Death Benefits

by Sarah N. Harvey

  I shrug. “Maybe. What do you think?”

  “Definitely,” Kim says, leading me over to a shampooing station and draping a zebra-print cape over my shoulders. I lean back and close my eyes as she wets my hair and massages shampoo into my scalp. Her breasts are only inches from my face. It doesn’t take long before I am deeply grateful for the voluminous cape covering my lap. When she is finished, we make our way over to a cutting station where I adjust myself surreptitiously while Kim assembles her tools and combs my hair. Arthur has taken up residence on a white leather couch and appears to be asleep.

  “So…what were you thinking?” Kim asks.

  “I wasn’t. Arthur was.”

  “Arthur.” She laughs. “What a character.”

  I nod at myself in the mirror as she runs her fingers through my wet hair. Her lips are pursed and she is frowning slightly, as if my hair is confusing her somehow.

  “Take it all off,” I say. I have no idea why I’ve grown my hair this long, and I have no idea how I know it’s time to cut it off. I just do.

  “You sure?”

  “Yup. All of it. I want to see what my skull looks like.”

  “Just what I was thinking,” Kim replies. “You have a beautiful skull. Let’s get it out of hiding.”

  It doesn’t take long. And as it turns out, I do have quite a shapely skull. She has left a bit of fuzz—for girls to touch, she says, although I have my doubts about that. I run my hands over the fuzz and stare at myself in the mirror. I look completely different—older, for sure, and tougher.

  Arthur wakes up with a snort and glares at me.

  “You joining the army, boy?”

  “Oh, Arthur,” Kim says. “Stop your nonsense. He’s gorgeous. Just look at that shape.” She glides her hand over my fuzzy head and gives a small shiver. “Gorgeous,” she repeats. “Your turn now,” she says as she helps Arthur to the shampoo station.

  “Why don’t you get yourself a coffee next door, Royce?” Kim says as she snugs the cape around Arthur’s scrawny neck. “Just tell them to put it on my tab.”

  I nod and go to the coffee shop, where I’m pretty sure the barista, a guy about my age, is flirting with me while he makes my drink. It’s not my scene, but even so I take it as confirmation that I’ve done the right thing. It’s weird to feel the air on my scalp. Exposed, but also free. Free of what, I’m not exactly sure.

  When I get back to the shop, Arthur is bald. Totally bald. No fuzz even. Shaved to the skin. Shiny. And grinning from ear to ear, which is almost as scary as his bald head. His teeth aren’t exactly white. The term death’s-head comes to mind.

  “Holy shit, Arthur,” I say.

  “Holy shit, indeed, Royce,” he says. “Where’s my coffee?”

  “Coffee?” Was I supposed to get him a coffee? I can’t stop looking at his head. And mine. Side by side in the mirror I see something even scarier than his bald head: a family resemblance. My head is the same shape as his, from my wide, high forehead right down to a couple of prominent bumps at the base of my skull. Our noses are identical—the Jenkins beak. I run my hand over the back of my head and he cackles.

  “Bonking bumps,” he says.

  “What?”

  “They’re called bonking bumps—the ones at the base of your skull. Size does matter. I had a girlfriend who believed in phrenology. We tested her theory—often.”

  Kim rolls her eyes and helps him out of the chair. He pats her ass, and she winks at me and says, “Runs in the family, then, does it?”

  Who knew an entire head could blush? Or that a wink could be so welcome?

  When we get home I give Arthur his lunch, and he sleeps for nearly two hours. When he wakes up, he is beyond grouchy. His head is cold and he insists on wearing the Cowichan tuque. He’s also convinced that I shaved his head (and my own) while he slept. He has no recollection of going to Kim’s shop or of telling her to turn him into a cue ball. He doesn’t believe me when I tell him he let me drive the car.

  I give up trying to persuade him otherwise and focus on calming him down with ice cream and bad television. He’s branched out lately to watching reruns of Little House on the Prairie on some oldies cable channel. I’m in the kitchen putting his dinner together when he announces, “My father shaved our heads every summer.”

  “How come?” I ask.

  “Prairie summers were hot. Blazing hot. We spent most days in the swimming hole. Naked and bald, swinging from ropes. Girls weren’t allowed. My little sister had long red ringlets and petticoats. Our mother wouldn’t let her play with us. She was supposed to be learning to be a lady. It wasn’t fair, but we boys didn’t care.”

  “Your sister?”

  “Elizabeth. She died of diphtheria when she was ten.”

  This is the first I’ve heard of a sister. I’m having a hard time with the idea of Arthur swinging from a rope at a swimming hole; it’s even harder to imagine his sister, doomed to an eternity of embroidery and watercolors.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know,” he says. “I had an older brother too. Robert. Bobby. He was Mother’s favorite. She didn’t much care for me.”

  I totally get why she felt that way. “What happened to him?” I ask.

  “Dead. Got bitten by a neighbor’s rabid dog when he was thirteen. In those days there was no cure.”

  I don’t know what to say. If Mom knows any of this, she has never told me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say again.

  “Our father shot the dog. Almost shot the neighbor too. Would have if my mother hadn’t stopped him.” He gives a short bark of a laugh before he turns back to the tv. I wonder if he still misses them—Elizabeth and Bobby—or if most of the time it’s as if they never existed. I don’t know which is worse—forgetting your siblings or never having them in the first place.

  That night, Mom freaks out when she sees my hair. Or lack of it. After years of telling me to get a haircut, she claims I’ve gone too far and that I look like a skinhead. A neo-Nazi. A thug.

  “Mom, neo-Nazis don’t usually wear orange Converse All-Stars and T-shirts that say Lunenburg Folk Festival Volunteer.”

  “Even so, Rolly…Royce,” she says. “You look different. Older.” Like that’s a bad thing.

  “You should see Arthur,” I mutter.

  “What about him?”

  “Uh, he’s bald too. Balder than me. Totally shiny. Once you get used to it, it’s kinda cool. Literally. His hat collection’s coming in handy.”

  I laugh and Mom says, “You think this is funny? You’re supposed to be looking after him, Royce, feeding him and keeping him clean and safe. Being responsible. Not letting him shave his head. What’s next? Tattoos? Piercings?”

  The minute she says it, I’m planning our next outing. Me and Arthur at the tattoo parlor. It’s weird, the word parlor. The only time you ever hear it now is with the word tattoo, but I bet Arthur’s sister had to sit in the stuffy parlor while Arthur sailed through the air at the swimming hole. I’m so stoked on the idea of getting tattoos on my bonking bumps—my initials, maybe?— that Mom has to yell at me to get my attention.

  “Royce! Your grandfather has dementia, you know. Diminished capacity. His decision-making is compromised. Do you understand what that means?”

  I nod. Diminished capacity for what? Sex? Probably, although he still talked a good game. Food? Yeah. Driving? Definitely. Walking? Yup. Personal hygiene? Undoubtedly. Cello-playing? For sure. But he wasn’t dead yet. Not quite. He still had a huge capacity for leering, inappropriate touching, bad TV, ice cream, coffee, mockery and insult.

  “Royce, are you paying attention to me?”

  “Yup.”

  “How much did the cab cost?”

  I am about to tell her I drove the T-bird, when I realize that she’s in no mood to see it as a convenience rather than an illegality. I doubt whether she’ll ever be in the mood. After all, I did search her room for Arthur’s license, which, for
all I know, has been revoked. I’ll have to tell Arthur to keep the whole driving thing under his hat. Ha ha.

  “Uh, yeah, the cab,” I tell her. “Arthur has an account.” To distract her I add, “You never told me about Elizabeth and Robert.”

  “Who?”

  “Elizabeth and Robert. Your aunt and uncle.”

  “I don’t have an aunt or an uncle,” she says.

  “Technically, no. But you could have. Arthur had a brother and a sister—they both died when they were kids.”

  Mom doesn’t say anything right away. She gets up and starts loading the dishwasher. Her face is flushed and she is chewing her bottom lip, a sure sign she’s upset. “He never talked about his childhood,” she finally says. “I knew that his parents were born-again Christians, real Bible-thumpers, and that he grew up in a little town in Alberta, but that’s about it.” Her voice is flat, and I wonder if she’s hurt that he confided in me and not her.

  “I think the head-shaving triggered his memory,” I say, as if that will somehow make her feel better. “His father used to shave Arthur’s head in the summer. He didn’t tell me much more. Just that his sister died of diphtheria; his brother died of rabies.”

  “I had no idea,” she says. She sounds sad and tired and discouraged. Maybe the tattoos will have to wait.

  Seven

  The next morning, Arthur is still exhausted. I make him his café au lait as soon as I get there, but it sits in front of him, untouched, as he dozes in his high-back chair. When he wakes up, he is disoriented for a minute, and I can see the fear in his eyes. I don’t think he knows who I am, but he knows he’s at my mercy. I could do anything: Tie him up. Rob him. Kill him, even. The laptop alone must be worth some decent coin. Ditto the car. People have killed for less. The moment passes and he picks up the cup of coffee, takes a sip and roars, “Scum!”

  For a second I think he’s referring to me, and then I realize that the milky coffee has formed a scum while he slept. I’m with Arthur on that one. Scum is revolting. I move to take the cup away from him, but he hurls it on the floor before I can stop him.

  “For fuck’s sake, Arthur,” I yelp as I jump out of the way. “I can make you a fresh one.”

  For a split second, he looks ashamed of himself, but then he rallies.

  “Clean up the mess, boy, before it makes a stain. Do you know what this carpet is worth? Pure wool. Got it at an auction in 1960. Made by Persian toddlers. They sign them, you know. See, right down there in the corner. Little initials made by little fingers. Probably got paid ten cents for the whole damn thing.”

  I get a rag and a pail of warm water and get to work on the coffee stain. He’s right about the initials. They’re tiny, and next to them is what looks like a little bird. My eyes sting when I think of some poor little kid going blind making carpets for rich people. It’s bad enough to be cleaning one.

  “I bought my first cello at an auction,” Arthur says as I scrub. “I was twelve. Never even heard a cello, let alone seen one. The only music I ever heard was the church choir.”

  He pauses to take a breath and then he sings, in a clear strong voice that sounds much younger than his usual rasp:

  “I sing because I’m happy,

  I sing because I’m free,

  For His eye is on the sparrow,

  And I know He watches me.”

  He stops singing, as suddenly as he started, and I wonder if he’s forgotten the words or that he was telling me a story. His memory is selective, to say the least. I’m about to prompt him when he continues in his normal voice.

  “At any rate, there was a country auction in our town—someone had died, I think, and the family was getting rid of a houseful of stuff. My father bought a pump organ for my mother. She played quite well. Learned when she was a girl in Ontario. I remember there was a crank gramophone, a baby carriage, a rifle and a cello. For some reason, I took the three dollars I had saved up from my chores and bid on the cello.”

  “Why the cello?” I ask from the floor, still scrubbing.

  “Something about it appealed to me—the shape probably.” He chortles. “Reminded me of my best friend’s older sister. What I really wanted was the rifle, but Bobby outbid me. He died before he had a chance to use it though.”

  “How’d you learn to play?”

  “I didn’t touch it for a while. Just put it in my room in the corner. After Bobby died, I hauled it out to the backyard, took Bobby’s shotgun and tried to add some holes to the cello.” Arthur chortles. “I was a terrible shot. Maybe because I always closed my eyes at the last minute. So I dragged it back inside and tried to figure out how to play it. Drove my parents crazy, but pretty soon they were ordering me sheet music from Edmonton. Didn’t have a proper lesson until I was fourteen. Then I spent a year un-learning all my bad habits.”

  I finish scrubbing and look up to see that Arthur is staring at his hands with tears streaming down his face. When he sees me watching him, he says, “What are you looking at, boy?” But his heart isn’t in it. I push the box of tissues closer to him and take the pail of water into the kitchen. By the time I come back he has turned on the TV, and he doesn’t even glance at me. I sweep the pile of snotty Kleenex into the wastebasket and head downstairs.

  The first thing I do is check the car. Not that I think it will have gone anywhere. I just want to sit in it for a minute and stroke the steering wheel and inhale the vinyl smell. (Arthur told me that in 1956, vinyl was totally cutting edge. Way better than leather. Very space-age. Too bad if it made your ass sweat.) I wonder what it would be like to just open the garage door and drive away. I could be on the mainland in less than four hours, and the drive to Nova Scotia wouldn’t take more than a week—maybe less if the weather was good all the way. I probably already have enough money to get across the country if I sleep in the car and eat at McDonald’s. It’s totally doable. Except for one thing: Mom. She doesn’t deserve any of this. An ancient demanding father. An ungrateful runaway son. But then I didn’t deserve to be wrenched away from my home and my friends either.

  I get out of the car. The great escape will have to wait. I don’t even have a change of clothes with me, let alone my iPod. In the absence of anything better to do, I decide to search for Arthur’s cello. I figure it must be around somewhere. Not the one he bought when he was twelve, although that would be cool, but the one Mom has told me about. The insanely expensive one-of-a-kind instrument handmade by an Italian dude in the 1600s. Only the best for the great Arthur Jenkins.

  Cellos are pretty big, and I figure this one will be in a hard case, which is about the size of your average nine-year-old. It doesn’t take me long to search the downstairs. No luck. It’s not hiding in a closet, or lying in wait under a bed or lurking behind a door. I continue my search upstairs, but the cello isn’t wrapped up in one of Arthur’s coats in the front hall closet. Nor is it sporting a rakish beret and smoking a Gauloise in the pantry off the kitchen. I grin at the idea of Arthur’s cello chatting up a cute violin. When I get to Arthur’s bedroom I have second thoughts about searching his room. It’s an invasion of what little privacy he has left, and why am I trying to find the cello anyway? It’s not like either of us can play it. But for some reason finding the cello seems important, so I persevere, even though the room smells really bad. While I’m in there, I strip the bed and throw the sheets by the door in case he wonders what I’m doing in his room.

  I’m about to give up and go fix lunch when I spot something shoved in the back of his closet behind a box of old shoes. I get down on my hands and knees and move the box aside. There it is: a few hundred thousand dollars’ worth of old wood. As I drag the cello case out into the light, Arthur rings the bell and yells for me. I consider shoving the cello back into the closet, but then I think, What the hell? and pick it up by its handle and head to the living room.

  “Where’s my lunch?” Arthur growls.

  “Look what I found,” I say.

  I’m sure if Arthur was able to, he’d d
eck me, but he has to make do with turning purple and screaming, “Put that away! You have no right! I’ll have the law on you!” Then he calls me a lot of names—miscreant, delinquent, bandit. He even calls me a dwarfish thief, which I happen to know is from Macbeth. It makes me laugh—being called dwarfish—which sets him off again. He pounds the desk until I start to worry that he’s going to break the glass. Or have a heart attack.

  “Okay, okay,” I say. “I get it. You’re upset. I’ll put it back. Sorry for taking an interest.” I turn to go back to his room and something hits me in the back. It hurts.

  “Hey,” I yell. “What are you doin’, man?” His electric razor is lying on the floor beside me, and he is wheezing, not with rage but with laughter. Talk about mood swings.

  “You should see your face, boy,” he gasps. “What do they say in those ads? Priceless.”

  “Jesus, Arthur. That hurt.”

  “Pansy.”

  “Whatever,” I say. “I’m going to put this away and then I’ll make your lunch.”

  “Let me see it,” he says.

  “What?”

  “Open it up.”

  “You sure?”

  He nods.

  I carry the case closer to him and stand it up where he can reach it. His hands are too stiff to undo the catches, and when I open the case, he makes no move to touch the instrument inside. He just stares at it, sighs and looks away.

  I don’t know what to say. It doesn’t look much different from any other cello, but I know it is.

  He reaches into the drawer of his desk, pulls out a flashlight and hands it to me.

  “Take a look,” he says.

  “At what?”

  “The signature.”

  “Uh, okay.” I turn on the flashlight and wave the beam at the cello. I have no idea where someone would sign a cello.

  “In there.” He points at one of the F-shaped holes. “At the top.”

  I get down on my hands and knees and shine the light into the body of the cello. I can see what looks like spidery handwriting on a small, faded paper label— letters and numbers. I can’t make out what it says, but I don’t have to.