New Animal

by Ella Baxter

I jog out of the house and into the lemony haze of the morning.

  Three deep belly breaths.

  I find my keys at the bottom of my bag among sand and food wrappers.

  One big belly breath.

  My hands are so numb that I can’t feel them holding the wheel. On the road to the hospital, I keep looking at my fingers to make sure they are holding on and not sliding off into my lap.

  The hospital is a wide expanse of cement that looms over a group of young people in scrubs smoking in the car park. I pull over near them and fling the door open, searching for a sign that might orient me to her.

  ‘Where’s the desk that I go to?’ I ask the group. My voice is higher than normal, and my dress is still undone at the back. Where are their credentials? With whom am I speaking? Where is my mother?

  One of the boys points his cigarette towards the entrance, and I scurry in past more young people in scrubs.

  I sprint down hospital corridors, stopping to ask for directions from a cleaner, from someone getting out of a lift, from someone in a uniform wheeling a gurney. At last I turn a corner and see Vincent and Simon sitting on a low strip of plastic seats. Simon is resting his head back against the wall and biting his nails, while Vincent is hunched forward, his head in both hands.

  ‘Where is she?’

  Simon points to a door a few metres away. ‘In there. You can see her in a bit.’

  ‘Now,’ I say, heading for the door.

  ‘No, no, not yet,’ Vincent says.

  ‘What happened?’ I ask.

  She fell down the stairs at home. Simon was in his room when he heard her cry out, but when he opened his door to the landing, she was already broken at the bottom. No one wants to have their last breath sink into their unclean carpet. No one wants to leave their body in an uncomfortable position. It’s not the way anyone imagines it.

  My toes are slippery inside my socks, and when I scrunch them, they squeak, and I stand scrunching and releasing them as I bite the inside of my cheeks, until the pain in my chest gives way to the pain in my mouth. I can tell I’m in the way from how people veer around me, but I can’t bring myself to move. For minutes I just stand there, unable to make a decision. Do I sit next to Vincent or Simon? How can I just sit while my mother is dying on the other side of the wall? I need to remain upright and alert.

  A nurse approaches and begins to talk to us calmly but I have no time for this; I need to see my mother.

  I interrupt him to say, ‘I’m going in.’

  He pauses, then resumes talking.

  I try again. ‘I need to go in.’

  This time he doesn’t pause.

  I want to tell him that I’m her daughter. That I need to tell her that I love her and that she’s mine. I want her to teach me the soup recipe with the soaked barley, and I want us to go and get fake nails like we did last summer and tap our fingers on every surface of Aurelia’s, testing the clicking sounds. I want us to take Spanish classes together, and do the Vogue diet where you only eat boiled eggs and white wine for four days straight. I want to talk about life and death with her.

  As I am weighing up whether I can use the strip of chairs as a battering ram to break down her door, the nurse stands aside and we are finally allowed in.

  I see the number of tubes that reach into her like reverse roots. Her thick, strong mother arms are filled with them, and it terrifies me. I stand at the furthest point from her, my back wedged into the corner. I look at my feet, willing them forward, but they are frozen.

  Simon sits next to her, kissing her hand, while Vincent paces the length of her bed, before wrapping one hand around her foot. I can see the shape of her toes through the white waffle blanket. She has the most beautiful feet.

  ‘You need to come back to us.’ He rubs her big toe with his thumb.

  I don’t realise Judy is standing next to me until I feel her shoulder touching mine. Carmen also appears, pink-eyed, and talks emphatically to a different nurse. Hugh crouches next to Simon stroking his knee, and I hear him murmuring things like, You’re doing so well. We will get through this, as Simon puts his face in her hand, curling her fingers with his own so that they cradle him.

  The new nurse walks around my mother’s bed holding a clipboard. Frowning, she presses the call button. I remain nice and still, using all my meditation skills and willpower to remain standing quietly as the distress in the room builds.

  The doctor purposely slows his pace as he comes through the door. Someone must have taught him that he shouldn’t rush his way through bad news, but the slow speed doesn’t suit him. He has a trim waist and a neat haircut, and I know that he could walk a whole wing of the building in a few seconds if needed. This is a man who might swim forty laps before breakfast. He checks my mother’s tubes and her monitor, and we all learn that she’s dead by his lack of speed.

  The doctor looks around warily then approaches me. ‘Arrangements will need to be made,’ he says. ‘If you contact a funeral service, they can take care of relocating her, otherwise she will be transferred to the hospital morgue.’

  ‘We are the funeral service,’ I say.

  Vincent interrupts. ‘My wife is not going into the morgue. Are you crazy? She’s coming home with us. You have offended me. This is very offensive. What’s your name? Who’s your supervisor?’

  Simon pulls a set of keys from his pocket. ‘We can take her today,’ he says, handing them to Carmen, who moves quickly towards the door. Hugh stands and hugs Simon’s head awkwardly to the side of his body.

  ‘I’ll go and get things ready for her back at work,’ Judy says, rushing to catch up to Carmen.

  I look at my mother. I can feel her tugging at the invisible line between us. Yanking it from afar. The umbilical cord. I plug my bellybutton with my finger. I miss her and I need her, and she’s me, or a part of me at least, and I haven’t fully absorbed her yet. I haven’t gleaned all the woman-ness from her, which is what a daughter does. Whose daughter am I now? Where has she gone?

  I’ve never seen Carmen drive, but the van arrives faster than seems physically possible, given the distance, and our mother is zipped into a bag and loaded into the back—a slice of trauma seared into each of us to be digested at another point in time. Vincent insists on driving us home in my car, even though he looks haggard, while Hugh and Carmen travel behind in the van.

  ‘Your mother,’ Vincent says, while indicating right and merging left, ‘loved you both so much.’

  I can’t breathe. I take off my bra underneath my dress, which is still open at the back. I need a window open. I need a glass of water.

  ‘Who will tell your dad?’ Vincent glances at me in the rear-view mirror, looking concerned because everyone knows Jack is still mourning a divorce from decades ago. Which one of us is willing to break this news?

  ‘Dad,’ Simon repeats, but I’m not sure if he’s referring to Vincent or our birth father, Jack.

  At home, I lie on my bed with the air conditioner on high, holding my body in the same position as my mother’s in the refrigerated unit at Aurelia’s. Vincent has left all the windows open in the main house, and for hours strange noises bounce between our two homes. It sounds as if he’s taking everything apart and putting it back together, like the act itself will apply to him.

  I think of my mother’s plump form wearing the landscape down, dropping skin cells and banging doors shut, making her mark on the world in various ways, even the book by her bed, marked halfway through with a folded page. Death always comes too soon, like a bus leaving minutes earlier than the timetable said it would. I want to feel her weight and measure her length. I want to know the exact colour of her eyes. What scars she has. I want to put her favourite things in a pile, and then I want to be underneath the pile. I douse the bungalow in her perfume but it brings no comfort. No peace.

  I run to the bathroom in the main house and search through the washing basket until I find her sundress. I clutch it to my chest and carry it back to my bungalow, where I lay it o
ut on the bed. I stuff it with a pillow. Then I take the pillow out and put the dress on. I take it off. It brings no peace.

  I run to the fridge in the main house and pull out the lump of marzipan that she rolls each piece of fruit from. I carry it back to the bungalow with both hands and sit on the edge of the bed, tearing off chunks and cramming them into my mouth until my lips can’t close. I chew and swallow, then break off another piece and mould it into the shape of a woman. Wide hips, pointy breasts, hugging arms. I eat the woman head first, but it brings no comfort. No peace at all.

  I get a pair of her favourite earrings, long beaded chandeliers. I put each under my bra strap, either side of my ribcage. I want the physical dent of them; I need to wake up with a pattern on each side of my body like pressed tin. I need to have her things near me. I need to have her near me. I need.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In the early hours of the morning, Vincent sends a group message reminding us that Cherie Reynal’s funeral is on in a few hours. He adds that we will hold my mother’s funeral in two days’ time. He then sends another message saying he’s sorry if the timing is insensitive, but we need to organise everything asap. Hugh messages to say that he will help out tomorrow and advises us to focus not on the things we can’t control but on the things that we can. Carmen sends a message saying how sorry she is for our loss, and how she loved our mother’s throaty laugh. Judy sends an animated heart. Vincent sends another message saying that it’s important to support each other in this difficult time. He forwards a link to a grief counsellor, and then sends a picture of our mother riding a bike in the sun. Simon doesn’t reply, and I throw my phone across the bed.

  When I absolutely must, I pull on a dress and stamp my feet into some flat shoes before leaning against the wall, exhausted. Whenever I have felt this awful in the past, my mother was there to support me with hugs, and even though I don’t love them, I would happily cut off my own hand for one right now. If I let myself, I could stay leaning against this wall all day, breathing and creaking like another piece of the house. Vincent could have cancelled Cherie Reynal’s funeral, repaid the deposit and lost a few dollars. We could have had a whole day to mourn our loss, to cry alone or together. Anything but go to work as normal. The thought of Cherie at work, waiting, hurts. But I need to go in, and so here I am, two earrings still pressed into my body, deodorant on, packed and ready. But he could have cancelled, we all know it.

  ‘I should brush my teeth,’ I say aloud, before taking seventeen long, slow breaths.

  ‘Go to work,’ I say, willing it to happen. ‘Pick up your bag and go to work.’

  Judy is sitting at the desk stapling pamphlets, and as I trudge in she bursts into tears. She brushes her hand along my leg as I trudge past her into the back office, and again when I return, sipping my water bottle and staring absently at the apricot trees. When I trudge back over to her desk and put the bottle down, she immediately puts two fingers over my thumb.

  ‘How are you going inside that head of yours?’

  ‘I’m compartmentalising every moment,’ I say, moving my hand away.

  She hands me an invoice for coffee pods, and I sign the sheet while she slides her puffy foot out of one Swedish clog and places it over my shoe. She loves the clogs, even though they give her blisters and make her sound like a Shetland pony walking across cobblestones.

  ‘Judy, are you going to keep touching me like this?’

  She nods.

  ‘I don’t need it,’ I say. ‘It’s unnecessary.’

  ‘I think you do need it, and Josephine would have wanted me to look after you. Putting things in boxes won’t cut the mustard in the long run.’ She lifts her hand to cup my chin, and then starts to cry again.

  Reaching into the top of her tunic, she takes out a sodden tissue from her bra strap and blows her nose into it. She then folds the tissue in half and wipes her eyes. I lift my arm to touch her, because it appears to be her love language, but before I’ve made contact she’s hugging the tops of my legs sideways, resting her forehead on my hip.

  I pat her on the back a few times. ‘Remember, the shoe that fits one person pinches another,’ I say. This is written on a post-it note near the photocopier. She nods through a sniffle and I give her shoulder a firm rub.

  Hugh steps out of the back office dressed in a pair of formal suit pants and a checked shirt. He has brushed his hair, and his face is pink from shaving. He looks surprised to see me.

  ‘Vincent didn’t hear back from you last night, so he’s done Cherie’s make-up himself.’

  No. I shake my head. That can’t be right. He wouldn’t.

  ‘Mr Reynal came in early to drop off her make-up bag, but Vince says he’s already finished.’

  Simon walks out of the office with a mug of black coffee and a piece of toast. He’s wearing our mother’s red silk scarf and a few of her silver bracelets.

  ‘We’ve told him it’s against regulation, but he’s being an absolute nightmare,’ Simon says, waving his mug towards the prep room. ‘I really can’t deal with him right now.’

  We all watch as he throws his head back and drains his coffee.

  He swallows, then says, ‘Also, Carmen and Hugh are going to move in during this period because I can’t be alone.’

  ‘Don’t want to intrude, though,’ Hugh says, folding his arms in front and looking at the ground.

  I glance over at Judy, who swivels back and forth on her ergonomic chair, following the conversation. She sees me and quickly snaps into action, busying herself with shuffling papers and checking that the phone is hung up properly.

  Hugh scratches the back of his head. ‘I was thinking that maybe …’ He looks at Simon, who nods encouragingly. ‘I thought I could organise us a few surfboards for after your mum’s funeral, then we could all paddle out and make a circle together in the ocean to celebrate her life.’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘I think it’s Hawaiian,’ Hugh adds.

  ‘It’s a beautiful idea,’ Simon says. ‘Really touching.’

  People can sometimes act boldly around the bereaved. They can quickly take care to an unfathomable level. It’s part of the horror of it all really. One person rolls out of your life and half-a-dozen others roll right in. I’ve seen people turn up to funerals ready to harass Judy for extra biscuits or seat cushions. In it for the long haul. Peripheral family members are often the ones to cry the hardest through the memorial montages; the ones that look at each other wistfully and say, That was our John, with sad smiles, while John’s close family sit mutely by his coffin. Close family get medicated, everyone knows that. In my opinion, the bereaved need a very specific amount of care. The ratio of care to being left alone is around forty to sixty. The bereaved need time to stare at a wall blankly, but then they need help remembering to brush the back of their hair, not just the front.

  I walk quickly down the hall to the prep room, picking up speed until I am almost running. I use the momentum to barge through the door, making Vincent jump in fright.

  ‘You are not qualified! What gives you any right?’ I yell.

  ‘Amelia! Don’t you dare come in here like that! My god! My heart!’ He stands at the end of Cherie’s coffin, grasping a handful of my brushes to his chest. His eyes are glassy and his clothing is crumpled.

  ‘You didn’t write back to me last night,’ he hiccups. ‘Who knew where you were?’

  ‘Are you drunk?’ I demand.

  ‘No! Certainly not,’ he says. ‘Don’t be rude.’

  Cherie looks absolutely cooked with the amount of makeup he has applied to her face. She rests in her satin-lined coffin, dressed in a lilac skirt suit with a white shirt underneath. Her hands have been placed unnaturally high across her chest, so that it looks like she’s grabbing at her crucifix, as if trying to take it off. I have seen her wear this necklace while pouring carafes of wine down at the bistro, watching as the Lord Jesus sank feet first into the long seam of her bosom.

  ‘You are making this a
ll about you.’ I wave my hands around the room signifying everything.

  He gasps, ‘I am a widower.’

  I ignore him and look instead at Cherie’s face, trying to analyse how to work backwards from all the layers of product. Overwhelmed, I begin by finger-combing some of her curls so that they are less like ringlets, but my hand gets stuck, and I bet it’s because he has set them with one of the shellac sprays.

  ‘There’s not enough time to wash her off and start again,’ Vincent says, making his way over to the sink, where he plonks onto one of the stools.

  ‘I used the gold powder to give her a bit of liveliness.’ He sweeps a fanned brush through the air to demonstrate.

  ‘Enough talking,’ I say.

  He pulls a flask from his pocket and takes a swig.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  He shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He takes another sip. ‘The French drink in the mornings,’ he says. ‘Italians drink at church …’

  ‘No one drinks at work,’ I say, while trying to wipe Cherie’s face clean.

  ‘Sommeliers do.’

  I fix her hands so that they are crossed neatly at the wrist, because the whole purpose of positioning the deceased is to show their loved ones that they are resting comfortably. He hasn’t done the research. He doesn’t get that things need to be done in a specific way if Cherie is to have a successful viewing. This job is very important and incredibly detailed, and little mistakes can make a big difference to the family’s funeral experience. I adjust the crucifix so that it sits at an even angle from her neck, and then align each side of her jacket, making sure all buttons strain at the exact same point across her torso.

  I continue to work on Cherie in a panic-driven rush, with no time to hold deep commune with her body. While hastening around her coffin, I realise she is a similar age to my mother, and I quickly try to push this feeling so far down that it’s in the soles of my feet, and I can keep it contained by stepping on it each time I move. As Vincent cries and drinks, and as my mother lies in a cold store two metres away, I use the corner of a wet cloth to scrub flecks of make-up off Cherie Reynal’s shirt.