Page 6 of Home Is Where the Bodies Are

I’m glad one of us is all right. Mom died right before my eyes and, though I know I’ll come to accept it, I don’t know if I’ll ever be all right again. Some things change you forever.

“What happens now?” Michael asks, briefly glancing over his shoulder toward the living room. Mom’s body is covered with a sheet again. Only we know she’s under there. Sharing this moment of grief with Michael feels hollow because he wasn’t here when she passed. I stare at the outline of her face. A puff of air forces the sheet to expand. I blink several times. I’d imagined it. Wishful thinking, I guess. Or I’m going crazy. I’ve actually never understood that saying.Goingcrazy... because crazy isn’t a place you go, it comes right to you.

“Beth,” Michael says, pulling me from my thoughts.

I blink again. “Sorry. I’m not sure.” I glance at the clock on the wall noting the time, thirty minutes past nine. “Cathy, Mom’s hospice nurse, should be back from her break any minute. She’ll tell us what happens next.”

He sips his whiskey. “What about the funeral?”

“What about it?”

“Well, what did Mom want?”

“I don’t know.” A tear escapes the corner of my eye. I quickly wipe it away with the back of my hand. “She never told me.”

Michael pulls his lips in, like he doesn’t know what to say. He clears his throat. “So, what’s new?” he asks, changing the subject.

It’s been seven years since we last spoke, and I wish I could say, “Everything.” It all should be new but it’s not, because I’ve been stuck in place. I work at the same factory, live in the same house, drive the same car.

“I’m divorced,” I finally land on. I’m not sad as I say it. I don’t know if I ever loved my ex-husband. We met when I first started at the factory. I worked the line, and he was a machinery operator. I was just a nineteen-year-old with a dull future. When he asked me out, it gave me something to look forward to, other than a paycheck or a day off. And then I got pregnant and knew that marriage was the right thing to do, not for me—but for him and for our daughter.

Michael gives me a solemn look and mutters, “Sorry. How long ago?”

“Five years.” I shrug. “But it was over long before that.”

“What happened?”

“Life happened.”

I’m not trying to be cryptic, but I know it’s coming off that way. I take a deep breath and look him in the eye. “After Dad disappeared, I became ‘obsessed,’ as Tom would put it. It took a toll on my marriage, on my life, on my relationship with my daughter. I was so fixated on trying to find him that I lost everything else in the process.”

Michael leans forward in his chair, propping his elbows on the table. If Mom were here, she’d scold him for that. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you. I didn’t know you were going through all that.”

“Weren’t you?”

He sinks back into his chair. “Wasn’t I what?”

“Going through that too? Didn’t you want to find Dad?” There are so many questions I want to ask him, but I know if I push too hard, he’ll shut down. That’s how he was as a kid, and most people don’t change. He overthinks, overanalyzes, and then keeps it all to himself, amassing clever little secrets. It’s probably why he’s done so well with his life.

“Mom didn’t want...” The front door creaks open, cutting him short.

Cathy pops her head in. She’s tall and thin with black curly hair tied back into a low ponytail.

“Hi, Beth,” she says, closing the door behind her. “How’s Laura doing?”

My eyes instantly well up. If I keep saying she’s gone, it makes it more real. I shake my head and lower it slightly. Cathy nods and delivers a sympathetic look. I wonder how she can do a job like this, meeting people in their final days just to watch them die. It has to take a toll on her. I think that as humans we can only carry so much death with us.

“I’m Michael, Beth’s brother,” he says, getting up from his chair and extending his hand.

“Cathy. I’m very sorry for your loss.” She shakes his hand lightly. That’s how greetings are during times of despair, fragile.

Cathy stands there awkwardly for a moment. She has worked as a hospice nurse for decades, but experience doesn’t make this any easier. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” she finally says to me.

I’m glad she wasn’t here but I don’t say that. “Don’t be.”

“Have you both had your time with her?” Cathy glances at each of us.

We nod.

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