Jimmy’s absence … in time … over time. And now, as if no time had lapsed at all, here it was again like a package delivered to her door. The draperies drawn, she dusted the pictures on the mantelpiece, including Jimmy’s high school graduation portrait, his last photo. For a while Herb and she had flipped through the family albums, recalling their son’s childhood and troublesome teens, holding hands and occasionally sobbing to themselves, wondering what went wrong, who was to blame, then deciding one day to look no more and to absolve themselves.
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He was right, of course. It caused embarrassment in the church pew, especially during a sermon. No one heard anything when the congregation sang hymns. There used to be a television show called Hymn Sing which she and Herb had watched years ago and had tried to get Jimmy interested on Sunday morning, even letting him eat his pancakes and syrup in the living room, at great risk to the furniture and rug, but the sweet voices and piety had had no effect. He became restless and disrupted the magic of the moment by asking to watch cartoons.
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Dr. Zhivago … was that also forty years ago?… and, of course, The Titanic … well, really, you just had to cry during that one, if you had a heart. Like Zhivago and Lara and that poor sweet Irish lad in steerage who drowned young, Jimmy had missed so much in life.
spent two weeks there shielding her eyes against too much sun, clashing lurid colours and almost-naked bodies, disoriented as if she had stepped onto a Martian beach, unsure of where to place her foot on the ever-shifting sands.
Grieving Mother, or some such nonsense.
Dead that long. Scarcely grown into manhood and his life cut off by a lunatic who preyed on boys. Nell quickly stood up, dropped the duster and leaned against the chair for support. Blood rushing, attenuated blood at that for which she swallowed prescription drugs, to the head of an old person could cause a capillary to burst, then she’d fall, possibly break a hip, or strike her head against the hardwood floor. In need of polishing, even re-sanding, she noted, so it was best to gather her strength before taking a step.
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The window tapping prevented Nell from slipping into stupor, so she struggled out of the comfortable chair and, lacking her cane, limped down the hall to the kitchen, the back door securely locked, the blinds pulled down. Herb should be home soon. How he’d managed to wade through the muck of newsmongers, she didn’t know. Leaving before sunrise to breakfast with Marshall, see a few old friends who had phoned to offer condolences forty years after the event, gather provisions, speak to the police at the station, he promised to return by noon. The police had warned the reporters to keep their distance after Herb had complained about trespassing and threatened. Perhaps they would part like the Red Sea to let him pass. God was always on the side of the righteous, so she had been told.
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Herb insisted and she could see it mattered to him.
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Members of the congregation greeted Nell at the door, assisted her down the aisle to her favourite seat in the front pew, trying to avoid tripping over her black cane, not really paying attention to her insistence that she could manage very well. People gathered around death and brought food as if a real funeral was in progress. Herb had also agreed to a wake to be held in the church hall. She couldn’t bear the thought of a hundred people eating jellied salads and date squares in her home after the service. She wouldn’t have to worry about what to serve for lunch or dinner for days because they would fill the back seat of Herb’s Toyota with plastic bowls of leftovers from the funeral feast.
under the large wooden cross: a simple, unadorned casket with Jimmy’s graduation portrait in a silver frame poised on top a blanket of white roses, paid for by the congregation. She even heard people sniffling and sobbing as if grieving for a dearly beloved relative, some of whom had also whispered in the cloak room and the back pews about Jimmy and what the newspapers accounts of his few months in Toronto implied. Arthritis hadn’t impaired her hearing. Very few even remembered Jimmy. What did they really know? Marshall embraced his brother and kissed her before he sat behind them. Along with five of Herb’s old work buddies from the Barrington docks, he had volunteered to act as a pall bearer. Herb stared at his black shoes, scuffed, for he had forgotten to polish them. She had had the foresight to keep her black dress with the black lace collar always pressed and protected by plastic sheathing in the closet because, well, at their age, she had already worn it more than once, and it was best to be prepared and dress for the occasion.
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yes”> “Nell, you must control yourself.” Pastor Manning looked down and smiled that forgiving smile of his and continued with a reading from scripture, something about love and charity. His white surplice needed washing. He should have married long ago before his age and drink reddened his complexion and expanded his paunch, but Nell doubted that any woman of sense would have him now.
“Nell, be quiet.”
“Don’t hush me, I won’t be quiet.”
Which explained why Herb and Nell did not accompany the hearse carting Jimmy, well, not Jimmy exactly, to the cemetery where they interred the coffin of bones, nor appeared in the church hall for sandwiches and squares after the grave site service. Pity, because many church women had prepared their tastiest salads and sweets for community gatherings of this sort. But grief, the pastor explained, took many forms. Poor Nell. Our hearts went out to her. The Lord was merciful. Yes, Pastor. Trying not to show their embarrassment and chagrin over Nell’s public spectacle as they wheeled the bier down the aisle and Herb hustled her towards his car. If it had been crying or even hysterics … what mother wouldn’t have broken down at a time like this?… but some of her comments … pushing Herb away…raising her cane … got scandalously personal and theological. Dear Nell … she must be heart broken. God bless her. Yes, Pastor.
In the car Nell remained silent except to issue driving instructions which Herb ignored.
When they reached home, after changing into her favourite house dress and slippers, she spoke to Herb’s back as he opened the refrigerator.
“I want to see that face.”
“Sure, honey, same ol’ face as always.”
“Not yours, fool, that face you saw on the computer.”
Herb grabbed a pair of scissors from a counter drawer and cut open the package of ham slices.
“I’m hungry. You must be hungry yourself, Nell, what with missing lunch at the church? Wish we had stayed.”
“You can go back but I want you to show me that picture.”
Agreement was better than argument so he booted the computer and found the web page which he had bookmarked.
“You sure you want to do this, Nell? You might get upset.”
“I’m fine now that I’m home. Never wanted that service in the first place, you know that. Don’t you have something to do? The grass needs cutting and I want daffodils planted.”
She sat in front of the computer and clicked the mouse according to Herb’s instructions.
There, logged on to the website which displayed Jimmy’s face, for the first time she perused the reconstructed face appearing on the monitor. Just a light intake of breath and she was fine, if Herb should walk in and ask, she was alright. Based upon his age, the shape of the skull and facial bones, yes, the forensic sculptor came eerily close, but so unlike her son she could have been viewing a wax figure in Madame Tussaud’s museum. Yes, amazed, maybe delighted by the similarity, you knew who the characters were, but you also saw something untrue, unreal.
She understood now why Marshall had phoned Herb. The face devoid of expression, not a smile, no light in the eyes … remember how sunlight brightened and sparkled the blue? … it’s Jimmy, they said … forty years … all those nights crying … Herb called her … he had made tea and a sandwich … she had forgotten to eat today … so very young, not even a wrinkle had formed, the very last picture of her darling boy, no history in his eyes at all, no history left behind at all … a lifeless image on the world wide web.
“It’s not my son,” she said, and shuffled out of the room.
Kenneth Radu lives in Quebec. His stories on-line have appeared in Two Hawks Quarterly (Nov /07), Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k), LWOT, and Forget Magazine. He is currently working on a novel and a series of linked short stories. Penguin of Canada published his last novel, The Purest of Human Pleasures.
