“Yes.”
“The hospital will not contact your side of the family. They leave that up to you.”
“OK.”
“And friends. Should friends be attending the funeral, you will need to notify them in advance. Johnston Funeral Services handles all of our funeral affairs. Anyone who is not a member of the immediate family of the deceased must contact JFS and RSVP if they are to attend the funeral.”
“Do I need to… RSVP?”
“No. Spouses are considered immediate family.”
“Is there anything I can do? Anything I should be doing?”
“Sign these papers. Beyond that, you’re off the hook.
Call people, if you’d like. We have a grieving hotline, if you need. The hospital, or JFS on our behalf, will contact you soon with the date and time at which the funeral is to be held. I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Can I—”
“Can you hurry up signing the paperwork? Your wife is not the only person dead or dying today. We’ve got at least a dozen emergency stops after this one.”
Simon signs the papers faster. His hand is beginning to cramp. Outside, the ambulance siren continues to wail.
“I’m sorry. It’s just—”
“I know. Hard. I’m sorry, again, for your loss.”
After the final form is signed, the mustached one collects the stack of paperwork under his left arm. “The hospital will be in touch,” he says. He salutes Simon and marches out of the apartment.
SEVEN PIECES OF ELECTRICAL TAPE, PLUS ONE DEAD ARM
After the ambulance goes, Simon finds a pair of scissors.
They are left-handed scissors because Celia was left-handed. The scissors feel awkward in his right hand, but he is right-handed and prefers the awkward feeling of using left-handed scissors with his right hand to the awkward feeling of using any scissors with his left hand.
He cuts the string attached to his left hand. It hurts very badly. He screams. His left arm falls limp at his side. He drops the scissors. He can no longer move his left arm.
Simon curls up in a little ball on the floor. He screams into the Persian rug. The rug is stained and smeared with elephant shit. He does not care. He is in severe pain. His left arm is immobile. He has killed Celia. He has killed their unborn child. He feels destroyed. Worse, he feels guilty.
Simon picks up the scissors in his right hand. He will kill himself.
He realizes that he cannot cut the string attached to his right hand if he is holding the scissors in his right hand.
He can cut all the other strings if he wants, but he fears that if he cuts all the strings except the string attached to his right hand, his spirit or whatever will be absorbed by his right arm and he will live the rest of his days as a right arm. Simon does not want to live the rest of his days as a right arm.
Out of frustration and a sense that he has reached his grieving limit, he throws the scissors against the wall.
Unlike Celia’s strings, his severed string does not disintegrate or retract into the ceiling. It floats about a foot above his head.
He gets up off the floor. He has resolved to make something work. He finds some thread and needle in a drawer.
He will sew his broken string back to his left hand. No he won’t. He cannot thread the needle with only one hand.
He does not possess that skill.
In the same drawer where he found the thread and needle, he finds a roll of electrical tape. He peels the tape back and clenches it between his teeth. He holds the tape roll in his right hand, unwinding it in a slow and cautious manner. When his arm can reach no further, he drops the tape roll and unsticks the tape from his teeth and lips.
He sticks one tape end against the back of a chair, retrieves the scissors from where they landed, and cuts off the other end. Simon repeats this six more times. It is a tedious process but eventually he has seven pieces of electrical tape that are as long as his arm.
He grabs the severed end of his string and encounters an other dilemma. He cannot hold the string in place and also tape the string with only his right hand, and no matter how he strains his neck, his mouth is too far away from his left hand to perform either task.
Simon feels doomed. Today’s events have distorted his mind. In his sadness and confusion, he feels bad about wasting electrical tape. He does not want the seven pieces of electrical tape to go to waste, so he tapes his left arm to his side. At least then he can pretend that he is not using his left arm by choice. It is much better to choose what you do, even if you hate doing it.
Simon sits down on the rug, still indifferent to the elephant shit. Celia will never live here again. Her organs will be passed on to other people. Her body will be donated to science. Should I move out of the apartment or keep on by myself, he wonders. The news of her death will destroy everyone.
FIRST FEW DESPERATE HOURS
On the morning of the funeral, Simon wakes up and puts on a pot of coffee. He lays two slices of whole wheat bread in the toaster oven.
He dresses in his grandfather’s grey suit. He would wear something black, but he doesn’t own anything black, nor any other suits. The left arm of the suit jacket hangs limp and hollow at his side.
In the bathroom, he brushes his teeth and combs his hair. He stares into the mirror above the sink while he does these things. He does not really see himself in the mirror. He only sees his strings.
The toast is burning. He can smell it. Celia’s funeral is in three hours, but at the moment, burnt toast is his reality. I am expected to cry, he thinks.
In the kitchen, he turns off the toaster oven. He slides the charred toast onto a green plate, careful not to scorch his fingers. He pours a cup of coffee and sits down at the table with his black toast.
The toast crumbles like ashen logs in his mouth.
The coffee burns his tongue.
Company might be nice. He’d even welcome the tiny elephants, but the tiny elephants are gone. They sleep in the walls in the day.
He shuffles around the apartment, terrified that he will fail to occupy the hours remaining before the funeral. He wipes crumbs from the corners of his mouth and stares at the books on the shelves, anything to avoid looking at his strings.
He takes down Keats’ Complete Poems.
Keats was Celia’s favorite poet.
He sits down again and opens the book to a page marked by a coupon for dog food. The coupon must have been there since before Ferdinand and Fernando died.
That was what? Three, four years ago?
The dogs were born of the same litter, and they died by the same rifle, fired by the same neighbor on the same day. Said the dogs threatened his goats. Simon and Celia loved their tent cabin, tucked away in the forest on the coast north of the city, but they decided to move after the death of Ferdinand and Fernando. Maybe they would have stayed on if only one of the dogs had died, or even both, if a mountain lion or bear killed them instead. Maybe, if they stayed, Simon would have never seen the strings. He folds the dog food coupon into his breast pocket and tells himself to forget the maybes.
The pages are blank because this is a talking book. In order to be read, the book must be wound like a music box. After he winds the book, the pages melt, then rise and fold together in the shape of a human head. The visage is that of the dead poet. The paper Keats opens his mouth and begins reading from Part Two of Hyperion. Simon is not surprised that Celia kept this page marked for so long.
Hyperion was her favorite poem. Face to face with the talking paper head, Simon has to turn away. Keats’ breath smells of mildew and rust, probably due to water damage.
The poet’s croaking voice emanates from trembling, yellowed lips: