“I don’t know why you’re so fascinated with death,” she said. “You’ll find out all about it soon enough.”
On the other side of the hill, beyond the mausoleum, there’s a blue stucco house where the caretaker lives. That’s something I would like to show you.
When I was a kid I used to have this fantasy that my family lived in a cemetery and my dad was the caretaker. I don’t know where this scenario came from—I probably read it in a book. It struck me as very romantic: to have an entire cemetery as your backyard, to play hide-and-seek with your friends among the tombstones; to take your best friend by the hand and lead him behind a tombstone, so that no one else can see. When my father died I would take over and become the caretaker myself; I would soon learn that looking after a cemetery is a great responsibility.
I’ve never caught sight of Holy Cross’s custodian, who, I imagine, does not have a spare moment in his day, but I’ve seen a woman who must be his wife. One afternoon I was walking by the house when a lady came out the front door. She was quite shrunken. Old people shrink, right? I think it has something to do with gravity pushing at the spaces between the bones of the spine, so everything gets compacted and jammed together. Or the bones just can’t be bothered to grow anymore; with death approaching, they don’t see the point. The woman was wearing a housecoat that looked like it was going to drown her. She was carrying something in her hand, which was misshapen, slightly claw-like.
Somewhat unsteady on her feet, she went over to the red and yellow roses that mark the perimeter of their yard, the boundaries of their property. She began pruning with the tool in her hand, a pair of clippers. Unaware of my presence, absorbed in her work, I stood there and watched her. As she pruned, cutting away the dead and unnecessary parts of the rosebush, she hummed a tune to herself. She seemed very pleased, perhaps because her roses were so healthy, big as baby’s skulls—you know what they say about bones being good fertilizer. Though her happiness may have been derived from a more general source, sheer gratitude at waking up each day in a cemetery; how rewarding it must be working alongside the dead, how peaceful it must be sleeping beside the dead, who fertilize your dreams so extravagantly, as they are profligate by nature, and unconcerned with waste.
I’m trying to be a little friendlier with my fellow human beings, and I told her how lovely her roses were. At first she didn’t seem to hear, so I said it again and she looked up at me and didn’t look pleased at all. She just glowered at me, like the dead must glare at the living when we enter a graveyard and encroach on their territory. I didn’t take offense; I expect you become withdrawn when you’re around the dead all day every day; the dead’s taciturn nature feels normal while the living and their drive toward communication seems pathological, creepy. The caretaker’s wife didn’t say anything and returned to her task, removing the superfluous elements of the rosebush, with the goal of future abundance, a task that once again absorbed her.