Sistering by Jennifer Quist

Author:Jennifer Quist [Quist, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781927535707
Publisher: Linda Leith Publishing
Published: 2015-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Heather

[15]

At this stage in our process, the dead old lady on the stainless steel table looks like she’s made out of phyllo pastry.

Today, it’s busy and crowded in the downstairs work area so I’ve brought her to one of our velour and brocade upper rooms to do the final touches—the dressing and powdering and painting.

There will be one more interruption.

“Hey, your sister is here.” It’s the new guy, the fresh young mortuary apprentice, sticking his head into the private visitation room where I’m working.

“Great. Send her in.”

He pauses. “You sure?”

“Yeah, no need to worry.” I wave at the body draped with a clean white modesty sheet. “My sister is a professional.”

Yes, I know right away my visitor must be Suzanne. Of the four of them, there’s only one who would appear spontaneously at my workplace. It won’t be Meaghan. She deplores my work—thinks it’s sick and tragic, thinks it betrays me as sick and tragic. Tina is bold with births, and she did go sit in that death-car at the auto show back when she thought the woman who died in it was her mother-in-law. And I’ll hand it to Ashley: not everyone can cheerfully eat lunch sitting on top of a stranger’s grave waiting for quickset concrete to dry. But in a place like this, there’s no earth or stone, no auto show velvet ropes or long passages of time to hide the deathliness of my work. It’s here on the table.

Suzanne knows it, and she’s making her way toward me anyway, silent feet in the carpeted funeral home corridor. She’s outside the door, moving through the cool disinfectant-rich air. It’s a lot like hospital air, actually. Only it’s scented with more flowers and fewer tuna sandwiches.

“Heather?”

“Yes, come in, please,” I say in my funeral voice. It’s like my normal voice only spun into a single glassy thread—light and clear and strong. Its language is slightly modified too. It uses long Latin derived words when shorter, simpler ones would suffice. And it never speaks in contractions or slang, though it will slip into old fashioned idioms about brass tacks and bygones.

The door cracks open until I see Suzanne’s face and she sees mine. “They said you’re dressing a body.”

“They are correct,” I answer. “Come inside, please.”

I am not trying to bully her into something terribly new and shocking. Suzanne has seen plenty of dead people. She has seen people in states that might be worse than death, for all anyone knows—wasted bodies grinding away in Intensive Care Units. After all of that, there is nothing here that should frighten Suzanne. Still, she is caught in the doorway, using the oak slab to shield her view of the body.

“Suzanne, come in,” I say again. “Everything is fine. The wet-work is completed. We are just getting ready for the close-up now.”

When she comes inside, Suzanne moves with panicky quickness, as if she is trying to keep a bad cat from escaping the room. She is wearing a hoodie as an overcoat and formless pastel-coloured pants with pockets sewn all over them.

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