EMILY CHMIELEWSKI A Coveted Practice

A COVETED PRACTICE

By Emily Chmielewski

His face was emotionless, long sweeps of tan makeup rested just above his skin, a shoddy attempt at masking the translucent flesh that lay underneath. Somebody somewhere was very proud of their masterpiece, but to her he looked like some sort of haunted ventriloquist dummy. A botched paint by numbers that consisted of only the best of CVS’s cosmetic aisle. The waxy layer was so thick that it had started to settle on his forehead in a way that reminded her of a 5th grade science experiment. Why did it have to be an open casket? Something about seeing the dead masquerade as the living was unsettling. In Melanie’s opinion, nothing was better for a grieving family than seeing the dead as they were… dead. Dressing a corpse up like some plaything was a coveted practice in the funeral business. No detail was too small; from the gentle spray of Chanel No. 5 that covered the smog like reek of decay, to Revlon's “Red Hot Rio” that covered brittle, yellow nail beds. They would even go as far as rebuilding facial structure, and, had the canvas been living, the mortician’s putty would have resembled the victims from House of Wax . An open casket ceremony had a way of playing into an acquaintance's worst nightmare. Susan’s son, Jim from work, or that really sweet guy that lived in 24B was preserved in the way you had always seen him. Except this time, small talk was the least of their worries.

“Were you close?” An earnest voice asked from the fold out chair to her left. Melanie kicked her black kitten heels on the linoleum absently, more interested in the tacky floor tiles than any conversation this man could’ve made. It was a funeral after all, why couldn't he go back to the expected pack driven grieving? To her dismay, he took the painful silence as an invitation to

continue. “I don’t like funerals. They make me really nervous; you know, like jittery? Like suddenly I need to tell my mom I love her or pay off my debt.” Melanie could feel the conversation move right through her and tinker to the floor into a useless pile of words. She was not the focus of his attention, and instead was a sit-in that kept people from giving strange looks to the man talking to himself. In a way she was thankful for his presence, a friendly counterpart gave the illusion she was meant to be here. The man rubbed his face and sighed, the anxious taps from his dress shoes pounding in her head.

“Mom? I don’t see her. Did she leave with Aunt Susie?” The man was mumbling to himself incoherently, and if she had set her mind to it she could almost decipher the jumbled code, but this man was nothing special. Melanie did her best to block him out, a distraction was not what she needed right now and her brain had been drawn to riddles.

A moment before she would’ve clapped her hands over her ears, the man stood, turned, and scurried without so much as a glance. Melanie followed the back of his head until he was absorbed by the mob of cheap black satin and rough crushed velvet .

She checked the post-it note for the umpteenth time. 2:43:23 PM at the Giles & Yeckley Funeral Home. She checked her watch. 1:46 PM.

Suddenly everything in the funeral home seemed to move slower, or at least her patience of it all was wearing away. With a twitch of her eye, she started tearing at the post-it note, forming tiny confetti piles on the yellowed tile. Nothing was worse than offering false condolences while a stranger floods forced tears down the front of a Dior dress they could never wear again. If she wasn’t so disgusted with the thought of physical contact she might’ve offered an equally forced pat on

the back.

Melanie's coworkers all claimed to enjoy funerals. But apart from cheaply organized cheese platters or the occasional dessert plastered with a portrait of the deceased there was no lure. A big ol’ slice of the dead’s cake portrait couldn’t justify the occasion. To them a funeral was the social equivalent of Monday night football, instead of betting on teams however, they betted on which relative would become the most entitled. Unlike the rest, Melanie preferred to remain inconspicuous, hidden amongst the distant cousins twice removed. It made it easier when she didn’t get involved. The man from before fell back into the chair making the metal squeak in protest. “I can’t find her anywhere... I can’t find anyone anywhere. ” He was wringing his hands roughly, with enough strength that she could hear his bones pop. The noise was getting on Melanie's nerves. At the rate he was going, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not would mistake him for the world’s first human metronome. She let her gaze wander to the tangled mess of white knuckled fingers, taken aback by the sudden surge of emotion radiating off him. She was already reaching for her purse to find a new dark corner to lurk in when she noticed something. There was a tiny chip at the end of his index finger, a hole that revealed the discolored plane underneath. Squinting slightly she could see a quarter sized smear on his left wrist just beneath the platinum cufflink, where orangey tan makeup had lifted. The man grabbed at his hair and pulled at the roots by the fist full. “I can't find anyone.” He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut. He had begun to resemble a deflating balloon. His chest rising and falling in deep compressions that made it hard to make out the form of his body. These decompressions continued for several moments until finally, after all of the meaningless rambling, he turned and addressed her .

“Why can't I find anyone?” His voice had gotten significantly more resigned from all the rambling she had heard previously. He searched the planes of Melanie’s face for answers, like somehow the new acquaintance could fill in the gaps he could not. But Melanie Brook was not a concierge, and Melanie Brook did not possess all of the answers. Melanie pursed her lips as she methodically tapped the face of her watch. Quizzically, watching the second hand for a sign of life. After seeing nothing, she hurriedly directed her full attention to the man.

Cream tan beaded off the man’s flesh and rose off the surface of his skin to form a barrier between them. The off whites of his eyes were a perfect match to the translucent coating that stretched over the bone. The coating began to pull taunt, giving Melanie glimpses of the structures looming beneath it. There was a moment of absolute stillness. Where both acquaintances became acutely aware of the other. Murky water met stormy clouds as Melanie absorbed the gold flecks that surrounded his iris. The accents danced around the void of the pupils playfully, in beautiful cadence with underlying lustrous greens and blues. She took advantage of what little time he had left to remember the way they shimmered. Eyes had always been the first to shine and the last to dull. If her coworkers had chosen to count by yarns, she would count by eyes. Melanie’s memory would never forget the golden dance of William A. Horton’s, nor would it forget the way his stormy clouds had started to rain.

Her moment was over when Mr. Horton studied what was left of his limbs with a moan saturated with agony. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Melanie sighed . With the only act of remorse she had felt all day she ghosted the fragile skin of Mr. Horton’s cheek . A soft glow filled the room with an immaculate light, so warming and gentle unlike anything you could experi-