Tuesday morning, Feb. 13, 2024. This is not the first day that no one dies in Ransom County. This is the first day I realize no one has been dying in Ransom County.
The joke about funeral homes is, it’s a steady business. Never lets up. That’s all I hear in my head the day I realize it’s been a while since someone has been rolled through the downstairs of Wells Funeral Home.
Exactly how long? I think back to the last day that I arranged for someone.
Mrs. Wilson. 86. No family, save an estranged niece who made the trip to take care of things. Viewing, Saturday, Feb. 3. No one in attendance. Save the niece.
This will be the second weekend in a row that the business, which is never supposed to let up, will be, as it were, without business.
I pillage the papers, scour the interwebs, looking for just one measly obituary. None to be found. Turns out, Mrs. Wilson’s peaceful passing was the last death Ransom County has seen in more than two weeks. All bordering counties seem to have had a normal number of deaths, obituaries, wakes and services in the time since Mrs. Wilson’s death.
But in Ransom County, things are drying up. No fatal overdoses, no tragic car accidents, no peaceful in-their-sleep passings, no successful murders, suicides or otherwise.
I am a funeral home director who is running out of business. That one decrepit, white, spindly joke I’ve heard 342 more times than I care to think about is coming back to haunt me. Circling like a murder of crows above my head. Reaching for me with bloated, rotting fingers. Scratching at me with sharp, overgrown nails.
You work at a funeral home? It must be pretty dead.
Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024. My father comes to me with some shit brained idea that people have stopped dying in Ransom County. He holds an indeterminant number of issues of The Mountaineer disheveled in his hands and starts babbling on about death and uncertainty and some Ms. Willis and his unsuccessful google searches.
I try not to pity him. I know it doesn’t help the situation, but his bowtie is askew again and the glasses look like they’re ready to take flight from his face and he’s in desperate need of a haircut to tame the white jungle atop his head.
I listen respectfully until he’s finished and then remind him that The Mountaineer has stopped running obits. They were having to charge too high a price to make up for the print space. I also remind him that, in case he’s forgotten, we now have an obit section on our website.
Once he’s disappeared into the basement, I step into the alley, out of view of the security camera, to sneak a cigarette. Sixteen years of working together and he has no idea. My hand shakes a bit with the anxiety all this is causing.
Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024. When I mustered the courage to tell my daughter Alice what I’d discovered, she shouted at me over the collar of her leopard print fur coat, “could we please not talk about this on fucking Valentine’s Day? Of all days?”
I can see the residue of yesterday’s mascara around her eyes and her updo is starting to look more and more like a bird’s nest.
She says something about The Mountaineer going out of business and our website dying and now I’m wondering if all of Ransom County is falling apart.
I go into the mini morgue downstairs, turn on the fan, and sneak a cigarette. The anxiety of all this leaves my hands shaking.
Later, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024. I find Alice asleep on the plush shag carpet of the chapel, directly under the skylight. I lay down beside her and look up. Rain pounds the window above us and I see the joke again, hovering its wispy, white body between the skylight and the dense, leaking clouds.
I can tell she is only pretending to sleep so I roll close to her ear, which sags with heavy, fake gold jewelry, and whisper, “who is going to be first?”
She pretends to be startled, let’s out a little scream, jumps up from her spot and starts wobbling away.
“Who’s going to break this curse?” I ask her retreating figure.
The space on the carpet where she was lying smells faintly of cigarettes and for a moment, I worry that she was standing beside the morgue exhaust vent outside while I was sneaking a smoke.
Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024. The old man is done for. He woke me up from my daily chapel nap with some obscene insinuation that we should do something about the fact that no one is dying.
He is still convinced this is really happening. He’s lost it.
After cleaning up for my hot date tonight, I cook him a Bertolli bag and sit with him and a glass of warm-up wine. He once again broaches the idea of taking someone out. I try to explain to him that there is nothing wrong with a couple weeks off. Not in a business that never lets up. Not in a business that steals every weekend of your life.
And even though time off work is really all I ever want, I can’t help but see the people’s faces this world be better off without.
If things go as planned tonight, I won’t be back inside this place. If things go as planned tonight, maybe I’ll be on a romantic getaway this weekend.
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024. Alice just can’t cook like her mother, bless her heart. Last night she sat at the table guzzling wine while I ate the mess she prepared. It’s difficult to tell her ‘no’ when she offers to take care of me. I think it makes her feel better.
She had on some ridiculous getup for a Valentine’s date that included a lot of leather, gold, and fur. She barked at me about wanting time off work when I asked her again, who she thinks will be the first to go. Who will break the curse?
Then she got quiet, very distant, and left. I worry about the girl.
With each day that passes, the curse settles heavier on my shoulders. It wraps its arms around my torso, sneaking cold fingers into my pants, underneath my collar. At 71 years old my business is dying. But there’s no riding off into the sunset when your work is your passion and there’s a 38-year-old daughter to think of.
Alice didn’t come home last night. At first, I thought, I hope she’s safe. Then I remembered, no one is dying. So, she must be.
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024. Everything went according to plan. Almost. Intimate dinner. Invited back to his place. Surprisingly mediocre sex.
But then, he’s snoring so loud it’s impossible to sleep. And I can’t stop thinking about dad. We don’t have enough for him to retire. Me? I’d be alright. Easy to convince some man with enough money I’m worth marrying. No trouble there. But if me and Dad are coming as a package deal? Not so easy. He depends on the funeral home for everything. Hell, it’s our home.
So, I’m lying there, this wretched sound in my ears, and I start making a list.
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024. When Alice does come home, she eats a massive mid-morning meal and, without changing out of last night’s get up, reoccupies her place on the chapel floor, falls asleep.
This time, it really looks like she’s sleeping. And I can smell the booze residue oozing from her skin, so I don’t wake her with my questions. I stare up at the harsh, pale blue winter sky through the skylight and wonder them silently instead.
The thing about curses is, they break. Right? Otherwise, it would just be shit luck. And this must be a curse, right? A county, population 51,000, doesn’t just go two and a half weeks without a death. Right? Some other force must be at play. Right?
Or would this be considered the opposite of a curse? For everyone else in Ransom County, not dying would be a treat. A real break from the hum drum disaster of living, loving and then losing everything and everyone you know. So, has someone cursed me and Alice? Or has the big guy upstairs put a freeze on fucking people in Ransom County? Is he blessing the beings of this place?
Alice snores herself awake and startles when she notices me beside her. She rolls her eyes and, for a few minutes, tries to fall back asleep. I can see her elevated heartrate pulsing through the carotid artery in her throat. She must have had a lot to drink last night. What single 38-year-old doesn’t on Valentine’s Day?
Finally, she gives up on the sleep and turns to face me facing her. Our noses touch and although her breath is rancid, I don’t turn away. The thick distortion of my glasses between our eyes make hers appear enormous at this proximity. She tells me she knows who will be first. And I’m delighted.
I wouldn’t put it past Alice to have come up with this curse herself. She is a miraculous woman, despite all her faults. Much like her mother. And women have a certain something inside them I’ve always felt but never been able to understand. Most of the time, it scares me a bit.
Maybe she just needed a break. Wanted a few weekends off work. Off the emotional toll of ferrying people onto what’s next and helping their family members navigate the intensity of that journey. I always had Alice’s mother to lean on, until I didn’t. And then I had Alice. I have Alice. She has no one.
Maybe she did some logical gymnastics, like somehow got people who die in the hospital in Ransom County transported out of the county before they are declared dead… but then wouldn’t their families still hold funerals here? At home? And how was she managing the sudden end to traffic accident deaths and overdoses and suicides?
I decide to stop trying to understand.
“Who?” I ask her. Not letting on that I suspect her of somehow causing this all. “Who will be first?”
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024. My father interrupts yet another midday chapel nap and if he weren’t staring at me with such soft curiosity in his eyes when I come to, I could have wrung his scrawny little neck.
I close my eyes and pretend to be asleep despite the throbbing in my head and the somersaults my body is doing in the darkness behind my eyelids. But I can feel him breathing on my neck and with each warm, moist breath the weight of him sinks deeper into my chest.
This is all he has. I am all he has.
Obviously, there is some explanation for this pause in kicking the can. Right? Just a fluke? A coincidence? Stranger things have happened. Right?
I suppose it doesn’t really matter.
I open my eyes and turn to face him. His glasses are once again in pursuit of a place somewhere other than his face and, sliding down his nose, they sit equidistant between our eyeballs. His breath smells like a mix between peppermints and moth balls and it brings on a fresh wave of nausea. The white hairs of his eyebrows reach out frantically and tickle my forehead. A whiff of cigarette smoke clings to my nostrils and I worry that he can smell it on me. If he does, I’ll tell him it was my date from last night.
I tell him I know who we should off. I’ve thought about it long and hard. While drunk and unable to sleep last night. But I don’t tell him that last part. It will be easy, and the family has money, and they all live here so, unless they do something wild like a destination funeral, they’ll be rolling the dearly beloved through the basement of Wells in no time.
Anita Silverstone. Age 89. Of the town Silverstones. No known relation to the Sugar Creek Silverstones. Although, who are we kidding?
Anita Silverstone is locked up in Autumn Care Nursing Home. Not only is she demented and being kept alive by round the clock attention from countless nurses and aids, she is also apparently a stone cold bitch. Racist. Sexist. Elitist. And those are just the ‘ists’ that can be confirmed.
In her day she refused to be treated by female doctors, driven by female drivers. You get the gist. And while she’s lost it enough to have stopped refusing the help of female aids in the nursing home, color is another battle entirely. She’s been known to spit on any person of color that tries to get near her. Including other patients. This has resulted in the refusal of the wait staff to serve her, and a permanent feeding tube that Anita Silverstone agreed to after swearing up and down that someone fed her a semen riddled yogurt cup. This incident cannot be confirmed.
Regardless, all it will take is a few simple machine disconnections. Nothing hands on. The night shift staff at Autumn Care won’t put up a fight. And once things are over, we’ll milk her ‘survived bys’ for all their worth. Which is a lot.
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024. Alice tells me Anita Silverstone will be the one the break this curse. But there’s been some horrible type of miscommunication. Because I asked Alice, who will die? Who will break this curse? Not, who are you going to kill?
I’m horrified at the thought of this sweet woman, my daughter, made of lasagna, and fur coats and gold jewelry and five-day-old hair dos and smeared mascara and a beautiful mind and something else I can’t put my finger on… I’m horrified at the thought of her taking someone’s life.
That’s not how this was supposed to end up. I thought she was in control of all this.
But on second thought. Maybe she is. Maybe this is something a woman can’t tell a man. A daughter can’t tell her father. Maybe she thinks it’s better for me to believe she’s offing some old woman than to really know what wild, terrifying things she is capable of.
I play along. I ask her, how will you get into the room? Surely, they don’t let strangers in in the middle of the night.
She says something about her name not being Shirley, and before I can stop her, I am face to face, nose to nose with my grown daughter describing a violently salacious affair between her and a night nurse that takes place a couple times a month in the courtyard outside the cafeteria at Autumn Care. The story lasts for far too long and I’m left in utter confoundment at the unprobed, unquestioned assurance I had lived with for 38 years that my daughter was straight.
Apparently, this courtyard woman will let her go where she pleases.
Friday, Feb. 16, 2024. At 11:45 p.m., Alice leaves for Autumn Care. I make my way to the mini morgue for a cigarette. It will likely take her longer to drive to Autumn Care and detach some cables from the wall than it will take me to have a smoke. But I don’t want to risk her finding me in this state. Hands shaking. Sucking on a cigarette like a lifeline inhaler. The anxiety of it all is getting to me.
Friday, Feb. 16, 2024. At 11:57 p.m. I pull into the Autumn Care parking lot and turn the car off. In the still darkness I smoke a cigarette. The anxiety of it all is getting to me.
I guess that the good thing about simply unplugging someone is that it doesn’t matter how bad your hands are shaking.
I hope that Anita Silverstone is asleep.
Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. Alice informs me that the courtyard woman has informed her, that Anita Silverstone has been confirmed dead.
She is the first death in Ransom County in the entire month of February.
I waited up for Alice last night, but she was too shaken when she returned home to talk about anything.
Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024. It wasn’t that bad.
Afterward, I met Wanda in the courtyard and temporarily relieved my heightened anxiety.
When I got home, Dad had fallen asleep waiting for me in the love seat by the front door. I put my coat over him and headed to bed. Then on second thought I took it with me because I was scared it smelt like cigarette smoke.
Sunday, Feb. 18, 2024. No call yet.
Monday, Feb. 19, 2024. Nothing.
Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2024. The Silverstones still have not called and now I am sure the curse lies with me.
Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2024. Zilch.
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024. I come up with an excuse to call the Silverstones. It can’t be that out of the ordinary for a funeral home Assistant Director to check up on a family they heard had lost a loved one.
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024. I take my place beside Alice on the chapel floor. Outside the skylight are dark, feathery snow clouds, and the first spittings of a flurry.
Alice tells me that because Anita Silverstone had given her ‘survived bys’ so much grief during her lifetime, they decided to cremate her and spend the funeral money on a trip to Greece. Not to spread the ashes. They aren’t even taking them. Just to enjoy themselves.
I hear the shake in her voice.
Then she tells me that although she hasn’t had a cigarette since college, she is going to have one now. Because she killed someone yesterday. Relief floods my body.
I tell her, ok, it’s been years for me too, but in solidarity, I’ll have one with her.
The pack that she pulls out of her coat pocket is crumpled and already missing the cellophane and though she tries to conceal it I see that it’s missing a few smokes.
I wonder, but don’t say anything.
She lights one for each of us and we lie flat on the pink shag carpet of the chapel, staring at the snowflakes making their way, hurriedly now, out of the sagging clouds and down toward us. Smoke rises toward the skylight before dissipating into the room.
Alice feints a cough on her first couple of tokes, so I do the same, before we both relax into the wide, deep inhales we are used to.
Alice turns to me and with a straight face says, you work in a funeral home?
I smile at the snowflakes before turning to face her so my nose touches hers. Through the lens of my glasses her smudged mascara and bulging green eyes look garish.
Just be dead, I say to her.
