The Sodium Arrow, page 1
The Sodium Arrow
Eleventh Story in the Periodic Table Mysteries
Camille Minichino
Copyright 2016 Camille Minichino
The Sodium Arrow
Anastasia Brent wrapped the long ties of a white plastic apron around her trim waist twice and clicked on the harsh light over her embalming table. She'd been called in to work at Curren's Funeral Home on this sunny California Saturday, when she could have been driving south to Monterey Bay, or hiking in the Sierras, or riding her bike through the Berkeley hills.
Such was the life of a freelance embalmer.
She'd even rather be home, tapping. Anastasia shook her right ankle to a shuffle step. Brush forward on ball of foot, pull back on ball. Then a shuffle dig. Shuffle, stomp. She dug into the floor with the ball of her foot. She thought how Marty, her boyfriend and tap teacher, would be pleased to know she was practicing. He was intent on including her in the Valentine's Day dance performance at their local community center.
"Just a four-minute routine," Marty had said, his off-centered smile charming her as usual. "And you'll be with other beginners."
"We'll see," was all Anastasia had promised, wondering how she was going to fit in the tutorials he'd sent her, links to five YouTube videos, in less than a week.
As Anastasia began to remove her client's clothing, a wave of sadness rolled through her. Even after more than twenty years, it didn't get easier. The girl—she preferred not to think of her as Trudi—now stretched out on the cold metal table, had been only fifteen years old. She'd been on her way to a birthday party with her friends when their car careened across a divider and into oncoming traffic on I-580.
Some days, Anastasia wished she'd followed her mother's advice and taken over the family bakery. She could be frosting cupcakes now, or making those miniature bundt cakes that were the rage in town.
She reminded herself that hers was a noble profession, relieving a great burden from the families of deceased loved ones, seeing to the last minutes of their appearance on earth. An unappealing task, but one that served many families' needs for closure.
The prep room where Anastasia carried out her tasks seemed eerie this afternoon. Each piece of equipment emitted angry hums and clicks as it stood by, waiting its turn. Anastasia imagined the entire room edgy, upset at the incongruities—youth and death, promise and decay.
But Anastasia had work to do.
Trudi Meyers's family deserved a little extra effort on Anastasia's part. As if losing a daughter wasn't bad enough, they'd endured an unexplained mixup that had sent the Curren van to the wrong hospital, delaying Trudi's removal by the better part of a day.
The mistake wasn't Anastasia's fault. This was what was nice about being a freelancer, responsible only for preparing her clients for viewing. She'd had enough of the rest of the business after her first few years out of mortuary school—removal calls in the middle of the night, dealing directly with grieving families and fussy clergy, casket sales spiels, even picking up flower arrangements when the florist didn't come through.
Trudi's parents had given Curren's a photo, a studio close-up taken for her sophomore class album. Anastasia studied the look—blonde hair pulled back, except for a few curls falling around her tiny ears; a slight overbite; a shy smile, as if she'd just been complimented on her bright blue eyes. Using the photo as a guide, Anastasia shaped the girl's face. At least, I can try to recreate the beautiful daughter her parents saw a few days ago.
Except for a few new instruments, Anastasia's embalming kit was the same one her parents had given her when she graduated from mortuary school, one of only three women in her class. Scissors, forceps, suture needles, arterial tubes, and hooks all lay in their original, custom-molded slots in the lined plastic case.
"I don't even want to think about what you'll be doing with these things," her mother had said, her hand fingering the top button of her blouse, as if the instruments might jump from their velvety berth and attack her throat.
Ruth Brent taught fourth grade in the Berkeley school system until her retirement last year. A civilized profession, she said, though Anastasia questioned whether a room full of ten-year-olds could be called civil.
Anastasia often wished her mother had won the battle of names over her father. She might have been Sue, or Ann, or Jean. She would have loved a simple name everyone could spell. But her father, Nicholas Brent, who'd done his master's thesis on the Romanovs, had prevailed, claiming his infant daughter looked just like the youngest daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra, with light brown hair, blue eyes, and a certain mischievous quality even as she came out of Ruth's womb.
"Did I also look like I'd disappear one day?" Anastasia remembered asking during her teen years. "And did you think, like, for the next hundred years women would claim to be me? No wonder I'm having an identity crisis."
No identity crisis now, Anastasia thought, just midlife crisis. Two weeks from her fiftieth birthday, and the only present she'd come up with when Marty asked what she wanted was a new trocar.
"The thing you stick in people's stomachs to … " Marty had trailed off.
"To eliminate gas or fluids from body cavities." Anastasia had finished her boyfriend's sentence, a common occurrence when issues of mortuary science were involved. "The trocar I want is glass, so you get a visible flow."
Eliminates guesswork, Anastasia remembered from the catalog. Showing the nature and consistency of aspirated material as it passes through a glass window.
A gulp from Marty. "Right. I'll get you either that or some new tap shoes." He'd swung his long, skinny limbs in an elaborate falling-off-a-log step, topped off with the exaggerated bright-eyed look he used in performances.
Marty Gilbert was nine years younger than Anastasia—eight years and nine months, as he often corrected. "In fact," he'd told her, "between my birthday in November and yours in February, I'm technically only eight years younger." It helped that he was balding early so she didn't feel like she was dating the pool boy.
No one was sweeter than Marty, Anastasia thought. He'd reintroduced her to old dance movies, gave the best massages, treated her like a Grand Duchess. So why was there always this enormous but whenever she considered their future together? The age difference? When she'd tried marriage with someone her own age, she reminded herself, it had failed miserably.
Back to work. The best escape from decisions like what to tell Marty the next four times he asks her to marry him, or at least move in with him.
Anastasia did as much as she could on Trudi's prep, given the enormous number of fractures the girl had suffered. She'd deal further with the back of Trudi's head tomorrow, since the cuts would be leaking all night. She'd come back with sutures and glue, then dress Trudi in the pink party dress her parents had brought. No doubt this was how her parents imagined her in heaven. Not in the neon green knit crop top and mini-shorts Trudi had been wearing under her sweats when she died.
Think happy, Anastasia told herself as she untied her apron, ready to leave the prep room. Picture Eleanor Powell and Jimmy Stewart dancing through Central Park. You'd be so easy to love . . . .
A knock surprised her, ending her escape to feel-good movies and songs. Ed Curren's six-foot-tall, broad-shouldered frame filled the doorway. Her boss on this contract, Ed was older than Anastasia by several years, but seemed to look younger with each divorce.
"Don't hang your apron up yet," he said. "We're bringing in another one."
"Really, Ed?" Anastasia was not thrilled at the idea of a double-duty day.
"Other end of the age spectrum. Some ninety-something female. A heart attack. Guess it was time."
Ed smoothed the top of his thinning, blow-dried hair and picked a tiny piece of lint from his black jacket. Anastasia knew the drill, from her old textbook: An immaculate appearance goes a long way towards cultivating an air of dignity and respect, which is one of the mortician's primary obligations. "Yeah. This old lady was in the paper recently; got some honorary award from Berkeley High."
Anastasia squeezed her eyes shut and drew in her breath. "My chemistry teacher? Mrs. Granger?"
Ed's face fell. Anastasia took that as a "yes." Mrs. Granger had died.
~~~
It hadn't taken Anastasia long to convince Ed that she was not so emotionally involved that she couldn't work on Mrs. Granger, her chem teacher and mentor. Unlike Anastasia's parents, Mrs. Granger had been thrilled with Anastasia's career as an embalmer and often asked her for insider stories. On her most recent visit to the Comfort Springs Home, where Mrs. Granger lived, Anastasia had recounted the special training she'd needed to place a bindi in the correct orientation on the forehead of an Indian-American woman.
"Your life is so interesting," Mrs. Granger had told Anastasia.
"Okay, you can work on your teacher," Ed had said. "It's not as though you're related. But definitely take a little break. A couple hours either way isn't going to change anything. Well, maybe a few molecules here and there."
Ed's last lines were spoken as he headed back out the door, and Anastasia guessed that he didn't see her disapproving look. This wasn't a peak day for her sense of humor.
~~~
She sat at a small table in Dziva's, following her boss's orders. The bookstore-café combo on the north side of the Berkeley campus was owned by her best friend since high school.
"Not Mrs. Granger!" Keicia exclaimed when Anastasia gave her the news about her next client. "Wasn't it just last week that we brought her that new collection of teas?"
Anastasia nodded, hoping the tea break would refresh her spirits. "I'm so glad we made that visit to Comfort Springs. You never know when's the last time you'll see someone—alive, anyway."
Keicia sipped rooibos, an African bush tea she'd just prepared for herself. A petite, fair-skinned blonde, Keicia seemed an unlikely candidate for an African poster girl, but a college semester in Kenya had changed her style—and her life, she'd tell you. Today she wore a new multi-striped, close-fitting cap, in the same bright hues as her silky tunic top.
Anastasia admired how Keicia could pull off the head-turning colorful look day after day. She herself felt average and boring—medium height; the right weight, except for maybe five pounds, all on her thighs, it seemed; middling color brown hair, mixed with gray when she didn't find time for a rinse. And today, solid-color pants, shirt, and sweater, in different shades of brown. Boring.
Anastasia stirred honey into her hot chai, moving the milky liquid around in careful swirls. She examined the goddess posters that filled Dziva's walls, one by one, and wondered which deity should have been guarding Trudi and Mrs. Granger.
"Mrs. G. was looking forward to her birthday party in a couple of weeks. She didn't seem that sick to me," Keicia said.
Anastasia had to think a few seconds before realizing that Keicia meant Mrs. Granger, not Erzuli, the Haitian goddess of love. "Me either," she said.
Anastasia had walked the few blocks from Curren's Funeral Home to Dziva's, just below Holy Hill, the local name for Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union. Nine different Catholic and Protestant seminaries and a dozen other religious programs were centered at GTU. She played her usual game of picking out religion or theology students from the other passersby—checking out the spines of their books, noticing their medals and symbolic pins, catching snippets of their conversation. Today she added NOT TODAY SATAN and GET THEE TO CHURCH, BRO, to the T-shirt logos she kept track of. There was no lack of a sense of humor on Holy Hill.
It was a dry, crisp day in February. The temperature was expected to hit the high sixties, warm even for Berkeley. The kind of day Anastasia thrived on. She'd walked briskly, making a conscious effort to feel her muscles work and to breathe deeply, clearing her head. Anastasia loved living in Berkeley. All the Berkeleys, she thought. If she felt like a successful professional, she could put on her Eddie Bauer shorts and a crisp white shirt and join the yuppie crowd shopping on Fourth Street. If she felt like reliving her hippie days, she could thread a multicolor belt through the loops of her worn jeans and cruise the vendor tables on Telegraph Avenue. She could ride her bike up in the hills behind the University campanile or down in the flats by the Marina. Berkeley had something for everyone.
Mrs. Granger was one of the two people most responsible for Anastasia's chosen profession. First there had been Mr. Frank Galigani of the Galigani Mortuary outside of Boston, Massachusetts, who oversaw the funeral of her little brother when Anastasia was ten years old; then there was best chemistry teacher in the world, Mrs. Millicent Granger.
Mrs. Granger had made science come alive for Berkeley High students. She'd arranged special programs at Lawrence Hall of Science and field trips to science museums all around the Bay Area.
Anastasia's eyes started to fill with tears. Mrs. Granger's visage began to mingle with Mr. Galigani's, as he tried to explain why God might want to take Nicky, Jr. before he could even count to one hundred. Mr. Galigani had done a better job than Father Cahill, she remembered, and thus she was now an embalmer and not a nun. Well, maybe it wasn't quite that simple. In any case, her family had moved across the country to California soon after Nicky's death. To start over, her father had said, but it hadn't seemed like anything had changed except the weather.
Anastasia traced her journey, crisscrossing the country, back to Boston for college and mortuary school, then back to California to be with her aging parents and resume her friendship with Keicia.
"Hello," Keicia was saying, waving a paper-wrapped straw, metronome style, in front of Anastasia's face. "Where did you go? Are you in that funk again?"
"What funk?"
"The fifty funk. The what have I done with my life? funk."
Anastasia smiled and folded her arms over what she suddenly thought might be a spot of blood on her beige sweater. "I think it's just a combination of things. Mrs. Granger coming in, plus no plans for the weekend."
"Where's Marty anyway? He can usually get you out of these moods with a little Cole Porter."
"He's at a Tap Festival in Los Angeles, doing his thing. I almost went with him, but Ed needed me for some special work on a teenager."
"A teenager. That's got to be rough," Keicia said, giving Anastasia's shoulder a rub. "I'd invite you to tag along with me and Paul, but this is film festival weekend and I know you like my friends only in small numbers."
"Not true. I like your friends. I'm just not in the mood for a party." Anastasia checked her watch. "I'd better get back to work." She slung her leather backpack-type purse over her shoulder, and headed out the door.
"Do something fun, okay?" Keicia called after her. "It's Saturday night."
As if the day of the week mattered in the death business. At least Keicia hadn't reminded her that Valentine's Day was only a week away. "I will," Anastasia said anyway. "I'll have some fun."
Now what would that be? she asked herself.
~~~
By five o'clock Saturday evening, Anastasia had fixed Mrs. Granger's face into a pleasant expression. To give her a more youthful appearance, she'd worked the old woman's upper lip to protrude slightly, and inserted a small roll of paper under her neck to eliminate her jowls. She'd filled in Mrs. Granger's sparse eyelashes, adding hairs from the woman's head to a length of tape on each eye, trimming and shaping to the proper length and curvature.
Anastasia remembered her restorative art class, when she'd felt not like a mortuary science student but a sculptress, forming ears, noses, eyelids, even hands, out of wax and pieces of tape and plastic. More than once in the years since, she'd used that skill—for an ear chopped off in an accident, an eyelid lost to cancer, a hand mangled on the job.
Anastasia hooked up Curren's new embalming machine. She smiled, remembering when she'd described it to her father on her last visit—her mother had blocked her ears and left the room.
"It looks a lot like Mom's bread-making machine," Anastasia had explained. "There's a canister that holds about two gallons on the top, and switches and controls on an aluminum base." He'd roared and promised not to tell Ruth and thus ruin his wife's latest culinary hobby. She had a hard enough time with her only remaining child in the death care industry, as Anastasia had taught her to refer to it.
Anastasia leaned slightly over her former teacher, and began to work.
She stepped back from the table to see Ed Curren at the door again, this time in jeans and a light blue crewneck shirt, looking cool enough for a Berkeley singles group party, where he was probably headed. Ed let it be known that he was on the scene again and ready to kick it, now that divorce number three was final. Anastasia had always wanted to ask Ed how he kept up his cheerful spirit all these years in such a dark business.
Anastasia worked in four or five prep rooms in the course of a year, but Curren's was her favorite, partly because of Ed himself, and partly because it was the most modern and well-lighted. Ed had been one of the first to break away from the stark white look, with soothing apple-green painted walls and tile floor. A special, isolated air-conditioning and ventilation system ensured that no unseemly odors recirculated through the building. Even though the prep room was far from the visiting parlors, Curren's was soundproofed, so there was no danger that mourners would hear the clinking of metal instruments against the table, the hum of the motorized injector, or the telltale sound of running water.
"Since you're captive here," Ed said, pointing to the tubes draped over Mrs. Granger, "I'll whine a bit."
"The raves don't start this early huh?"
Ed gave her a thumbs-up, a wink, and a click of his tongue, one of his stock composite gestures.
"I'll bet the whine is about the Last Lights, Incorporated saga. Another visit from their illustrious CEO?" Anastasia asked.
