What We All Want

by Michelle Berry

  Hilary nods.

  He steps carefully across the rocks and sits on the dent in the couch. “They look great.”

  Hilary stands before him twirling her hair around her finger. She smiles.

  Jonathan sits politely and waits for Hilary to tell him what to do. “I have a date tonight.” Hilary stands in the doorway.

  “A date?”

  Hilary smiles.

  “With whom?”

  “Whom?”

  “Your date.”

  “Oh, Dick Mortimer.”

  “And who is Dick Mortimer?”

  “He’s a funeral director.” Hilary says this with such conviction, with such pride, that Jonathan sits up on the couch, straightens his back. “A funeral director.”

  “Yes.” Hilary smiles. “A funeral director. He owns his own funeral home.”

  “How nice,” Jonathan says. He looks at the rocks below his feet. There is a knock at the door. Hilary’s face suddenly turns red, her hands shake.

  “That must be your funeral director,” Jonathan says. “Where is Thomas’s room? I’ll wait for him there.”

  Hilary nods her head. “Upstairs,” she says. “Second door on the right.”

  Jonathan stumbles over the rocks and makes his way up the stairs. The dolls watch him walk past. “Christ,” he whispers as he stumbles upon a little boy doll who is hiding in the shadows.

  Jonathan opens the second door and comes upon Thomas in his bedroom getting dressed.

  “Jesus,” he says. “You’re right. This place is a mess.”

  Thomas starts. Almost falls over, with one foot in his pants. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to see you.”

  “I told you not to come. Christ, Jonathan, don’t you ever listen to me?”

  “I wanted to come.”

  “Jesus.”

  “It’s time I was part of your life, don’t you think? Don’t you think fifteen years gets me an admission ticket?”

  “It’s too complicated,” Thomas says. “It’s too much.”

  “Listen,” Jonathan says. “I just wanted to be here to support you.”

  “This isn’t support, damn it. I told you not to come. Supporting me would be doing what I told you to do, or not to do.”

  Jonathan looks out the window. He looks out at the backyard and sees the muddy hole that Hilary was digging.

  “I guess I could fly home,” he says.

  “Jesus,” Thomas says. “Do you know how much money you wasted on the tickets?”

  “It’s my money.”

  “I know, but —”

  “I don’t want to leave,” Jonathan says.

  “Jonathan.”

  Thomas zips up his pants and moves to the window to join Jonathan looking out.

  “You’re just going to complicate everything even more. I didn’t want to have to explain. There’s so much going on you don’t understand.”

  “If you would talk to me, then maybe I would understand.” They watch the neighbour coming and going from the side of his house, carrying branches from a freshly trimmed tree to his woodpile. “What’s that?” Jonathan asks.

  “The neighbour.”

  “No, what’s that dug-up part there? That hole?” He points down. “Oh.” Thomas turns from the window. He scratches his scalp. He rubs his chin and his eyes. “A grave, I guess.”

  “What?”

  “That’s where we are burying my mother.”

  “Burying your mother? In your backyard?”

  “It’s Hilary’s idea. Seems the funeral director doesn’t mind.” “The guy she’s dating?”

  Thomas nods.

  “Oh, shit,” Jonathan says. He laughs. “There’s no way you are getting rid of me now. Now I’ve really got to stay.”

  Downstairs Dick is standing at the front door holding flowers in his large hands. The flowers are shaking Hilary opens the door and lets him in.

  “You look great,” Dick says. “Red is my favourite colour.”

  Hilary says nothing. They look shyly at one another. Dick looks at the living room floor and sees the rocks Billy was talking about. He looks at the dolls everywhere and he feels shivers move up and down his spine.

  “Someone is walking on my grave,” he jokes. “Or I’m about to get some money. No, wait. That’s itchy palms.”

  Hilary is confused.

  “Shivers,” he says. Dick wonders for an instant if Billy was right, maybe Hilary is a bit crazy. The dolls are lined up everywhere. They look like baby-sized adults.

  Hilary feels uncomfortable with Thomas and his friend being upstairs. She feels as if they are spying, watching her. She keeps looking towards the staircase.

  “Are you alone?” Dick asks.

  “No.” Hilary moves towards the kitchen with the flowers. “Not alone.”

  “Who’s home?” Dick looks up at the hallway ceiling. He hears nothing. He wonders if she thinks the dolls are alive.

  “Thomas and his friend, Jonathan,” Hilary says. “Come into the kitchen.”

  Dick walks into the kitchen without removing his coat and he perches uneasily on a chair and watches Hilary put the flowers in an empty pickle jar. She fills the jar with water after she’s arranged the flowers. The kitchen is still a mess but Dick tries to ignore it. After all, he reasons, they just had a death in the family.

  “Thank you for the flowers.”

  “No problem.” Dick clears his throat. “I’ll buy you a vase next.” He looks at the puzzle on the table. “You still haven’t found her face, have you?”

  “No. She’s faceless.”

  “You’ll find it, I’m sure.”

  “Thomas keeps saying it’s just a puzzle but I think it’s more than that.”

  “More than a puzzle?”

  “Yes,” Hilary says. “Much more. Don’t you?”

  Dick shrugs. He doesn’t know what to say. Dick whistles a tune under his breath. Hilary smoothes her hair down.

  “You look nice,” Dick says. “Really nice.”

  “Thank you.” Hilary blushes. “It’s my mother’s dress.”

  “I wouldn’t have known that,” Dick says. “It looks brand new.” “Should we go?”

  Dick helps Hilary with her coat at the door. His hand touches the back of her hair. Hilary feels heat travel down her body. Dick feels electrified.

  “Your car,” Hilary says, when she gets outside. “It’s new?”

  “A couple of years old.”

  “It has air bags?”

  “Yes?” Dick scratches his head.

  Hilary holds her breath, sucks it in hard, and then climbs into Dick’s car.

  They drive for a while in silence and then Dick mentions beef teriyaki and he stops the car at his favourite Japanese restaurant. He opens the car door for Hilary. Her legs are stiff from tension. Her hands hurt from gripping the car seat. They sit at a table by the window surrounded by couples, the men in business suits, the women with finely sprayed hair, manicures, and high-heel shoes. Hilary looks at the view, a strip mall parking lot. A Donut King just beside the restaurant. A muffler repair shop. A pet food store—Paws ‘n’ Claws. She looks at the cars coming and going. The exhaust pipes spew smoke, the car lights glow into the cold air, and Hilary orders chicken and looks out the window.

  Dick comes here a lot. He smiles at the Japanese waitress. He feels strong and proud.

  “Funny how we lost touch,” Dick says.

  “Things happen.” Hilary looks at her chopsticks. She picks them up and studies them.

  Dick clears his throat. “I missed you. You were my only friend in school.”

  Hilary looks up at him. She says nothing. They sit silently for a while, watching the people around them.

  Dick tries again to make conversation. “Have you started to dig yet?”

  “Nothing more than what you saw,” Hilary says. She plays with her chopsticks. She doesn’t know how to use them.

  “You’d better get a move on,” Dick says. �
�The ground is frosty now. It’ll be hard work.”

  “Yes,” Hilary says. “Hard work.”

  Dick reaches out to touch Hilary’s hand suddenly. She pulls back. No man has touched her before. Mother’s touch felt like sandpaper. Rough. Thomas’s touch is smooth. Billy doesn’t touch.

  “Do you see many naked bodies?” Hilary suddenly asks. She puts her hand back on the table. His touch was warm and dry. She reaches tentatively towards his fingers. She pulls away again.

  Dick chokes on his drink. “What?”

  “In the funeral home?”

  Dick thinks about his answer.”They are all naked, Hilary. I have to dress them.”

  “Yes,” says Hilary. “I guess that’s right.”

  Dick feels warm all over. He is sweating. He takes off his sweater and Hilary notes the sweat stains under his armpits. She smells a strong chemical smell coming off of him—the funeral home. She sniffs deeply. Dick’s face turns red.

  “I showered,” he says. “I just can’t get the smell off of me.”

  “I know,” Hilary says. “It’s not bad. It reminds me of …”

  “Of what?”

  “School. Biology class. You.”

  They eat their dinners silently. Hilary wrestles with her chop-sticks. Copies Dick. Mostly uses her fingers.

  “Did you ever finish high school?” Dick asks.

  “No.”

  “Maybe you can now,” he says. “Maybe now that your mother is gone you can go back to high school.”

  Hilary looks up from her plate. “No,” she says.

  Dick swallows his wine. “Have you ever seen your father again?” “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  “I thought we could get to know each other again.”

  “You shouldn’t be asking me these things. I’m not asking you about your father.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you finished?”

  Dick looks at his unfinished dinner. He is confused. “I guess.” He wants dessert.

  “I want to go now,” Hilary says. “I want to go to the funeral home.”

  “To see your mother?”

  “No,” Hilary says. “Of course not. I just want to go there again. Like we used to.”

  Dick calls for the bill.

  Hilary steels herself for the car ride. She takes deep breaths. Each time, she thinks, it is getting easier.

  It is dark outside and Tess is pacing in front of the living room window, eating a Snickers bar. It isn’t very satisfying. She has been pacing all afternoon, waiting for Billy. She looks at Sue who is curled up on the couch watching TV, eating unbuttered, unsalted popcorn, and drinking Diet Coke.

  Tess sighs.

  Sue takes a sip of her Diet Coke. “Get a load of this outfit,” she says. “I could wear that.”

  Sue is watching a fashion show and Tess looks over at a stick-thin figure she supposes is a female parading down a runway wearing a sheer, see-through bra and tight hot pants. She doesn’t have breasts. Just two dark, erect nipples floating in the loose material of the bra. Flat chest. Tess blinks. She moans. She suddenly sinks to the ground, her polyester tent-dress covering her legs. She hunches over on the floor. Two erect nipples—is that what her Billy is doing? Is he having an affair?—and her world comes crashing down.

  “What’s wrong?” Sue stands. “Fuck, Mom. What’s going on?”

  “Help,” Tess says. “Help me.”

  Sue clutches under her mom’s fat armpits, trying to raise her. “Get up,” she shouts. “Get up.”

  “Call someone,” Tess says,”call the police.”

  Tess thinks, The signs: the bag in the wind, the ketchup, the matching earrings. It’s all come down to this. Her arm feels numb suddenly and there is a crushing pain in her chest. She feels as if someone is sitting on her, squishing her.

  “Indigestion?” she whispers. “Maybe it’s just indigestion.” Sue is on the phone calling an ambulance.

  The pain rips through Tess again and she feels faint and can’t breathe and the world spins until her nose hits the carpet and her mouth tastes of peanuts and chocolate.

  “Get a fucking ambulance here now,” Sue screams into the phone. “No, I won’t calm down. My mom’s dying.” She lights a cigarette with shaky fingers. “She’s throwing up on the living room floor.” She isn’t allowed to smoke in the house but she doesn’t care right now. This is an emergency.

  Tess smiles to herself before she passes out. Listening to Sue’s angry voice makes her realize that someone cares. At least someone cares, she thinks.

  10. What We All Want

  Billy peers through the dark into the Greenhomes Minigolf Course clubhouse at Grace. He is stepping on the bushes under the window, watching her. There are only two cars in the parking lot besides his and he watches as a young man counts money from a tray on the front counter and Grace fiddles with her coat. He stares at her, summoning up his courage. Billy has been drinking in the car since he left Dick’s and now he has to pee. He looks around. He opens his fly and waits for the urine, and then sighs as it comes splashing out into the bushes and against the wall. When he looks up again Grace is gone and the young man is turning off the lights. He watches the young man leave the clubhouse, get into his car, and drive off into the darkness. The lights in the parking lot flicker and go out. Billy looks up at them. He looks back into the window. It is dark now, the lights are off. There is silence. Nothing. An eerie black space. But the other car is still standing in the lot.

  Billy suddenly hears footsteps.

  Grace is standing just to the left of Billy. His heart speeds up. He steps out of the bushes and smiles at her. “What do you want?” she says.

  “I thought I’d take you up on your offer.”

  “My offer?” Grace looks confused. “Oh, when you asked me out.” She smiles.

  Grace is much shorter than Billy and she cowers a bit under his gaze. He looks down on her mass of coiled, dark hair.

  “It’s cold tonight, isn’t it?”

  Grace starts to walk towards her car.

  “Can I buy you a drink? Actually, I have some beer in my car.” Grace stops walking. She turns towards him. She weighs her options and looks at her watch.

  “Aren’t you married?” Grace says. “I’ve seen you around with her. Your wife. You used to come in a lot with her, play a couple of rounds.”

  Billy nods.

  “You shouldn’t be dating other women then, should you?” Grace shakes her head but Billy can see in the darkness that she is a bit pleased. “That’s not nice.”

  “I can’t help myself,” Billy says, and in saying this he feels like he’s just popped a balloon—a little burst of adrenaline, a gasp of air, and it’s out in the open, the protective covering isn’t there any more.

  “Well. . . .” Grace turns back to her car. “What do you know about that?”

  Billy kicks his foot on the ground, stubbing his toe, making pain a more intimate part of him than this conversation.

  “You’re one of those men who likes women big, aren’t you? A big handful, something to pinch and hold on to.”

  Billy sucks in his breath.

  “Well, come on then,” Grace says. “I’m not all that big but I’ll do, I suppose. You can come home with me.”

  The wind rips out of Billy. He feels weak at the knees.

  “Just be quick about it,” Grace says quietly. “I haven’t got all night.” She climbs into the driver’s side of her car and unlocks the passenger door. “Come on then,” she calls out of her window. “Get in.”

  And Billy does get in. He grabs a case of beer from his car and locks the doors, and he walks with large strides towards Grace’s car. He climbs in. He can’t stop shaking. He keeps his hands in his coat pocket and his ball cap on and he shakes and twitches and his teeth chatter. All of the times he’s wanted to do this have come crashing down into this moment.

  “My,” Grace says, “you’re frozen. Let’s get some heat going.”
<
br />   Grace pulls the car out of the lot and drives in the opposite direction of Billy’s house. They drive in silence, sharing an open beer. Grace lives on the outskirts of suburbia, where a new housing development is being built, but where, for now, most of the other neighbours are factories and highways. She lives in her childhood room in a virtually deserted house. Her mother rocks endlessly in front of the TV, cane out to poke the channel selector, a bowl of peanuts in her lap. She is half blind and fully deaf. Since Grace’s father died last year and Grace moved out of her apartment and into her mother’s home to take care of her, she has sold the furniture around them, keeping only the kitchen chairs and table, only the toaster oven and microwave, only the rocking chair her mother sits in. In Grace’s bedroom there is only the bunk bed. Grace says her mother sleeps in the chair in front of the TV. Grace will sell the house once her mother dies. She will use the money to move to the city and buy an apartment. She will find a new job.

  Grace makes Billy tiptoe into her room behind her mother. She takes her mother to the bathroom, refills her peanut bowl, adjusts her cane-to-TV ratio, and joins Billy in the bedroom at the back of the house. He is sitting on the bottom bunk. She locks the door. Grace lies down on the bottom bunk. Billy listens to the hum of the TV set and he waits for his heart to stop violently beating. He sips on the beer he brought in from the car. He does nothing. Grace waits.

  “It’s difficult,” Grace says, “to afford taking care of her, buying her medicines, on my salary. So I had to sell some things. My father’s pension dried up.”

  Billy thinks about money and jobs and such. “Hey,” he says, “do you think you could get me a job at the golf course?”

  Grace thought they were coming back to her place to have sex. She’s had several men in like this, men she just gets a look at, a whiff of, in the minigolf clubhouse. She has them back to her house, tiptoes them past her mother, and they make love on her bunk bed, usually on the lower bunk. She knows they are mostly married, wanting a quick thrill, the feel of something different under their bodies. But this man, this Billy, is different. He hasn’t touched her yet. And he is making her nervous. He is full of pent-up energy and he seems to just want to sit. Grace was more in the mood for sex. She fixed her hair and even sprayed some imitation Chanel No. 5 on her wrists while she watched her mother pee in the toilet.