Putting Makeup on Dead People (18 page)

“No, don’t. It’s fine. But I’ve got to go. Big test next week.”

“Okay,” she says. “Thanks, Donna.”

“You’re welcome,” I say, although I’m not sure for what. For spreading doubt and my bad attitude?

An hour later, Mr. Brighton and JB catch me staring at the wall in the lobby.

Mr. Brighton says, “We’re going to suit up Mr. Mahoney, and then JB’s doing the makeup.”

“Want to observe me, too?” JB smiles.

“Sure,” I say.

In the meantime, I set up several bouquets of carnations and gladiolas along the walls of Viewing Room Two. The Brightons wheel Rory and his average casket into the empty spot.

“Nora Mahoney will be here in an hour,” Mr. Brighton says.

“Then I’d better get to work,” JB says. “Come ahead, sweet apprentice.”

Mr. Brighton shakes his head and leaves us, closing the pocket doors to the room behind him.

JB opens his cosmetics case on one of the small flower stands next to the casket and looks at the picture Nora gave us of Rory. “Everyone’s unique, and we need to honor that.” JB reminds me that we always request a picture to get the right color and shading for each person. In this photo, Rory’s laughing on a lounge chair in front of some ocean.

The Rory before us is not laughing. His round face rests still, gray-and-black-speckled eyebrows curving above closed lids. But I can still see the laugh lines around his mouth, and JB’s already fixed his lips into a slight grin, which he describes as “no small feat.”

JB pulls out the nude cosmetic and a makeup brush. “Showtime, Rory,” he says. “Let’s make you pretty for the big day.”

JB brushes the cosmetic onto Rory’s face and bald head and sets his slight grin with lip wax and a pale neutral lip color to smooth out the skin. He pauses only to say the name of each thing he uses; otherwise, he’s in his own zone and does his work like a virtuoso painter. With delicate strokes, he brushes more cosmetic on Rory’s hands, covering a bruise from the hospital I.V. After a few puffs of powder from his atomizer, he steps back to appraise his work.

“How does he look?”

“Good.” I’m impressed. “Really good and natural.”

“Thanks, kid.”

In his suit, all finished, Rory could be ready for his wedding. He could be just asleep. I touch his arm, cold and stiff under the suit, and I remember touching Dad’s arm under a similar suit, that same stiffness. A slightly nauseous feeling swirls in my stomach as I see my fourteen-year-old self standing at the casket, feeling like the loneliest person in the world and being fascinated at the same time.

While JB puts away his makeup case, I carefully set the last few flower arrangements on the stands flanking Rory’s casket and think about Mom and the gaping hole Dad left behind. I think of Nora, who will say a last good-bye on Monday.

When Nora arrives at Brighton Brothers, I can tell she’s pulled herself tightly together, buttoned into a black suit and skirt and encased in gray panty hose and simple black pumps. She’s ready for this first day of viewing. Since Rory had so many friends, Nora decided on two days of visitation, with the funeral on Monday. It seems like she’s got composure stored up somewhere. She asks me to come and look at Rory with her.

In Viewing Room Two, we stand next to the open casket. “He looks good,” she says. “I’ve never seen that.” She leans in closer to the body. “Rory never smiled like that for me.”

“Oh, I’m sure he did.” Which sounds like a stupid thing to say as soon as I say it.

“Nope,” Nora says. She looks at me, then past me, and a slow smile rises on her lips. “You know, Rory’s best friend Dan died when they were sixteen. He only talked about it once, when we first met, but he told me Dan would be the first person he’d see when he died. He laughed about what a good time they’d have tearing up heaven or hell together. Which place they ended up, I don’t know.” She wipes some stray tears from her cheeks with a handkerchief. “But I bet they’re having a ball right now.”

I’m holding back my own floodgates as I think,
How beautiful
. I imagine Mom reuniting with her best friend, tearing up the afterlife with Dad. But she’s not in the afterlife. She’s in this life, and unlike Rory Mahoney, she has a good reason to smile now. She’s going out on dates. She’s got her first romance in four years. I smile for her, and I feel confused, like I’m betraying Dad.

Nora swats my arm with the back of her hand. “So, how’s your love life?”

“Who knows?”

“Sounds about right,” she says. “Just don’t give up yourself. You’re all you’ve got, and you only go around the block once.” She blows her nose. “And buy your mother some goddamn flowers.”

A
few weeks later, I’ve successfully avoided two family dinners, claiming I had plans with Tim, although I haven’t actually heard from him since I called him from the parking lot. I have considered calling him to say that Charlie could give him some lessons in being supportive. It’s officially October, and the air creeps in with a chill at night and smells like Halloween. The leaves on the oak tree in front of Brighton Brothers have turned a flaming red, and the brightness feels almost oppressive to me. I’m more in the mood for them to go with the season and just fall.

Which is what I feel like doing. Collapsing to the ground, letting kids jump on me, and turning into compost. Instead, school is getting busier, and so is work: just as Mr. Brighton promised, more people are dying.

Fall also means a new Players production, but at the first-of-the-month meeting on a Sunday afternoon, I tell them I’m too busy with school and work, and will have to bow out this time.

When I get back to Brighton Brothers and head to the rear entrance, I find Mom sitting on the porch swing that Mr. Brighton put in for Mrs. B at the end of the summer. I sit next to her. She says, “I’d love for you to come eat with us tonight, but I guess you have plans?”

“Yeah.” I can’t look at her and lie at the same time, so I do my best to thoroughly inspect my fingernails. “Study group.”

“So we haven’t really talked since our dinner.” She looks down at her red purse and plays with the strap. “What did you think?”

By the little smile I see at the corner of her lips, I know she means Roger. “About what?”

She turns her face toward me and isn’t smiling. Instead, she shoots her lasso-of-truth eyes at me, the ones she always used to get me to confess that I had not actually finished my homework. “About Roger.”

“He’s nice,” I say, as if commenting on shoes I probably wouldn’t buy.

“That’s it?”

“You may have known him for a while, but I just met him.”

“That’s never stopped you from forming opinions otherwise,” she says sharply. She looks back to her purse.

I know I could be more helpful here, throw her a bone. I should say something more, something about how he seems kind and well-balanced and interesting and intelligent, but I just can’t go that deep. “He’s really good-looking.”

This makes her smile; we can agree on this. She twists the blue Roger-bracelet around on her wrist. “So, you know Gwen and B invited him to the wedding.”

I want to be magnanimous, but I say, “They don’t really know him either.”

“They’re not supposed to know him. I’m the one who’s dating him.” She pushes the porch floorboards with her Keds, and we rock a little in the swing.

I rub my temples with my fingers. I can still smell Linda’s perfume from the Players meeting, and the sweetness turns my stomach. “So he is your boyfriend?”

“Roger and I are dating.”

“So how serious are you?”

“Serious enough.”

I put my tennis shoes on the porch floor and stop the swing. “If he’s not your boyfriend, then why is he coming to my brother’s wedding?”

“Donna.”

“What?”

“Please don’t be like this.”

“You could go with Uncle Lou. I’m sure Aunt Irene would be happy for a way to get out of socializing.”

“Do you know who I’d really like to bring?” I see hurt in Mom’s eyes, and I see that I’m causing it. “I’d love to bring your dad, but I can’t figure out how to make that happen. What I do know is that there’s a breathing man who wants to spend time with me. And I like him too, God help me.”

I hug myself with my arms. I want to run, but I don’t know where to go. And the way Mom’s staring at me, I feel like I can’t escape.

“I’ve planned for everything in my life—family dinners, education for my children, being a good Catholic mother, my wedding.” Her eyes shine bright and full and fiery. “But I didn’t plan for this. I didn’t plan for any of this. I’m doing the best I can, and I could use a little help here.” She stands up and leaves me swinging.

I use my feet to stop it, but it still feels like I’m rocking back and forth.

As she drives away, I realize we never even said hello.

That night, I’m sitting at my desk, reviewing my embalming notes, when Tim calls and says, “Hey what’s up?” like we just talked yesterday. “Want to hang out this Friday?” I say yes quickly, wanting something, anything, to fill the void and distract me from thinking about my conversation with Mom, which I’m actually doing as I stare at my embalming notes. I feel a little bit like a starving person, grabbing at the first food that’s offered to me, even if it is a stale Twinkie. A small part of me says the last thing I need is a self-centered faux-pastry, but a bigger, louder bully part reminds me that my best friend is four hours away in Pittsburgh, and if I don’t want to spend another Friday night alone, I should take what I can get. So I do.

In embalming class on Monday, Mr. Troutman describes the different kinds of postmortem blood clots, two of which are called currant jelly clots and chicken fat clots. I’m a little uncomfortable with the fact that both of these sound like they could double as ingredients for a Southern dish. At the same time, I’m also curious and looking forward to when I get to start embalming.

Sitting in class, I realize something feels familiar. I don’t really know any of my classmates. I haven’t spoken up much in class. Other than my being fascinated by all of the subject matter, this feels like Woodmont, where all I wanted was to disappear. But I don’t want to be back at Woodmont, and I find I don’t want to be invisible here. Which means making myself noticed, something that I’m not used to doing.

So after class, I take a deep breath and go up to Ned Troutman, who is erasing blood clots from the board. When he notices me standing behind him, he turns around. “Yes?”

“I just wanted to say thank you for the lecture today.”

“You’re welcome.” I see him searching my face as though he might find my name there.

“Donna Parisi.” I say it a little too loudly, like it’s bursting from my mouth. But it feels good to say my name out loud, to hear the sound of it. I hold out my hand.

Ned Troutman shakes it. “You’re welcome, Ms. Parisi. I’ll see you next class.” He smiles and seems to stand a little straighter, like he’s talking to someone important. And, I think, he just may be.

In the hallway, I see a pair of familiar tattooed arms. Jason of the Restorative Arts. “So you decided to study here,” he says. “What do you think so far?”

“I think I’m in the right place.”

“Nice.” He grins. “Class with me next semester.”

“Looking forward to it.”

I feel warm and energized when I get to Social Considerations of Death and Dying, but the classroom is freezing, so I’m glad I brought my thick sweatshirt.

Dr. Landon, however, has taken off her black jacket and is sweating in her short-sleeved silk blouse. “People,” she tells us at as class starts, “I’m in a full-blown hot flash, and I’m not going to try to hide it.” She pushes out her lower lip and blows up under her big round glasses to get the bangs out of her eyes. She leans back against her desk. “In my humble opinion, we do too much in this country to hide from what’s natural.”

For the next forty-five minutes Dr. Landon speculates on what she calls the American Fear of Death, how we do everything we can to avoid it, even though it’s the one thing in life that’s guaranteed. She talks about how so many old people die alone, in nursing homes, with families who can’t face the presence of death and dying in their day-to-day lives. She says that in her view the solution is community.

One of my classmates, a short, perky girl who looks like she could be an Olympic gymnast, says, “When I was growing up, we lived with my grandma, and I loved it. Even when my parents were busy, she always had time for me.”

I wonder what it would have been like to live with Nonna or Grammy. If Nonna had been around, I have a feeling I would have gotten lots more dollar bills and sips of beer than I had without her.

At the end of class, Dr. Landon gives us an assignment that’s due at the end of the semester. She wants us to carefully examine our views on death, what we bring to the embalming table, so to speak—our assumptions, our fears, our expectations, our experiences. It can be in the form of a paper, or we’re free to use creative license—short films, PowerPoint presentations, songs, whatever. And we will present them to the class. Which sounds about as fun to me as a chicken fat clot.

So much for not wanting to disappear.

On Thursday, I start to make death lists to address Dr. Landon’s assignment.
Assumptions, Expectations, Experiences, Fears, Questions, Beliefs.
I consider making an
Assassinations
list but guess that’s not part of the assignment.

For the moment, I give up. I put on my Terra necklace and lie down. I put my hand over the metal turtle shell and look over at my nightstand, at the card from Aunt Selena.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
I like the idea of so many ways to kneel and kiss the ground, Mother Earth. I’m just not sure which way is my way.

I wonder if it would work for my assignment to make a mobile or somehow use painted rigatoni noodles like Mom helped me use to create a DNA double helix for biology. Painted noodles would definitely make this easier. I laugh about the noodles and think of calling Mom, but I’m not sure that she wants to talk to me.

I head to Mrs. Brighton’s kitchen to look for ideas in the pantry, and hear my phone from down the hallway. With a box of bow-tie pasta in my hand, I get to my phone before it stops ringing, and it’s Liz, who is coming home for the weekend. I almost scream into her ear. “I have a date tomorrow night, but I can cancel it.”

“I appreciate that,” Liz says, laughing, “but I’ll get home late anyway. Let’s do something Saturday—all day.”

“I’m all yours.”

Friday night, after I watch Tim eat ramen noodles, we have returned to his mattress. When he buries his face in my neck and kisses my ear, I make an audible sigh and hold my arms tight around him. In the space of my sigh, I feel a sad kind of emptiness, but that bully voice reminds me that a cute guy has his arms around me and that should be enough.

He slides his hands under the back of my sweater. He breathes on my neck and whispers, “You make different sounds than Tina.”

I move my hands from his back to his shoulders. “What?”

He lifts his head and looks at me. “You make different sounds than Tina does when we have sex. It’s cool.” He grins and lowers his head to my neck again.

I push him back up. “You have sex with your friend Tina?”

“Well, yeah.”

I push him off me and roll onto my side to look at him.

“You’re not upset, are you?” he says.

“No, I’m not upset.” Not with Tim, anyway. At this moment I feel very calm. The bully voice is shouting all kinds of warnings and threats now, but I’m not so interested.

And fortunately, I discover I also have imaginary duct tape.

“I just have some things to think about.”

“Before we have sex?”

“Yes.” I lie back and look at the corky ceiling of Tim’s room. Doesn’t look very sturdy. This house could fall down at any second, I think, and here I’d be with Tim, under the rubble. Nora Mahoney said not to give up me, that I’m all I’ve got. And do I really want to let myself be buried under pieces of corkboard with this guy? I imagine my epitaph:
Here lies Donna Parisi. Crushed by corkboard and inadequacy. Loving daughter, sister, with a moan all her own.

“Are you done thinking now?”

“Yes.”

“Does that mean we’re going to have sex now?”

“No. It means we’re not going to do anything anymore.” And as I say this, I know this is true. It feels like a fog lifts out of my brain, and I can see the path clear ahead. I’m tired of not caring. I don’t want to just make do. I don’t want to just kind of date someone. I remember what Mr. Brighton says about being passionate about something. I know what that feels like now, for the first time in a long time, in school or when I’m working. And I know I’m not feeling passion right now.

I also notice that this time, I haven’t been visited by the Anti-Sex Choir. Maybe the duct tape scared them off. And instead, I’ve conjured more of a doo-wop group, consisting of Nora Mahoney and Bob Brighton. And I’m singing a fairly nice lead. “Take care of yourself, Tim,” I say. “I’m going home.”

And it comes as no surprise to me that this is totally cool with Tim.

It’s two a.m., and I still can’t sleep. Looking at the wooden ceiling beams in my dark room, I feel alone. But not just in this room by myself. I feel like I’m in this life alone, that one day I could be an old person in a nursing home like Dr. Landon talked about. It’s not as if I want to call Tim or anything. Letting go of him—whatever it was I had of him—felt freeing. But now it feels scary. I close my eyes, hoping that might shut out the fear.

I used to love alone time. All through high school I felt better when people weren’t talking to me, but it’s not so much fun anymore. I want something else, and it hurts. I think of Leaf and can hear her repeating what that other nurse said: “No one’s forcing you to be here.” It’s true for me too. No one’s making me do or be anything. If I want to be somewhere else, I’ve got to take myself there.

But I want so many things now, I don’t know what to do with them all. I want to be a good student. I want to be in love, for real. I want things to be normal with Mom again. I want to make Dad proud.

In my mind, I hear the words again.
No one’s forcing you to be here.
And this time, the voice sounds like my own—strong and sure.

It feels like I opened some kind of gate and let loose a team of wild horses, galloping around inside of me and doing their damnedest to get somewhere. And in the midst of the stampede, as I feel like I might be trampled, I remember Aunt Selena’s charge. If I want to matter, if I want to make my life one of consequence, I just need to be someone amazing. Oh, that’s all.

My eyes snap open, and I find that my vision’s adjusted to the dark. Suddenly, everything seems clearer and more defined—the grain of wood in the ceiling, the line of the window frame, my path to greatness, if I dare to take myself down it.