Mannequin

I feel no pity for the man who weeps by the graveside. He whose only solace for his love is a pathetic bouquet of fleeting flowers. I attribute such acts to weakness, to surrender, to dishonoring of sacred vows.


They said it was unfortunate in that sympathetic tone I could never understand. They said it was a tragic accident. No, it was arrogance, negligence, youth and stupidity. The mangled car was all they could show me. They couldn't explain why she was the only one to die.

I look at her battered body. I hold her hand and look into her lifeless eyes. It is strange how the light seems vacant in the eyes of the dead, as though they are hollow, broken bulbs of light. Even still, I am lost in them. Even still, I try to find her.

I should weep right now. By any measure of normalcy, my eyes should well up and spill tears in equal quantities to my grief. But, no, something else overcomes me. I bend over towards her ear and I whisper: I will bring you back home to me and you will live again. I swear.

I stroke her cheek. She is smiling as she always does. I am working in my workshop, crafting old fashioned mannequins from wood and clay. She stares at my work lovingly and I am empowered tenfold, carving and crafting delicately throughout the day.

We eat our dinner at the table. It is her famous pot pie tonight and I eat it without reserve. She isn't hungry so she sits and watches. Afterwards, we hold hands, enjoying our favorites of Bach and Beethoven. Her fingers are long and smooth, firm and beautiful in their grasp of mine.

Tonight, we sleep together. I snuggle against her and the smell of her hair intoxicates me. I don't know why, but I always remember her smell like yesterday's flowers, like the slightest hint of a fading potpourri. It lingers in my nose. Her silk shirt glides off her porcelain skin and she quietly holds me as I bury my face into her bosom. We dream together.

We spends weeks together. Months, perhaps. I am happy beyond words.

But, this one morning it ends.

My son is strangling his mother. He's smashing her head against the floor. He's pulling at her hair, scarring her face with a fork, and mutilated all the beauty she had passed onto him. I scream and the rage overcomes me. My fist is animated by that base and brutal anger and I strike him in the face. He falls back weeping. I had broken his nose and the blood spatters over his shirt like a red tie-dye. I am guilty, but I do not regret it.

"Let her die, dad!"

"No!" I scream. "She is your mother!"

"She is dead," he says with a whimper as he presses his shirt against his nose.

"No, can't you see? I've brought her back to us. She is alive and living and breathing and beautiful!"

He sits and cries without response. I scoff at his weakness. I carry his mother back into the room.

She is injured badly, hurt by such reckless violence of a son against his mother. He is a child and I cannot blame him. I touch the grooves left by the fork against her face. It hurts me. I take the tattered and twisted bits of her hair from the ground and my eyes are welling up as I smell it, but I don't cry. I take her broken fingers and her snapped left arm.

The next morning, I have begun to heal her. I make her a new arm from the finest piece of rosewood. I mix the clay that will fill in the painful cracks that my foolish son had wrought. The broken pieces of her skull are ground into a fine powder and I knead it into the clay. The ashes of her old body are mixed into it and it gives it a pale gray color that matches the rest of the face. Slowly, I put her soul back into the body and prepare the rest of the pieces that had been ruined. I find strands of her hair to fashion into another hairpiece. I find her old clothes from the closet and begin to dress her. Even, her old make up is reapplied.

She smiles at me as I tenderly bring her back to perfection. I can hear her laughter like a sweet spring breeze pressing softly against the leaves on trees. I laugh with her as I nearly finish.

Tonight, I feel is a special occasion. She is now complete-- beautiful and pristine like the day she was born. I recommend that we go to our favorite restaurant to eat and she expectedly agrees. We get dressed in our Sunday best. I forget how to tie the Windsor knot and I call to her, but she is too busy fitting into the dress she might have gotten a bit too large for. I smile and decide that I won't wear one tonight.

We get into the car as it begins to rain heavily. The rain soaks into my hair and rolls down my cheek. She is unfazed by the rain she always loved to run in. It soaks into her dress and rolls off her firm skin. Her make up is running and her outfit is ruined, but she smiles nonetheless and we laugh at the irony.

I start the car and we begin to drive into the city. The headlights are scattered into countless little bits of light by the rain and everything rushes by us like momentary fireflies going fifty miles per hour. She complains that I drive too fast, but it doesn't stop me. I want to make our appointment on time and I am a good driver.

I look over to her momentarily as we near the exit that leads to our special place. The headlights of the oncoming traffic seem to illuminate the glass beads I had placed as her eyes. They seemed brilliantly alive, ever changing and warm, burning like her desire to live.

Moments later, I see a bright light. I hear the screeching of tires. I hear the breaking of glass and the clashing of metal. The world is spinning. I smell gasoline and burnt rubber.

My eyes open for a bit and I see her looking at me. Her belt had gotten loose and she had somehow ended up on top of me. I can see a stray shard of metal in her side. I look into her eyes and like a second of a daydream that seems endless, I stay there captivated. There is a strange sad fire in her eyes now, like a fickle flame caught in a wind, ready to be extinguished. In this light, she seems so sad even as she smiles. I pass out.

I wake up to an empty room in a hospital. My son is sitting by my side looking at me with his worried eyes. I stroke his cheek and smile. He cries and hugs me. I ask him the first question that came to my mind.

"How is your mother?"

"She is dead," he says.

I begin to cry.