Tom Houghton by Todd Alexander

anything. And you know that little vein that throbs in Pa’s head all the time? Well, it’s not beating any more. Everything is just . . . still.’
    â€˜Baby, you’re my brave man, you’re just so . . . What would I do without you?’
    â€˜You’d be all right, Mum.’
    â€˜What do you think we should do, then?’
    â€˜It’s late, Mum. There’s nothing we can do. Pa looks so calm and peaceful in there, why don’t we just leave him for the night and we’ll get the morgue to come and get him in the morning?’
    â€˜Is that . . . is that the right thing to do?’
    â€˜I guess so. I don’t really know. It feels the right thing to do.’
    â€˜I’m not gonna be able to find a replacement here, Tommy, I –’
    â€˜Mum, you need to keep working. You can’t throw away your job now, you know what Roger’s like, he’ll just fire you. I’m looking after things. I’ll be okay.’
    â€˜But you’re all alone . . .’
    â€˜No, I’m not. Pa’s right here.’ I hadn’t thought twice about being in the house with a dead body. My mother never left me home alone, yet something about Pa’s lifeless presence must have reassured her. There was always our neighbour, Mrs B, to call in an emergency, but I didn’t view Pa’s death as one.
    When Lana got home from work a little after two in the morning, I was still wide awake, crouched over my magazines, feverishly making notations on my movie index cards.
    â€˜You’ll ruin your back,’ my mother said, her voice full of fatigue. ‘That’s why you got a desk for your birthday, Tom.’
    We went to see Pa together, and stood holding hands, looking at his pristine face, all the worry taken from it, all the hard-work lines simply melted away. My mother sighed.
    â€˜He looks beautiful, doesn’t he?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜You did the right thing tonight, Tommy. You made me proud, my strong man.’
    That night as we lay in bed together, my mother curled in snugly behind me, she rubbed my spine softly until she thought I had fallen asleep. A few moments later I felt her crying into the back of my head, trying hard to stifle her sobbing, but it was not long until my hair was slick with her tears. I wanted to turn around to her then, to take her into my arms and be a solid foundation, but I didn’t turn, or make a sound.
    When Roger found out, he showed he had a heart after all and gave Mum the remainder of the week off from both the butcher shop and pub. He simply said that he’d make do. From that moment on my mother behaved like a woman possessed, frantic in her organisation of the funeral and cremation. She called a funeral director first thing Tuesday morning and arranged for them to collect the body that afternoon after clearing with them that it was acceptable for her to cleanse it. I asked to help, wanting to be with her at this time, but she’d insisted she would do it alone and had closed Pa’s door behind her firmly, a bucket of scented water in one hand and freshly laundered washcloths in another. She spent close to two hours in there with her father and I heard her speaking to him occasionally, or crying, and it nearly broke my heart not to be there to help. I’d found it impossible to concentrate on magazines or movies and instead made my way around the yard, picking ripe fruit and vegetables, collecting the eggs, mowing the lawn – anything at all to keep myself occupied in the intervals between standing outside the closed bedroom door.
    Mum called the funeral home and arranged the date and time of the service. She spoke with the funeral director and laboured over the right coffin. She spent another two hours in Pa’s room choosing the right suit for him to wear – the very same one he’d worn to his retirement banquet after thirty-seven years