“What the hell is she talking about?” Billy asks “Hilary, we can’t hear you with that sock over your mouth.”
“Are you going to bury her down here?” Tess smiles. “Now that would really be something. Next to all of these preserves. My God, Hilary, is this all you’ve been doing for the last twenty years? Preserving everything?”
“Not in the basement, Tess. Of course not,” Thomas says. “We’re just looking at the broken window and the mould down here. Hilary wants to have someone come to clean it all up.” Thomas points to the window and then to where Hilary was pointing, at the black coating on the walls.
“That’s mould?” Billy says.
“That’s disgusting,” Tess says.
“I can’t breathe any more,” Hilary says. “I have to go upstairs.”
“Let’s go upstairs then,” Tess says. “I’ll make some coffee and we’ll have some sweet rolls. I’ve got some in the car. You look like you need some nourishment, Thomas. And Hilary, my Lord, you’re all skin and bones. I just can’t understand you Mounts—not an ounce of good fat to protect you from the cruelties of the world.”
“Is that what it is?” Billy says. “Protection?”
“I’m probably already sick from the mould,” Hilary says. “I probably have asthma and don’t know it yet.” Hilary takes the sock off her mouth.
Billy lingers in the basement while the others make their way upstairs to the kitchen. He looks at all the preserves stacked high. Blues and yellows and reds and oranges. He can see fruit and pickles floating in the liquid. Chutneys. Applesauces. Jams. It’s an overwhelming sight. For some reason it reminds him of the funeral home and makes him think of death and body parts and how fragile his heart is encased in his chest. He roams around, tapping the sides of some of the jars. Or fetuses, maybe that’s what they remind him of, dead babies. The black walls smell, a bitter, composty smell. Billy makes his way up to the kitchen where Hilary has shed her sock and is peering in the mirror above the sink.
Thomas bites hungrily into a sweet roll. He hasn’t eaten anything yet and it’s past lunch. He can’t figure out how they are going to start cleaning this mess, where to begin. After rooting through the groceries in the back of her car, Tess has somehow managed to make coffee. Thomas still hasn’t been shopping.
“We’ve got some time to decide,” Hilary says, looking away from the mirror. “We don’t need to bury her right away.”
“Here’s some cream, honey.” Tess squirts cream into Hilary’s hand. Hilary rubs it on her cheeks.
“We don’t need any time.” Billy laughs. “Why should it take time? We just decide and then we have the funeral and then we sell the house.”
“Hilary, honey”—Tess pats Hilary’s hands—“you really should go somewhere to get that hair fixed. Get it all chopped off. Get it out of your eyes. No one can see your pretty face.” She pats her tight, short permanent.
“My pretty face?” Hilary echoes.
“Playing with your hair all the time isn’t very attractive.”
“Jesus Christ,” says Billy, now drinking his fourth beer. “Let’s just get this over with and get on with our lives. We’ve got to clean this place up, Hilary.” Billy sucks on his beer bottle. He wants to sell the house quickly. That will solve all his financial problems.
“No,” Hilary says. She says this flatly, with no emotion. “No.”
“Hilary,” Thomas begins.
“No.”
“We have to sell.You need money to live on. The money Becka saved is almost all gone. I can’t keep sending you money.”
“No.”
“Billy, Thomas,” Tess says. “Leave her be. Her mother just died.” “She’s our mother too,” Billy says.
“But she’s all Hilary had, Billy.”
“What about Sage Hill? The cemetery there is nice.” Thomas says, “Fine with me.”
“Too many bushes,” Hilary says.
“I thought you liked bushes.”
“Yes, but Mother doesn’t. Not really.”
“Didn’t,” Billy says. “She’s dead. She must have liked bushes. She gardened all the time.” Billy wants to bury her at Inglehaus because it’s farther from his house and that gives him an excuse not to visit. He doesn’t want to trim weeds and take flowers. His mother is dead and doesn’t care about flowers any more.
“I think we should bury her somewhere special,” Hilary says. “Somewhere we can visit all the time. Somewhere we can go to remember.”
Tess picks up a doll from the table. She rocks it in her arms like a baby. She tries to remember when Sue was so tiny.
Thomas reaches for a beer from the fridge. He never drinks this early in the day but he’s hungry and the sweet rolls are gone.
Billy calculates how many beers are left in the fridge. He quickly guzzles his and starts another. He’ll have to start on the beer in the car and then stock up on more this afternoon.
Tess watches everything.
Hilary thinks of Mother moving around the garden outside, cutting the deadheads off the roses, pulling unsightly plants out of the dirt, bending over, her cigarette dangling from pale lips, plucking a dandelion from the high grass, trimming the bushes until they were all lopsided. But in the end Mother only wanted to look out at the garden from her bedroom window. And then in the last several months she stayed shut inside, listening to the sounds of the house, the groans and creaks surrounding her.
Hilary decides she’ll bury her mother in the garden.
She’ll do it no matter what Thomas or Billy say. Hilary wants to make her mother comfortable. Surely Mother won’t want to be taken away from her home and planted in some strange park. Right now she’s suffering at the funeral parlour, Hilary is sure of it. Somehow she has to get her mother back. Quickly.
“Cremation,” Hilary shouts out. “We’ll sprinkle her ashes in the garden. Have a lovely ceremony.”
Tess pales. “Honey,” she says, “you know what your mother thought of cremation. You know what she said about it.” Tess turns her eyes to the ceiling as if acknowledging a host of heavenly angels. “She thought it was devil’s work. She thought that fire consuming flesh was evil. God rest her soul.” Tess crosses herself. Fat fingers moving from nose to belly button, from breast to breast. She hasn’t been religious since she was a child, since she went to Sunday school every week and collected bags of candy for every verse she memorized from the Bible, and she didn’t really know her mother-in-law, but it seems necessary suddenly to cross yourself when speaking about the dead in their own home.
“Mother never said anything one way or another about cremation.”
“Yes she did, Hilary. We had a long conversation about it years ago. Your mother would flop over on her stomach at Mortimer’s and hide her pretty face in a satin pillow if she knew what you were suggesting.” Tess puts down the doll. She places it carefully on the table with the food and coffee and beer bottles and then she massages her large fingers, looking at the swelling.
“I agree,” Billy says. “I don’t like the idea of burning Becka. I’ve never agreed with cremation. It’s a horrible thought. We’ll bury her, Hilary.”
Hilary thinks about Mother’s death scowl, lips open, eyes wide, before the doctor came and moved her expression around, made it softer. He pronounced her dead of liver cancer. He said she died peacefully. To be scattered around her garden would do her soul a world of good. Hilary is certain of it. And when, Hilary thinks, did Tess ever sit down and talk with her mother? When Tess would visit she would push into the house, fill up the fridge with sweets and fattening foods, and then bustle off just as quickly as she came. But Tess always seems so sure of herself. Maybe it’s her bulk. Weighty people seem to say powerful things.
Thomas laughs suddenly. “We could put her ashes in a preserve jar.” Silence. No one moves.
“You know what? I think we should all go play some minigolf,” Billy says. He is still drinking. Warmth is spreading down his face to his neck and shoulders.
“What?” Thomas says.
“We should get in a round of minigolf at Greenhomes. The season is almost over.”
“Minigolf? God, I haven’t played minigolf in years.” “Cremation,” Hilary says. “That’s the only way.”
“No,” Tess says.
“No,” says Billy.
Thomas shrugs. “I have no feeling about it one way or another.”
“We are not selling this house either,” Hilary says. “Just so you know.”
Thomas sighs. “Let’s go play minigolf. Let’s talk about all of this later. I’m getting a headache.”
“I’m staying here,” Hilary says. “I have things to sort out. Besides, I’m not putting a foot inside Billy’s car. It’s unsafe.”
“You can take me and the groceries home, Billy,” Tess says. “I
need to unpack them before the freezer items melt. I don’t feel like
golfing right now anyway. I think I might just bake some cookies.”
“What I don’t understand,” Thomas says as he stands, “is why none of you talked to Becka about her wishes. She was sick for a while.” Thomas shakes his head. “Why didn’t you ask her where she wanted to be buried? Broach the topic, at least. It seems simple to me. Necessary, in fact. Just part of everything you have to do when someone is dying.”
Billy swallows his beer in quick gulps. He burps. He looks at Hilary. Tess looks at Hilary.
“What I don’t understand,” Hilary whispers, “is why you didn’t fly back here and ask her yourself? Why didn’t you call her and ask her, for that matter?”
Thomas pales. She’s right. Why didn’t he call her and discuss matters with her? The odd time he did phone he talked mostly to Hilary and only said a few quick words to his mother. She always wanted to know if he was married yet. Thomas doesn’t know why, it’s not as if marriage ever brought her any happiness.
“Come on,” Billy says. “Let’s just get away for a while. We’ll talk about this later.”
“You have no idea, Thomas,” Hilary says. “You weren’t here. You didn’t take care of her. You didn’t lift a finger. Not a finger. You all have no idea.”
“Let’s go.”
“Like I said before, you really should get your hair styled, Hilary,” Tess says on her way out of the door. She pats Hilary’s arm. “Maybe a permanent like mine.”
Standing on the rocks in the living room, Hilary watches them load Tess into the Olds. She watches from the front window as Tess bends forward and her belly touches her thighs. Hilary can see Tess’s mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water, panting from the work of bending, from the layers of fat pushing into her tiny lungs. Tess used to be a little girl, a petite girl. Hilary wonders if lungs grow when you get fat.
Having Sue made Tess swell up like a hot-air balloon. She never lost the weight. Now Sue is going to have her own baby and Hilary wonders if her thin body will expand out of control. Will she puff up and out like her mother? Hilary touches her belly and feels the flatness. She feels the bones of her pelvis sticking out.
How could she have asked her mother what she wanted done with her body after she dies? How do you ask someone something like that? You want to give them hope, don’t you? You don’t want them to give up. Because, at a certain point, hope is all there is left.
Hilary runs her fingers over her belly button. She wonders what it would feel like to have a baby nesting inside of her. Incubating. Hilary takes her favourite doll off the shelf over the fireplace, the doll her daddy gave her, and she holds it up to the light of the day. She looks at the doll’s face and eyes and hair, she touches the dress, emerald green velvet, a yellow collar and ribbon for the back. The doll is wearing frilly underwear and polished black shoes. The broken eye sticks shut.
Hilary carries the doll over to the couch. The silence in the house is overwhelming. She turns on the TV. The sun is dimming outside. The air is cold. Hilary hugs the doll to her body but there is no warmth in its plastic frame. Her feet resting on her rock collection, she settles into watching a talk show about breast implants that have leaked and she thinks about burying Mother in the backyard right under the magnolia tree, its blossoms so pretty in early spring. Right there, Hilary thinks, just to the left of it to avoid the roots, and six feet down. She is never going to sell the house and move.
On TV a woman stands up in front of the camera and pulls up her shirt. The audience gasps. Hilary looks at the scar across the woman’s chest, the scar that replaces the breast that should have been there. The woman says, “I just wanted to be healthy, to be whole,” and Hilary looks closely at the scar and thinks that it looks a bit like the profile of her mother. Hilary can see the small nose, the thin lips, the curl of her hair.
Hilary shakes her head. She shakes the doll. She opens and closes the doll’s eyes with her finger. It seems to Hilary that she is seeing her mother everywhere. As if her soul is hovering because she’s not yet been put to rest.
“I’m being haunted,” Hilary whispers and the doll’s eye flaps open and then closes.
5. Greenhomes Minigolf Course
A large parking lot, a small clubhouse, and an iron gate lead into Greenhomes Minigolf Course. It is a small minigolf course and each hole is close together. Thomas played here when he was young. He has travelled extensively by train and boat and car but he has never again seen anything like Greenhomes Minigolf Course. The course is designed to represent a selection of North American homes. There are ten holes. There is a Tudor house, a bungalow, an apartment building, a condominium, a Gothic-revival mansion, a castle, a stretch of subdivision semis, a townhouse, a low-rise building, and a factory loft. The object is to get the ball through the front doors of each building and to avoid the plastic pools and small cars that run back and forth on tracks. Small plastic people move on their own tracks out from behind bushes and from within the houses, knocking the balls off course. The castle has a garden party in progress. The subdivision has cars moving furiously around. The condominium has people carrying groceries and laundry. The Tudor house has a family picnicking on the lawn beside their pool.
The sign out front says,
GREENHOMES. ENTER THE WORLD OF BETTER LIVING.
NO OTHER GOLF PARK LIKE IT IN THE WORLD.
IDYLLIC SCENERY, FAMILY FUN .
Thomas thinks there can’t be anything like it in the world.
The brothers park in the lot and walk together to the clubhouse. Billy stares at the heavy woman who rents them their golf clubs and balls. She has ringlety hair and a cherub face, round and full and pink. Her body is curvy. Billy can’t take his eyes off her. She looks back at him and smiles. Her name tag reads “Grace.”
“Not bad,” Billy whispers to Thomas.
Thomas looks at the woman. “I should be grocery shopping,” he says. “There’s nothing to eat in the house.”
“We’ll go after. I’ll take you. Shit, that’s all I seem to do these days. Grocery shop.”
The men move into the golf course. They are the only players. The wind is fierce, the sky is white and the air is cold. The glow of the floodlights on the course shine on them in the dimming light.
Thomas can’t get his putt right. He bends down to the ground and closes one eye tight.
“What the hell are you doing?” Billy asks.
“Lining up my ball to the hole. Like pool.”
“Oh,” Billy says. “Did you learn that in university?” He laughs. Thomas stands and presses down the turf with his golf club, forming a ditch that will lead his ball straight to the hole.
“That’s cheating.”
“It’s not cheating. There are no guarantees.”
“That’s cheating.”
“Besides,” Thomas says, “you always win this game.”
Thomas hits the ball and it bounces straight into the pool. He curses and waves his club in the air.
“Careful,” Billy says, “you might hit someone.”
“There’s no one here.”
&nb
sp; “You might hit me.”
“I can’t stand this game. Why did I come here?”
Billy shoots his ball straight over the pool and into the hole. “Hole-in-one.” He has never once knocked over a plastic person or damaged a tiny car. Between putts, Billy spends his time looking at Grace in the clubhouse. She looks back. They share smiles.
“She’s looking at me,” Billy says.
“You’re married, remember. Soon to be a grandfather.” “Don’t remind me.”
“I really hate this game,” Thomas says. “I’ve always hated playing minigolf. Squash, now that’s a real game.”
“Stop whining.”
“I bet you can’t play squash.”
“I wouldn’t want to play squash,” Billy says. “Squash is a fag game.”
Thomas ignores Billy and gets down on his knees and reaches his hand into the doorway of the Gothic mansion. His ball is stuck inside. Thomas’s hand moves around searching for the ball. He knocks over a small plastic person as it ducks out from behind a doorway in the hall. He tries to prop it back up but it keeps falling over.
“Just leave that one,” Grace calls from the clubhouse window. “It’s been broken lately. Keeps falling over. Just leave it alone.”
Thomas finds his ball and rolls it through the house and out into the garden. He stands and breathes deeply.
Billy waves at Grace. She smiles.
Billy imagines Grace in the nude, imagines her body, her lips, her beautiful round face. He’s taken to doing that lately, imagining women naked. Even young girls. He caught himself imagining one of Sue’s friends the other day and he felt sick to his stomach when he realized what he was doing.
“How is Sue?” Thomas asks, as if reading Billy’s mind. “How’s the pregnancy.”
Billy says, “Sue’s doing fine, I guess. Still don’t know who the father is. She won’t tell us.”
Thomas is silent for a minute and then he says, “Why did you never visit Becka and Hilary?”
“I visited.”
“Once a year?”
“Better than you.”
‘This isn’t a competition,” Thomas says.
What We All Want Page 8