What We All Want

by Michelle Berry

  Billy is sitting at the kitchen table nursing his hangover. Tess moves soundlessly around him. Sue is standing by the fridge counting out how many calories she is allowed today. Billy looks at Sue. She looks nothing like her mother.

  “Can I have twenty bucks?” Sue asks. “I need some things at the pharmacy.”

  “What things?”

  “Don’t talk to your father right now, Sue. He’s not in a good mood.”

  “Just things “

  “Is there more coffee?” Billy asks. “I need more coffee.”

  “Have a sweet bun, honey. Have some oatmeal. Have an egg. Fill up that void.” Tess pours Billy more coffee.

  “I need new lipstick, for one,” Sue says, turning towards her parents. “And some deodorant.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Billy says.

  “You’re never hungry,” Tess says. “You have to eat. Keep your strength up.”

  “I need some birth control pills.”

  “What for?” Billy says. “You’re pregnant “

  “For after.”

  “Christ,” Billy says. He looks down into his coffee cup. He tries to steady his hands but they are shaking too much to hold still. “Can’t you learn from your mistakes?”

  “I have money in my purse,” Tess says.

  “Don’t give her money.”

  “What do you think I’m doing,” Sue says. “I’m learning from my mistakes. This time I’m not going to make a mistake. This time I’ll be ready.”

  “You don’t need any money. I gave you money yesterday.” “Fuck you.” Sue says this quietly.

  “What?”

  “Sue,” Tess says, “why don’t you watch some TV.”

  “Just fuck you both,” Sue says. “I’m sick of your fighting and drinking. That’s all you ever do.” She walks out of the kitchen. Billy stands. His hands shake. He wants to throttle that girl. Tess moves to stand between Billy and Sue’s receding figure. Billy and Tess stare into each other’s eyes and neither of them blinks when the front door slams shut.

  Last night Billy peeled off his wet clothes and rolled into bed next to Tess. He watched the car lights on the ceiling. He moaned a bit because his stomach hurt from vomiting several times, but Tess stayed heaped away from him, facing the wall. Her body is a mound of skin and fat and muscle and bone, a large doughy hill that he just can’t climb. And he wanted to last night. He actually wanted to make love to her like they used to a long time ago when everything was good. Billy lay there on his back and watched the lights and thought of his life, of his mother’s death, of his brother and sister and daughter, his lost jobs, the woman at the minigolf course, and his unborn grandchild.

  “We have to talk,” Tess says.

  “Not now.” Billy sits down again. He sits on his hands. He puts his head down over his coffee mug and sniffs. Maybe he can wake himself up with the smell.

  “Now.” Tess sits down beside him. The chair groans under her weight. “I need to know something, Billy.”

  “What?”

  “I need to know how you are feeling inside.”

  “My stomach hurts.”

  “No, how you’re feeling emotionally.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Tess.You’ve got to stop watching those talk shows on TV.”

  “Everyone dies, honey. There’s nothing you can do about it. But you can’t hang on to a person, hold on tight, when they are dead. You have to let them go, help them go, really. Billy, you’re holding on so tight to your mother that she’s sucking you into the other world.” “What the hell are you talking about? The other world?” Billy’s head is pounding.

  “She’s pulling you down with her.” Last night Tess decided that this is what all the signs are pointing to. Ever since Becka died, Tess has been seeing hidden meaning in everything. Just yesterday she noticed Sue was wearing the same earrings, a matching set. This never happens. And the day before, when Tess put ketchup on her scrambled eggs, her late-night snack, the plastic squeeze bottle didn’t squirt at her like it always does.

  “What does my mother have to do with anything?” Billy says.

  Tess crosses her legs. She manoeuvres her large bottom around the vinyl chair. Billy hears the sucking sound of nyloned thighs, the swishing sound of polyester rubbing vinyl. “I think it’s your mother, Billy. You’ve got to get her buried soon. And buried deep. She’s haunting you, honey.”

  “Give it up, Tess. Haunting me?” He laughs.

  Tess looks at her hands. She studies them. “Then it must be me,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Then it must be me. Why else won’t you make love to me? Why else don’t you love me any more? Just because I’m getting fat? I’ve been fat for years, Billy. Why all of a sudden?”

  “What?” Billy’s head aches. He feels queasy. “Listen, Tess … I —”

  “Tell me, Billy.” Tess sits up as straight as she can, her belly protruding.

  Billy doesn’t know what to say.

  “What did I do to deserve this?” Tess asks.

  “I lost my jobs, all right? I got fired. Are you happy now?” Billy shakes his head.

  “You lost your jobs? Both jobs? When?”

  “A couple of days ago, a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Billy shrugs. “What should I have done?”

  “You should have told me. Oh my God, Billy, why didn’t you tell me? Why did you get fired? I thought they just gave you a long holiday at the photo shop. Isn’t that what you said? That’s what I thought you said. Lord, what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know why they fired me.”

  “You don’t know why? Did it have something to do with your drinking?”

  Billy sips his coffee.

  “What are we going to do now?” Tess asks. “How are we going to live?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “You’re working on it? You’re doing nothing but drinking “ Billy stands. “I have to get out of this house.”

  “Billy, we should talk about this.”

  “I’ve got my mother’s funeral to worry about too, you know.” “Billy, we don’t have any savings. Sue is having a baby. I haven’t worked in years.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? I have to go. Becka needs me.” “You never even visited her when she was alive. Why is your mother so goddamn important now?”

  Billy walks out of the kitchen. He climbs the stairs to the bathroom. His stomach feels heavy, full of lead. His mind hurts.

  Billy soaps himself all over. His lean body is white with bubbles. He has an urge to hum a tune but he can’t think of anything meaningful. Something mournful and wilting. Something you’d play on a harmonica. Or bagpipes. Billy wishes he knew how to play an instrument. He wishes he had some sort of talent. Something he could fall back on when times were bad.

  Billy thinks that everything seems to be about everyone else —what will Tess and Sue do now that he lost his job? How will Hilary feel if she is forced to move? But it all really comes down to you, doesn’t it? Just you. You enter the world alone and you go out alone. The people you snag along the way are just comfort, just warm bodies to help you pass the time. He thinks about Grace at the Greenhomes Minigolf Course. Maybe it is about bodies. Maybe it’s all about the journey, the passing of time, the getting from here to there, from birth to death, surrounded by bodies. Other people’s bodies.

  Billy dries himself roughly. He wants to ache some thought into his skin, create some pain to focus on. He dresses himself and leaves the house without saying anything more to Tess.

  Tess sits at the kitchen table eating the breakfasts that Billy and Sue didn’t touch.

  “Waste not, want not,” she says as she eats. She feels like crying.

  9. Flat-chested Models

  It is early evening. Dick scrubs himself in the shower with a hard brush. His skin stings all over. He is desperate to get the smell of the funeral home off of him. While he’s in the shower he
looks his body over, tries to admire it. He tries to look down on it with love. But it doesn’t work. All he sees is hair, lots of it, and rolls of fat, along with wrinkles and bulges and stretch marks and a shrivelled little penis and moles and pimples and more hair. He can barely see his toes, for Christ’s sake.

  Dick’s mother used to love his body. She loved it to death. That’s what she would say,”I love your little belly to death, Dick Mortimer.” Now she’s dead and no one loves his body the way she did.

  Dick wonders if Hilary might like his body. He wonders if she’s partial to men with lots of hair and baggy skin. He thinks about lying down next to her small, thin body, ruffling up her already-scruffy hair, and touching her softly all over. Dick watches the warm water going down the drain. He watches the soapy water snake down into the little holes which are stopped up with bits of hair. What if she thinks he’s too hairy?

  Then he thinks of his father touching that dead body. Squeezing her breast like a cantaloupe. Erect and drooling. Was he drooling? Dick remembers a lecherous face, a drooling, sick face turned towards him, shouting, “Get out, get out.” He backed up quickly and ran. Hilary’s footsteps echoed behind. But when his father came home that night for dinner nothing was different. He clapped Dick on the back, asked Steve how school was, sat down in his chair by the radiator, and smoked his cigar.

  Was it really him that they saw?

  What must Hilary think of funeral directors?

  When Dick gets out of the shower he hears a pounding at his door. He wraps a towel around his bottom half, holds on to it tightly, and opens the door. Billy Mount is standing there, panting, looking pale and sick.

  “Hi,” Dick says.

  “Hi. Can I come in?”

  Funny, Dick thinks. You live in the same area with people your entire life, they don’t even bother to say hello to you if you pass them on the street, and then you take in their expired loved one and they are suddenly pulling you into bars to drink with them, stealing boats and knocking at your door at all hours. When people experience death, Dick has noticed, they seem to feel a natural attachment to the person who sells the casket, who stores and embalms the body and organizes the burial.

  Billy wanders into Dick’s apartment. “I wondered if you wanted to go minigolfing,” he says. “Are you busy?”

  “Yes, well.… I have a date this evening “

  The phone rings Dick answers it and holds his hand up to stop Billy from talking. It’s one of his assistants. Seems they are all out of eye caps downstairs. They need the eye caps now or the eyes won’t stay shut on the two people they are ­embalming. “There’s a new box in the basement,” Dick says. “Beside the ­furnace.”

  Billy walks around the apartment above the funeral home. It is sparse and small. He hears the buzz of machinery below, the chugging of the furnace, the hum of the lights. He smells the chemical odour of prepared death. He looks at the pictures framed on the walls: Dick’s father opening his business, a picture of the first casket they sold, the first dollar bill they ever made. There is a picture of Dick shaking the old mayor’s hand at the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the opening of the new, improved funeral home years ago. Dick looks proud, the sun beaming down upon his face. The mayor looks tired and drawn. It seems to Billy that the mayor died shortly after the opening and Billy wonders if Dick gave his family a deal on the casket.

  “Are you sure?” Dick asks into the phone. “By the furnace. In the corner. Check again.”

  Billy looks at Dick’s bookshelf. Books on embalming, on the dangers of formaldehyde, on the construction of caskets, on the his-tory of the funeral industry. A couple of novels Billy remembers reading in high school; he thinks that high school was probably the last time he read anything worthwhile.

  “All right,” Dick says, still clutching his towel, balancing the phone. “Put them in and finish embalming and then go home. Dress and makeup tomorrow. It’s been a long day, Darren.” He hangs up the phone. “Billy?”

  “I just wanted to know if you wanted to go golfing.” “Golfing?”

  “Did you say you have a date tonight?”

  “Yes, with your sister.” Dick can’t help but let out a little laugh. “My what?”

  “Your sister. I’m taking her out for dinner.” Dick walks over to a mirror and smoothes down his eyebrows. The towel slips a bit and Billy sees the top of Dick’s large, hairy ass. His skin looks sore and raw.

  “Shit,” Billy says. Now Hilary is dating the funeral director.

  “I can’t play golf tonight. Maybe tomorrow?”

  “No problem. I just wondered.…” Billy doesn’t even know why he wanted to do something with Dick in the first place.

  Dick stares into the mirror. Thank God he doesn’t look anything like his father. “Hey,” he says, “can you help Hilary dig for Wednesday? She needs someone strong to dig.” Dick pulls at a hair growing out of his nose.

  “Dig?”

  “And support the walls with wood.” He rubs his nose, trying to get the hair to go back inside.”I’d prefer she used cement but there isn’t enough time. Plus it would look suspicious, don’t you think?”

  “For what?”

  “To dig the hole in your mother’s backyard.” Dick looks in the mirror at himself. He wonders why he has so much hair growing everywhere—in his ears, on his shoulders. But none on his ankles where his socks are. He’s completely bald there.

  Billy’s face registers nothing. “Is Hilary having plumbing problems? Why didn’t she call me first?”

  “For your mother’s grave,” Dick says. “Didn’t anyone tell you about it?”

  “What?”

  “Hilary and Thomas,” Dick says. “They are burying your mother in the backyard, under that big tree, the magnolia.” Dick turns towards Billy. “I thought someone would have told you.”

  “What?”

  “Just like I said.”

  “Cremation?”

  “Her whole body. Casket and all. It’s illegal, of course, so we’ll have to be quiet about it.” Dick raises his right index finger to his mouth in a hushing gesture. He feels like he is talking to a child.

  “When?”

  “On Wednesday night. If you help, the digging will go faster.”

  “Shit,” Billy says. He looks at the floor. Maybe if he stares at it long enough he could see straight down into the funeral home, right to his mother’s body. “Why?”

  “I’m bringing your mother over on Wednesday night. We’ll do it quietly. No one can know. This is important. Billy, are you listening?”

  “Shit.” It seems that’s all Billy can say. His mouth is dry. He needs a drink.

  “Are you all right?”

  Billy nods. “They can’t do that,” he says. “They can’t bury her there. How are we going to sell the house?”

  Dick turns back to the mirror. He shrugs. He thinks about what he’s going to wear to see Hilary. A suit or something casual? “It’s what Hilary and Thomas want,” Dick says. “You should talk to them.Your sister has already started digging.”

  “Fuck,” Billy says. He walks quickly out of Dick’s apartment. He leaves the door open and hurries down the stairs.

  “I’m sure if you talked to them,” Dick begins, “they’ll be reasonable about—Billy?” Dick doesn’t notice that Billy is gone until he feels the cold breeze from the open door. He walks over and shuts the door and wonders if anyone walking by on the street below saw his naked, hairy back. Then he wonders if his father touched all the corpses or just the women. Then he wonders if his father went farther than touching. Dick stares at himself in the mirror. His eyes look frightened.

  “Father went farther.” He plays with the words. His voice startles him.

  Jonathan climbs up the stairs to the front door of the house. He knocks. He notices the rusty baby carriage lying at the bottom of the steps. He looks down at the street and sees candy wrappers in the gutter. It is early evening. Jonathan’s plane was delayed and then the taxi got lost in the suburbs
. Jonathan understands why. All the streets look the same. Strip mall after strip mall. Everything so flat. He is tired and frustrated and worried.

  Jonathan couldn’t stop himself from coming. He worried all last night and straight through the plane ride about Thomas’s reaction but there was some force drawing him close. Something he couldn’t control. He’s been with Thomas for fifteen years and he knows nothing about Thomas’s roots and, no matter what Thomas says, it’s about time he discovered them for himself.

  Hilary calls out for Thomas to get the door but Thomas is in the shower and doesn’t hear her. Thomas is soaping his chest and thinking about Hilary’s protruding rib cage. He wonders if he should take her to a doctor. He thinks about anorexia and bulimia, everything he knows about eating disorders. It was like looking at a skeleton.

  Hilary straightens herself. She is wearing the red dress. She wishes her mother was alive to see this. She runs down to the door and opens it.

  “Hello?” Hilary is taken aback. A well-dressed black man is standing on the front porch holding an overnight bag and a bottle of Scotch. “Are you selling something? Because if you are, we don’t need anything.” Hilary moves to shut the door.

  “No,” Jonathan says. He blocks the door with his shoe. “I’m here to see Thomas. Thomas Mount? God, please tell me this is where Thomas Mount is staying.” He pauses. “You must be Hilary.” He looks at her in her red dress. “It’s wonderful to finally meet you.”

  Jonathan puts his hand out and Hilary opens the door wider and shakes it. “Who are you?” she asks. His hand is beautifully dark. A rich darkness, creamy. The palm is pale pink lined with dark. Hilary thinks it is a wonderful hand.

  “I’m Jonathan.”

  “Oh?”

  “Jonathan Brandley.”

  Hilary looks at this man, this Jonathan. She feels as if she’s staring into the face of someone special, as if she’s just met a movie star or a politician. He is striking.

  “Thomas is in the shower.”

  “May I come in?”

  Hilary nervously ushers him into the living room.

  “Look at that,” Jonathan says. “Thomas told me there were rocks on the living room floor. Can I walk on them?”