An Unremarkable Body

by Elisa Lodato

  I must have fallen asleep, because I woke around eleven to the sound of the bathroom door closing and then the shower being turned on. I pushed myself up into a seated position and let my feet drift down to the carpet. My stomach was still horribly empty. I put my head down between my legs and looked at my toenails, hot-pink and indifferent. It had all seemed like such a good idea last night. I sat there with my head hanging for a few minutes before standing up slowly. I walked back towards my bedroom, but as I passed the bathroom door I heard David’s voice speak into the wet heat. For a moment I thought he was talking to me, but then I realised he was on the phone: ‘All OK here, thanks. Just got out of the shower.

  ‘No, Mark’s cooking us breakfast. I’ll leave after that.

  ‘Think my train is at one, so should be fine.

  ‘OK. Yep. See you later,’ and then, very quietly, ‘love you too.’

  My brain was faster than my legs – by the time I’d processed that his conversation was with Sarah, it was too late to dash back to the living room. He opened the door and released the pent-up steam of his stolen shower. We stared at each other, defeated by the morning and our divergent realities: I had to drive over to my mother’s for lunch, and he had to go home to his family.

  He followed me into my bedroom and began the process of dressing and retracting. ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘Don’t. Please.’ He waited for me to continue. ‘It happened. And it shouldn’t have. We both drank too much.’ He smiled ruefully and, sitting down on the edge of my bed, began to pull an unwilling sock over his damp foot. ‘Go home to Sarah.’ He stopped and looked up.

  ‘I will. I mean, I am.’

  I looked down at the toes I’d painted so optimistically last night.

  ‘It was great to see you, though,’ he said.

  I pulled at the hem of my nightshirt, holding it away from the contours of my breasts and belly. I wanted him gone. ‘I need to have a shower and head over to my mother’s house.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, looking for his jeans. He stood up to pull them on. ‘I’ll get my things.’ He grabbed his phone and keys from my bedside table, and as he walked past me and into the hallway he reached for my hand. ‘I wish things could have been different.’ I let him hold my hand, knowing nothing could stop this goodbye. That it had a momentum of its own. I continued staring at his chest until I felt his face descend to mine. He kissed me gently on the lips. I pulled my hand away and opened the front door. He disappeared down the stairs without another word.

  I walked back into the kitchen, averting my eyes from the cold and abandoned tea on the work surface and reached for the loaf in the bread bin. I toasted two slices with renewed purpose, buttering them generously, and then took the first bite. There wasn’t enough saliva in my mouth to break down the unwieldy toast, but I forced myself to eat it.

  I checked my phone and saw that Andrea had texted just two words: Did you? I put it down and went to have a shower. The hot water reminded me of normality, but as I lifted my left leg onto the side of the bath in order to shave it, my stomach finally surrendered the chunks of half-chewed toast into the soapy suds that had collected at the plughole.

  I got out of the shower, combed through my damp hair and got dressed slowly. I patted some splodges of foundation under my eyes to cover the worst of the darkness there and made my way downstairs and into my car, not knowing my mother would never see my face again. That she was already dead.

  I knocked on the front door, rang the bell and eventually searched through my bag to find the spare key. I put the key in the lock and tried to convince myself that she’d popped out. But when I saw the door hadn’t been deadlocked and the alarm was off, I knew the heavy silence of the house was ominous. I opened the door slowly and stepped over the threshold, peering into the hallway. I pushed the door further and tried to widen its arc, but something soft and obdurate blocked it on the other side. I looked down and saw that I was standing on strands of my mother’s brown hair. I knew what it was. I knew what it must mean. I turned my right shoulder into the hallway and slid along the wall so I could really know. Her head was turned away from me, at a perfect right angle to her body. Her legs were raised, still upon the stairs, but her skirt had risen where she fell, exposing her thighs. It was so sudden and irrevocable. So incontrovertibly true.

  I knelt beside her and called her name. At first quietly, and then with panic when I saw her eyes were open. Frozen in terror. I put my hand on her cheek but it was firm and cold to the touch. It reminded me of the weeks before Christopher was born, when her body had pushed me from her. She had grabbed for me then. Tried to pull me closer. But all I could see were her eyes, wide and anxious to explain.

  I stood up and reached for my bag, emptying its contents onto the floor to find my phone. I dialled 999 and told the operator my mother was dead. She dispatched an ambulance immediately. I repeated, as though she had misheard me, that she was dead. In a tone of voice both practised and exasperated, the operator informed me a paramedic would still have to attend the scene. I ended the call and phoned Helen. She answered promptly, sharply: ‘Laura? Is that you? Is everything OK?’ Her voice was so clear and interrogative that I found my own, shrinking and sliding down the stairs to rest on top of my mother’s head.

  ‘She’s dead.’ I swallowed the lump and heard an intake of breath so painful I closed my eyes and braced myself for the exhalation. But it didn’t come. Just silence. And then a changed Helen, one seeking to clarify, to ask me, as though I were an overexcited teenager, if I was sure.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ and then unwillingly, ‘she’s lying here in front of me.’

  ‘Laura. Listen to me. Have you phoned for an ambulance?’

  ‘Yes. It’s on its way. But Helen, she’s gone.’ Repeating the announcement opened the floodgates to my own ugly, gulping shock. Gone. I choked on the pain of it. When I found my voice again, Helen was no longer on the other end. I put my phone down on the floor and closed the front door. I sat down beside her, invited by her right hand, flat to the floor, to interlace my fingers with her own. I tried as best I could, but rigor mortis was greedy for her; her hand was already cold and unresponsive.

  Some minutes later, I have no idea how many, I heard the siren and saw the blue lights of the ambulance fire intermittently through the stained glass of the front door panels and then onto the wooden floorboards of the hallway. The footsteps on the driveway were abrupt and culminated in loud knocks on the door. I wished then that I hadn’t made such a fuss. All I wanted, at that moment, was to sit beside my mother’s body for a little while longer. In cold and quiet contemplation. But the people knocking at the door began shouting through the letter box to open up.

  My mother’s corpse was examined by a paramedic who went about his task with discreet efficiency. He checked her pupils, her pulse, called out lividity and rigor mortis and pronounced her life extinct at 2.16 p.m. I stood and watched this administrative ritual with sombre fascination. He asked his partner to call the police as he guided me out of the hallway and into the living room. I resisted the professional push and asked him about the removal of her body.

  ‘Are you going to take her away?’

  ‘Her body is the property of the Coroner now. They will arrange for removal and, more than likely, a post-mortem.’

  ‘Can’t she stay here? With me?’ And then, the absurdly irrelevant: ‘We were supposed to have lunch together.’ I stood with my hands hanging beside me. I must have looked so helpless because he said, kindly, ‘Do you have any family you can call? A friend, perhaps?’

  Into this stand-off came Helen’s voice from the driveway. The front door was open, but not enough to permit a view of my mother’s body.

  ‘Laura? Where are you? Can I come in?’ There was no time to answer. She marched into the hallway and stood before the paramedic and me expectantly, as if she were waiting for us to explain ourselves. She had not seen the corpse on the floor behind her. I looked down at my mother and she followed my
gaze, turning on her heel.

  For as long as I can remember, Helen had been strong. Her sheer force of will was enough to hold my mother up at times of great weakness, to pull our family from the mire and encourage us all to keep going. But when she saw my mother’s dead body, something broke inside her. She moaned at the pain of it and tried to kneel down beside her head, but the paramedic stopped her, preventing her from this final act of support.

  ‘I must ask you not to touch the body. The police will be here shortly. I need to ask you both to step away from the scene entirely, please.’

  We went and sat on the living room sofa, side by side, as though we’d been very naughty. I looked around the room, understanding for the first time that the books on the shelves and pictures on the wall were the possessions of a dead person. They already wore the dusty, neglected aspect of items that have been forgotten. Left behind.

  Helen sat with her head in her hands. She looked as though she were trying to work something out: an equation of such complexity that her head needed her hands as a stand. I was waiting for her to cry. Her tears would be the starter pistol for my own grief; I couldn’t have my mother’s friend outsprint my own sorrow. But she didn’t cry and, consequently, neither did I. I got up and walked over to the bookshelves.

  The police arrived around three o’clock and asked me a series of questions: what relation was I to the deceased; what time had I discovered the body; had I touched or moved anything; how long did I wait before calling the emergency services; was anybody else in the house when she died. They were endless and clinical. The body. The deceased. My mother’s death had already taken on a life of its own, one that would be constructed by stationery and administered by laser printers, held together by staples and sealed in A5 envelopes. Overwhelmed by what she’d become, I told them, fearfully, that I had stepped on her hair and stroked her cheek. The female police officer nodded her head in understanding, as though such bland interference with the scene was to be expected. Helen remained impassive and silent beside me.

  They arranged for the body to be removed, suggesting, with practised concern, that I remain in the living room while they wheeled her out. Helen stood by the bay window with her back to us, watching as they loaded my mother’s dead body into the private ambulance. Her back was straight and strong.

  ‘When can I see her again?’ I asked one of the police officers with rising panic, as I realised they were taking my mother away from me.

  ‘You’ll have to deal with the Coroner’s office from now on. There’s a number you can ring on those papers. You’ll need some form of ID.’

  I nodded. And then realised I didn’t understand. ‘For me?’

  ‘For you, yes. You are the next of kin, aren’t you?’

  I thought of my father and brother for the first time. That I would have to inform them of her death. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what about a funeral? When can we sort that out?’ asked Helen. She had turned back to the room, direct and snappy.

  ‘It all depends on the Coroner. They can sometimes issue what’s called an Interim Certificate of Fact of Death so you can arrange a funeral. If that happens, the inquest is usually adjourned to a later date. But I don’t know. I can’t second-guess the Coroner’s office.’

  I nodded, stunned by all that was suddenly expected of me. Her body was mine but had to be opened up and inspected by a stranger, and then I could dispose of her as I pleased? Just as I’d once been passed to her, here she was being passed back to me. It was confusing.

  ‘Let me drive you home,’ Helen said.

  ‘No, I’m OK. I’ll drive myself.’

  But she wouldn’t go. She sat down on an armchair and waited for the police to gather their things and leave.

  ‘I could follow you home, then. Stay with you for a little while. I can’t bear the thought of you on your own after this.’

  ‘I want to be on my own. I need time to just understand. I don’t understand, Helen. How can it have happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. God, I don’t know. She must have slipped and gone down the whole lot.’

  ‘Her neck. It looked strange.’

  ‘Don’t torture yourself, Laura. They’ll be able to tell us what happened after the post-mortem.’

  ‘She was all alone.’ I began to cry. ‘She must have been so frightened.’

  Helen looked down at my feet as her face contorted in time with my own.

  ‘I can’t stay here,’ I said suddenly. I didn’t want to share my grief with Helen. I felt, even in those first moments, an instinctive urge to claim my mother as my own.

  She stood up and put her coat on. I locked up and reset the alarm, conscious with every movement that the most valuable thing in my life had already been driven away. Helen hugged me, briefly and without emotion, before she got into her car, a battered Volkswagen Polo. I watched her drive away before beginning my own long and lonely journey home.

  We decided her funeral should be a humanist one; my mother was not religious in any way. She cared only for the kind of carefully crafted fiction she could inhabit. Hardy’s Wessex, or Eliot’s Middlemarch. The implausible vignettes of the New Testament afforded her no foothold and, consequently, she had no time for the landscape of Christ. The service was held at Kingston Crematorium on Tuesday 21 February at twelve thirty in the afternoon. Shrove Tuesday, as Helen pointed out the Saturday before. She drove over to Balham to help me choose the readings and make the final catering arrangements.

  ‘Is that significant?’ I asked.

  ‘Not unless you want to make pancakes.’

  ‘I don’t remember ever making pancakes at home. So I’m not about to start now.’

  ‘Well, forget pancakes. How many people have come back to you to say they’re coming?’

  I looked down at my list and counted the names. ‘Twenty-four, including Dad and Jenny.’

  ‘And the kid? What’s she called?’

  ‘Ellie.’

  ‘Ellie. Is she coming?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘And where are we with Christopher?’

  ‘His flight lands on Monday evening at Heathrow.’

  ‘Are you going to collect him, or shall I?’

  ‘No, he wants to spend the night in a hotel. Get himself together before the funeral.’

  ‘No Steph, then?’

  ‘Somebody has to feed the dogs.’

  Helen rolled her eyes. ‘Is there anything else we need to decide?’

  ‘I think that’s it for now. Did you have a look at those readings I sent you?’

  ‘I did. I think I’ll go with the Khalil Gibran.’ She looked around at my dark and messy flat. ‘Laura, would you like me to come and stay with you for a few days? At least until after the funeral. This is no time to be on your own.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Thank you. I’ve just got to get through this bit and I’ll be fine.’

  I woke around four thirty on the morning of her funeral, and as soon as I began thinking of the day ahead, the flames that would consume her coffin, I knew that sleep was lost to me. I tossed and turned for some time, tried to read and finally gave up, getting out of bed at six thirty. She was everywhere: in the sun rising to tell me today would be replaced by another day and then another until it didn’t hurt so much. She was in my bathroom as I looked at my face in the mirror, a trivial version of her own. And at the bottom of the stairs as I pulled the front door open to leave.

  I set off around ten thirty and drove myself to the funeral home in Kingston. Christopher was already there, dressed in a dark grey suit with a black tie. His eyes were red and narrow. The sight of my baby brother made me want to weep. He’d been summoned from the other side of the world to say goodbye to a woman he didn’t know was leaving. It made me want to howl for him and for me. She’d gone, and left us nothing but her body. And we were about to burn it. I couldn’t make any sense of it.

  Though we were equals in grief, united by loss, I still wanted to take his away from him
. I sat down beside him and put my arm around his shoulders. He bowed his head to the sudden warmth and I felt his shoulders lift with a dry sob. Neither of us could speak into the emotion of that moment.

  We were invited to the viewing parlour where she had been laid out. I took Christopher’s hand and together we approached and peered over. It felt surreal to suddenly see her, made up and dressed nicely, in a Kingston funeral home. As though she’d spent the last nine days hiding away so she could reinvent herself as a corpse. I bit my lip in muted pain.

  Christopher and I were led outside to a funeral car gleaming with grief. It swallowed us easily and gaped expectantly for more mourners. We sat, small and abandoned, on the back seat, lost without our mother. Her coffin had already been placed in the hearse in front of us, and so, with sombre courtesy, the funeral director signalled to his driver to begin the short journey to Kingston Crematorium.

  Our modest cortège made its way through Kingston’s one-way system to the cemetery. The chapel was at the end of a long driveway. Helen was waiting outside for us, as were my father and Jenny. She stood speaking-distance apart from them, watching only for my mother, the return of her friend.

  My mother’s coffin was carried into the chapel and placed on the bier. We took our seats at the front, in uneasy expectation of the flames to come. My grandmother was led to a seat near the front by a middle-aged man in a suit. He whispered something in her ear and gave her an order of service. She nodded her head and began fishing in her bag for her reading glasses. Helen sat behind us, next to the aisle, and as the ceremony began, she stepped forward with her reading. I felt my father shift uncomfortably beside me as she turned to face the congregation. It was a short passage about drinking ‘… from the river of silence’, and how a soul shall ‘truly dance’ when the earth claims them. When the reading came to an end, she didn’t move. She just stood before us with her head bowed, as though unconvinced by her own words. And then she walked up to my mother’s coffin, slowly and alone. She put both hands down on the lid and looked as though she was trying to decide what to do. Then she bent her head down low to the wood and whispered a final, private communication to the silence within.