Putting Makeup on Dead People (3 page)

B reaches for another cookie, and Mom says, “Don’t worry. We’re having dinner soon. And I made chili.”

B nods like he just solved the crime. “I thought the cookies in my dream smelled a little like dead cow.”

“Ick,” I say, and Liz giggles.

“Donnnderrrrrr!” B says in his deep radio announcer voice that used to make me laugh no matter what. I don’t think he’s called me this in years, so as I’m laughing I also feel a little like crying. “Is Liz coming to your play?”

“You’re in a play? I’d love to come.”

I shoot my brother a dirty look. At school, I don’t really talk about my secret drama life with the St. Camillus de Lellis Players.

“Good. It’s tomorrow night.” B grins. “Donna’s playing a bank teller. It should be riveting.”

Once last year, Becky saw one of our plays and mentioned it after school when she’d roped me into helping her make student council posters. She said we could have pizza, and since she rarely asked me for anything, I said yes. As we sat around a table with thick, primary color markers, Becky had said, “You were awesome in your play last weekend.”

“What
?
”
Patty asked.

I remained silent, but Becky spoke up for me. “Donna does plays at her church.”

“That,” Patty said, “is so lame.”

But here at our kitchen table, Liz says, “I’ll be there.”

Now I have something else to worry about, which is losing a new friend the day after I meet her because she realizes what a huge dork I am. But I manage to relax enough to enjoy Mom’s chili and the Sasquatch documentary we end up watching, because Liz is there and seems to be having fun. And everyone seems to like her, too. Linnie even comes out and peeks her head into the living room with her shower cap on.

When I walk Liz out to her car, she says, “You have a great family.”

“They’re not usually this great. Maybe it’s you.”

“I doubt it. Anyway,” she says, “I feel comfortable here. Thanks.” She gives me a quick hug, and I realize she smells cinnamony like her car, and also like vanilla.

“Can I ask you something?” Liz says.

“Sure.”

“Is Charlie a good kisser?”

“What? How would I know that?” For that matter, how would I know what anyone kisses like? I’ve never even gotten close.

“You don’t? I mean, I thought you two were an item.”

I feel my face getting hot. “No. We’re not. We study together sometimes, but that’s it.”

“You know he likes you, right?”

“Um, no.” The thought that someone like Charlie might like someone like me makes me feel like miniature circus performers are doing aerial work in my stomach.

“It’s pretty obvious.”

“I guess I never thought about it.”

“Well, think about it.” She grins. “If you’re into hippies.”

I laugh and surprise myself with the sound of my own voice. I wonder if I am into hippies. What I do know is that I feel comfortable with Liz. And right now, in the cool air with my new friend, so much feels possible that I think it might just be okay to share my new discovery. “Can I tell you something?”

“Of course.” She sets her purple purse down on the driveway at her feet.

I watch how the fringe spreads out like octopus legs on the pavement. “I think I know what I want to be. You know—do, like for a job.” The words almost sound like I’m speaking another language, like I do sometimes in my dreams, where I’m in class and start speaking in some foreign tongue that I don’t even understand, and everyone looks at each other and says, “Oh, she’s the crazy one.”

“What is it?” Liz says. “The suspense is killing me.”

I cross my arms over my chest and wonder if it’s okay after all. “Can you keep it a secret?”

“Are you going to be a hooker or something?” She laughs and then looks at me. “Yes,” she says, in a calm, kind voice. “I’m an expert secret keeper.”

“So, you know people who work in funeral homes?” I pull at a thread on one of my sleeves. “Morticians?” I glance up at Liz.

“You’re going to be a mortician? Wild.” She puts her hands on her hips and nods and smiles. “Like that weird dude you were talking to today. Wow. I’ve never been friends with a mortician before.”

“I’m not one yet.”

“Oh, you’ll be one. I can feel it.” She holds her hands out to the sky, closes her eyes, and breathes in. “You’ll be a good one.”

“Thanks.” I feel myself smiling, and I’m thinking she could be right.

She drops her hands to her sides and picks up her purse. “Okay, I want to get home so my parents don’t worry if they get there before me. But we’ll talk more tomorrow. I’ll see you at your play.”

I almost forgot about that. “You don’t have to come, you know. Seriously. It’s just a stupid play.”

“I don’t have to do anything. I choose to come, okay?”

“I’ll see you there, then.”

“
Ciao
,” she says, and kisses me on one cheek and then the other. As I feel the tingle of where Liz’s lips brushed the skin on my face, I have a flash of Angelo’s Italian Grocery on Main Street. I must look as discombobulated as I feel, because she says, “That’s how they do it in Europe.”

“Oh,” I say, “
ciao
, then.” And I remember Saturday trips with Dad—just me and him—to Angelo’s. Dad would always grab one of the small Italian flags Angelo kept in the front display and wave it, saying
“Ciao, ciao.”
And then Dad would ask if Angelo had any extra cannoli so he could give one to his little lady, and Angelo, who had two gold front teeth, would say with a metallic grin, “Of course, one for the
bella donna
.”

As Liz drives away, I look up at the sky. I can see a few stars and smell that spring smell again. Keeping my arms at my sides, I open my palms just a little and imagine what it feels like to be Liz, arms stretched wide to the heavens.

When I go inside, I open the basement door a crack to see if B’s still up. I hear him on the phone, and he’s using his soft talking-to-Gwen voice. I shut the door. I’m glad I got to share my news with Liz, since B’s clearly not available.

Mom’s asleep in the living room chair, and in our old room, Linnie lies on her bed with headphones over her shower cap, still cooking a new shade of hair. Walking down the hallway to the bathroom in our suddenly quiet house, I feel lonely and nervous.

While I brush my teeth, I close my eyes and say in my head,
I’ll be a good mortician. I will be.
I do my best to spit out my fear with the toothpaste foam into the sink and watch it wash down the drain under the running water. Just to be safe, I run my hand over the whole sink, wipe away every last bit, and decide that tomorrow morning I’m going on a field trip to somewhere I once thought I’d never want to visit again. And I feel something, just a little something, move right where my heart should be.

I
n the morning, I eat a bowl of cereal and tell Mom I’m driving to the library to do some research in quiet. The research part is true. I will be doing that. For the moment, I’m putting Mom on a need-to-know status in terms of my future plans.

I pull the Lark—the Buick Skylark that Linnie and I share—out onto Sherwood, make my way down Far Hills, and turn onto Falder Road. The sun hides behind a thick wall of gray clouds, so it’s colder today, and I keep the windows up as I drive past the old Big Boy, past the Kozy Korner, where Uncle Lou and Dad used to play cards. I think Uncle Lou still does, but I’m not sure.

I turn off the road and down a short gravel driveway lined with those bright, self-assured tulips, like pageant contestants all in a row. Yesterday, Becky struggled to find a spot for her car in this parking lot packed with cars—just like it was three years and eight months ago. Now only two regular cars take up space in the lot, plus two long black hearses and two limos. An oval sign perched on the front lawn reads brighton brothers funeral home, and below that, a simple peace.

I’ve got that nervous feeling again, here outside. So I sit in the car for a minute, reminding myself to breathe. I remember dressing up in my favorite purple sweater and new black dress pants that first night, and standing close to Mom and holding B’s hand. Then I remember Mom looking for Linnie later and my finding her out here, actually, near the side of the building, smoking with our cousin Olivia. I was so mad that she could even think of doing that while Dad was stuck inside in a coffin. Or maybe I was mad I hadn’t thought to sneak out myself.

Now I open the big wooden door with the long brass handle, and inside, Brighton Brothers sounds even quieter than the classroom where I took my SAT. No listings are marked on the board in the lobby—they’ve already taken down Lila’s name.

It’s vacant except for the shadows of all my cousins and aunts and uncles, Mom and Dad’s friends, Dad’s coworkers from Sanford Steel, who seemed so straitlaced and out of place compared to all of our crazy relatives. I glance into Viewing Room Two and half expect to see Dad lying in there. I’m relieved he’s not. Ahead of me, an arrow-shaped sign says office, and I follow it.

I take a step directly onto a creaky floor spot and suddenly have the feeling I might get caught, even though I’m not doing anything wrong. A second later, I see Mr. Bob Brighton step out of the room that must be the office. He limps as he walks toward me and buttons his gray suit jacket.

I raise a hand in a hesitant wave. “Hi.”

Mr. Brighton always reminds me of a toy we had: a white-haired, round-faced plastic head of a dentist with a mustache poised over his big set of pearly teeth. The plastic man-head came with an array of dental tools, and we could take out the teeth. I decide not to tell Mr. Brighton about this.

“Donna Parisi?” he says.

“Yeah, that’s me.”

“Saw you here yesterday.” He takes another step toward me. “Very sad about Lila. Everything okay?”

“No one else is dead.”

“Oh,” he says.

“I guess that’s usually why people come in here.”

“Usually.” A lot like the dentist head toy, Mr. Brighton has something static and still about him, like he might not actually be real.

I wonder if he needs that quality to make room for all the crying or angry people he must meet. And yesterday, it didn’t sound like Joe Brighton helped out much in that capacity. “Um, is your brother here?”

“Joe? No he left this morning to go camping at Red River Gorge.”

I wonder if Joe has his funeral suit rigged with some kind of Velcro so he can rip it off to reveal shorts and a T-shirt to do a quick change into Outdoorsy Joe.

“Can I help you with something?” Bob Brighton winks. “I’m smarter than that guy anyway.”

I was kind of hoping Joe would be here, but I remember how kind this Mr. Brighton was to my family, how he made sure all of Lila’s aunts had Kleenex close at hand all morning, and how Lila’s service ran like clockwork, even with so many teenagers around. This Mr. Brighton probably also knows a lot of things I’d like to know. “I just had a few questions. Of a general nature.”

He studies me for a second, and I notice his eyes are amber-colored like a cat’s. “Come on in, then, and have a seat. Right now I can’t stand any longer on this darn hip.”

I follow him into his office, and he settles behind his desk into a high-back leather chair that swivels. I sit across from him in one of two lower-back leather chairs that don’t swivel.

Mr. Brighton pulls at a corner of his thick white mustache. “So what can I do for you? Of a general nature.”

“Why is it so empty in here?”

“Question with a question, is it?” He smiles and seems to relax a little. “It’s spring. Lila’s is the only service we’ve had during March. People don’t usually die in the springtime.” He holds up his hands and shrugs. “Just wait until the fall. They’ll be dropping like flies.” He grins. “And we’ll be in the green.”

I raise an eyebrow. I hadn’t thought so much about mortician-ism as a business, but I guess it is, and I hadn’t thought about when death’s busy season happened either.

Now Mr. Brighton definitely looks like a real person, one who’s realized he may have just said too much. “I’m sorry. I forgot my manners.” I see that both Brighton brothers are a little awkward and unlike anyone else I know, which just makes me like them even more.

“I’m not upset. I just never thought about it, is all.” And I really don’t mind; it’s interesting to me—death as a business. “So how would someone become a mortician?”

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

I’m not sure what that has to do with my question. “Can morticians not have boyfriends? I mean, you’re married, right?”

“Yes I am, but you’re so, well, young.”

I lean forward on my chair. “You weren’t always this old.”

“No.” He groans a little and leans back to stretch his bad leg out. “I was not always this old.”

“Is it like royalty or something? I have to have been born into it?”

He laughs. “Not exactly, but often it works that way.”

As far as I know, no one in my family is in the business, and I’m not descended from any kind of funerary line. Dad sold steel beams, and Mom’s a secretary at St. Camillus Elementary School.

He sighs. “So you’re really looking to get into the business?”

He makes it sound like the Mafia, so much that I almost giggle, but I realize that wouldn’t be professional; and I am, after all, a person seeking a profession.

“I guess so. I mean, yes I am.” I sit up straight in my chair. “What do I need to do?”

“School’s the first step. And Chapman’s the closest one to here. Chapman College of Mortuary Science. I think I have one of their catalogs somewhere.” He stands and limps over to a tall file cabinet and rifles in the middle drawer. “Here it is. We just got the new one.” He hands it to me and sits back down.

On the cover of the catalog, young happy people with really white teeth smile as they walk down a wooded path next to an old brick building. I’m not sure what they have to do with Mortuary Science, and I didn’t actually think about science as being a part of it. That sudden realization stops me cold. “So,” I say, trying to sound casual, “there’s a lot of science? Like physics and stuff?”

“It’s not physics kind of science. It’s about the human body, and really, the whole human person. If you can love the whole person, body and heart and soul, you can be a good mortician.” Mr. Brighton leans forward onto the desk, and just then he seems like someone’s grandpa. I don’t have any grandparents alive myself, but I imagine this is what a good grandpa looks like, right here. Kind and smart and like he might have faith in me. “Do you think you can do that, Donna?”

Love seems like a strange way to put it—loving the whole person. “I don’t know. But I do think I can be with a whole person, even the bloody parts. I didn’t get freaked out when Linnie fell off her bike onto that glass bottle. And it was pretty gory.” I ruffle the pages of the catalog with my fingers and then hold it still. “And I know what it’s like to cry. I’m familiar with that.”

Mr. Brighton nods. “That’s a start.”

I nod back. “So what next?”

“Why don’t you take that home with you and give it a good read? Do some thinking. See if you can imagine yourself doing this work. Maybe write about it.” He leans back in his chair. “And if you decide you’re serious, I mean really serious about this, come back. You could help out around here this summer and see how that goes. It’s not like I have people dying to get jobs here.” He smirks.

I stare at him for a second. “Oh, I get it.”

“Yeah, that’s why I don’t do stand-up. See you next time, Donna Parisi.”

Walking back down the hallway and out, I can still feel the shadows around me, the sense of who I was here once. But now it’s different. Now it’s like I’m in the between space, because I can see who else I can be here. I can see another possibility, even if I’m not there yet. I hold the Chapman catalog close to my chest and whisper the word “Peace” to myself when I pass the sign on the way to my car.

When I come through the front door, Mom asks, “How was the library?”

“Very informative. Very librarious.”

“Okay,” she says. “How about laborious?”

“Yep. That too.” I feel the weight of the catalog in my backpack. I want nothing more than to read it cover to cover, and I have to think quickly how to do that undisturbed. “I think I’m going to take a bubble bath. You know, go over my lines for tonight.”

“Fine, but remember we’re going to Mass before your show. And we’re leaving here at four thirty sharp.”

“Got it,” I say. In my old bedroom, I change into my bathrobe, hide the catalog underneath it, and walk fast to the bathroom without incident. Since I have to fill up the tub anyway, I figure I might as well take a bath while I’m here. I put in five lidsful of bubble bath instead of the recommended two, and sink down into the steamy water. I hold the catalog up high so I don’t get it wet, and read about business classes and embalming classes and the experts who teach there from all over the globe.

At least according to Chapman, they’re one of the best colleges in the country, if not the world. That seems a little arrogant, but I guess it’s advertising. I read their mission statement:
The mission of Chapman College of Mortuary Science is to hold sacred the natural passage from life to death, to educate whole people in the art of funeral services, and to train funeral directors and morticians to be compassionate companions to both the deceased and those living in the wake of death.

Living in the wake of death. I hadn’t thought about that, but it makes sense. Being awake and knowing someone else will never wake up again. That’s me.

I read their tuition policy, campus history, faculty bios, and student profiles—like stringy-haired Lars, who heard his calling to mortuary school while out at sea, when he and some friends saw a dead body float to the surface. I think Lars sounds a little weird, and if I ran into him on campus, I’d probably walk the other way. But stories about Betty, the once-librarian, and the very normal-seeming Sarah, the competitive swimmer who’s only a year older than me, make me feel a little bit better.

By the time I come out of the bathroom, I’m a plump human raisin, saturated with water and information, and I don’t have much time to get ready for Mass. At least we’re going tonight, which I like much better than Sunday. It’s like getting a free pass to sleep in. Also, something seems more holy to me about church in the evening. In the morning, it’s all so bright and stark—like the surface of things. Nighttime seems like below the surface time, when it’s darker and quieter and God can come out under some kind of cover. And so can I.

I grab clothes from my dresser in the basement and go upstairs to get ready. I put on my powder blue skirt and the white shirt I like because it has puffy sleeves. Brushing my hair in front of the mirror, I wonder if my eyebrows are too thick, which I’d never thought about until Patty got hers waxed, and said, “See, Donna, yours could look this good too.”

Mom walks into the room. “Are you ready?”

Just for kicks, I say, “What if I didn’t want to go?”

“For now, you live under this roof, and under this roof, we go to church.”

I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. I was actually just curious. But now that Mom’s started it, I feel like maybe I’d like to fight after all. And I am actually curious. “So why do we go to church?”

Mom stands next to me in front of the mirror and wipes away a stray smudge of lipstick. “You sound like you did when you were five. Why, why, why, everything. Can’t you just do something and not question it?”

“No.”

“Don’t be contrary.”

The thing is, I’m not being contrary. I really mean no, I don’t think I can. But I don’t want to make Mom suffer. She’s suffered enough. Still, I wonder why she does everything without questioning anything, at least anything important and not just what ingredients she can substitute in dessert recipes. Why everything must be a particular way. Wouldn’t it make her feel better to dig into the big things and ask some questions?

Just then, Linnie walks in, and I get my first glimpse of her new hair color. I’m guessing it’s also Mom’s first glimpse, because she says, “Oh, dear Lord,” and holds her hand up to her mouth.

Linnie’s hair hangs to her shoulders in bluish green strands, more of a seaweed color than the electric blue she’d intended. She looks like a mermaid in exile. “Come on,” she says. “It’s not that bad.”

Behind her, B steps into the room. “Hello, Green Goblin. I didn’t know we were wearing costumes tonight, too.”

“Shut up.”

“You’re going to wear a hat,” Mom says. “You’re not going to church like that.”

Linnie folds her arms across her chest. “Maybe I just won’t go to church.”

“Do not start with me. I just finished that conversation.”

“I don’t want to wear a hat.”

“You really should wear a hat,” B says.

“Well, maybe you should try some of Mom’s lipstick,” Linnie says. “It matches your stupid magenta shirt.”