A Real Gem
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THERE’S no question my wife, Marsha, is batty, but this time I think she was on to something. Not that I would have agreed to the idea if she’d run it past me ahead of time: I had plenty of notions about the afterlife, but they usually involved angel wings and St. Peter at the heavenly gates. Never did I imagine this.
It took me a while to clue in to what was happening. Being dead is disorienting enough: one minute you’re cleaning out the eaves and reaching a little farther than maybe you ought and the next someone is zipping you up in a bag. And the bedside manner of that mortician left something to be desired, bouncing around to that horrible hip-hop and ramming things into me like nobody’s business. It’s disrespectful is what it is. Would it have killed him to play a little Brahms? Then in the crematorium — everything went so dark for so long I was terrified I’d been put in the ground or sealed in an urn. And the pressure! Lord help me. It wasn’t until that fellow plucked me out of the squeeze thing and held me up to a jeweler’s loupe that I finally understood what was going on, and that’s only because I remembered that story on NPR.
I guess Marsha remembered it too. At the time I thought the whole concept was nuts and said so. Marsha just sat quietly and listened. My only complaint is that the place she sent me also does pets. Did she check how well they clean their equipment? For all I know I’ve got dog residue in me. Speaking of which, she’d better not be planning on doing this with that sloppy mutt of hers. I’m guessing this wasn’t cheap, and Barney’s no purebred.
When Marsha cracks open the box and looks in at me, she holds her hand to her chest. I gather it’s Christmas. Gift-wrapping me seems a bit over the top, but I suppose she was excited at my reappearance. Like I said, Marsha’s a little on the ditzy side. Lord only knows what she’s been up to while I’ve been gone. Probably run up all the credit cards, and I’ll bet she hasn’t checked the car’s oil once.
She looks different — thinner, and her hair is blond. She’s also wearing makeup, something I never approved of. She looks ridiculous for a woman her age, slathered in orangey-pink mousse with her eyelids painted blue. Talk about mutton.
She holds me up to the light, letting me dangle in a most disconcerting way before finally fastening me around her neck. It’s a strange view. Life as Marsha sees it, only 10 inches lower. She may be a ditz, but I’ll tell you what: she was using her head when she had me set in a pendant rather than a ring. Just watching how much her hands move makes me want to vomit. I’m dizzy enough nestled on the relative calm of her throat. I think it’s the facets: I suppose I’ll get used to them, but I feel like a housefly coming around after an anesthetic.
Marsha sips her coffee and patters into the kitchen. I’m still woozy, but I can see that she’s preparing a turkey breast rather than an entire bird. I assume this means our hippie son decided not to come home for Christmas. Still following that wife of his around, I suppose. Doctors Without Borders indeed. And what is he? Her scrub nurse? Apparently he was too good for the shoe business. Fifty years I worked so I’d have something to leave him and he’d rather go traipsing around Afghanistan. Children, they rip your heart out.
Marsha wanted more, but I was thinking of her when I laid down the law. Think of all the heartache I saved her. She never saw it that way, but this proves me right. Would it have killed Justin to invite his mother for Christmas? I know Karen never warmed to us, but this year at least you’d think she’d make the effort.
Marsha is humming “Little Drummer Boy” and poking stuffing under the turkey breast. Her fingers are coated with bread crumbs, butter and sage. That huge yellow beast of a mongrel is standing on his hind legs right beside her licking the counter, and she’s doing absolutely nothing to stop him, just humming and stuffing, humming and stuffing — meanwhile his great pink tongue and dirty toenails are inches from the food. I probably ate dog slobber every meal of my life since the moment she talked me into letting her keep him, never mind what he brought in on his feet. But I’m lonely with Justin gone, she said. I’m not ready to be an empty-nester. What was I going to do? Dollars to doughnuts she lets him sleep on the bed now. I always suspected she let him up on the furniture the second I left for the store.
Marsha puts the meat in the oven and rinses her hands with water only, no soap. I’m surprised I didn’t die of E. coli. When she moves into the dining room, she doesn’t even try to make Barney get down, just leaves him scrounging on the counter. She circles the table, arranging two place mats, two napkins, two china plates — oh God. Justin is coming home. Karen must have left him. I knew she was no good. I told Marsha right from the beginning, but would she listen? Oh no. Give the girl a chance, she said. Only a very special person could do that kind of work. Now who’s right? Eh, Marsha? I’m just surprised he’s not back living in the basement.
O Lord, please tell me he’s not back living in the basement.
When the phone rings and Marsha hurries back to the kitchen, she doesn’t seem remotely fazed to find Barney standing with all four feet on the kitchen table. “Oh, Barney, you’re impossible!” she says with no conviction whatever. She might as well have said, “There’s a good boy.” Barney grins at her for the space of a couple of wags with his legs splayed, and then goes back to the business of dragging his grotesquely long tongue across the table’s surface.
Marsha plucks off an earring — I haven’t seen those before, did she get her ears pierced? — and reaches for the phone.
“Hello?”
I’m close enough to hear every word: “Merry Christmas, Mom!” Justin and Karen chirp, immediately before launching into a bad rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” They have half a nerve. I suppose he thinks a phone call will make up for leaving his mother alone on her first Christmas of widowhood. She should hang up on them, but she won’t. She always coddled Justin. Let him get away with murder, just like the dog.
“Oh, goodness!” says Marsha. “That was lovely! Sounds like you’re having fun.”
“We’re fine, but I still think you should be here with us,” Karen says.
Marsha’s hand waves dismissively in front of her, as though they can see her. “Don’t worry so much.”
“It’s not good to be alone on Christmas. Especially this one. You should be with family,” says Justin.
“I’m fine, sweetheart.”
“Do you want us to come get you?” Karen asks. “Justin could be there in a couple of hours. The bird is huge. Pack a bag, stay a few days.”
“No, really. I have plans.”
“Plans? Are you going out?”
“I’m having someone over.”
“One of your girlfriends?”
“No,” Marsha says.
“Oooooh,” trills Karen. “Anything we should know about?”
“Not yet.”
Not yet? Not yet?
“Well, if you’re sure you’re O.K. ...”
“I’m fine, sweetheart. Oh — there’s my doorbell. Must dash! Love you!”
Marsha kiss-kisses into the receiver and hangs up. She pauses to clip her earring back on (thank God she hasn’t completely lost her mind) and stops in front of the hall mirror long enough to fluff her hair. When she opens the door, my business partner is behind it.
Morty? What does Morty want with my wife on Christmas? He’s Jewish, for crying out loud.
Morty struggles out of his coat and drapes it across the hall chair in an overly familiar gesture. When he leans in to kiss her and dangles his stubbly neck wattle over me, I want to throw up. He has Old Spice stink lines rising off him. “Merry Christmas to my beautiful business partner!” he says, pressing a wrapped gift into her hands.
His bug eyes flash. He reaches out and mauls me with fat sausage fingers. Hey, Marsha? You want to get a clue? The bastard’s looking at your cleavage. Which you apparently powdered.
“So that’s him, is it?”
“It is.”
“I thought you said it was a diamond.”
“It is a diamond.”
“It’s yellow.”
“They come in yellow, blue, or red. I liked the blue better, but it takes longer and I’d already waited 26 weeks.”
“Diamonds are supposed to be clear.”
“It has something to do with the remains.”
“Huh,” Morty ponders. “How big is it?”
“Just under a carat.”
“Really? I’m surprised. Norm wasn’t exactly a small man ...”
And just who’s talking, Mr. Porkster? Checked a mirror lately? You haven’t missed a meal in 76 years.
“The longer the remains are in the press the bigger the diamond, but I wanted it for Christmas. It’s the only jewelry I ever got from him.”
I beg your pardon? Are you forgetting your wedding ring? Maybe it’s not the biggest, but it’s all I could afford at the time. I know I said I’d replace it one day, but by then we were married and I figured I didn’t need to impress you anymore. O.K., O.K., maybe I should have replaced the diamond. But can you please not complain to Morty, of all people? Sweet Jesus, woman.
She shows him into the kitchen and ladles steaming mulled wine into garish mugs with snowmen painted on them. From the Home Shopping Network, no doubt. Barney crashes down from the table and greets Morty, who goes to great pains to pretend to like him, even crouching on the floor. He struggles to his feet when Marsha hands him a mug garnished with a cinnamon stick.
I had forgotten just what a bore Morty could be. Through the rest of the preparation and halfway through dinner he hardly lets her get a word in edgewise, what with yammering about his condo in Florida, his sons and their children, his sailboat, the marvelous life he’s built. Just when I’m finally managing to tune him out the old son-of-a-gun comes up with, “We could be more than business partners, Marsha.”
I want to kill him. I want to leap from her throat and wrap around his and twist, twist, twist until his eyes pop and his tongue swells blue and his skin is black.
Marsha drops her eyes. “Please, Morty. It’s only been six months.”
Yes. That’s my girl —
“My Becca’s been gone four years. Life is short, and let’s face it, we’re not getting any younger.” He reaches across the table and snags the tips of my wife’s fingers. She doesn’t pull away. “Becca always said that if she went first she wanted me to find someone else. I’m sure Norm wouldn’t want you to be alone.”
Speak for yourself, Buster! And Marsha! For God’s sake, we played bridge with Morty and Becca for 40 years! He’s after the other half of the business is what. He doesn’t want you.
“I could get you a real diamond. A clear diamond.” He raises one of those Donald Trump eyebrows, and I suddenly realize Marsha is not the only one dyeing her hair.
Marsha withdraws her hand. “Goodness.” She folds her hands in her lap, where Barney’s massive head is resting. Then she rises. “I’ll be right back.”
“Marsha —”
“I have to check the pudding.”
IN the kitchen, she stands in front of the microwave, staring at her reflection in the glass. She brings her hands to her cheeks and holds them there, breathing heavily.
I could kill him for upsetting her. He’s my business partner, for crying out loud. You don’t go after your partner’s wife. I know she’s lovely. She always has been. I can’t say I care for the blond hair, but she could still pass for 60 in the right light. I hope I told her enough. I think I did, but what do I know? I never knew she held a grudge about the diamond, and now Morty’s in my dining room putting the moves on her. All these years you think you know someone.
Marsha drops her hands so they cup the back of her neck. Then she tips her head back and closes her eyes. Poor ditzy Marsha — probably thought she was doing a good deed, inviting lonely old Mort over on a holiday, never even thinking that for him it isn’t a holiday.
All of a sudden I’m swooping down toward the counter. It takes me a moment to process that she’s taken me off — I’m still getting used to the facets, and to complicate matters she covers me with her hand. Oh, and she’s set me in a puddle of congealed gravy. Nice.
“I’m sorry, Norm. I don’t want you to see this,” she whispers.
Say what? You don’t want me to see what?
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. For a moment I think she’s going to put me back on, but then she straightens her dress and disappears around the corner.
I hear the scraping of table legs across the floor and the muffled sounds of conversation. The pitch rises and falls: he pleads, she responds, and not with as much conviction as I’d like, either. I’m trying desperately to make out the words but it’s hard because stupid Barney’s nails are click-click-clicking toward the kitchen. He’s roaming unattended.
And here he is, and I do mean right here — the broad yellow forehead, the disgusting nose, the dopey eyes and eraser-pink tongue swooping, arcing past and rasping against the dried gravy. Then all is a jumbled, swirling riot of rank, metallic breath, browned teeth and wet mucosa.
I’m halfway down before I realize. My chain must be trailing because he gags — his throat muscles contract around me and I wonder briefly if this is what birth feels like — and then I’m enveloped by churning blackness.
Behind the monstrous symphony of Barney’s guts is a muffled trill of laughter, and the tinkle of cutlery on fine bone china.
Check Out My Other Blogs (click on blog name to go there) = / 1.3rd Eye Blog / 2. Favorites Blog/ 3. Vita Excolatur (Living Well ...) Blog/ 4. Humor Me Blog/ 5. News and Current Events Blog/ 6. Consider This ... Blog/ 7. Consumer Warnings Blog/ 8. New Orleans Pentimento Blog/ 9. We Constant Gardeners Blog/ 10. Chaillot Family Blog/
