“If you change your mind, Matthew and I will be there in a flash, okay?”
“Thanks.” He sighs heavily and I can picture him running his hand through his hair again. “I have to say, this parenting stuff is a lot harder than I ever thought it would be.”
“Yes, it is,” I agree. “And it’s been sprung on you without any warning. Twice.”
“At least with you I had time to get used to the idea, and I’ll have a chance to influence the kid as he grows. With Emily, she’s pretty much a done deal already. Changing her isn’t going to be easy.”
“Maybe she’s not the one who needs changing.”
There’s a long silence on the other end. Then he says, “R-i-g-h-t,” drawing the word out with a sarcastic tone. “Don’t start preaching and philosophizing to me, Mattie. There’s already one shrink doing that. I don’t need another.”
“I’m just saying it’s worth thinking about, Hurley. You’ve been on your own for a long time and you’re pretty set in your ways. But there are new people in your life now, people who are going to challenge those ways.”
“I’ve made plenty of sacrifices for Emily already,” he grumbles. “I’ve given her a home to live in, a room of her own, food on her table, clothes on her back.”
“Those are all great, but they’re material things. And I can tell you from my own experiences at that age that while material things matter, they aren’t the most important things in life. Emotional things are. How much of you have you given her?”
“This psychological mumbo-jumbo is giving me a headache.”
“Then I’ll stop. I have to go anyway. I have an appointment with Barbara to get my hair done. But I’ll keep my cell with me. Call me with any news, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.”
I’m about to tell him to hang in there when I realize he has already hung up.
Feeling unsettled, I head back out to the living room and reluctantly turn Matthew over to Dom. Two minutes later I’m on my way to the Keller Funeral Home. Over the past year I’ve grown accustomed to having a hairdresser who works in the basement of a funeral home, a fact that also requires me to lie down while getting my hair done, sometimes next to another customer who isn’t breathing and smells strongly of formaldehyde. It’s a little creepy, I suppose, but for the magical ministrations of Barbara, the dead’s answer to John Frieda and Vidal Sassoon, it’s worth it.
While I’ve adapted to coming to a funeral home to get my hair done, today is the first time I’ve entered the place when it’s dark outside other than to attend visitations or funerals that were well lit inside and well attended. Tonight there are no events—or gatherings, as Irene Keller, the owner, calls them—and the funeral home is darkened and seemingly empty. The front door is unlocked—I’m not sure if it would normally be or if it was left open for me—and I step into a large main room with a variety of plush seating lining the walls and situated in two small conversation circles. Various doorways off this area open onto Irene’s office, the casket room, three different viewing rooms, and at the far end, the basement. The only interior light at the moment is coming from some wall sconces in the main room—all of which seem to be dimmed—and from inside Irene’s office.
I head for the office, my footsteps cushioned by thick carpeting. The acoustics in this place drive me crazy. It’s as if the walls eat the sound, and overpowering silence is not all that comfortable when you’re tiptoeing through a house of the dead. For some reason I always feel like I need to tread lightly, as if stomping my feet, or making a floorboard creak might somehow upset the dead or the grieving. I also get an overwhelming urge every time I come in here to sing loudly, preferably something fun and slightly irreverent, like Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” or The Cure’s “Hello Goodbye” or “I Dig You.”
And the people who work here don’t do much to lighten things any. They all have serious, somber faces, wear black suits and shoes, and talk in hushed, monotonic voices. Their demeanor and appearance only serves to up the creep factor in my opinion. And then we get to Irene, who is the ultimate in creepy when it comes to her appearance, though she does display a refreshing attitude of in-your-face honesty and a dark sense of humor that she’ll share with those she trusts. But at eighty-something—no one really knows her actual age—Irene looks worse than many of the customers who come in through the basement door. She has skin so thin you can see through it in the places that aren’t covered with liver spots or as wrinkled as a shar-pei. Her teeth—what few she has left—are stained and yellowed with age, and she has all the muscular definition of a slug, which is fitting in a way, since she moves at a snail’s pace. Her hair grows in white tufts that she tries vainly to tame into something resembling an actual hairdo, and her hands are gnarled and bent from arthritis. For some reason she always wears bright red lipstick and nail polish. I suspect she wears the color in an effort to make herself look younger or at least draw one’s eye away from her older bits, but the end result is a garish clash of colors, sights, and textures that draw attention to all the things that make Irene look like the Crypt Keeper.
I’m anticipating the sight of Irene behind the desk in her office, so it’s a pleasant surprise when I find a young woman seated there instead. Ever mindful of the nerve-rattling silence of the place, I clear my throat loudly as I enter the office so as not to scare the poor girl.
“Hello,” she says, looking up at me with a smile. She is quite pretty, with huge blue eyes, a cascade of curly auburn hair, and pale, translucent skin. She rises from her chair and greets me just inside the door by extending her hand. “I’m Renny. How can I help you?”
I take her hand expecting her to shake it, but instead she clasps mine between both of hers, holding it.
“I’m here to see Barbara,” I say, grabbing a length of my hair and holding it out. The girl eyes my head for a second and then nods. “Ah, yes. Sorry, I should have guessed. You must be Mattie Winston.”
“Yes, I am.” I should probably be offended by the fact that one look told her I was in need of Barbara’s services, but I find her honest appraisal rather refreshing, especially in this place. Maybe that means she won’t embrace that fine art of cautious, euphemistic lingo that forces funeral home people to say things like departed, or moved on, or deceased, as opposed to the more succinct term dead. Those euphemisms created an awkward moment for me in nursing school when I was involved in the care of a southern Baptist family whose patriarch had suffered a heart attack while they were traveling to Minnesota to visit relatives. The heart attack was a bad one and the patient was touch and go during the two days of clinical time I did that week. The following week, when we returned for more clinical time, I saw the wife of the patient standing in the hallway outside his room, leaning against the wall. When I asked how her husband was doing, she said, “He’s going home.” I whooped with happiness, told her how great that was and how glad it made me. A few minutes later I learned that “going home” was another one of those euphemisms for dying.
“Are you a new employee here?” I ask Renny.
“Sort of. I’m Irene’s great-granddaughter. My birth name is Irene also, but everyone has always called me Renny. Anyway, I’m graduating in January with a degree in mortuary science and Grams is grooming me to take over the business since no one else in the family has ever shown an interest. So you and I will likely cross paths from time to time.”
Ah yes, that camaraderie that comes from sharing something that many perceive to be a darker side of society that is better neither seen nor heard. “Wow. Congratulations. Though I have to say, that seems like a . . . lot of responsibility for someone so young.” I was about to say it seemed like a dark choice, but then I realized that many of today’s younger generation are drawn to such things.
“I suppose it is, but there are so many things I’m looking forward to changing in this business, things that Grams would never consider. She’s a bit stuck in her ways.”
That’s putting it mildly. Irene
hasn’t changed a thing, including her wardrobe choices or her hairdo, in the decades that I’ve known her. “That sounds positive,” I say. “What sorts of changes do you have in mind?”
“Well, for one thing, this place is going to get a huge makeover, hopefully sooner rather than later. It’s too dark, too old, too quiet, too formal. It’s like a mausoleum. I want to see some brighter colors, and more sunlight, and furnishings that aren’t so heavy and dark.”
“I like that idea,” I tell her. “In fact I was thinking along those lines when I walked in here.”
“See? People these days are much more open to that kind of stuff. Grams thinks everyone expects somber and formal but I disagree. All the baby boomers that are aging now are into a whole different scene. We’re talking about former hippies who were into freedom of expression, and fun music, and bright colors. And then there’s the whole green movement. Did you know that there’s an option now to have your body cremated and your ashes placed into a biodegradable urn along with a plant seed? Once you plant the urn, your ashes become part of the tree, or whatever other plant you may choose. To me that’s way cooler than a big, cold gravestone, don’t you think?”
It is an interesting idea, enough so that for a moment I consider letting go of my resistance to cremation. For some reason, even though I know that cremation is the only way I’ll ever have a smoking hot body, the idea of burning my body into a small pile of gravelly ashes bothers me. I much prefer the idea of being returned to the earth, of being food for the worms and fertilizer for the plants. And besides, Barbara has already shown me how kick-ass good she can make me look for my funeral and I want to preserve that perfect hair for as long as I can.
“That’s a cool idea,” I say, “but I’m kind of committed to being buried. I know it tends to cost more but I’m fine with not having my body preserved, and I don’t want a fancy, expensive coffin. In fact, I have my eye on the one I want already.”
“Really?” Renny says, smiling skeptically.
“Really,” I tell her. “I found it on Amazon one night when I was looking for a book by an author named Coffin to give as a gift to a friend. I’m not sure what struck me as weirder, the fact that you can buy a coffin from Amazon, or the fact that some of the models come with customer ratings, including one bearing the headline, ‘Easy to get into, hard to get out of. ’”
Renny busts out a laugh, a healthy, happy laugh that sounds wonderful and a tad bit rebellious within the confines of this building. “Good one,” she says. “That’s the kind of thing I want to see more of. There’s a movement toward holding wakes rather than memorials, bright, happy gatherings where people can come together and remember the deceased with good humor, and laughter, and a shared story or two. There will always be tears, but rather than focusing on death, I want people to focus on life. I want them to embrace life . . . not only their own, but that of the person who is gone.”
“I like your style, Renny,” I say with a smile. “Just promise me you won’t change anything with Barbara. She’s the best hairdresser I’ve ever had and I hope to keep her right up through to eternity.”
“She is good,” Renny acknowledges with a nod and a smile. “I’ve let her do my makeup a time or two. My date for my senior prom would have died if he’d known he stole the virginity of someone who had been lying on an embalming table just hours before.”
“Was that a joke?” I say. “He would have died knowing?”
Renny claps a hand over her mouth and her eyes grow big. “Oh, that was a good one, wasn’t it? And completely accidental. Poor Grams would have a stroke if she heard me say something like that. She’s been trying for years to weed words like dead and body out of my vocabulary.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” I promise. Then with a glance at my watch, I add, “I’m late so I best get downstairs.”
“It was a real pleasure to meet you, Mattie,” she says with a genuine smile. “I look forward to working with you.”
“Likewise. Is the basement door unlocked or do I need to buzz in?”
“It’s locked. That rule is one I have to keep. Regulations and all, you know,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “Barbara is expecting you, so go ahead down there. I’m going to close up at eight, so you’ll have to leave through the basement door when you’re done.”
“Okay, thanks. You have a good night.” I leave the office and make my way to the door that goes to the basement. Beyond it is a set of stairs that leads down to a locked door. I hit the buzzer on the wall and Barbara opens the door a moment later.
“Mattie, good to see you!” She eyes my head with an expression of horror and disbelief. “And quite overdue, might I add. Where the heck have you been? It’s been months since I last saw you.”
“I know. Believe me I know.” I follow her into an ante room outside the official embalming room. “During the last part of my pregnancy I was being stalked by a crazy man and I was pretty limited in my ability to get out and about. And since the birth I’ve barely had the time to eat and sleep, much less get my hair done.”
“Yes, I heard about your new addition. Congratulations!”
“Thanks.”
She pats the top of a metal gurney, which she has topped with a cushy pad, and I hop up and lie down. Barbara is good at what she does, but she comes with a quirk. She does her best work on people who are supine since that’s the position the majority of her customers are in by default.
“You had a boy, right?” she says, running her fingers through my hair.
“Yes, his name is Matthew.”
“Got a picture?”
Yet another reminder that I need to get some sort of snapshot that I can carry with me. “No, not with me. I have some videos at home, but no pictures yet.”
Her fingers get caught in the chunk of dried barf hair on one side of my head. “What is this?” she asks, making a face.
“You don’t want to know.”
She takes a brush and starts teasing the individual strands in the chunk loose. “You’d be hard put to have anything in your hair grosser than some of the stuff I see on a daily basis in there,” she says, gesturing toward the embalming room. “But I’ll take your word for it. I’m assuming you want all-over color today and a trim, yes? How much do you want me to take off? Your hair has gotten long.”
“I’m thinking of making a change,” I tell her. “A big change.”
“Ooh, I like that. Want me to make you look like me?” she says with a wink.
When it comes to physical attributes, Barbara and I have almost nothing in common. We both have blue eyes and big bosoms, though mine grew so much during my pregnancy that Hurley named them K-2 and Mt. McKinley, fitting nicknames given that my real first name is Matterhorn. But that’s where the similarities end. I’m in my late thirties, tall—five-foot-twelve—and have my father’s thick body build. Barbara, on the other hand, is a short, thin woman in her mid-twenties with pale skin and jet black hair that she wears short and spiky. It’s a good look on her, but it wouldn’t work well on me, especially since the hairdo would only add more height.
“I want to go red,” I tell her.
Barbara steps back and scrutinizes me for a few seconds. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she says. “If you want change, we could do a darker blond, or even a light brown with gold highlights. But with your skin tone, I’m afraid the red tones will make you look sallow.”
“I really want to try the red,” I insist. “Where’s your book?”
She grabs a binder from a shelf and hands it to me. Inside it are a variety of color samples and when I find one that looks like Charlie’s color, I point to it. “I want this one.”
“Are you sure?” she says with a frown.
“Absolutely.” I snap the binder closed to seal my decision.
“You’ll have to change most of your makeup tones,” Barbara says.
“That’s fine. I barely have time to put on makeup these days anyway. Motherhood doesn’t allow me
much time for self-indulgence.”
“Looking good isn’t self-indulgent,” she says. “It’s a necessity.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re not buried in mounds of dirty laundry, tied to feedings every two hours, and facing a stack of dirty dishes taller than you are. And on top of that I have a kid and all the stuff he adds to the mix.”
It takes Barbara a second or two to get my joke, but once she does, laughter echoes through the funeral home for the second time tonight and I find I like the sound of it.
Chapter 17
You wouldn’t think lying on what amounts to a metal slab in the basement of a funeral home would be very relaxing, and yet every time I visit Barbara I come away feeling rested and rejuvenated. It’s after nine by the time we’re done, and while I’m feeling pretty good at the moment, the fact that Hurley hasn’t called or texted me while I’ve been here doesn’t bode well for a restful night.
I’m undecided about my new hair. The color is quite lovely, but it’s such a shock when I look in the mirror that I can’t decide if I like it on me or not. Barbara tells me to give it a few days to get used to it and see what other people think.
I can always tell when people give me false compliments on a change like this. I learned it in high school when I tried combining teal-colored eye shadow with plum-colored lipstick, and again when I decided to cut my hair supershort, à la Demi Moore in the movie Ghost. I have a big, round head, and big round heads don’t look good with short, scalp-hugging, pixieish hairdos. When I look back at the pictures of me during that phase, I can’t believe my friends and family let me out in public looking like that. Over time I came to realize that when people are on the fence about a new look you’re trying, or even firmly off the fence on the grass-is-brown side, they always start out with some innocuous observational phrase like, You changed your hair, or That’s a new style for you. Once you acknowledge this observation, they then tell you it looks nice in a tone that’s safely neutral. Not It looks great, or I love it, but a blandly neutral It looks nice. If someone truly likes a change you’ve made, they say so right at the start and do it with enthusiasm. Wow! I love that new hair color on you! Or Oh my God! Those hip hugger pants make your ass look fantastic! For further affirmation, if the person then goes out and copies whatever you’ve done, you know whatever you did is a rock solid improvement.
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