CHAPTER 3 NIGHTMARES AND NOAH
NIGHTMARES AND NOAH
I dig through the junk drawer in the kitchen and find the flashlight. I click it on and shine it toward my parents, who are on their feet in the living room. My dad is staring at the lamp in the corner like it turned itself off on purpose.
“Is the whole block out?” I ask.
Mom goes to the window and peers out. “Looks like it.”
“The generator should be on by now,” my dad says. “I’ll go check.”
We can’t afford to have the power go out for even a short period of time. The bodies in the freezer need to stay cold; otherwise, they’ll start to decay faster than we’d like them to.
There’s a rumble and an electrical hum, then all the lights and the TV come back on.
My dad sighs. “Oh, thank god.”
“Why is the electrical in this house held together with bubble gum and duct tape?” I ask. “The wind isn’t even that strong.”
“It’s an old house, baby,” Mom says as she returns to her seat on the couch. “You know that.”
The TV has reset itself and is now on the local news channel. A reporter is standing outside Barnes Hall on the Cornell campus.
“Vincent Hollowell, a professor of English literature here at Cornell, has been spotted for the first time in nearly ten years,” the reporter says.
“Hollowell sustained a near-fatal injury during a hike at Buttermilk Falls and was forced into early retirement nearly twenty-six years ago. Hollowell has become a bit of a recluse but has continued to be one of Ithaca’s most influential benefactors, with sizable donations made to the city every year. ”
“What in the world?” my mom asks, leaning forward and staring at the TV as pictures of Professor Hollowell, his face covered by a mirrored face shield, the kind made popular when COVID-19 kicked off, flash across the screen. “I thought he was dead.”
“Nearly dead,” my dad says. “He was in the hospital for months. He was friends with my father. Pretty sure he went to see Hollowell in the hospital when all that first happened.”
Silence swallows the room. My dad almost never talks about his own father.
From what I understand, their relationship was complicated, with my dad refusing to even mention him most of the time.
Grandpa Redwood was also a mortician and died before I was born but I trust my dad if he says the man was difficult.
I picture my dad as a kid, looking to his dad for help and getting rejected by him.
Kind of makes me want to stomp on the old man’s grave.
“I swear I thought I heard someone say he died,” Mom says. She laughs lightly.
“You probably have him mixed up with one of the other old rich dudes who run that school,” I say.
“Money can buy you a lot of things in this town,” my dad says. “Even a new lease on life, apparently. Hollowell has to be in his late seventies by now.”
My mom turns to him and is about to say something else when she stops herself. She looks at my dad with a kind of concern that she usually reserves for the relatives of the recently deceased.
The picture on the TV freezes as the image of a missing woman flashes on the screen. Then the signal blinks out completely and a little hourglass appears under the words “No Signal.”
“I think that’s a wrap on movie night,” my dad says.
“You seem really broken up about it,” I say.
He dramatically puts his hand over his heart and pretends to cry. “I’m so sad I can’t stand it.”
I side-eye him as he pulls himself up off the couch and goes into the kitchen.
“I’m gonna go get ready for school tomorrow,” I say. “I gotta do some laundry.”
My mom presses her lips together. “You sure, baby? You barely touched your food.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’ll eat later, if that’s okay?”
Mom nods. “Sure, baby. I’ll put your plate in the microwave.”
I jog upstairs to grab my dirty clothes basket, then lug it down the butler’s staircase that leads to the basement.
We don’t have an actual butler but that’s what the narrow staircases in the back of old houses like ours are called.
When I was a kid, I was terrified of them because they were dark and the narrow space smelled like damp wood and dust. They lead directly into the part of the house we use to prepare the corpses for burial.
I didn’t care about the bodies, but I was concerned that some kind of ghost was gonna snatch me if I used the back stairs.
I’m not bothered anymore but ten years ago, when my parents first opened the Redwood Funeral Home, there was no amount of coaxing that would have convinced me to take them.
Now the butler’s staircase is less of an obstacle and simply the fastest way to get to the laundry room.
The basement itself is still and quiet as I drag my laundry down.
Doesn’t matter how many bodies are being prepped or taking up space in the walk-in refrigerator, there is always the distinct feeling that I am completely alone down here. Sometimes it’s nice.
I throw my rumpled clothes into the washer, add some detergent, and hit the start button. I slide down and sit with my back against the washer as it rumbles to life.
There are only three windows in the basement.
One is a narrow opening in prep room number one that we use for ventilation when things get a little too stuffy.
The other two are at the top of the walls at either end of the hallway.
When the setting sun filters through them it casts shadows along the dark gray linoleum in long, reaching tendrils.
As I sit back, images from the dream threaten to creep from the back of my mind.
I press my hands into the floor and clench my jaw so tight it hurts.
I don’t want to see those images while I’m awake, too.
I stand and wander into the main preparation room to try and clear my head.
Prep room two is where we do the hair and makeup of our guests.
It can hold two bodies at a time and tomorrow it will, but for now, the glinting steel tables are empty.
I readjust the headrest on one of them. Mr. Chavez, a recently deceased grandfather of six whose mortal remains are lying in the refrigerator in the room next door, is only about five feet tall and his head won’t need to be at the very top of the table.
After arranging the table, I pull open my mother’s Craftsman 2000 tool cabinet that holds all her mortuary cosmetology tools.
Everything is neatly organized—all the different shades of pigment arranged from dark to light in the top drawer alongside an assortment of brushes and palette knives.
The next drawer down holds false eyelashes, lipsticks, mortuary wax, needle injectors, and wire.
The bottom cabinets contain little jars of lacquer thinner for loosening up the mortuary makeup and Mom’s secret weapon—Smithfield’s Mortuary Spray Paint.
Regular cosmetics are fine, but they can’t be applied directly to the skin of a corpse.
Deceased skin is way too dry to look natural under a layer of foundation meant for living, breathing people.
Mortuary spray paint is usually applied over the finished makeup look to set it, but my mom uses it as a base.
She applies it first, lets it dry, then goes to work creating a look that could rival any makeup artist. By my count, she’s down to six cans of Smithfield’s, and it usually takes a full can to do a single body, so I make a mental note to order another case and restock her cabinet.
In the hallway, my clothes are still spinning in the washer, and the shadowy silence of the basement is making me sleepy so I trudge back upstairs.
I stop off in the kitchen to reheat my plate.
As the plate turns in the microwave, I go to the fridge and am about to open it when my mom clears her throat.
I almost break my ankle spinning around to find her face in the shadowy dark of the living room.
“Do not drink any of your dad’s sweet tea,” she says. “He made a whole pitcher and doesn’t want to share.”
I squint at her. The living room lights are off and she’s got her face covered in a layer of light-colored cold cream. The muted glow from the microwave light is not helping her look any less nightmarish.
“Why are you sitting in the dark?” I ask. “You trying to give me a heart attack?”
“Never, baby,” she says. “Your dad is having a stomach issue and he’s using the bathroom in our room to handle it so I’m down here, away from the funk.”
“Yikes,” I say.
She sighs heavily and shakes her head. “That man needs a colonoscopy or something.”
The microwave beeps and I take my food out.
“Can I eat in my room?” I ask.
She waves her hand. “Just don’t leave the dishes up there.”
“Okay,” I say. “Night. Love you.”
“Love you, baby,” she says.
I retreat to my room at the top of the house. I set my food on the nightstand and stretch out across my bed. Over my head, window cards from the Broadway productions of Sweeney Todd and Beetlejuice are tacked on the slanted ceiling. Me and Noah had taken the FlixBus to the city to see a few shows.
I’ve pinned a bunch of photos between the other posters on my ceiling.
One is of me and my mom when I was about seven, right before we moved in here.
She’s grinning and I’m grinning wider. She looks exactly the same now as she does in the picture.
Meanwhile I’m taller, the baby fat that once plumped my cheeks has mostly gone away, my hair is longer.
Another photo, my favorite one, is of me and Noah.
We were at Stewart Park with the lake in the background, our arms around each other, smiling like we didn’t have a care in the world.
Next to it, a picture of Noah and Caleb with me and Cipriana sitting on their respective shoulders.
We’d all gone out to celebrate homecoming and one of our teachers had snapped the pic for us.
Cipriana fell off Caleb’s shoulders as soon as the picture was taken and broke her thumb. I laugh to myself. Poor Cip.