The Egg Shaped Room
:oR:
Blood On Mouth and Mourning Dress
by f. Simon Grant
Copyright 2012 f. Simon Grant
Table of Contents
Part I: Eudaemonia
Part II: No-face
Part III: Misery
Part IV: The Reception
Part V: The Procession
Part VI: The Parlour
Part VII: The Eulogy
Part I: Eudaemonia
I have to start with the youngest, Eudaemonia Tone; she spent most of her life in funerals; she was a receiver of stories, never a creator and stories fertilely blossomed out of her like any decay: the soil must be deep, black and incomprehensible. Contrary to the common sense of comfort-blinded society, she spent most of her life in funerals by choice: Eudaemonia was a professional mourner. She was paid to go to funerals and cry and make a big fuss about dead people she never met, never would meet. She was, perhaps, the only modern professional mourner. Professional mourners were more common when oldentimes folks believed God could look down from the clouds like a nosey neighbor and only see the public faces, judge a person’s worth by the number of funeral attendants and the overall grief; maybe popularity was the key to eternal life. People in modern times who hired Eudaemonia Tone for her mourning weren’t interested in the opinions of God. But they were interested in popularity.
Eudaemonia was the perfect professional mourner. She had an entirely neutral appearance, all features far too generalized to be picked out as unknown, easily mistaken for the member of any family. Most of the people who hired her wanted to make a dead relative seem more important. And she was beautiful, in a general way, so the unawares genuine mourners said to themselves, “Uncle Such-and-such knew some beautiful people.” Sometimes when rich eccentric recluses would die, the estate would hire Eudaemonia as the beautiful widow, and the press would speculate about the mystery woman and make jokes like, “Oh that’s why old Such-and-such never came out of his house.” She’d be the fake girlfriend of the stoic but appearance-minded business man or the fiancée of the wifeless grandchild who wanted to truncate speculation. They’d all hire Eudaemonia to weep and weep and show all the emotion they couldn’t or wouldn’t or totally occum’s-razored out of their soul. They’d say, “It’s okay, Jennifer,” -- She always ended up a Jennifer -- “Be strong. Be strong for the family. Hang in there, Jennifer.”
Eudaemonia had a good reputation as a professional mourner because of her realistic weeping and her generalized appearance, but it’s hard to call it a reputation when it’s little more than a name on a business card and conspiratorial murmurings like a haunting experience. It’s important to know here that Eudaemonia’s non-specific features went beyond mere overly-normal to a shadowed level of perception: there was a certain indefinable naked-singularity aspect of the face that almost forced you to forget it. It was like a hypnotism to look at her: your eyes going blank and sleepy, your head shaking, until suddenly you forget who you’re talking to and you have to ask, “I don’t mean to be rude, but who were you again?” “Oh, I’m Jennifer. Such-and-such was my great aunt on my father’s side. But she was like a mother to me.”
She could go to funerals for one family ten different times as ten different people, and no one would ever notice she was a repeated face. Someone could even hire her one week and mistake her for a forgotten relative the next. They could remember her only as a presence and a beauty: “He came to the funeral with ... somebody. Why can’t I remember who she was? She was beautiful. She cried her eyes out. So pitiful. I should remember who she was or at least her name, but I can’t for the life of me recall it. Something with a J?”
But she had one secret about her she never told anybody beyond her siblings -- of course, Eudaemonia never told anybody because she never talked to anybody outside of the funerals; the fact embarrassed her, although it shouldn’t have -- the reason her weeping seemed so genuine was because Eudaemonia Tone was genuinely weeping. She wasn’t an actor. If she did try to pretend like she was crying, it would’ve sounded fake and melodramatic. Tears flowed like any natural water, like the opening of genesis heaven-gates, all creation-power pinned until words spoken and bodies revealed. Of course, in her deepest hidden heart, part of the crying was selfish; any overheard phrase like “She’ll live forever in our memories” caused an uncontrollable throat lump but for nobody but herself.
However, for the most part, it was a pure open-souled empathy: all the otherwise embarrassing stories, all the awkward eulogies, all the overly posed photographs, all the saccharine poetry, those inanimate people, the deep-inside the eye-that-won’t-close that once was two way, the deep-inside the eye of the left-behind family hiding in formal talk; it ripped her and ripped her and ripped her and kept ripping her until water flowed and there were passionate heaves that might be sexual in another context, and her face compacted, and she bared her teeth, and she rocked back and forth, holding her stomach in non-physical pain. Eudaemonia was addicted. She would’ve done it for free.
The reason I’m telling her story first is because of one moment, a moment of transition; it’s the sort of moment that could begin a funeral parlor story, like, “This was the weird moment that defined Uncle So-and-so’s life.”
Anyway, she was at her fourth funeral in one week, and she was getting to the best part, the most entirely miserable part of the funeral. Her eyes felt the strain of a straight half-hour of crying, and the tears were dry now. She was ready to start them up again. Viewing the body was a good way to do that. So she walked up to the casket, looked at the handsome older man with the clichéd appearance of “only sleeping” and the funeral home make-up that gave him an accidental effeminacy. The first view of the body always made her a little cynical, like her clients, but as soon as she started thinking -- thinking about this person’s life, the things he did, the idea of impermanence, the idea that despite all illusions nothing can be permanently remembered -- the ripping would start. She would feel it going from her diaphragm, down to the bottom of her spine, and her knees would go bawly and wobbly like a weird jazz dance and she’d grip her stomach in invisible vomitous heaves. But this time was different. She stayed in that original cynical mind-frame. Something about this man’s face made her stop and search her memory.
She said out loud before it fully registered in her brain: “This is my father.” She reached her hand unceremoniously into the casket, moved the face left and right and left and studied and said, “Yeah... Yeah... Yeah...” Nobody noticed her hand was in the casket, all of them looking down reverently at their feet. Eudaemonia looked at the lady to the left of her and said, “Excuse me. What’s this guy’s name? I forgot to ask.”
“Well, don’t you know young lady?”
“No. It doesn’t matter why. What’s his name? Please.”
“Bob Tone. I was his secretary for twenty years.”
“Did he ever tell you he had a daughter?”
“He has a daughter?”
“He had two daughters and a son.”
“Goodness. I never knew.”
Eudaemonia put her hand back in the coffin on his cold face, rubbed off a little make-up. She stood there staring at him very confused. Then she broke out laughing. Her laugh was as passionate as her weeping. She turned around and looked at the entire funeral party. They were all shocked. She wasn’t worried about losing work for this. She said in good humor, “Does anybody know who I am? Do I know any of you? Have we met? I mean before today. Have you ever in your life seen me associated with the dead guy in the box? Pictures in a wallet? Home movies? Anybody? Anybody?” Nobody answered. They were all still shocked. She said, “That’s wha
t I thought.” She gave the corpse the middle finger and strutted out of the church with unapologetic sexuality. The funeral party stayed in that shocked silence for a good five minutes.
And slowly they started forgetting.