He stared down at the open casket and tried to put on the right face because people were watching. Her carefully curled golden hair transported him to Thursday night. Angel hair pasta, homemade of course. White sauce, like her hat. It melted on his tongue.
He realized suddenly that the blue flowers that frosted the corpse’s intertwined hands were real as the sweet honeysuckle assaulted his nose and slammed his stomach with the eternal lack, now, of her special honey glaze drizzled so gently over perfectly roasted ham shanks. Christmas was ruined forever.
The brownies, cupcakes, fruit on the table in the back, rudely provided by the funeral company were pale imitations of the forty-year marriage that lay dead before him. Like they were mocking the delectable flans and tarts that lay dead in the casket before him. Never to be tasted again.
A fat, nervous man, vaguely an uncle, approached him slowly and laid five plump sausages on his shoulder and patted, leaving a greasy stain behind. “So sorry for your loss” he mumbled, unable to make eye contact.
His loss. Yes. “It would have been taco night. Her homemade taco seasoning was the best, and she fried her own taco shells.” The tears finally came.
Her mother hugged him, enveloping him in soft dough, and her sister with her parsley hair loosely garnishing her thin, dehydrated face tried to be practical with him. “What do you need? What can we do to help?”
Help? “No need. She left her recipe box on the counter. How hard could it be?” He held on to this thought for comfort and hope.
But the roast was overcooked and under spiced. The souffle, predictably, collapsed and the cheese fondue was hard and filmy. The simple chef’s salad looked right, but he knew it wasn’t. The lettuce had a touch too much bitter – she was better at picking a head. The ham was tad too thickly sliced. His micrometer revealed it all. The cheese was not worth mentioning. The meatballs could be eaten, but they offered no reason why he should.
He gave up.
He lay curled on the couch spooning her apron, arms wrapped around the strings, fingers caressing the wording across the breasts. There was a stain in lower corner, a splotch of exceptional brown gravy from three thanksgivings past. He sucked it until there was nothing left but the hunger in his heart.
For three weeks he didn’t eat. Why bother? It could never compare. Finally, driven by pain, cramps and mostly by the ear splitting noise of his stomach that interrupted his nightly and daily vigils and remembrance ceremonies, he walked into the IHOP on the corner at 1 AM on a Thursday. The smiling waitress, two teeth missing, wiped her hands rhythmically on her stained apron. His judicious eye pegged the gravy stain as processed, chemicalized dreck. He ordered a pancake. Just one.
It arrived. Stale, mechanical. Not hers. So he ate the plate instead. The next day he broke his fast with a tea cup. He supped on three McDonald’s mcnugget boxes rescued from an alleyway dumpster. He tried bits of the fence, two large bath towels, a car tire, the groveling cards that people sent him, and he burped their sympathy back up. He tried flower petals, shoelaces, ball point pens and a napkin. Gym socks proved surprisingly salty.
But none of it was really right. None of it satisfied like she had. None of it brought her back. So he tried closer to home. He clothes were stringy. They caught in his teeth, but her pillow was quite filling, and her scent still lingered- almost, but not quite, peach cobbler. Her perfume like her raspberry tarts, slid gently down his throat without any of the expected burn, and it curled up in his stomach and purred. Her sowing machine was pleasingly full of iron. He could feel the anemia flee his body in a panic. Her wine glasses tickled his stomach. But soon he was out of her belongings.
And still. The hunger. He needed to see her.
The tall, cast iron gates at the cemetery tempted him for a second. He knew the ornamental curlicues would be a needless indulgence, pleasant but ephemeral and would only leave him hungry shortly thereafter. No doubt made in China. They swung open and out of his mind.
He drove up the winding drive past the varied gravestones, each its own shape, texture and taste. He felt like a child opening a variety box of chocolates and trying to decide what to pick and be disappointed by first. The large mausoleums no doubt had an inedible nut at the middle that you couldn’t chew through. The angel statue on the hill was surely coconut-filled. Always the nasty surprise. The low, plain semicircles poking up like teeth from a ground already sated by corpses- chalky valentines candy with tacky slogans that everyone gives to others, but no one likes. Nothing was right. The hunger mounted.
At last he found her. A plain square slab- about the size and shape of her ornamental serving tray (the very reason he had picked it out for her) adorned by wilted flower-jerky left to dehydrate since the funeral but sadly lacking in teriyaki sauce. He nibbled at one stem tentatively, but gave it up for a lost cause.
He sat, cross legged, on the grave and tried to talk to the dead hole in his life. What do you say to your life-long partner, copilot, better half who you can’t live without? You bare your soul.
“I found your recipe for mashed potatoes, but they didn’t turn out right. Is there some other spice I am supposed to add?”
Silence. Emptiness. Hunger.
So he stood on all fours like a cow and ate the thin new grass until it turned to dirt. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his special travel toolkit. Then he spooned the dirt carefully his mouth, spilling not a single clod. His steak knives made short work of the casket ceiling, although it did leave splinters in his throat.
He scrabbled away the remaining dirt, debris and memories.
There she was – perfect, homemade and fresh baked. Just finished cooling on the window sill. She was not even visibly marred by the processed, mass produced embalming fluid. She could rise above even that.
He began in earnest. The hunger was over.
John Kendrick teaches English in Dallas and occasionally dabbles in doing instead of teaching.