Part 4

Wednesday, March 29

In the morning, Lee left the ward with the box. He called a taxi, visited his former home – now but a house. There he picked up a package containing the dress Harper picked and a photograph of her happiest, her most beautiful.

He changed his jacket, posted updates of Harper’s passing on Harper’s and his social channels and emailed her office. Then the taxi took him to the funeral home.

On the way he picked up a pack of cigarettes, his first in thirty years.

With the taxi waiting, he set up the date – March 31. They discussed the proceedings: the cavalcade, the ceremony, the wait for Harper’s transmutation from organic to inorganic, the lowering, the final words, and the payment with the funeral director at Arboretum Memorial Park.

He asked for as many flowers as possible, and he paid for the best because he wanted Harper’s last moments smell like spring, and, perversely, he wanted to see the money earned through tears and wasted time all go up in the air.

He handed over the package with the dress and the photograph. They agreed that he would return tomorrow, the day before the funeral, to confirm that she looks right in the dress, that everything was arranged as agreed.

Then he walked across the cemetery toward their tombstones. The snow had melted, and water squished from under his dress shoes. When he scaled a minor incline, his dress shoes slipped, and he landed on his knees; then his elbows hit the wet mud as he held the red box against the flaps of his jacket.

As such, he stood before the rugged cubic tombstone that stood level with his knees and doubled as a black, polished granite bench on the side carved with a quaint tree in white and the inscription: Lee Dean Jr., 1994-2011, Always remembered, Always Loved.

After the long winter, the bouquet of flowers long dead lay brittle and broken beside the vase and surrounded by rabbit droppings. That was the last time Harper made her pilgrimage here.

“Hi, Lee, my baby boy,” said Lee. “I know we haven’t been here for a while. If there is such a thing as heaven, maybe you now know why. If not… your mom has passed.”

“We miss you, my boy. I now miss you both. I’m sorry you never got to shed the Jr. Your mom and I would have given anything for you to live, and your mom did.”

He raised the red box and looked to the identical tombstone next to Lee Jr.’s. It read: “Lee Dean 1970–, Harper Dean 1974–, Together Forever.”

“She couldn’t let you go, and now she is here with you. And I’ll be here soon. I just don’t know how to arrange my trip. I don’t have your mother’s heart or mind to make universe bend, so I don’t know how to kill myself with cancer, and I’m too weak to…” Moisture started to evacuate from Lee’s eyes, nose, and mouth, and his breathing broke into cries. He swallowed a curse and sniveled. His tongue abandoned him, but his heart was not finished. So, he sat down, sat the red box next to him, and lit a cigarette. Just something to do. Just something to stay a while longer. Just the three of them together in this park, on this bench. He looked at the red box that marked his heart as biohazard. He peeled off the label.

He opened his wallet and pulled out a black quartz chip he found on their tombstone when they had it installed. He had kept it with him to remind him the life’s outcome. A memento mori to wake him up when life seemed unbearable. Now he dropped it into dirt, no longer needed.

***

Lee turned on the TV to remain mindless, and the inconsequential news stories poured over him. The TV spoke of more rain and cold, and a late spring in case people didn’t have windows to check the weather. Then came the emperor’s protracted public announcement. He stated that he is aware that he wears no clothes, and that he makes this choice consciously as part of his work for the people – always the people – and his Cabinet does not consider this choice at all as folly. In short, he is indifferent to the fact that the world knows he is a fool.

Behind the lectern, the emperor brandishes the old man’s physique, his belly fat hanging deeply low over his manhood in an unsightly spectacle. He was surrounded by smiling weavers in suits. Creatures short of a soul whose grins revealed narcotic teeth intended to sink poison into one’s soul.