Chapter 2: Tuesday

Your father brings lunch.

This is new. Usually you eat vending machine sandwiches. Egg salad in triangle plastic. Ham and cheese that tastes like the refrigerator case. But today your father has a cooler. Blue hard-plastic. The same cooler your mother packed for beach trips when you were small.

He opens it. Inside: two sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. Two apples. Two cans of ginger ale. He unwraps a sandwich. He hands it to you.

You take it.

Turkey and swiss on wheat bread. Mustard. Lettuce. Tomato. The tomato is thin. Even. Your mother's knife work. Your mother made these sandwiches. Your mother is dead but the sandwiches exist.

Your father bites into his sandwich. He chews. He swallows. He takes another bite.

You bite into yours. The bread is soft. The turkey is the good kind from the deli counter, not the packaged meat. Your throat closes. You chew anyway. You swallow. The sandwich goes down hard.

Rule three: you eat what is given to you.

Your father taught you this when you were seven. Dinner at someone's house. You did not like lima beans. You said so. Your father said nothing. At home he put lima beans on your plate for the next six nights. On the seventh night you ate them. He nodded. He never served lima beans again.

The point was not the beans. The point was never the beans.

You finish the sandwich. Your father hands you an apple. The apple is cold. Crisp. You eat it down to the core. Your father eats his. You both drink ginger ale from the can. The carbonation burns. You finish it.

Your father packs the wax paper back in the cooler. The apple cores. The empty cans. He closes the lid. He sets the cooler by the door. He walks back to the weighing room.

You follow.

Today's bodies: a drowning, a stroke, a probable suicide. The drowning is a child. Six years old. Fell through ice on a retention pond. Parents were inside watching television. The child went out to look at the frozen water. The ice broke. The child went under. By the time the parents noticed, twenty minutes had passed.

The child weighs forty-two pounds.

Your father's hands shake when he fastens the toe tag.

This is the first time. In twelve years. The first time you have seen your father's hands shake.

He strips off his gloves. He walks to the sink. He washes his hands. He washes them again. And again. The water runs. His shoulders curve forward. He grips the edge of the sink. The metal digs into his palms.

You stand in the doorway. You do not move.

Your father turns off the water. He dries his hands. He throws the towels away. He turns to face you. His eyes are wet. Not crying. Just wet. The way headlights look through rain.

He says: your mother wanted to be a teacher.

You say nothing.

He says: elementary school. Second grade. She wanted to teach reading. She got her degree. She did her student teaching. Then she got pregnant with you and the school district was doing layoffs and we needed the insurance from my job. So she stayed home.

You say nothing.

He says: she never said she regretted it. But I knew. I always knew.

You say: Dad.

He says: twenty-one grams. That is all that leaves. Everything else stays. The weight. The meat. The choices. It all stays.

He walks past you. Out of the weighing room. Down the hall. You hear the break room door close.

You stand alone with the bodies. Three bodies. Three drawers. Three toe tags. The fluorescent lights hum. The refrigeration units hum. You hum. Everyone is humming the same song.

You walk to the child's drawer. You put your hand on the metal. The metal is cold. You leave your hand there until the cold moves up your arm. Into your shoulder. Your chest. Your throat. Your eyes.

Rule four: the cold keeps everything fresh.

You remove your hand. You walk to the break room. Your father sits at the folding table. His face is dry. His coffee is half-finished. You sit across from him.

You say: she used to read to me. Every night. Even when I said I was too old for it. She would sit on the edge of my bed and read. Chapter books. The Hobbit. Watership Down. A Wrinkle in Time. She did all the voices.

Your father nods. He drinks his coffee.

You say: I remember the voices.

He says: so do I.

You sit together. The lights hum. The machines hum. The building breathes its cold mechanical breath.

Tuesday ends.

Tomorrow is Wednesday.