Break in Case of Emergency by Jessica Winter

Author:Jessica Winter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-07-12T04:00:00+00:00

Dolly

Jen was at work, leaving a voicemail for Jim.

“In the dream, I’m in a simple Lutheran church, everything’s wood; hard, cold pews; hard, cold everything, but lots of leg room. You’re on the aisle and I’m sitting beside you. I know you’re you, but you don’t look like you; you look like Max von Sydow in Through a Glass Darkly. On my lap, sitting up like a regular person, is the embalmed and neatly dressed corpse of a middle-aged English woman named Dolly. Everyone else in the pews also has an embalmed corpse on their lap, except you. There’s a small, shuffling group of mourners that stops by each pew to pay their respects to the deceased. One of them is Dolly’s dad. Dolly’s dad leans over to see his daughter, kind of awkwardly bent over you. He’s wrecked, just totally destroyed by this whole ritual, but he’s trying his best to put on a good face, and the result is that he’s doing this kind of high-pitched, hooting-crying thing, and he keeps saying in his posh British accent, ‘Goodbye, Dolly, goodbye, we love you, Dolly, bye-bye, now, Dolly, that’s our girl, Dolly, goodbye.’ Over and over. Dolly’s mother stands by his side, silent, just watching Dolly with this fathomless expression. I keep apologizing to you for how difficult this is, and you are silent. As the mourners are dispersing, I notice that Dolly is picking at her face. I say ‘No, no, Dolly, don’t do that, sweetheart.’ I turn her toward me—now I’m cradling her—and she’s scratching and pulling really hard. Her skin is breaking and bleeding. I try to pull her hands away, but she’s too strong for me. Then I think, What does it matter if she picks her face? She’s dead. That was the end of the dream.”

Jen pushed the button to listen to her message, then pushed the button to erase the voicemail from Jim’s inbox, then hung up.

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