Ghost, p.3
Ghost, page 3
A scent of formaldehyde. David gasps for air. He turns and looks up the sloping ramp, through the long corridor, to a door leading to the street. In the distance, he can see a small window, a sliver of sunlight.
“I hope you’ll stay,” says Ophelia. “We’ve had only stupid boys.”
DAVID IS WAITING IN LINE at City Hall to get a burial permit.
The place smells of perspiration and dust. Overhead, a fan hangs from the ceiling, its blades slowly churning the thick air. The room is slow and old. The heavy front door is old. The wood desks and lighting fixtures are old. The flaking walls haven’t been painted in thirty years. The salmon-colored tiles on the floor are chipped and worn along a path from the entrance to the front counter, where, year after year, people have stood waiting in line.
Already today, David has been waiting for half an hour. He has come here many times over the last month. With a sigh, he looks at his watch. It is 2:40 p.m. Behind the front counter, a half dozen clerks sit at their desks, while only a single clerk attends to the people waiting in line. David stands on his toes to see what the other clerks are doing. Most are staring at their computer screens. Two read magazines.
There are still six people in front of him. For the last ten minutes, the woman at the head of the line has been arguing with the public clerk about her property tax bill. Her house is far smaller than her neighbors’ houses, she says, yet her taxes are just as high. She produces document after document of evidence, laying each out on the front counter. The clerk appears unmoved.
When David at last arrives at the head of the line, it is well past three in the afternoon. He explains that he needs a permit for the burial of a Frederick Hawkins, who died during the night, and hands the clerk the death certificate. The clerk studies the certificate and frowns. “I’m afraid that the physician has signed in the wrong box.” The clerk is a thirtyish man, just beginning to bald, dressed in a rumpled white shirt and checked tie.
“What do you mean?” asks David. “His signature is on the certificate. It’s right here.”
“Yes,” says the clerk. “But the signature is supposed to be in this box.” He points to a blank space on the death certificate. “You’ll have to get it signed again.”
“But it’s Friday,” David says helplessly. “There’s no way I can get the death certificate back to you before you close for the weekend.”
The clerk nods. “I’m sorry,” he says. “We have our rules.” The clerk looks past David to the next person in line.
In his mind, David is imagining the Hawkins family at this moment, the wife and the three children, waiting to schedule the funeral. By now, the family would have been waiting for almost twelve hours. This morning, David himself received the call from the wife, sobbing into the telephone. “He was only forty-six,” she kept repeating.
“The wife and three children are waiting for us to schedule the burial,” says David. “There are three children.”
The clerk stares at him. “All right,” he says finally. “But next time make sure that the attending physician signs in the right box. It’s the rule.”
David watches as Martin washes and disinfects the body with germicidal soap. Both men wear face masks and blue hospital scrub suits. In the light of the fluorescent lamp, the director’s forehead looks waxy and yellow. When he is finished with the washing, Martin sprays the body with a long shower hose, the water running into a flush sink near the floor. The embalming room is small and bare of ornament, except for an anatomy chart tacked to the plaster wall. On its margins are scribbled notes, people’s names, telephone numbers.
Martin steps back from the operating table. He bows his head and begins muttering quietly. He is saying a prayer. Opening his eyes, he moves back to the table and begins working again. His instruments lie waiting on a silver tray: scalpels, forceps, scissors, clamps, hooks and tubes, wire, thread. First, he swabs the inside of the mouth and nose with a germicide-disinfectant solution. With a pair of forceps, he plucks all visible hair from the nostrils, nose, and ears. He then packs the nostrils with cotton soaked in disinfectant. Again using the forceps, he pulls back the eyelids and puts plastic eye caps over the eyes. An adhesive paste rubbed on the underside of the eyelids keeps them closed. More cotton is placed in the mouth, to fill out the cheeks and shape the underside of the lips. Martin is working methodically, patiently, as if he were a craftsman repairing a valuable piece of furniture.
With a staple gun, Martin drives staples into the upper and lower gums. Then, using wires attached to the staples, he pulls the mouth shut. He begins shaping the mouth with his gloved fingers, carefully working the mouth and lips against the cotton underneath. This procedure takes time. The mouth must be handled with special attention, Martin explains, because the mouth is the most expressive part of the face. The mouth determines how the relatives will view the deceased. Indeed, David is astonished at how many different expressions the face assumes as Martin slightly moves the lips this way and that—as if the deceased were passing through his lifetime stock of emotions.
When he is satisfied that the mouth has a natural shape, Martin glues the lips into position with more adhesive, then rubs them with softened wax. “Jenny was telling me about bowerbirds,” he says as he makes a one-inch incision just below the neck. He peels back the skin. With a metal hook, he fishes around in the wound until he finds the jugular vein, covered in a translucent pink jellylike substance. “You see it? Under there.” Careful not to rupture the vein, he lifts it up with the hook, places a metal wedge beneath the vein to prop it up, and puts thread around each end. He inserts a needle and plastic tube into the vein. Immediately, blood rushes into the tube. He is draining the blood out of the body. “I’ve never heard of bowerbirds. I don’t know where Jenny learns all this stuff.” With his metal hook, the director probes deeper into the wound, searching for one of the carotid arteries. “There it is. You see it? It’s thicker and deeper down than the vein.” He pulls the artery up, wedges it, puts thread around each end, and inserts another needle and tube. “The males build really fancy nests with colored grasses, ribbons, anything they can find to attract a female. Then they fly around and destroy any other nest that competes with theirs. Just like people.” Pushing a plunger, he injects a mixture of formaldehyde and water into the artery. Slowly the liquid flows, two gallons’ worth. From time to time, Martin leans over and massages the legs, to help circulate the fluids, he says. David doesn’t want to watch, but he finds himself unable to look away. He is mesmerized. He stares at the yellow skin. He feels faint and strong at the same time. He feels alive. In the background, a ventilator hums. It breathes, like a human. Once the blood has been drained and the arterial embalming fluid injected, the director ties off the punctured vein and artery to keep them from leaking. He is moving with a kind of rhythm now. He has gone through these motions hundreds of times.
Tenderly, Martin places his gloved hand on the deceased’s stomach—tenderly, as if he were touching the shoulder of a friend, or a lover. Then, just above the navel, he pushes through a long, pointed metal tube attached to a suction hose. No blood appears. One at a time, he punctures the stomach, the bladder, the large intestine, the lungs—and suctions out gases and fluids. Odors of flatulence mix with the sharp smell of formaldehyde. Some of the organs faintly pop as they are punctured. He weaves the metal tube back and forth as if he were rowing a boat. Each abdominal organ must be punctured and drained. After which a stronger solution of formaldehyde is pumped into the torso. When this process has been completed, the director deftly sews closed the incision holes. He packs the anus with cotton. He washes and dries the body again. Finally, he glues the fingers together. David stares at the fingers, long and thin, almost feminine. Later, Martin says, Robert will manicure the fingernails, comb the hair, and put cream and makeup on the face. The entire procedure has taken an hour, possibly two. There is no clock in the embalming room. A door opens. David leans against the wall, wobbly on his feet, and realizes that he has been panting the whole time.
PERMITTING HERSELF A FUGITIVE LITTLE SMILE, Martha has strung ribbons across the room so that everyone walking in must duck or be tangled in a swirl of yellow and green. For her part, Ophelia dispenses plastic cups for champagne and party hats. She wears a cone-shaped hat herself. “I’m not leaving until I’m crocked,” she announces, draining and refilling her own cup every time she fills someone else’s. On the round central table, usually reserved for the grieving families to ponder cost sheets and event schedules, is a coconut cake with candles, ham sandwiches, chips, sweet pickles, and some potato salad that Jenny has made. Today is Robert’s birthday. By tradition, they are celebrating in the arrangement room.
Robert is tall and so thin that he looks ill, but he’s as strong as a horse. He is twenty-six today. For the last two years, he’s been working at the mortuary to support his night classes at the university, and he’s soaked up everything that Martin has taught him, but he’s made it clear that he’ll be leaving at the end of this academic term to be an engineer. Robert’s impending departure Martin considers a personal rejection. He can’t bring himself to mention it and instead talks as if Robert will remain at the mortuary indefinitely. “In a year, Robert, you’ll be better at makeup than me. We’ll see.” Now he puts his arm around Robert. From across the room, David looks at the two of them, Martin’s hand on Robert’s shoulder. Martin is relaxed with the champagne. All of the staff birthday parties are celebrated here in the funeral home, says Jenny. “Martin prefers not to go out.”
Robert is talking to Jenny and David about how his parents met the first time. His father was on his way to work one morning when he saw this “fascinating” woman staring at him out the window of a bus, which had stopped briefly to discharge passengers. Seizing the moment, his father leaped onto that bus without any clue about where it was going. By chance, there was a vacant seat next to the fascinating woman. They began talking. “It’s amazing how things happen,” says Robert. “If my mother had been looking somewhere else for three seconds, I wouldn’t be here. And now I’m going to be an engineer.” Robert laughs and takes a bite of cake.
All the staff are here, people David has barely met, coming and going in the hidden rooms of the mortuary. Thayer, the sullen hearse driver, is already drunk and sits in a corner eyeing Ophelia. Just last week, Thayer was bragging to Ophelia about how he takes the hearse out on his own during his off hours, without permission, and drives at high speeds down the highway.
“This room used to be my grandfather’s office,” Martin says to no one in particular. “And my office now used to be my bedroom.”
“We should have some music,” says Jenny. “What do you think, love?”
“If it’s low,” says Martin. He takes a swallow of champagne.
“We always have music,” says Robert. “Who’s got my CDs? I brought them in, but they totally disappeared.”
“Your CDs are boring,” says Ophelia. “Let’s play mine.”
“That would be the thing,” says Thayer, slurring his words. “Rouse the dead. They got a long time to be dead. Let’s wake ’em up.”
Even without music, Robert and Ophelia begin dancing around the room, moving slowly. Everyone watches. Ophelia is barefoot, having flung aside her high heels. Crocked as she intended to be, she droops her head against Robert and seems limp in his arms. He holds her up by her waist, struggling to wrap his arm around her thick middle.
“Ophelia is the best runner I’ve ever had,” Martin whispers to David. “She’s a little cheeky, but she’s got spirit, and she cares about this place.”
Martin is talking to everyone. “Robert should blow out his candles,” he says, “and make a wish.” Robert has already blown out the candles, says Martha. “But what about the wish?” asks Martin. He’s done that as well.
“Well then, a toast to Robert,” Martin says and raises his champagne glass. “Twenty-six years old…. When I was twenty-six, I…” He can’t finish his sentence. Tears are in his eyes. David has an urge to put his arm around Martin as Martin did with Robert.
“What is it, love?” asks Jenny.
“I’m sorry,” says Martin.
“You were thinking of when you were twenty-six.”
“Yes. A long time ago.”
“Let’s dance,” says Ophelia. She slides away from Robert, drapes herself over Martin, and pushes him into the middle of the room.
ON A SUNDAY, DAVID VISITS HIS MOTHER, taking the early bus just after dawn. For the last month, she’s had trouble walking. Twice, she fell on her way to the market, causing her legs to swell and turn a dozen shades of purple. She doesn’t complain, and she rarely asks him to make the two-hour trip to see her, but he knows when she wants him to visit.
When he arrives, David can see that his mother is not well. Her face is pale, despite her considerable makeup, and she barely has the energy to stand up and kiss him before returning to her chair. She’s wearing her red Chinese robe.
“I don’t understand why you keep it so dark in here,” he says, opening the heavy curtains. She squints in the light.
“Lauren closed the curtains last week,” she says, “and I haven’t bothered opening them. You know Lauren does what she wants. Lauren said that people across the way can look in my window and see me in my bathrobe. Or worse.” She laughs. “Phoo. Who cares about seeing an old woman naked.”
He leans down and gives her a kiss. “You still look pretty good.”
“I know I don’t look good.” She coughs and takes a sip of water, holding the glass carefully in her veined hands.
He can smell his mother’s perfume, flowery and sweet, jasmine. “Did you get the fruit?” he asks.
“You shouldn’t send me so many things. I can buy fruit for myself. Lauren sends me more than you do. You know, I do go out of the house now and then.”
“I send fruit to a lot of people. Okay, I’ll stop sending you fruit.”
At the window, David stares out at the other apartments across the way, the little path leading to the gardens, the swimming pool that his mother never uses. “You’ve got a beautiful view. You really should keep your curtains open.”
“I already know what it looks like out there.” She coughs again. “Before I forget, darling, I want you to check my last bank statement. The dumb thing isn’t right. I know I should have more money than what the bank says. You’re so good at figuring those things out.” David nods. “Sit,” she says. “Here.”
He sits in the love seat next to his mother, takes off his shoes. Already, he is slipping into her world of tranquillity. He feels it and leans back into the cushions. “I passed Mr. Crawley on the stairs,” he says sleepily. “I didn’t know he still lived in the building. I thought he was going to move.”
“Jack will never move. He only talks about moving. He must have just gotten back from mass when you saw him. He goes to mass with his daughter every week. He never used to, but he’s gotten religious in his old age. That happens.”
“You used to go to church.”
“Phoo. I can’t remember the last time I went to church.” She pauses. “You should meet Jack’s daughter sometime. She’s a smart cookie. Unmarried too. But I won’t say another word about her.”
“Jack looks all right.”
“Yes, he does. I don’t know what he does to his hair. That’s his business.”
They sit for a while without talking. They could always do this together. He asks about her friends. Mary has moved away to be close to her grandchildren, his mother says. And Frances has surprised everyone by enrolling in a course in psychology at the university. Unfortunately, she has become awfully full of herself in the process and rarely speaks to her old friends anymore. David remembers Frances. She’s been around since the days when his father was alive. In his mind, he pictures Frances and her husband coming to the house for drinks before going out for an evening with his parents, the women in fancy shoes and the men in jackets and ties, everyone laughing as they sipped their drinks and talked about some new comedy on television. Frances and her husband were attractive, but they paled beside David’s parents. Even at that young age, David recognized envy when he saw it, and he saw it in Frances. David’s mother knew that she was beautiful, but she let it all slide off her back. David’s father would have been oblivious to such a thing. He seemed completely unaware of his handsome good looks, as if he’d never glanced in a mirror in his life. He was humble. People told David that his father treated the janitor in his shop the same as the owner. He managed a five-and-dime store, but that wasn’t his passion. His passion was woodworking. He could make anything with his hands—a chest of drawers, a carved wooden box, a toy sailboat—and David spent hours with him in his shop in the basement, all a dim memory now. But the smell of sawdust and paint he remembers. The pieces of wood. At the pond, the toy sailboat catches the wind, its tiny sails billow. David, David, his father yells, laughing in pleasure, and David runs along the shore following the boat. How old was he then? Seven years old, eight years old, his father almost a boy himself, his sudden death only a year in the future.
David stands. For hours he sat cramped on the bus. He walks around the living room, pausing in front of the little jade bowl that he sent his mother for one of her birthdays, and the cabinet with the photographs. There, the familiar picture of his father eons ago, so handsome and so young, much younger than David is now. A photograph of himself and Lauren. A photograph of the tiny house they lived in after his father died, with its three tiny bedrooms hardly larger than closets, its tiny kitchen and the stained linoleum floor with the peeling tiles. A photograph of his mother in her twenties, glamorous. In her younger years, she looked like Lauren Bacall, with wavy brown hair and high cheekbones and sultry eyes. Looking at the photograph, David wonders again why she never remarried. She had plenty of opportunities. Men admired her. Besides her beauty, she had a serenity. Her paramours invited her to parties on boats, candlelit dinners, dancing, and she sometimes went, but she never accepted any of their marriage proposals. It was not as though she were a heartbroken widow. In fact, she rarely mentioned David’s father. It seemed to David that remarrying would have made her life so much easier—she was working such long hours at a dingy insurance company to put food on the table for her children, even though it was only macaroni and cheese out of a box, and she was always gone from the house. Marriage to any of the men would have let her spend time with David and his sister. But she preferred her independence. She wanted no attachments. It was as if the early loss of her husband had flattened the terrain of her life. Afterward, nothing bothered her. When she entered a room, people felt the air grow still. When she walked, she floated, never quite touching the ground. Both men and women were drawn to her. And when people entered her bubble, they felt that the world was a little better and calmer than it actually was. Her serenity could be maddening. Lauren hated her for it. When Lauren had her first period, she never told her mother; she told David instead. At eighteen, Lauren left home. In his childhood, David wanted to be like his mother. He would do anything to please her. She was the strength. She was the world. But she had no interest in anything. He wanted to be disturbed, while she could not be disturbed. And now, his mother was growing old, her once sensuous eyelids turned to heavy, dark bags, her cheeks sunken hollows that no makeup could disguise. For years, he was angry with her for never remarrying. And yet, he still wanted to please her. He went to law school to please her. Law is the most noble profession, she said to him one afternoon near his twenty-first birthday, the two of them sitting on a cool stone bench on his college campus. Except for medicine, she said, and you aren’t cut out for medicine—you can’t take the sight of blood. Sailing through the entrance examinations, he roomed with Harry. For six months he suffered through the tedious law books and lectures until he couldn’t stand them any longer. Not until a year later did he tell his mother he’d dropped out.
