In the dream, everyone knows where Lena is hiding, but she stays under the bed anyways, flattened against the wall. She squeezes her eyelids shut, listening for someone to clomp across the room, bend down, and grab at her. Eventually it dawns on her that no one is going to come because they already have her right where they want her.

Lena knows the people in the room, although she hasn’t put names or faces to them. She lies in a frozen piece of time, waiting for nothing while Jennifer Russell enters the room, then smiles and lets go. When she wakes up, the dream is forgotten. She only remembers that her husband has finally managed to die, and that his death is the least of her worries.

The funeral was probably predictable, although Lena doesn’t really notice. The only thing that might be surprising, if Lena felt the least bit surpriseable, is when Jennifer Russells face appears at the cemetery, peeking over Pastor Bob’s right shoulder. Pastor Bob was holding Lena’s hand and talking to her.

“Harold has gone to a wonderful new life in a wonderful new home, where there is no cancer, no sorrow, no death of the body or of the spirit,” he says.

Lena feels a bit annoyed. She is pretty sure the Reverend already mentioned this during the service. The annoyance rouses her a little and she shrugs. Pastor Bob has arranged his big pink face to show that he cares and his concern is something of value to Lena, but his eyes are shifting. His mouth opens and closes a few times. He licks his lips. His face turns pinker and he looks down at his shoes. Jennifer Russell looks the way Lena remembers her, which seems more than a little unlikely since they haven’t each other in more than forty years. She raises an eyebrow, and Lena remembers her grade nine Home Economics class and the very first assignment for the year which was to go home and complete this very sentence: ‘The most important thing for a young woman to know is how to .RU.’

Lena has struggled to come up with something profound about raising a family, but Jennifer gets up and tells the class that the most important thing is to tell assholes to fuck off, which earns her a detention at school and a broken arm from her father. Lena has already decided being friends with Jennifer is more trouble than it’s worth.

Lena straightens up and pulls her hand away from Pastor Bob’s soft, sweaty grasp. Her lip curls and she looks straight into his big moony, nervous eyes.

“You would rather not handle the rest of my funerals,” she tells him “because you haven’t the courage or the compassion for it.”

Her eyes are dry and her voice is steady. Pastor Bob flinches and Lena finds this satisfying. She looks at Jennifer then walks away. Lena skips the reception and takes a cab to visit her daughter and her grandson. Julia is sitting on the hospital bed, holding Tommy’s hand while he sleeps. Lena stands in the doorway and watches them. Skinny used-up sick people, she thinks, on their way to a wonderful new life. The Sex Disease Madonna and her Immediately Terminal Conception, on their way to the Great Landfill in the Sky. Lena’s lip won’t come uncurled. When Julia lifts her head and looks up the force of her stare is enough to push Lena back a step.

“I can’t hang on any longer Mom,” Julia whispers. “I can’t stay to watch him die.”

Lena watches Julia stepping slowly and carefully across the room, like some kind of plucked and dressed up monster wading bird. By the time she reaches Lena, the angry desperate eyes are dead.

“It’s ok,” Lena says. “You can go.”

She drapes on naked wing around her neck. Jennifer Russell takes the other side and they help Julia’s body to the nearest stretcher. The body goes to science. It’s the easiest way. Pastor Bob sends his sympathies on a small white card. Julia’s memorial service is attended by Tommy and Lena, in the hospital room.

Tommy is propped up in bed, crying, with the sound turned off. Lena stands to one side, wondering what her grandson has become. He is shrivelled and tiny, impossibly old, like something out of an Alien Invaders comic book, perhaps the result of crossbreeding between an off-world insect species and some ancient primate form. Lena remembers when she and Jennifer Russell used to play with flashlights at night, shining them inside their mouths to light up their cheeks and make scary faces. If someone put a flashlight in Tommy’s mouth and turned it on his whole head would probably light up from the inside like a pink paper lantern. You would see his brain stirring, blood tickling, and nerve endings buzzing vaguely.

Tommy’s father appears in the doorway. Lena is glad to see how scrawny and helpless he looks. He steps into the room but stops when Lena walks towards him. Her lip is more curled than ever. Tommy’s father is crying, and Lena finds this both pleasing and infuriating. She wonders how he learned about Julia’s death. Tommy and the man watch each other cry. Lena –hard as porcelain, dry as ashes –moves between them.

The man begins to babble. But Lena doesn’t listen. This is the man who infected the woman who infected the child…Lena stares through him, remembering Jennifer Russell’s Home Economics presentation on ‘My Family’s Values.’ She sees Jennifer standing in front of the class, holding a canvas knapsack in one hand a reciting a poem.

My life is in a box

There is a box on a hill

There is a window, but not door

My hands are on the windowsill.

After that, Jennifer slings the knapsack over her shoulder and leaves. As far as Lena knows, no one in town has seen her since. The man is still babbling:

“Oh dear God, please help me Lena!”

She nods briskly and walks over to the bedside table. She opens her purse and takes out a pen and paper. She writes, then walks over to the man and gives him her nicest smile which feels perfectly natural, although she hasn’t used it in quite a while. She also gives him Pastor Bob’s home address.

“Go see this man,” she says.

“Just ring the doorbell and walk right in. He’ll understand.”

Lena waits until the man sees he has no choice but to leave now. After he is gone she turns back to Tommy. He has stopped crying, but his cheeks are still wet and his nose is dripping. Jennifer Russell is sitting at the foot of the bed. Lena gets a tissue for Tommy and sits down beside him. She reaches for Jennifer’s hand and finds that it is suddenly very hard not to cry.

Originally published in White Wall Review 20 (1996)