Read by Clareine Cronin
“You must be the embalmer,” she says.
“You must be the gravedigger,” he says. “It’s nice to finally meet you.” They sit under a bare yellow bulb, knees near touching. She notices the care he puts into dressing his salad, his manipulation of knife and fork — how his hands turn leaves. He admires her spooning of soup — working across the bowl until empty. The economy of it.
“Supposing this date goes well,” he says, “what happens next?”
“That’s easy,” she says, “we decide where to live.”
“Well I do have the mortuary, lots of bedrooms, steady income, but there is nothing better than the outdoors to grow a family. Perhaps your boneyard would be best.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” she says, “fresh air, sunlight, the exercise of digging, and of course, the refilling. And I should point out that my graveyard is fed by every mortuary in the county, so also a steady income.”
He likes everything about her, with the exception of this bit about her steady income probably being more than his steady income. But she’s lovely to offer up her graveyard, so he lays his hand over hers.
“When should I move in?” he says.
“I believe in long engagements. Let’s not do it a moment before the bill comes.”
“Supposing once the bill is settled and I move in,” the embalmer says, “any reason we couldn’t start a family right away?”
“We’ve already started,” the gravedigger says. She pulls her hair to one side, lets it fall over one clavicle, the yellow light carving out a dark shadow below the other. When the bill comes the embalmer is lost in that shadow until the gravedigger has signed the receipt.
“I love you,” she says. They are holding hands. Hers cold, his burning.
“I love you too,” he says. He thumbs the bone of her thumb.
They walk next door for after-dinner coffee. They sit on opposite sides of a deep red booth and drink from tiny white cups.
“I have a surprise for you,” she says. “I’m pregnant. We’re having a girl.”
“That’s wonderful,” he says. “I know of a late night chemist where we can get prenatals and packages of ground soil. I’ve read that a tablespoon a day works wonders against unusual cravings.”
“Of course, I will be needing some help with the digging,” she says.
“Not another word,” he says. “You’ll never touch a shovel again. At least, not before the bill comes.” The embalmer stirs sugar into his cup. She watches his smooth hands and hopes they’ll fit into her work gloves. “Anything I should know before I begin?” he says.
“Use the axe for tree roots.”
“Won’t that dull the blade? Or if I hit rocks, ruin the blade?”
“How badly do you want through the roots?”
He admires the tautness of her forearm as she presses her fork through coffee cake, the veins of her wrist softly blue. “I just realized the dangers of raising children in a graveyard,” he says. “The holes.”
“You’ll just have to fill them in,” she says. “Besides, think of the fun she’ll have amongst the headstones. Red Light, Green Light. Hide-and-Seek. Bury Them Bones.”
“Suppose I get the holes all filled in, and make repairs to the fence and the gate, do you think it would be all right to put up a treehouse?”
“Well, there isn’t a tree sturdy enough to support one. They are all wind-worn and creaky.” The embalmer sets down his small cup. Rotates it around by its handle with a slender finger. “But,” the gravedigger says, “the lease just expired on an adorable little mausoleum. If you were to knock out some windows and transfer the remains to a regular old plot, I couldn’t think of a nicer playhouse.”
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you too,” she says. “And I think my water just broke.”
The embalmer settles the bill for coffee, leaving a too-big tip, and they walk out into the night. A gust comes up, blowing hair across her face. She throws her head back and he’s lost in the sharp edge of her jaw. They decide to walk against the wind.
“There has never been a mother so lovely,” he says.
“Thank you.” She takes his hand in hers. “Can you believe how fast she’s grown? It seems like only yesterday she was crawling, now she’s talking and running, dragging that plastic shovel behind her.”
“Well, she takes after her mother,” he says. She leans into his shoulder, braces against the wind, pulls her jacket front closed with her free hand.
“And the play house turned out so well,” she says. “She just loves it. Mostly, I think it’s those curtains that bring the place to life.”
“One really does get a knack for sewing, being an embalmer,” he says.
“Speaking of which, I have a surprise for you. I’ve had an outbuilding put up, out past the tool shed.”
“What for?” he says.
“Embalming, I know how you’ve missed it since the digging started.” He kisses her then, hair blowing around them both, breath misting between them. She presses her belly against him. “Also, we’re having a boy.” Through her jacket he squeezes into her biceps, his fingers wrapping clear around, his thumbs pressed into the meat of her shoulders.
“Can I see him?” the gravedigger says.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” the embalmer says.
“Please let me see him. I want to hold him for a little while.”
“Of course,” he says. “And I’ll get started on the hole.”
He opens her car door and the wind closes it behind her. He gets in behind the wheel.
“Now that our daughter is nearly grown, we really should start thinking of our future,” he says. He eases the sedan from the curb, holding the wheel delicately in his fine hands.
“Nearly grown?” she says. “She is still years away from college.”
“Years away, yes. But she’s saying med school. We should start planning now. Turning an agoraphobic pre-teen into a doctor will be no easy task,” he says.
“Oh, she isn’t really agoraphobic, she’s just most comfortable underground, digging.”
“You’re just being contrary,” he says. “As usual.”
“I’m not,” she says. “You’re just displacing your fear of mortality onto the child. As usual.”
She lays her palm on the crook of his elbow, feels the cold of his overcoat. She thinks his arm is thin, maybe as thin as hers, but her eyes stay on his hands as they hold the wheel, occasionally reaching for the turn signal, twice adjusting the wipers. His movements are fluid and stronger than his small arm suggests.
“But what do we need with all those catacombs?” he says. “To tell you the truth, I don’t even think we’re zoned for them.”
“It makes her happy, let the girl dig.”
“Of course I want the girl happy. Who was it, down there punching holes in all the coffins when the creek ran over so they’d stop floating from chamber to chamber?”
“You,” she says. “Always you. But it’s not like it was gruesome work—the coffins were empty. You only use those catacombs for storage.”
In the red glow of a stoplight he reaches his fingers to the nape of her neck. He runs his nails down until they catch on her collar. Farther down and through her coat he begins outlining vertebrae with fingertips. Green light and he returns his hand to the wheel.
“That isn’t the point,” he says. “Besides, I’m much more concerned about this young person you hired to dig graves with that tractor scoop. Really, it’s just vulgar.”
“Well ever since you got your outbuilding all you ever do is embalm. There are so many exposed holes it makes one wonder if you’re digging up remains just to have someone to embalm. Or is it, re-embalm?”
“You’re not being fair,” the embalmer says. “It’s the only thing that makes me happy. I’m so unhappy.”
“I’m unhappy too,” the gravedigger says. “This just isn’t working any more.”
A hard rain falls against the car’s windshield, momentarily blinding the embalmer. He switches on the wipers and they both watch them go.
“You look well,” he says. “How’s our daughter?”
“She’s well,” she says. “I’ve lost thirty pounds forgetting to eat and picking up extra shifts in the graveyard.”
“I’ve lost forty,” he says. “Of course I’ve put twenty back on of lean muscle mass—I’ve taken up Zumba.”
“I was going to say you look like you’re doing well. How is it being back at the mortuary?”
“Good. Quiet,” he says. “Why are there extra shifts, aren’t things working out between you and that tractor person?”
With the sleeve of her coat, the gravedigger wipes a hole clean in her fogged-over window. “Well, you were right,” she says, “the catacombs were a bad idea. The tractor sunk a tread into a particularly shallow passageway. Getting it out collapsed most of what our daughter built.”
“Oh no,” he says. “She wasn’t underground, was she? When it happened?”
“Luckily, no. She was out in the charnel house.”
“Charnel house?” he says.
“It used to be your embalming studio. Now it’s the place we keep the bones we find when we’re digging new holes.”
“Bones already in the ground?”
“Of course. The bones from before,” she says. “This is me.”
The embalmer pulls the sedan up to the graveyard gate, retrieves an umbrella from the boot and opens her door. He’s soaked to the skin when she takes his hand and steps out. They walk the path through the gate and up to her door, her arm in his. When she unlocks her door he leans in, pulls her hair free of her ear and kisses the corner of her jaw.
“Thank you for dinner,” he says.
“Thank you for coffee.”
“Thank you for the fine family and many splendid years together,” the embalmer says. “Sorry it ended this way.”
“That’s okay,” the gravedigger says. “Parts of it were exactly as I wanted.”
(c) Matthew Robinson, 2016
Matthew Robinson is the author of the novel The Horse Latitudes. More of his writing can be found at matthewrobinsonwrites.com. He lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.
Clareine Cronin trained at Drama Studio London. Stagework includes Susan in The Future (Pentameters), Tanya in Paper Thin (Barons Court Theatre) & Eva in Tough Luck (Hen and Chickens). Screen credits include Tiz in Forna, Teresa in Making It Mean Something and The Bill. She's also an experienced corporate roleplayer. www.clareinecronin.com
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