’ll keep it in the library of my heart just in case I need a bit of a laugh or some wisdom.

  ‘For a long time now I’ve been asking myself, What would Eddy think about this? And I just realised that the Eddy in me will answer like always.’

  My throat ached with crying that needed to be let out. I knew if I said another word my voice would squeak and I’d lose it. I nodded to Daryl and he caught the eye of his offsider who bowed his head before quietly closing the lid of the coffin. The music began to play. Eddy’s beautiful music. The music she’d played for me when I thought she’d died. Mellow heartbeat bass and soaring violins. Now she had died, the words she’d said came flooding back like lyrics. May the music always cut to our core, chase away the shadows and fill our bones with hope.

  My eyes started to melt. My body shook and I stood proud in my pain. Something beneath the coffin gave a little clunk and it sank slowly into the pedestal. By the time it had vanished from sight some of the people were crying louder than the music, and I desperately needed a hankie.

  We went to Tedi’s flat and I stood in the sullen little garden with Mum and Chantelle, while a succession of old people offered us plates of sandwiches and congratulated me on my speech. I shook cold hands and thanked them awkwardly. I stuffed myself until I could hardly walk, not wanting to disappoint any of the tray bearers.

  Daryl told me that Eddy’s ashes would be ready to be picked up the following morning. Not at the crematorium, at their office in Chandler Street. Why was he telling me? Maybe I had become her son. Her next of kin. Grandson, maybe. Whatever. Luke had disappeared and no long-lost relatives had come out of the garden for the funeral. She really had been alone. Alone but never lonely. She left behind good memories and friends. All she had left to do in life was die.

  I sat in the back seat with Chantelle on the way home. We didn’t say much. The sky had darkened and the wipers stammered as they dragged a light mist from the windscreen. It felt like Mum was chauffeuring us and we held hands. Her fingers were like ice to begin with, but by the time we pulled into her driveway they were warm and alive and I didn’t want to let go. Not then or ever. Maybe it was a sense of losing someone you love and maybe it’s contagious. I’d lost Chris and Eddy, now the thought of losing Chantelle was skulking around in my head. I shook and forced myself to smile. There’s enough heartache in the world without dreaming more into existence.

  Outside the car, the dogs were going crazy so Chantelle opened the door. Rabbit jumped i
n and put pawprints on Chantelle’s skirt. He jumped across the seat with his tail cutting the air and licked my mouth. I pushed him off and got out of the car. I spat on the gravel and wiped my face on my sleeve. Chantelle laughed and I felt like grabbing her and tickling her until she couldn’t breathe. I stepped around the car and she ran off a few paces and smiled. She rubbed at the pawprints on her skirt. She growled at Rabbit but there was too much smile in her voice and the dog wagged his tail harder.

  ‘Do you want to stay at my place tonight?’ I asked her. I asked before I’d thought about it and Mum wound down her window.

  ‘I think one friend sleeping over is enough for tonight, Dan. Can you make it another night? I’ve got to get home,’ Mum said, and I remembered that Jake was coming home on the bus with Kat. What was the big hurry?

  ‘You could stay here,’ Chantelle said, and my toes curled in my shoes.

  Mum looked at me and shrugged.

  ‘Would it be okay with your mum?’ I asked.

  ‘Dad. Mum’s on night shift so Dad’ll be home. I’ll give him a call and find out.’

  ‘We’ll make it another night. Don’t worry about it,’ Mum said. ‘C’mon, Dan.’

  ‘Nah. It’s no trouble. Won’t be a sec,’ she said. She ran to the front door and kicked her shoes off. Rabbit and Stacey followed her but bolted back to me when she closed the door in their faces.

  Mum looked at me and shook her head.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  ‘You kids grow up too quick.’

  I shrugged. ‘Can’t help it.’

  ‘Yeah, well stop it anyway.’

  Chantelle ran back outside in her socks. ‘Yeah, that’s fine with Dad. He said it’ll be an early night though, so we can still get up for the bus tomorrow.’

  I wanted to scream and jump up and down like Toby does when he’s excited. I held it in. It was hard work and some of the joy leaked out of my eyes.