She Is Survived By

The rose is stiff as waxed velvet in my mouth.

I chew it anyway, heartily, not gratified when my teeth break through the waxy shell and the faint chemical flatness of pesticides bleed out into my mouth. It finds the many tiny wounds between my teeth and along my gums; it burns there, dozens of tiny stars lighting up the awful emptiness of my mouth.

Still, I reduce it to a fibrous pulpy mass before I give up on it and spit it out behind the nearest vase.

The caterers don't seem to notice the remnants, glistening greyed and pink with mixed saliva and blood. They're busy raising towers of food high around me. They're carving filet and ladling soup, they are salting tomatoes and dressing them in sharp sweet vinegars; and all around is the red flesh of tuna, the meaty gloss of rib, rice studded with fruits that wink in the chandelier light like a promise. 

My mouth waters. He really went all out this time, my husband dearest: he filled my home and my nose and my mouth with such delicious smells, such a feast, but–

"Be patient," I hear him saying: "it's not time to eat yet."

It's never time for me to eat.

I take another flower from the arrangement. A lily this time. Its crisp swordlike petals crunch almost enjoyably in my mouth–til another tray is uncovered and [good smell) hits me, and my stomach moans, and the only thing the lily can do is bleed wetly in my mouth, iceberg lettuce dressed in florists' sprays. Nothing like the succulence before me–the cheeses, the berries, the charcuterie meats and caterers…

I shouldn't be in here: the temptation is much too much. But where else can I go?

Something presses against my stomach and inwards. Something short and blunt and sharp; something like fingers, manicured into claws, poorly cared for.

They scrabble around in my middle. They push organs to the side, they dig into the empty spaces between and behind–

I never knew how much of me was emptiness.

#

I go where the pain begins–and there she is, I knew it would be her as soon as I felt her malformed manicure. 

My sister Ellen perches on her knees, her raised toes, in my closet. She looks like a frizz-haired hen in a nest. My mouth waters.

I don't know what she's hunting. Not until she shrieks with pleasure and pulls something from the wreckage; holds it to her mouth, runs her lips along the glass smoothness of the bottle. points the mouth at herself and sprays. 

When my husband bought me that perfume, the mingled stinks of leather buried in earth, cinnamon, vanilla, wet-dog musk only made my eyes water and my nose run. I spent that anniversary leaking. I'd have given her that bottle even if I didn't already know.

But I am beyond that now. It's all fine. My tongue slips along my aching teeth, my nose is clear enough to smell her musky as spiced meat, and my eyes are clear enough to glide towards my sister brooding like a cuckoo in the wreckage of my passage.

I understand him now. She smells delicious.

#

The children, next. I have a vague sense that I should look in on them, make sure they're okay. My twins. My dear children. Jack and Marianne.

The two of them sit in the spare room that used to be Marianne's room. Both are perfectly armed, perfectly groomed, matching splendidly in black cashmere. But my eyes fall upon Marianne's cherry-red top peeking through at the wrists, Jack's bloodshot eyes.

"I'd like the beach house," Marianne tells Jack, a little crease between her eyebrows. I used to kiss that furrow when Marianne–Mary-mine–was sick and small; I used to wet the end of my thumb and massage it when Marianne cried, pretend I was wiping a smudge off til my sensitive little girl giggled through her tears. I do not understand why it should be there now. "But it's so expensive to keep up. And really, when would I use it?"

The beach house? My place in Wilmington, my family vacation house? My children grew up there, delighted in its brilliant shell-pink paint even as all the neighbors greyed: they made so many memories there, a whole childhood...

The void where my stomach, intestines should be quakes. Perfume remnants cling in bitter shreds to tongue and teeth, like bug spray in her mouth from nights on that beautiful beach porch.

"We'll sell it in a hot minute," Jack promises his sister, "don't you worry. That kind of house makes money."

But it's been in my family for generations, it's my family’s house. I stare at them in mute frustration. It was your whole childhood. It was something I gave you. 

The hunger yawns.

#

"Jeanne was a beautiful woman, and her illness was very difficult for all of us, especially me," my husband says to the room full of people, the sea of faces. All these people, here for me. Where were they while my sister ransacked my closet? Where were they while my children murmured of conspiracy? "Her support was so vital to me. I hardly knew it until it was gone. I've struggled at work. I've had family troubles... and needless to say, the financial side of things has been a struggle as well."

I drift up the aisle toward him. My stomach groans and grinds so loudly I can barely hear my husband over the hunger; every word that falls from his mouth hits the ground like butter, splashes unctuously over me. 

"She was my wife, my helpmeet: she was the mother of my beautiful children–yes, you, Jack, Marianne–she was a wonderful cook, a wonderful homemaker. When she fell sick all of that changed. Suddenly I was managing appointments, tidying, making freezer meals–I tell you, that was the hardest adjustment–"

He leaves a space to fill with laughter. The audience does not indulge him, leaves it as empty as the spaces that yawn inside me.

My teeth ache with hollowness; my mouth burns; my jaw is sore for chewing, chewing, chewing. I am so hungry.

I reach the front of the room. The coffin stands open behind my husband, but my body is thin and sunken and deformed. No sustenance there, no nourishment. I barely even notice it. It’s ended. It, too, is an empty space.

But this man, my husband…he is so warm.

I snake my hands up his chest. I pull at his suspenders, flick the buttons of his shirt aside til the hair springs free, glossy like the prime rib at the caterers’ feast, lustrous and well-fed.

My mourners murmur behind me. A susurration of love. But I am so far beyond them now; I cannot be sated on gossip and praise, vapors and air.

I plunge my hands into his chest. 

I lift his bubbling heart to my mouth. I bite down.

And finally my stomach quiets; finally I can fill it, calm the roiling of empty spaces.

But only for a moment.