The Language of Dying Read Online Free PDF Page B

feel a little more stable. I am nearly forty, I remind myself. I can cope. The house is quiet. I go into the kitchen with the first run of bags and Penny is crying.
    ‘I’ve rung Paul,’ she says. ‘He’s going to ring the boys. I told him he’s the eldest brother, it’s his job. You’re doing enough.’ She doesn’t look up. She is looking at sheets of paper pulled from an open folder. I recognise the folder. It is red cardboard, like so many of his others, but for the words
funeral arrangements
scratched on the flap in black pen. Penny is staring at the receipt and the paperwork.
    ‘Did Dad do this, or you?’
    My shoulders ache as I put the bags down. ‘Dad. He did it while I was at work. Hang on.’ I go back outside and fetch the last of the bags, slamming the boot. Pen doesn’t come out to help. She won’t have thought about it. Air to my earth. When I go back into the kitchen she’s unpacking the first lot, though, tidying the fridge as she goes. She lines up the margarine and the eggs so that they are at perfect angles with one another on different rows.
    I’ve watched Penny over the years and I think maybe her need to clean and tidy is a little on the compulsive side. I think she will forever seek the order she’s never found in her life, despite her glorious adventures and her romances and her children. She cleans, she scrubs and she tidies. Her house is spotless when I visit and I know that it is always spotless regardless of visitors, and I wonder sometimes what it really means, this need to be clean. To be
seen
to be clean. Watching her rearrange the fridge so officiously I wonder if I really know her under the glow at all.
    I throw the mushrooms into the vegetable rack not really caring where they land. This is my order.
    ‘He had about three funeral companies round one afternoon and basically figured out which one did the best deal. He’s paid for it already. The car and flowers and everything.’ My tone is conversational and I feel as if we’re talking about you booking a holiday. Maybe it’s better that way. ‘He’s having a wicker coffin. Hewanted cardboard but it was more expensive. Figure that one out.’
    I don’t tell her about the evening we spent trawling the Internet, examining the biodegradability of various coffins. I wouldn’t be able to say it and she wouldn’t get it. Penny laughs from behind the fridge door. ‘Only Father …’ It warms me to hear her laugh. It’s a good sound.
    ‘Yep,’ I say. ‘Only our mad dad.’
    She laughs some more at this and as I join in I wonder where laughter fits into the language.
    When the shopping is put away, Penny goes to have a bath. I wonder why she bothered putting on all that make-up and then I remember she’s already showered once this morning. I think about the bath and put the immersion heater on so there will be enough hot water for me later. Baths are not about washing. They’re about soaking. Floating. Drifting privately in the warmth. Maybe that’s what Penny wants. Some private time. I don’t mind. I understand private time and it’s good to have the kitchen to myself again. I look outside. It’s raining. I open up the window and put my face into it, stretching my neck. The fresh, dewy smell fills me up and the water hits my skin in tiny slaps. For a moment the sensation is exhilarating, but then the cold and damp are too real and I shrink back into the shelter of our home. I settle for watching the water streaming against the glass and trees, the drops erratically chasing eachother before becoming one on the windowsill or the ground. I could watch for hours, mesmerised by the everything and nothing of nature.
    It was raining like this on that Sunday morning when we went to see the crematorium. Another bubble of time.
    *
    The windscreen wipers scratch across the glass in a steady rhythm, smearing the water. You sit beside me. You tell me I need to get
new bloody wipers
before they ruin the screen. I bite my tongue