The Strange Case of Mrs. Brody

Mr. Brody had been in the ground for about two days as Mrs. Brody entered the high lobby of the insurance company. He was dead. That was for sure, as Mrs. Brody had, herself, watched her late husband gargle out of his mouth his own blood and bile. She watched, early on, him lose all control of his bowels, and, like a little boy, beg the nurse for some relief. She learned, quickly, that she oughtn’t to look at him when he lost himself, for if she did, she would lose all the heart she had left. Mrs. Brody had been in the hospice the last hours of Mr. Brody’s coughing, gargling spitting up, shooting, screaming, delusions, and crying. She had been there when, in the last moments of Mr. Brody’s breath on this earth, he whispered to her, his breath raspy and soft on her ear,

“Darling Lilly, I will love you forever.”

No. There was no doubt about it, and it was a plain and simple fact. It was one of those facts that isn’t all to different from a good shot to the jaw: direct, cold, and sharp. Mr. Brody was dead, in the ground, with what seemed like a ton-weight stopper between him and the air outside.

Mrs. Brody found herself in the high-rise of her husband’s life insurance as a result of some complications with his will. So she was told, though she wasn’t much in the mood to fret over it. The lawyers and the insurance officers had, hitherto, been nice enough in guiding her hand through the fiscal menagerie of her late husband. Naturally, she assumed they would be just as helpful and understanding today as they had been in the past. Of course, Mrs. Brody would never much find out.

A young woman, no older than thirty, was sitting behind a dark mahogany reception desk, the ornamented type, with the molding and the scrolls and the beautiful flower carvings which, in the past, delighted even the poorest of souls. The young woman was ornate too, with her crimped blonde hair, which just kissed the tops of her shoulders, her eyes which, with the jewelling of her lashes, popped out like the tropic oceans. Presently, she was looking down at her nails, deciding, exactly, which ones she was going to touch up before tonight, for a woman simply does not go out with poor nails. She had a date. She didn’t have to worry about a dying husband. And she didn’t have one stuck in the ground.

Mrs. Brody recalled that she wasn’t much different from this primped, darling woman when, so many years ago, she was young (she was sixty-eight at the time of her death). She recalled her flouncing, her jiving up and down the streets of town, all the while working as a clerk, working all the boys’ hearts into a jell (or perhaps a pudding). She met her Phil on one of her downtown jives, in an old greasy bar. It seemed odd to her that now she would never see him in that old bar again.

The week past her husband’s death had not been kind to her mind, but it had been especially cruel, like a schoolyard bully who pick you, out of all the other kids in the yard, to give hell, to her face. Small ravines had been cut, gouged and eroded over her checks, and down her chin, where her tears had fallen. The underside of her chin had sagged and fallen, as though someone with a sadistic sense of humor, stuck a fish hook into the skin of her chin, and weighted it. Her nose stood crooked, as it had not before, likened to that of a well-seasoned boxer.

Indeed, Mrs. Brody sat still, absolutely still, in a suave-blue waiting chair, chewing all this up in her head, grinding her thoughts up like gears, until the young blonde rose from her desk, with an air of youthful candor, and approached Mrs. Brody. She was, to Mrs. Brody at the least, built like those old busts of Aphrodite or Venus, and was, without doubt, the woman you pictured, when you pictured them. She was tall, slender, and her back had yet to have time’s foot, and grief’s hand, stoop it over. The sound of her heels were themselves youthful, as they cracked over the well marbled floor.

“Mrs. Brody?” Her voice was honey.

“Yes. You are looking at her.” Mrs. Brody’s voice was cracked, cockled, and raspy.

A small smile, a smile that had well learnt, in her dealing with the young men about town, to deal with curt replies, cracked on the blonde’s face, and she said to Mrs. Brody, “Well.,we just need you to fill this form before we can meet with you.”

A grimace came over Mrs. Brody’s face, as she was trying, in awful, whole, and utter desperation, to smile. The young woman went back her desk and, once again, began to comb her nails over.

Thinking it imprudent to delay, Mrs. Brody went straight away to the paperwork. She was quick at writing, normally, and today was not particular or different in that regard. Rising, a slow and pitiful rise, Mrs. Brody got out of the suave-blue waiting chair, and approached the young woman at the desk. An almost absolute silence fumed about the room, and lingered in the corners, like some sort of devil haunting the place. Oppressive and full. Mrs. Brody continue towards the woman.

A haze! An awful and utter haze clouded Mrs. Brody’s eyes, and forced her gaze over to the far side window, over-looking the street. It was a large window, strong-looking and had a striking look of resilience. It was to be shown that it wasn’t strong enough. She rubbed and beat her eyes with a violent fervor, almost like a child. Her eyelids creaked open, slowly and erratically, like the drawing up of the curtain by some inexperienced stagehand. She beheld, when her sense came back to her, a young man lounging on the insurance company’s window.

“Phillip?”

It was the Phillip she knew from that old greasy bar; tall, young, handsome. Not that gargling, blood stained creature she had known in the hospice. He stood languidly, almost as though he himself had an appointment, and had been waiting so long, that he simply didn’t care much about how he stood. She stood as still as the wind on a summer evening.

“It isn’t me, Lilly, at the window right now.”

His face had a rosy palor, like a boy’’s who had been out in the cold too long. He was dressed like he had been when they first met: unkempt, his dress shirt creased and wrinkled, untuck from his cheap brown slacks (which had themselves been hand-me-downs from his own lanky, stick-man father). His tie was crooked as though it was the first time he had ever wore one. He aired youth and carelessness. Mrs. Brody took a step forward towards the window.

“Lilly, don’t take another step.”

The reprimand took her aback, and hurt her a little, as though she had been yelled at by her father. In defiance, a stiff and childish and awful defiance, she slid her other foot, creaking it on the carpet, in line with the first, and stood straight, like a pencil.

“Phillip, surely I am seeing you right here. Right now. Did not the man I meet, so many years ago, dress as you do now? Did he not have those same ruddy cheeks? That smail! Did he not have that same smile you have now!?”

“Lilly, I am not here.”

“You must be. I can see you. Phillip, I can see you!”

“Lilly, you’re seeing things.”

“Phillip, I am seeing you. I am seeing my husband before the whole damn world thought it would be fair and funny to strike him with the God-forsaken pale of illness, and deform him beyond recognition.”

“Lilly, I am not here.”

“And what about your voice,” Mrs. Brody said as she was grasping at straws, “can I not hear the voice of my husband right now? At this very moment? Is his voice not coming from you?”

“Lilly, you’re hearing things.”

“I am hearing you, Phillip.”

“I am not me, Lilly. You’re imagining things.”

Her husband became more vivid to her; all of his features coming into the clearest focus she had ever had in her life. She saw her husband’s eyes, dark and brown (a stoic, strong sort of brown). She saw the old curls of her husband, which had knotted without restraint, and which Mrs. Brody always was coming out. She saw his nose, as it was. His ears as they were. His gaze as it once had gazed into her eyes. She was looking at a picture. Lifting up her leg, and slamming it down, she took another step towards the window.

“Darling, I am begging you to stop. Turn around, please, and go to your seat.”

But Mrs. Brody had tired of listening. All she wanted to do was touch her husband. She took another step.

“Lilly. Quit this, and go back to your chair.”

She shuffled her feet once again, and clock them together. This time, she took two steps to the window.

“Lilly, I am begging you to stop. For the love of God, please.”

Mrs. Brody shuffled up another three steps to the window.

“Lilly.” Mr. Brody’s tongue lingered on his teeth, and said, slowly, quietly, sternly, “go back to your seat.”

But Mrs. Brody took no heed, and she clacked her feet once more, and broke. Quick. Deliberate. Completely out of her mind. These were the words which the other folk, collecting on the death of some family member or some friend, described Mrs. Brody’s sprint out the window.

Glass shattered, and Mrs. Brody flew like a bird, without wings, of course, across the early afternoon blue. She glinted, the sun dancing off her forearms wrapped tightly around what she thought to be her husband. Opening her eyes yielded nothing good for Mrs. Brody, as she saw, unequivocally, that she was embracing nothing but air. Her husband was no longer with her. She realized that now.

The young blonde gave a report when the police came, later that afternoon. Of course, there wasn’t much to be said. A woman lost her husband, her late husband, and she being old and fading, flung herself out the window. Nothing much to be said. Nothing at all. But the blonde, after giving the all too familiar run of events, added something particular. Something the cops, hitherto, had not heard. Here’s how she went:

“She seemed intent, like a lion ready to pounce or some pour gazelle. There was fire in her eye. A sort of quick, crackling, popping fire. It was only a second or so, from when she turned to the window, and when she jumped out. Not long at all, but it felt like an eternity. You know, the oddest thing was,” she added with a flair of her slender nails, “she didn’t say a word. She only stared at the window, and made a break for it.”

Seeing nothing more prudent to their case, and seeing that this case was pretty open and closed, the police stopped its inquest by the next morning. Mrs. Brody was in the ground quickly after, not more than a few days. Of course, she had been buried, her coffin stopped by a few yards of dirt, in the plot next to her husband. Her service was small, short, and quiet. The preacher lectured on the nature of man, passions, love, and the importance of modesty and moderation when we walk with God. Naturally, the preacher, not a man quick to sentiment, didn’t shed a tear.