Chapter 3: Wednesday

The box arrives at ten in the morning.

The cardboard is thick. Brown. Unmarked except for a sticker with your mother's name and a nine-digit identification number. The crematory delivery guy sets it on the counter. He has you sign for it. He leaves.

Your father stands on one side of the counter. You stand on the other. Between you is the box. Inside the box is ash. Inside the ash is calcium fragments. The bone pieces that will not burn. The crematory pulverizes these with a machine that looks like a coffee grinder. This is the final step. This is how you become ash.

Your mother is eight pounds of ash.

Your father picks up the box. He carries it to his office. You follow. He sets the box on his desk. The desk is metal. Gray. Government-issue. On the desk: a lamp, a mug full of pens, a calendar from an auto parts store, a framed photograph of your mother from 1992.

In the photograph your mother is thirty. She stands in front of a lake. She wears a yellow sundress. She is not smiling. She is looking at something off-camera. At your father. You know this because you have seen your father look at photographs. He looks at them like he is trying to remember something he never forgot.

Your father sits in his chair. He does not open the box.

You sit in the plastic chair for visitors. The chair is cracked. The foam shows through. You have sat in this chair maybe fifty times in twelve years. Always the same crack. The same foam.

Your father says: we need to decide.

You say: decide what.

He says: what to do with her.

The ashes, he means. What to do with the ashes. Scatter them. Bury them. Keep them. The three options. The three choices. Your mother left no instructions. She said: I don't care. Do whatever. I'll be dead.

This was your mother. Practical. Direct. No sentiment about bodies or ceremonies or symbols. When you asked her why she wanted cremation she said: I'm not paying money to rot in a box underground. Burn me. Save the space for something living.

You say: what do you want to do.

Your father looks at the box. He says: I want to keep her.

You say nothing.

He says: I know that is not healthy. I know grief counselors say you need to let go. Move on. Release. All the words they use. But I want to keep her.

You say: so keep her.

He says: where.

This is the question. Where do you keep eight pounds of your wife. Not on the mantel. You do not have a mantel. Not in the bedroom. That is macabre. Not in the garage. That is disrespectful. Not in the car. Not in the closet. Not anywhere that makes sense.

You say: here.

Your father looks at you.

You say: keep her here. In the office. She spent half her life waiting for you to come home from this place. Let her be here.

Your father's face does not change. But his breathing changes. Deeper. Slower. He nods.

He picks up the box. He opens the bottom drawer of his desk. Inside the drawer: files, old timecards, a broken stapler, a box of tissues. He removes the files. The timecards. The stapler. The tissues. He places your mother inside. He closes the drawer.

He says: there.

You say: there.

He stands. You stand. You walk back to the weighing room. Bodies are waiting. An overdose. A heart attack. A car versus tree. You weigh them. You tag them. You slide the drawers shut. The metal sounds like a drawer closing. Which is what it is.

At lunch your father opens the cooler. More sandwiches. Egg salad today. More apples. More ginger ale. You eat. He eats. You do not talk. Talking is optional. Eating is required.

After lunch a family comes to identify their son. Twenty-two years old. Motorcycle. No helmet. You bring them to the viewing window. Your father pulls the sheet back from the face. The face is recognizable. Barely. The mother makes a sound. Not a scream. Not a cry. A sound that has no word.

The father says yes. That is our son. The father's voice is steady. The father's hand holds the mother's hand. The father's eyes are the eyes of someone who has looked at too many things.

Your father pulls the sheet back. He closes the curtain. He walks the family to the lobby. He gives them paperwork. He explains the procedure. His voice is gentle. Professional. The voice of someone who has done this five thousand times.

The family leaves.

Your father returns. He washes his hands. You are already at the sink. You wash yours. You stand side by side. The water runs. The soap dispenser gurgles. You both use brown paper towels. You both throw them away. You both walk back to the weighing room.

Rule five: you wash your hands before and after.

Before, to show respect. After, to remove the smell. But the smell never fully leaves. It lives in your nose. Your hair. Your clothes. You shower when you get home. You use strong soap. The smell persists. You stop noticing. This is how you know you have been doing the job too long.

Your father has been doing this job for thirty years. You have been doing it for twelve. Together that is forty-two years. Forty-two years of weighing the dead. Forty-two years of metal drawers and fluorescent lights and brown paper towels.

Your mother waited forty-two years for your father to come home.

Now she lives in a drawer in his office.

Wednesday ends.

Tomorrow is Thursday.