Settlers' Creek, page 14
‘I can’t just kick them out.’
‘They’re not sleeping here!’
‘No, Tipene and some of the others are staying down at a motel. He said most of them have got relations to stay with.’
Box stood up. ‘Okay, fine. Sorry, I feel like shit.’
‘We should go.’
‘Give me a couple of minutes.’
Box and Liz were led into a room with a tiled floor. In the middle of the room was a metal table on wheels. A gurney. That was the word, thought Box. Mark — Mark’s body — is lying on a gurney.
The same plump-faced funeral director who’d come to the house had been waiting for them at the front door. Box had rummaged in his fogged brain for the man’s name but hadn’t found it. The building looked new: a cross between a church and a software firm. The funeral director was polite, respectful, but for some reason Box wanted to punch him in the face; just to end all this civilised façade.
In the tense and mostly silent ride over from the house, Box had imagined a dramatic unveiling of his son’s face. He guessed that he’d been watching too many American cop shows. In reality Mark’s face was visible from the moment they came through the door. The starkly white sheet that covered him was folded back with five-star precision to just below his throat. His bruised neck and the tops of his bare shoulders were on display.
Box sensed that Liz, who’d been walking behind him, had stopped. He turned and saw her stranded halfway between the door and their son’s body. Her face was leached of colour. She was so still and pale that she seemed to be on the verge of turning into a pillar of salt, of becoming frozen and permanent.
Box went back to her and put his arms around her stiff shoulders.
‘I’m okay.’
‘Just take it slowly.’
The funeral director made that coughing noise that had irritated Box at the house. ‘Everything you need should be here. If you want me for anything I’ll just be in the office. The door’s on the left just outside.’
‘Okay,’ said Box. That’s right, piss off.
‘I’ll leave you alone now.’
‘Thanks.’
Box heard the man’s footsteps on the tiled floor and then the door closed. They were alone, just the three of them. He cupped Liz’s face in his hands.
‘Are you sure you’re up for this? We don’t have to. The people here can take care of everything.’
‘No, I’m okay. I need to be here, Box.’
He took her hand and they crossed the room together.
Mark didn’t look as though he was sleeping. That was the cliché, wasn’t it, the — what was the word — euphemism? Asleep, Mark had always moved. He’d splayed twitchy and hot across every bed he’d ever lain in. As a kid he was constantly murmuring and mumbling to himself in his sleep, sometimes crying out, eyelids flickering.
Right from that tepid Nelson summer when Box had first got together with Liz, it had been Mark’s habit to slip like a warm rabbit into their bed, almost every night. Hadn’t stopped till he was ten. Bad dreams, he always said, standing by the bed in the darkness. At first Box had been all for taking the kid back to his own room but Liz had insisted that they let him stay. Mark sleeping in her bed was a pattern the two of them had set up in the twelve months since Steve — Tipene now — had walked out on them. Even with Liz’s body between them, Box was aware of the kid shifting and muttering on the other side of the bed. Sometimes a foot or a fist, flung blind in the darkness, would snake across and hit him. It had been like sleeping with a minor earthquake. Not that Box had minded much. Not that much. Not after a while, anyway. He missed the deep unbroken sleep of a single man, but the truth was that the three of them together in the bed like that had made him feel as if he was part of a family. That had been worth the odd bruise earned in the night.
But here, now, in this tiled room, in the fucked-up, inexplicable, gut-churning nightmare he found himself in, Box knew that Mark was definitely not sleeping. There was only ghastly stillness.
Beneath the sheet Mark was naked. Seen from above his body was all contours; peaks, rolling hills and dry valleys.
Someone who didn’t know him had combed his hair. It had always been thick and long and unkempt, a mane that he seldom wore shorter than shoulder length. Now the fringe was brushed to one side and there was a heavy-handed parting where a pale line of scalp showed. Liz reached out slowly with her hand and ruffled his hair, tousling away the parting until she was satisfied. She let the back of her hand drop down and brush his cheek. She pulled it away quickly. She made a strangled sound and stepped back and looked away to the high windows where the day’s last sunlight was coming into the room and hitting the far wall.
Box looked at the heavy bruising around the boy’s neck. It wasn’t pretty. But actually he was relieved. During the last two days he’d imagined that it would be worse. Box had found himself going over and over in his mind what could have happened up on the hills on Saturday night. In those torturous movie scenes, Mark’s eyes were the bulging bloodshot eyes of road-kill possums. The boy’s neck was always a dripping nail-torn mess. Box could deal with reality better: just blue-black bruises.
With the tips of two fingers he touched the skin on his son’s shoulder just above the ridgeline of the shoulder bone. The skin was hard, cold and desert dry. Of course, with Liz not wanting the boy to be embalmed, they’d been keeping the body in some type of cooler. Box blinked several times and breathed deeply.
The funeral director had laid out a neat pile of flannels and several thick soft white towels. They were the type of towels that Liz had loved in the days when they’d been able to afford to travel and stay at good hotels. There was also a basin of water. Box carried the basin over to the table, balancing it on top of the towels and the flannels, careful not to slop any water on the floor. There was room on the gurney to place the bowl next to Mark’s hip.
‘You okay? We can still change our minds.’
‘No. I want to do this.’
Liz used the tips of her fingers to lift the edge of the sheet up and away from Mark’s chest. She folded it down carefully across his hips. The funeral director had told them what to expect, but the autopsy scar was enough to start Liz sobbing. It was Y shaped and ran almost down to his navel. The funeral director had chosen his words carefully as he’d explained what would be done and the extent of the scarring they’d be faced with. He had strongly advised that Box and Elizabeth not dress the body themselves.
Now, looking at the damage, Box couldn’t help imagining latex hands cracking open his son’s chest. He felt a surge of anger. What the hell were they looking for anyway? Wasn’t it obvious that it was hanging from his neck that had killed the kid? Box imagined them reaching into the excavated chest and lifting out the boy’s heart. They would have held it up, turned it towards the light and slowly rolled it over for closer inspection. How much had it weighed? he wondered.
Liz took a flannel, dipped it in the bowl of water and wrung it out. Box watched as she began wiping Mark’s forehead with long gentle strokes. She moved to the sides of his nose and then down across his cheeks.
‘There’s a little bit of stubble,’ said Box.
Mark had shaved daily. Even before he needed to. Box went to the door and opened it. ‘Excuse me.’
The funeral director immediately appeared through the first door on the left. ‘Yes? Is everything all right?’
‘Do you have a razor? And some shaving foam.’
‘Of course.’
The man followed Box back into the room. From a cupboard over the bench he took out a packet of disposable razors and a blue and white can of shaving foam.
‘Thank you.’
‘Is there anything else you need?’
‘No.’
The man left. Box popped off the lid and pushed down the nozzle but only a thin trickle of watery foam came out into his hand. He shook the can and tried again, with better results. It gushed like whipped cream, smelling strongly of mint.
Box carefully wiped some of the foam onto Mark’s cheeks and down the line of his jaw to his chin, then went over to the sink and washed the rest of the foam off his hands.
Each razor came in its own clear wrapper. He undid one, pulled the hard plastic guard off the blade and held it out to Liz.
‘You can do it if you want,’ he said.
Liz shook her head. ‘No. You do this part.’
Box began to carefully shave his son’s face. On the first stroke, the razor moved over the skin with an audible rasp that made them both flinch.
‘I’ll make the water hotter,’ said Liz.
She carried the bowl back to the sink and emptied it and ran the tap until the water came out steaming. She filled the bowl and carried it back to Box. He sloshed the head of the razor in the hot water. Foam and a few flecks of black hair washed free from the blade floated in the bowl.
When he was finished with the cheeks Box shaved downwards from the jawline onto the neck, making long furrows through the foam. What would happen if he nicked the skin? Would there be any blood?
When Box was satisfied he took a new flannel, wet it under the tap and wiped the remaining foam from Mark’s face.
Box carried the bowl back over to the bench. He turned on the tap and by trial and error made the water less hot. He rinsed out the bowl, refilled it and carried it back. Working together now, Box and Liz began to wash their son’s body. She chose a new flannel and wiped out from the red lips of the scar bisecting his torso. Box started from the shoulders. The room’s bright lights cast shadows under the curve of the boy’s chest and along the ridges at the back of his arms. Box saw how, in the last few years, Mark had gone from being tall and skinny to solid and muscular, and he was still growing. Had been.
When they’d washed his shoulders and both sides of his chest and down along the almost hairless concave of his stomach, Liz moved to the bottom of the table. She folded up the sheet high onto his thighs. The blood had pooled in Mark’s feet and in his calves. They were mottled as though he’d been beaten. Box saw how the little toes on each of Mark’s feet hooked in. That was something he’d inherited from Liz. Like hers, the rest of his toes were long and his arch was high. Liz began to wash his feet and legs. Twice, Box saw Liz pause and look away from the bruising before getting back to work.
When she reached the top of his thighs she carefully folded back the edge of the sheet so that it still covered his hips.
‘I can do that if you want,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’
Somewhere around the age of eleven Mark had become self-conscious around his mother. The boy hated being caught naked, changed in front of her at the beach under a towel. Box and Liz had joked about it, even teased Mark. Certainly Liz was no prude. She didn’t bother to close doors if she was fresh from the shower or getting dressed. She would lie in the bath and carry on long conversations with Heather or Box. But right from his first year at intermediate, Mark had shied away from seeing her naked. Box and Liz had speculated at the time that the boy’s attitude was caused by a mixture of rumbling hormones and Mark’s mates. Box had once overheard one of the boys refer to Liz as a fox. He’d teased Liz that if she ever got sick of him she’d have no trouble hooking up with a younger man.
But now it was Liz who looked away as Box folded up the sheet. He used the flannel to wash around the twin outcrops of Mark’s pelvis. He wiped the top of his inner thighs, carefully moving around the dark sack of the boy’s scrotum. And then he cleaned the penis, which was shrivelled and small. When he was done he laid the sheet back in place.
‘Okay, finished.’
They’d brought a sports bag containing a neat pile of Mark’s clothes. Liz carefully lifted out the clothes and placed them on the bench. His shoes were at the bottom of the bag. They looked ridiculously large in her hands — a pair of shoes lost by a circus clown. Liz moved over to the sink and rested both hands on the edge of the benchtop and breathed deeply. For a moment Box thought that she might throw up.
‘You’re doing great.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘You sure?’
‘Come on. Let’s keep going.’
Box picked up Mark’s jeans from the top of the pile. They were the same ones he’d been wearing when he left the house on Saturday. The police had held them for a day, presumably to check them for signs of something more sinister than suicide. When they found nothing, an officer had delivered them back to to the house, along with the rest of Mark’s clothes, his cellphone and his wallet. Since then Liz had washed the jeans by hand, three times. She’d stood over the sink in the windowless laundry space and blankly scrubbed them until the water had cooled and the ends of her fingers were shrivelled stubs.
Box edged the jeans up over the boy’s feet. He took one leg and Liz the other. They had the jeans up beyond his knees when Box stopped.
‘Christ.’
‘What?’
‘We’ve forgotten to put on his underpants.’
The pair of blue boxers were sitting on top of the pile.
And before he could control it a smile spread across Box’s face. And then they were both laughing. Somewhere in the laughter Liz started crying again. They were holding each other and he was laughing and she was laughing and crying, gulping down air like a drowning woman. Somehow all at the same time.
Box wasn’t sure how much time had passed but he became aware that the funeral director had poked his head inside the door. ‘Is everything all right?’
Box nodded. ‘We’re fine.’
‘It’s just harder dressing him than we thought,’ said Liz.
‘Can I help? I’ve had a lot of experience.’
‘No, thank you,’ said Liz. ‘We’ll manage.’
When the man had gone again, Liz smiled ruefully up at Box. ‘I can’t believe that we forgot to put on his grunds,’ she said.
‘Yeah. Mind you, I did the same thing when I was dressing myself yesterday.’
She smiled through the tears. ‘Help me get these off again.’
The jeans slipped off, Box took responsiblity for lifting the sheet and pulling the underwear up over the buttocks and the hips. And then the jeans again. Together, they put on Mark’s almost-new shirt. It was a pale autumnal gold with a small logo of a dancing horse on the breast pocket. First one sleeve. And then the shirt under the body as Box tilted the shoulders up. The other arm slipped in. Everything could be straightened and buttoned.
‘Shirt in or out?’ asked Box, already knowing the answer to a silly question.
She smiled back at him.
The shirt stayed out.
Thirteen
Box hadn’t smoked a cigarette in fifteen years. He’d quit when he was thirty-three, but it had been a stumbling marathon. He’d come close to lighting up again in those months when the business was going under. One day about a year ago he’d found himself in a dairy asking for a packet of Camels. He actually had them in his hand but had put them back on the counter and walked out before he could change his mind. And again on the day when their house on the hill had been sold at mortgagee auction for a hundred and fifty thousand below the bank’s valuation; standing at the back of the smug crowd listening to the auctioneer trying to wring an extra few thousand dollars out of the vultures who’d come to pick over his life, right then he would have killed for a drag. But he’d always resisted.
Now he stood out on the front veranda and rolled the stiff pluckings of tobacco out onto the small white rectangle of paper in his hand. His fingers remembered.
It was a cold evening and the hovering city smog gave the air a chemical smell and a taste that a born and bred local could roll around in his mouth and comment on like a wine lover talking about a bad merlot.
Even before Box scraped the match along the side of the box, the smell of the tobacco dragged him back through the years to Whitecliffs. Dee hadn’t allowed smoking inside the house. In the evenings Pop would go out onto the veranda, on the north side if it was windy or raining, but when the nights were anywhere near fine he would walk out onto the big sloping lawn at the side of the house. He would stand on the edge of the orchard, close in to the flaky-barked pear and the apple trees, and puff away. His grandfather often smoked during the day as he worked on the land, but those cigarettes always seemed casual and without significance. Pop’s last cigarette of the day was a real ritual.
Box would sometimes stand in the window of his bedroom and watch Pop on the far side of the lawn carefully rolling the tobacco. He would lift it to his mouth, moving his tongue slowly and carefully along the edge of the paper. Then he would produce a flame with a flick of his wrist. He would eke out the cigarette in his hand even if the weather was cold. On still evenings the old man’s smoke drifted into the trees, then rose slowly into the higher air. Sometimes Pop would inspect the branches closest to him as he smoked, occasionally breaking off a leaf and moving it around between finger and thumb. Or he would sweep the ground in absent-minded movements with the sole of his boot as though weighing up the quality of the earth that he uncovered.
Box finished rolling up the tobacco and lit the cigarette. He paused, then took a drag. He felt the smoke hit his lungs like a long warm hug from an old girlfriend — too bloody nice for your own good. He held the smoke down for a moment before blowing it out over the three stunted roses that they’d inherited with the house.
People had been coming and going all day. Mostly they were Tipene’s relatives; strangers to him, but Liz knew a few of them from the old days — from the three years she was with Tipene. Other people had come to the house as well. Jill, their neighbour from up on Taylor’s, had nervously arrived with a plate layered thick with pikelets, jam and cream on the top. And a bowl of cooked chicken nibbles as well. A couple whose son had been at intermediate with Mark had turned up on the doorstep just after lunch. The boys had done athletics together and had been tight for a while before going to different high schools. Keith and Trudy had both been as edgy and embarrassed as an ex-nun on her wedding night. But at least they’d made the effort. The less brave sent cards and flowers. The courier bloke didn’t even bother knocking any more. He just carried in the sixty-dollar arrangements — lilies and chrysanthemums and even orchids, nestling in soft beds of baby’s breath — and searched for a clear surface to put them on. They’d long ago run out of vases and jars. Luckily these days most of the flowers seemed to come in cardboard vases, their stems already soaking in a plastic bag of water.
