What We All Want

by Michelle Berry

  Billy would like to stay out longer even if he is freezing, but he takes up the oars and begins to row them back to shore. Problem with hanging around with funeral directors, he thinks, is that they really aren’t very much fun. Everything becomes so personal.

  “Hey,” Billy says. “What does my mother look like now?”

  “What is it about you Mounts?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Thomas was in today, looking at your mother.”

  Billy stops talking to think. Thomas was there, looking at Becka? This thought puzzles him, intrigues him. “Well,” he finally says, “what does she look like?” He thinks he might like to go see her tomorrow. Maybe he should make an appointment with Dick. Dick tries to think about this. How do you describe a dead mother to a son?

  Should he tell Billy how he wheeled his mother’s body into the embalming room on Thursday afternoon and worked on her for three hours? Should he explain how he pulled up the carotid and the jugular, drained her, filled her, sealed her again? Cut above the belly button? Pumped out the organs, filled the chest cavity with fluid? Dick should probably tell Billy that he used a non-formaldehyde-based solution because formaldehyde reacts with the jaundice and would have made her dark green. Maybe he should tell Billy about those marks around her neck. Strange, but then liver cancer sometimes leaves marks. Perhaps he should tell him how Rebecca Mount was swollen right up, edema from kidney failure. The liver gives and then the kidneys, as if all the organs are good friends and can’t bear to live without each other. He could say how he was careful not to push on her skin too hard. Careful not to leave thumbprints. One hard touch and the skin won’t bounce back. Dented skin.

  And then she dehydrated and now she’s small, shrunken. Stitches near the clavicle and on the belly, he could say. Naked, he could say.

  Yellow.

  Face heavily creamed to protect her from burns if the chemicals leak (cream which, luckily, he wiped off several hours later, before Thomas saw her).

  Dick still has to finish work on her. He’ll apply cream-based makeup to her hands and face, he’ll shampoo her wig and set it, give her a manicure, dress her, place her hands on rubber blocks to position them. Make her look just fine. Nose spray to keep the flies away.

  But instead Dick says, “She looks great.”

  “Bullshit.” Billy stops rowing and looks down into the water.

  They pull the boat up under the dock and Billy climbs out. He looks down at the inches of water in the bottom of the boat. He scratches his head and then he helps Dick onto the pier. They sit for a while, looking down at the boat. Dick wonders if his shoe will be a home for fish, if they’ll live in there, be safe from predators. His stomach churns. It’s been a long time since he’s had so much to drink. He knows he’ll feel sick in the morning.

  Billy stands and walks to the other side of the pier. He vomits into the water. The noise he makes is quiet and controlled.

  “Fuck,” Billy says when he’s finished. “That feels better.”

  Dick shakes his head. He can smell Billy’s sour stomach odour. He wonders how you could fall as low as this man has, this Billy Mount. Dick thinks that once you fall down like that, it’s impossible to crawl back up.

  8. Decision Made

  Sunday morning and the small hole Hilary dug has filled up with mud and water. She is standing in the backyard wearing only a housecoat, staring at the hole and shivering, when Dick pulls up to the house. Dick climbs the front porch and peeks in the window. He knocks. No one answers. He decides to walk around the house to see if anyone is outside or in the kitchen. He comes upon Hilary in the backyard.

  She is startled. She clutches her robe around her. She can feel her small breasts and thin hips jutting nakedly against the fabric of the robe. She is bare under this material, naked.

  “Sorry,” Dick says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “No, I . ..”

  “Did you just wake up? Really, I’m sorry to bother you,” Dick says. He looks at Hilary’s hair, skewed and messy, caked with mud from the night before. Like a rat’s nest. It looks to Dick as if she’s just had a night of passion. He smiles to himself. But then he sees the lines on her cheeks from where her fingers have been scratching and his heart goes out to her.

  “I just was looking at the ground,” Hilary says. “I was thinking about the hole.”

  Dick looks at the hole in the ground. It is about two feet wide and not very deep. “Oh,” he says. He itches his scalp. “Planting something?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I was just wondering,” Dick begins. “I just came over to see if you’ve thought of any place to bury your mother,” Dick says. This wasn’t why he came. He just had an urge this morning to see her. Stand close to her again like he used to when they were young. Nothing Billy said last night scared him away from wanting to see her again. His head aches from drinking and his stomach is raw.

  Thomas walks out of the house, freshly showered, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. Seeing Dick brings up the image of his mother lying dead on the table at the funeral home.

  “Hi,” he says.

  Dick turns to him. “Hi.”

  “Listen,” Thomas says. “Thanks for yesterday. Really. I’m sorry I had to run out so quickly.”

  “What?” Hilary says.

  “No problem,” Dick says. “I have your umbrella at my office.” “Great,” Thomas says. “Thanks.”

  “I understand these things,” Dick says, looking at Thomas. “It’s hard.”

  “Can I get you a coffee?” Thomas backs into the house.

  “Yes. That would be nice.” Dick follows Thomas Hilary follows Dick.

  “What are you talking about?” she says. Behind Dick she feels like a mouse again. She wants to reach high and touch his shoulders. “Nothing, Hilary.”

  Thomas fixes coffee. Dick sits at the kitchen table and looks at the puzzle of “The Annunciation.” “Where’s her face?” he asks. His head is pounding. He collapsed on the floor just inside his bedroom door and woke up in his damp suit and coat early this morning with a huge desire to speak to Hilary.

  “I can’t find the pieces.” Hilary feels angry about it. There is the Madonna, about to be told that she is pregnant, and she has no face. Imagine what that would feel like, Hilary thinks “Mother did the puzzle last. I think she lost the pieces.”

  Thomas makes coffee and joins Hilary and Dick at the kitchen table. Dick looks at the dolls in the kitchen. He can see into the dining room from where he’s sitting and the entire dining-room table is covered with dolls. He jiggles his leg nervously.

  What are you planting out there?” Dick says. “I thought it was too late in the year to plant anything.”

  Thomas looks at Hilary. Last night he agreed to bury Becka in the garden. Her body, not her ashes. The more time he spends with Hilary, the more he realizes what Hilary’s life must have been like—taking care of her reclusive, then dying mother. But in the plain light of day the idea of a home burial strikes him as absurd. How will they sell the house with a grave in the backyard? If it were discovered, they could go to jail and he is sure that Hilary would end up in a mental hospital. Besides, Dick Mortimer has Becka’s body. Thomas doesn’t know how they would get it back from him. Thomas opens his mouth to say something but Hilary interrupts.

  “I’m not planting anything. I would like to bury my mother in the garden,” Hilary says. “Right there. I was digging a hole to bury her.” She points out the sliding-glass doors towards her hole. Dick watches the curve of her thin arm, her face filled with concentration. Thomas nervously studies the puzzle on the table.

  “In the garden?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, cremation,” Dick says. “Sprinkling the ashes. We’ve got some great urns and lockets. Keepsakes. You can wear a touch of her ash around your neck or in a ring. It’s not really a good idea to bury the actual urn in your garden because if you ever sell the house, someone else might dig it up.”
r />   “No.We want to bury her whole. Her whole body. In the garden. In a coffin.”

  “Casket,” Dick says. And then he smiles “Her whole body? This is a joke, isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “But it’s illegal. You can’t just bury a body in your backyard. You need a graveyard, often a vault or a cement liner. There are areas set up for the dead. You can’t just bury them anywhere. Imagine,” Dick says, “if everyone buried their loved ones here and there. Just imagine.” He laughs. He looks at Thomas but Thomas avoids his eyes. “No one would know where to step.”

  “I think the plague started that way,” Thomas whispers.

  “No one has to know about this, Dick.” Hilary is staring hard at him, trying to read his soul. “We would keep it a secret.” “That’s impossible, Hilary.”

  “Secrets are easy to keep, Dick. You know how to keep secrets, don’t you? I’ve done it for you.”

  Dick’s face pales as he suddenly registers what she is talking about. He feels his throat constrict.

  When Hilary and Dick came upon Dick’s father embalming that young woman, when he turned to them and told them to get out of the room, what Dick tries to forget, what he has spent his life suppressing, is the large bulge in his father’s pants and his father’s hand on the dead girl’s breast.

  “He didn’t —” Dick begins.

  “I’m sorry, Dick,” Hilary whispers. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ve kept it a secret.”

  “What are you talking about?” Thomas asks.

  “I’m sorry.” Hilary looks at her hands. She feels faint. “When I heard she was going to your father’s funeral home I was worried, I got so —”

  “We can’t bury your mother in the garden. I would get arrested. I would get my licence revoked. I would be ruined.” Dick puts his head in his hands. His father, Christ, his father.

  Hilary says, “But when I saw you there I knew she would be fine. Dick, secrets are fine. Sometimes people need to keep secrets.”

  “I don’t want to think about it,” Dick says.

  “What?” Thomas asks.

  Hilary turns away from Dick. “I just want to bury my mother in the garden.” She begins to cry.

  Dick moves to comfort her. He pats her hand. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.”

  Thomas studies the puzzle. He stares at the angel Gabriel kneeling before Mary. He has an urge to rip off the angel’s wings, throw them in the garbage. Are angels afraid to fly? he wonders. Thomas doesn’t know what Dick and Hilary are talking about and he doesn’t want to know.

  “You don’t really have to be a part of it,” Hilary says. “We’ll do it. We just need her back, please. And we need a casket. An inexpensive one. Will you do that?”

  “But —”

  Hilary stands. She brushes the tears from her cheeks.

  Dick looks at her thin legs, her long neck, her knotted hair. Her bathrobe is slightly open. She looks wild. Dick is spellbound, speechless.

  “Surely,” Hilary says, “people buy caskets from you all the time. Surely there must be people who store them in their basements, just to be sure they have them for the future. No one will think twice about it if you sell me a casket. No one will miss her body. Just give us back her body.”

  “But the paperwork, the death certificate.…”

  “Can’t you work around that, Dick?”

  Thomas gets up and leaves the room. “You two figure this out,” he calls back. “I’ll pay for everything, but I don’t want anything to do with the planning.”

  Dick stands. He walks up to Hilary. He looks down at her. She is standing by the kitchen sink. His fingers suddenly ache to take her skinny neck in his hands and caress it. He wants to run his hands over her bathrobe, under her bathrobe, over her body. What’s happening to him?

  “Can we go out?”

  “Now?” Hilary looks outside. “I’m not dressed.”

  “No, tonight. Can we have a date?”

  Hilary looks up at Dick. “A date?” He is standing close. She can feel his breath on her.

  “Dinner or something.”

  “Oh,” Hilary says. “I don’t know.”

  Dick looks down at his shoes. “I’m not like him. I respect the bodies.”

  “I know.” She clutches her bathrobe around her. Her hands flutter to her neck.

  “I would never hurt someone.”

  “I’ll have to wash my hair if we go out,” Hilary says. “And take a bath.”

  Dick says, “I try to forget about that. I try to remember him the way he was. I know he was a fine mortician.”

  “I’m sure he was,” Hilary says. “Really. We all have our weak-nesses, I guess.”

  Dick nods his head slowly. “When would you need your mother’s body?”

  “Oh,” Hilary says. “Really? Would you? Wednesday night, I think. I think I can get organized by then. And a casket too. Something nice but simple. Something inexpensive.”

  Dick nods. “I’ll see you tonight then? Eight o’clock?”

  Dick leaves through the sliding-glass doors. On his way out he looks at the muddy hole in the yard. “You’ll need to dig deeper than that,” he calls to Hilary. “And be careful with the neighbours. Don’t let them get suspicious. You can’t let anyone know about this.” He walks to the side of the house. The sun is on the ground. His hangover has lifted. “Do you know how deep to dig? Do you know how to keep the walls from caving in?”

  “I’ll learn,” Hilary calls from the back door. “I can learn anything I want to learn.”

  “Yes,” Dick says, “I’m sure you can.”

  “Dick,” Hilary calls out, “we should just try to remember our parents in the best possible light.”

  Dick nods. He disappears around the front and climbs into his car and shakes his head. He can’t believe he is jeopardizing his entire career for Hilary Mount. For this funny woman with the wild hair and stick-thin body. This woman who lives with the dolls. Dick is nervous but he feels like he is young again. His heart is beating wildly. He opens his window, turns on the music loud enough to forget about his father, and drives fast all the way back to the funeral home.

  Hilary rushes upstairs to her mother’s room to find a dress. Her hands are shaking as she sorts through her mother’s closet.

  “A dress, a dress.” Hilary pushes her mother’s clothes aside, inspecting one after the other. “Dress, dress, dress.” She looks at herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door.

  “Purple? Green? Flowers? Stripes?” Hilary begins to take the dresses off the hooks. The smell of cigarette smoke lingers in them, so thick Hilary can practically taste it. She throws the dresses on the floor. Each dress holds a memory. Her body stings. She thinks she may be getting a fever. Maybe she got a flu from being in the rain last night. Hilary holds up a red dress and stares at it. She remembers her mother wore this several months after her father left them. She wore it to the grocery store. Got all dressed up fancy, lipstick on, and went to the grocery store. That was after she stayed in bed for a while, when she got up the nerve to try and face the world again. And this green dress was the one she wore several years ago when Hilary walked her halfway down the block and then, at the corner, she turned and rushed back home, pounded on the locked front door, “Let me in, let me in.”

  Hilary inspects the red dress. She takes off her bathrobe and tries it on. It hangs on her like a sheet. Her mother was thicker, shapelier, she had breasts and hips that jutted out. Hilary’s small, thin body is flat and straight. But when Hilary pulls in the belt around the waist and looks again at her reflection, she thinks that she looks fairly pretty.

  The man who will sew her mother’s gums shut is coming over to her house tonight to take her out. His father touching that dead woman. His hand resting on her white breast. The nipples erect. Part of Hilary thinks that maybe that will be the first time someone will touch her when she’s dead.

  “What are you doing in here?” Thomas is standing at t
he door, looking in.

  “I’m trying on dresses.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m going out tonight.” Hilary smiles. Hilary’s face, lit up like that, floods Thomas with the memory of their childhood, with a picture of the girl she was before their father left. Thomas feels overwhelming sadness for where Hilary has gone with her life.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know. A restaurant. Dick Mortimer is taking me.”

  “What did you two decide about Becka?”

  “Dick’s bringing her over Wednesday night.”

  “We’re going to bury her in the garden?”

  Hilary smiles.

  “I don’t like this,” Thomas says. “Not one bit.”

  Hilary turns away from Thomas and slips the red dress over her head. She begins to put her bathrobe back on. He sees her back, like a concentration camp victim, the lines of her ribs pushing through the white skin Her hips jut out, stabbing her underwear. Her legs don’t meet at the top.

  “God, Hilary, you’re so thin.”

  “Don’t look at me when I’m changing.”

  “Why are you so thin? Why are you scratching your face raw?”

  Hilary shrugs. She ties the belt tight at the waist. “Can’t you see the marks?”

  “What marks? There are just scratches on your face.” Hilary whispers, “I’m stained. I can’t get the stain off.” “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t you get it?” Hilary turns to face him. “Don’t you know what it has been like around here? How can you not know?” “But I sent money for a nurse.”

  “Mother didn’t want a nurse.”

  “Mother didn’t want a nurse,” Thomas echoes. “She wanted you. A slave.”

  Hilary takes the red dress and leaves the room. From the bathroom window she can see the neighbour cutting down his tree. He is peering over the fence between the houses, studying Hilary’s small hole in the ground.

  Thomas stands in the doorway to Becka’s room. He tries to steady his breathing. He purses his lips and smacks the wall with his hand. The sound is loud and hollow.