Romy's sister wanted pale flowers because she remembered Romy as someone who loved pale things. Romy had worn orange shoes to my wedding and painted her kitchen a green so bright that eating there made everyone look ill. I ordered pale flowers anyway. Her sister was arranging the funeral, and I had already lost one argument about the music.
The supplier sent a substitute for the lilies. Long white stems, small closed heads, leaves with a soft gray underside. They had no label beyond the delivery number. When I cut the wrapping, the room filled with a smell like hot skin after a bath.
For a moment I wanted Romy so badly that I had to sit down.
I put the arrangement beside the coffin before the private viewing. Her sister, Anouk, was coming alone. They had not spoken for almost a year before the accident. Anouk had asked whether she would be allowed to touch the body. The attendant said yes, of course, within reason. I had disliked the phrase until I found myself trying to decide what reason meant in that room.
The flowers opened toward Romy's face.
At first it seemed a trick of the light. I moved the vase to the other end of the coffin, but the stems slowly bent back, their pale heads tilting toward the mouth. Romy's lips had been closed neatly. I knew the little unevenness at the right corner, the one she worried with a finger when thinking. Someone had made both corners identical. A thin white filament lay across the lining. I tucked it out of sight, thinking it had come from the torn wrapping.
Anouk arrived carrying a scarf she had knitted years before. She stood in the doorway and asked whether the room was too cold. I told her the temperature was normal. I had begun answering questions that way because I had nothing useful to say about the things she actually meant.
She put the scarf beside Romy's hand.
The perfume strengthened. Anouk leaned closer, breathing it in. I felt the same terrible longing I had felt at the shop, but now it had a direction. I wanted my mouth against Romy's cheek. I wanted to take something of her inside me where no one could remove it.
I stepped back, ashamed.
Anouk did not.
She pressed her lips to the corner of Romy's mouth. A pale blossom opened there, pushing between the carefully closed lips. Anouk bit it off.
The sound was small. I remember how small it was. I had expected any new terrible thing to announce itself loudly enough to give me time.
"Anouk."
She chewed. Tears ran down her face. A little piece of Romy's skin clung to the stem between her teeth.
I pulled her away. She fought me with an urgency that had nothing to do with anger. Her fingers caught in Romy's hair. I saw roots moving underneath the skin of the temple, fine white lengths drawing together toward the flowers. The perfume was coming from the body now. My own mouth filled with saliva.
Anouk told me to let her finish.
I shouted for the attendant. He was downstairs opening the street door for another family. By the time I heard his steps, Anouk had gone back to the coffin. She was making the small impatient sounds people make when a meal is too hot but they cannot wait to eat it.
I smashed the heavy vase and the stems it held against the edge of the coffin. The stems split. The smell thinned. Anouk paused with her mouth open.
Beneath Romy's cheek, a new white bud pressed outward.
I struck the roots beneath the cheek with the broken base. I knew which face I was damaging. There was no moment when terror made it somebody else's face. I saw the familiar ear and the brow I had watched crease over menus, and I kept striking the roots until their wet movement stopped.
The attendant reached us as Anouk began to retch. He pulled her toward the chair. I stood over the coffin holding the broken base of the vase, waiting for the hunger to return. The perfume was gone. All that remained was the smell of disturbed flowers and a body that should have been left alone.
Anouk asked what she had eaten.
Nobody answered quickly enough.
I held the basin while she tried to empty her mouth. She kept rinsing and rinsing. Each time she thought she had finished, her tongue found something else. The attendant called someone senior and spoke so softly that I knew he could see no reasonable version of the room to describe.
The coffin had to be closed for the service. I stayed while they washed Romy's damaged face. There was no floral arrangement left to replace, and nothing I could arrange would have helped.
Anouk sat beside me that afternoon. Whenever she swallowed, her hand rose to her mouth. Once she asked me whether she had hurt Romy. I told her I didn't think Romy had felt it. She held my wrist through the first song. When she needed to swallow again, her grip tightened.
