Five Minutes More

Darlene Ryan

Text copyright © 2009 Darlene Ryan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Ryan, Darlene, 1958-
Five minutes more / written by Darlene Ryan.

ISBN 978-1-55469-006-0

I. Title.

PS8635.Y35F59 2009    jC813'.6    C2008-907416-5

First published in the United States, 2009
Library of Congress Control Number
: 2008941139

Summary
: After D'Arcy's father dies, she struggles to come to terms with the fact that he committed suicide.

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

Cover and text design by Teresa Bubela Typesetting by Christine Toller Cover artwork by Getty Images Author photo by Kevin Ryan

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For Susan

I play the Five Minutes More game. Five minutes. I can stand anything for five minutes. Even my father being dead.

We're making the
arrangements
. Nobody has used the word
funeral
. My mother's answering questions for the announcement that will be in the newspaper. Her hands are folded in her lap, one hand over the other. She seems so calm and in control. Only I can see that on the bottom hand—the hidden one—she's picking at the side of her thumb with the nail of her middle finger, so a patch of raw, sore skin is exposed. She sees me looking at her and she gives me a little smile that's really just lips stretching, and I give it right back because I don't know what else to do.

Five minutes.

Mom and Mr. Rosborough are standing up now, so I get up too. “And no visitation,” she says, smoothing her skirt.

“Of course,” he murmurs.

Mr. Rosborough is the funeral director. He's very tall and thin, with lots of white hair combed back from his forehead. He's wearing a dark blue suit and tie with a very white shirt. His skin is very white too, and he has deep hollows below his cheekbones, as though his face is just skin and bone and nothing else. He looks exactly how I would have expected a funeral director to look if I had ever actually thought about it before today.

His doorplate only says
Director
. I guess nobody uses the word
undertaker
. Anyway,
director
seems like the right word to me. I feel as though I've walked onstage in the middle of a play. I'm just trying to stay out of the way until I can figure out how to get off again.

We go up to the second floor. I trail my hand up the banister. The wood is smooth and dark with age. This used to be someone's house. People lived here.

The top of the stairs opens into a big room, and the whole space is full of coffins.

Everywhere.

My breath sticks in my chest. I hear myself make a sucking sound halfway between a gasp and a heave, but no one else seems to notice. There's nowhere to look and not see the coffins. They're hanging from the ceiling, mounted on the walls, displayed on stands in rows like some kind of death department store. There's polished wood, metals that gleam like new change, velour and even some kind of white vinyl with studs that looks like it was recycled from an old car seat.

I close my eyes, but the image of the room is printed on the inside of my eyelids in swirling colors, like some kind
of psychedelic negative. I open them again and try to take a deep breath.

Five minutes more, I tell myself. Five minutes was what my dad said when I didn't want to get a needle or go to the dentist. It's what he said when I hid under my bed on the first day of kindergarten.

“Five minutes. Then, if you don't want to stay, we'll go for French fries.” And if I wanted to leave when the five minutes were up, he'd say, “We're already here. Let's just stay for five more minutes, and if you want to leave after that we'll go get those fries.”

My dad could five-minutes-more me through almost anything. And after, we always ended up at Fern's Diner sharing a big plate of fries with gravy on an oversized yellow pressed-paper plate.

“D'Arcy.” My mother motions me over to her.

“I think you'll be very satisfied with this,” Mr. Rosborough says, as though we were going to take the...thing home with us.

Up close he gives off the scent of flowers and something else that seems familiar but that I can't identify. The smell is sticky. It makes my head throb. I start to breathe through my mouth and try not to think about what that smell could be.

“What do you think?” Mom asks. The one they're standing beside is storm-cloud gray with some kind of space-age polymer finish. The inside is lined with a shiny blue ruffled fabric, like a tacky tuxedo shirt.

Little sparkles of light are dancing around the edges of my vision. Yesterday my dad drove his car into the river that
runs beside the old highway. How am I supposed to answer?

“It's nice,” I tell her.

We drive home in the dark, spits of rain hitting the wind-shield. The wipers click on,
snick snick
across the glass, pause and then do it again. I need some answers—I just don't know how to ask her the questions

“Did he leave a letter or anything?” I jump, realizing I've finally said it out loud. Now the words are out, I keep going. “How can they know for sure that he...?”

I watch my mother without turning my head. She takes a quick look in the rearview mirror, and then her eyes go back to the road. She never looks at me. “There's no letter,” she says finally. “The car went into the river. The rest is nobody's business.”

The only sound is the wipers moving across the glass in front of me. My mother doesn't say anything more. And neither do I.

“D'Arcy, there's a plastic garment bag somewhere in the hall closet. It's probably on the shelf or at the back. Would you get it for me, please?” Mom asks.

There's a long black bag on a hook behind the coats. I take it upstairs. “Is this what you wanted?” I ask from the bedroom doorway.

“That's it.” She takes the bag and opens the zipper. “Does this smell okay to you?”

I nod. I can't go into the room.

Mom has laid out my dad's underwear on the bed: a white T-shirt, dark socks and a pair of those stupid boxer shorts he liked. They have green smiley faces on them.

No.

“Rocky and Bullwinkle,” I say.

She turns. “What?”

I point at the stuff on the bed. “Rocky and Bullwinkle.” She gets it then, pulls open a drawer and moves things around until she finds the right underwear.

“I thought maybe the gray pinstripe,” she says, bringing the suit from the closet.

My father wasn't really a suit person, but what difference does it make? He's not going anywhere in it. I'm pretty sure suggesting jeans with holes in them would be wrong.

So I nod again. My head still hurts. Maybe I'm getting the flu or something.

The suit's in the bag now, along with a pale blue shirt. Mom holds up a red and navy striped tie. “I think this one.” She folds the tie and the underwear into the pocket at the bottom of the garment bag. Then she turns to me. “D'Arcy, go put the kettle on, please. I could use a cup of something hot. I'll be right down.”

In the kitchen I fill the kettle, set it on to boil and drop two peppermint tea bags in the china pot. When Mom turned forty-five she gave up caffeine. Now she drinks herbal tea— peppermint, chamomile and rose hip.

I lean on the counter for a minute, but I can't stay still. I know in a few minutes the phone will ring or someone will be at the door.

I go upstairs again. Through the half-open bedroom door I can see Mom. She's sitting on the end of the bed with the bag on her lap. Her hand is tracing slow circles on the plastic. I feel as though I'm watching something private that I shouldn't be seeing. I back away from the door.

I wake up five or six times during the night from strange dreams I can't really remember. I end up sleeping later than I wanted to, and when I get up I feel as though I didn't go to bed at all.

It's the first time since Mom and I got back from the funeral home that we've been alone in the house for more than a few minutes. Someone else is always here, putting food on a plate, patting me on the arm and looking sad.

A car pulls into the driveway. Mom's at the table in the dining room. “She's here,” I say. Mom gets up, glancing at her watch. We go into the kitchen in time to hear the soft knock on the door before it opens.

It's Claire. My sister. My half-sister to be exact. There's no way anyone can make that half into a real sister for me.

She's carrying her coat with a tote bag over one shoulder. Her eyes make a circuit around the kitchen; then she says, “Hello.” She doesn't look like she's been driving for hours.
She doesn't look like her father just died. She looks perfect because that's Claire. Her short blond hair shines like a shampoo commercial. She's wearing navy check pants and a creamy sweater. I don't think she owns jeans. And I bet if she put on a sweatshirt, she'd break out in a rash.

“Claire. I'm glad you're here,” Mom says. Her hands move, start to reach out, but then she pulls back and clasps them in front of her.

“Leah,” Claire says. She looks at me. “Hello, D'Arcy.”

“You must be tired. Can I get you anything? Are you hungry? There's lots of food,” Mom says. I want to tell her to stop talking.

“No. I stopped to eat about an hour ago. What I'd really like is more details. You didn't say much on the telephone.”

Details. What does she mean? The car went into the river. Dad's dead. The end.

I see my mother tense her shoulders. “Of course,” she says. “We should go over the arrangements of the service as well.”

“You already planned the service.” The way Claire says the words, it sounds like my mother did something wrong.