I don’t know what it is in me that vigorously hopes they don’t get back together.
It’s not a very nice thought, but I think it nonetheless.
* * *
An hour later, they’re still in there and I decide to hire a bike out to the river. Getting ready to leave the flat takes three times as long as it did before and each time I forget something or check my phone or need the toilet, I think of staying. Then I tell myself all I have to do is slap sunscreen on, close the front door, and let my stubbornness take care of the rest.
The familiar route encourages me to keep going, so I put my headphones on and listen to music. I don’t realize I’m nodding my head to the beat until a roller skater doing the same smiles as she passes. I look back at her and laugh. I sing random bits quietly until suddenly I’m belting them out. I focus on the path ahead and people either ignore me or smile as I ride past. I feel swaddled in my headphones and whenever I stare out at the river, I have a sudden pull, a brief thought of what it would be like at the very bottom.
I bounce my head to the music, attempt high notes, shake my shoulders and consider the possibility that people will think I’m weird. I revel in the fact that I don’t care if they do—secretly, they wish they were as free as I am! I wonder if I’m actually happy or just momentarily distracted.
Maybe the latter is what happiness looks like for me now.
Chapter Twenty-seven
There’s nothing but silence in my ears on the way to the funeral directors and when Mum and I enter the small room, the lady goes through a form, slowly—why always so slowly?
If this weren’t about my dad’s death, I’d probably like her—Ros. She’s short with blond hair pulled into a limp ponytail and looks in her early forties. I can tell outside of the office she loves the color pink. She wears rectangular glasses and has a French manicure she may have done herself. Her voice is gentle, but her words stretch unnecessarily, thinning my patience.
“Okay,” she says, and for a word that is often spelled with only two letters, she makes each syllable work hard. I slightly hate her. She’s reached a large box on the form and turns to me. “Can you tell me a little bit about Dad?”
I look at her. “Why?”
“Don’t worry, sweetie. This is just for us here at the funeral home, so we know him a bit better.”
I want to shake my head and tell her how nonsensical that is. It’s a bit late to get to know him now, don’t you think?
Ros prompts an answer by asking, “Just, you know, what he liked to do; what football team he supported, things like that.”
I recall the evening I told Dad I’d be moving out; there was a football match playing, but I don’t remember which teams so I can’t answer this question. Dad didn’t do much because that’s Parkinson’s for you, and I didn’t have much access to his life before.
“He liked to watch TV,” I say slowly. Although that may not be true. Dawoud and I just always put it on for him because I couldn’t stand the thought of him sitting in silence all day. “Mainly football,” I say, “and the news and some cooking channels. He supported … erm, sorry, I’m not sure which team. I think he used to like reading? He read newspapers—he would always buy them on Sundays.”
Ros writes this all down and I hope that’s enough because my mind is blank and I must look like a selfish daughter who never took any interest in her dad. She doesn’t know that he preferred not to share. She doesn’t know that was Dad.
“Sorry, my memory isn’t great.”
“That’s okay, sweetie,” Ros says. “Did he like to cook? Did he have a favorite dish?”
I falter; I think he liked my lasagna, but then Mum says, “When he was able, he liked to make soup, traditional pepper soup.”
Of course. Pepper soup—how could you forget that?
“And he did love to read,” Mum continues. “He was once a librarian, before Maddie was born, until he was offered a better-paying job at a private school. His love of reading is where Maddie gets it from.”
I frown at Mum’s revelation, only stopping when Ros looks at me and smiles, creasing her pink lipstick in the process. “Oh, that’s so lovely, isn’t it?”
I try to smile and hope it works because I don’t think a love of reading is genetic, otherwise how do you explain James who once said, “I don’t read for shit”？
I didn’t know Dad had been a librarian, though. I think of him, much younger, wearing glasses and a thick jumper, stacking books onto shelves. I used to spend my weekends in libraries, bringing home as many books as my library card would allow. The local librarians used to love me and openly said they didn’t know any other child in the area reading as much as I was.
I start bouncing my leg and breathing deeply as Mum and Ros talk endlessly; the conversation has moved on to flowers now. But who gives a shit about flowers? Ros gets out a tape measure; did Mum ask how large their flowers are?
“You just pick,” I tell her when she asks for my preference.
Mum nods, then says to Ros, “Before I forget, we need clippings of his toenails and fingernails.”
What?
Ros nods sagely. “I’ve heard of this tradition,” she says. “Are you Ghanaian? Yes, I thought so. We’ve done this before.”
“Yes, his brother and sister will scatter them back home in Ghana,” Mum explains.
“Of course,” says Ros. “I’ll make sure to include that.”
I look at Ros; how does she know that and I don’t? She must learn about all sorts of traditions here. I think about her job. All the professionals I’ve had to interact with since my dad died have left me internally asking, Why is this your job? What led you here? Surely you didn’t choose this?
“Maddie, would you like your father’s fingerprint?”
I blink at Ros. “That’s possible?” There’s still a piece of Dad left. “Please! Sorry, yes, of course I would.”
Ros adds my answer to the form, and I have to fill out another section asking for my name, address, relation to Dad, and bank details.
These processes really should be quicker.
Welcome to FuneralCare, Maddie. We have two services for you to choose from today. We have the fast-track option carried out in a perfunctory yet expeditious manner, featuring minimal conversation and a desultory delivery. Or we have the compassionate snail trail that, even though we’ve never met you and we go through this process multiple times with other people literally every day, features intermittent coos and spontaneous moments of silence allowing you to linger in melancholy. A little more costly, but this service lasts three times longer than necessary in order to show how much we care. So, which would you like to go for?
Ros eventually goes to call the cemetery for a date. I’m still bouncing my leg and have started pinching my skin. I can’t wait to leave.
When she returns, she says that Saturday the twenty-first of August is the earliest availability.
Ten days away! “That long?”
“Darling, I am sorry about that,” Ros says. “I understand the wait can be awful, but we only have certain days available.”
I never imagined we’d have to take the schedules of random members of the public into account. I thought these people were on standby every day, waiting for people to die.