A Share of the Body

by Devon Capizzi

The urn is small as an egg and fits nicely in the hand. Heavy, weighted. Avery picks it up and shakes it a little. Bits and pieces rattle inside. It’s like a shaker from an early music class, but there’s something harder too. “You think it’s his bones?” Avery’s brother Jackson asks, his skin ghost-white and papery as he clutches his own small egg of ashes. Avery shrugs because she doesn’t want to say, “I do.” Doesn’t want the sound of her own voice corrupting the sound of bone in its eternal casing. So small, Avery thinks, turning the urn in her hand and wondering how much of him they fit inside.  

For weeks, Avery carries the urn wherever she goes. The grocery store has been the same since childhood. A county dairy farm with house-made chocolate milk, and ice cream, and an assortment of local meats and cheeses. Avery buys a packet of gum after picking up a bag of flour for her mother, who is baking biscuits for her stress. The cashier is not much younger than she is, Avery notices. She is nineteen now and feeling ancient with dark circles underneath her eyes. The cashier looks his age. Gangly limbs and teenage acne. The mop of hair and slick of oil on his forehead. Avery is distracted by him only briefly, his life of girl crushes and hand-me-down cars and too-big suits at high school prom. The weight of the urn in her pocket grows heavier, and Avery can feel it in her knees and in her feet. Like she’s merging with the glossed linoleum floors. She reaches out and grabs a plastic canister of Tic Tacs. Maybe, she muses, I got a piece of his mouth.

At the gas station, Avery buys lottery tickets and scratchies. At home, Avery gives her mother the flour and her mother accepts it with empty eyes and nimble fingers. On the countertop, there’s a peanut butter and jelly sandwich—half-eaten—the only thing Avery’s mother has been able to keep down since the accident. Avery doesn’t like to think about the sandwiches. As if her mother is nothing but a child again, no kind of mother at all, as if the death of a husband can slap you so hard you lose your mind and body, and what is a mother without a body? 

In her bedroom, Avery uses the sharper curve of the urn’s ever-so-slightly pointed top to scratch the lottery tickets. She wins a free coffee from the gas station. Methodically, she takes the tickets she has gifted to the urn. She scratches. The urn upstages her and wins fifteen dollars from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. On her bedside table, Avery places the urn so carefully it is almost too intentional. An altar, she considers. But no, her father always warned her, Never give yourself to something that can’t give back. 

On Thursdays, Avery goes to the movies in the afternoon. Her mother has started inviting guests for coffee most days, and Avery can’t stand the empty chatter of their voices, of her mother’s voice. 

More and more, Avery thinks of exposing the urn to others. Considers resting him on the ticket counter. The concession stand, so full of salt and butter the air stings her nose. She buys a bucket of popcorn and knows she’ll eat the whole thing, because she is gluttonous. A teenager, again, behind the ticket window. Avery clutches the urn so tightly in her pocket she warms the metal. She thinks, What pieces are inside of you? Accepts the movie ticket. Falls asleep in the cool, dark theater. When she wakes up, she is comforted again to find the urn tucked in her pocket. As much as she wants to share him, the satisfaction lies in keeping him, over and over, to herself.  

Back home, her mother won’t stop crying in the living room. 

Back home, a whole chicken, roasted to perfection for their dinner.

Back home, Avery eats alone. She listens. 

Wind through forest trees. The whisper of a distant wind chime. The rustle of dead autumn leaves as they scrape along the patio. Her mother’s breathing. The clatter of Avery’s knife and fork across the plate. The egg inside her pocket. Avery listens for it, but hears nothing. 

When she is finished eating, she stays seated at the kitchen table. Exhausted, her shoulders ache. She thinks of Jackson. Big brother. Big belly. Big beard. Big heart. An experiment of his from years ago, Do you know you can squeeze an egg as hard as you possibly can, and it won’t ever break? When he tried, the egg splattered in his face and the whites clung sloppily to his beard and Avery laughed so hard she snorted orange juice through her nose and she can almost feel it burning now.

She squeezes her egg of ashes. She squeezes it tighter. 

On Christmas day, they gather at the family house. They drink eggnog and watch Claymation classics, one foot in front of the other. Jackson eats too much and agrees to stay the night. Avery’s mother doesn’t eat enough and falls asleep at 5 p.m. Avery drinks too much and tries to pop the top off of the urn to see inside. 

Late at night, alone in her bedroom. Her stupid fingers work the rounded top of it and she questions if it’s glued. The space, lit softly by the electric candles Avery’s mother puts in each window of the house for holidays. Old posters on the wall, peeling at the edges. The face of Juno from Juno pouts at her and Avery says, “What?”

She feels the wine in her stomach and in her temples, and ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum, it beats like blood. She lies back on her twin-sized bed and wonders if she got a piece of his eye when they divvied up the ashes. Wonders if she got a piece of his thin-rimmed glasses. Wonders at the picture of him on her bedroom dresser. Years ago, at Disney World. Looking miserable. His forehead sweaty. His belly hugged by a fanny pack. Avery wonders what’s inside the fanny pack. She wonders if they burned him up naked. She falls asleep. 

By Easter, Avery’s mother has lost so much weight she looks ill. Avery watches her closely, makes sure she fills her plate. Her mother makes lamb and Avery imagines her father’s mouth inside the urn inside her pocket. Lamb, his favorite, extra rare, borderline raw. Avery’s mother cooks it a sensible medium-well and they eat it with globs of mint jelly in front of the television. 

When night falls, Jackson shows up with a coconut cake that looks like a rabbit and Avery has two slices and Jackson falls asleep on the couch again and Avery helps her mother with the dishes. 

“I’ll wash, you dry,” her mother says. 

And so, they stand. Shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen sink, Avery watches her mother’s hands closely. The arthritic knuckles from her pottery. The dry skin from her pottery. The thin crescent scar from Avery back when she was three years old and tried to cut the strawberries herself, flung the knife around. Don’t be so stubborn, her mother said, annoyed. But Avery wouldn’t let it go, remembers that soft, easy feeling of the knife slipping through her mother’s skin and feels her belly turn and turn too slowly; she feels dizzy at the thought of blood. She wonders, for the first time maybe, how much her father bled before he died. 

“You okay?” her mother asks, her hands still working, the water still warm and sudsy.  

Avery nods, takes a plate and dries it off. Takes a bowl and dries it. Takes a spoon, a sharp, serrated knife, a wooden salad prong. They find a rhythm with each other. I’ll wash, you dry. Avery is struck by the thought that she is standing in her father’s place. His feet right where her feet are, and his arms in constant motion. The damp feeling of the dishcloth; he knew this, too. The urn is tucked safely in her pocket. That old, familiar weight. 

After, like she is a child again, Avery crawls into her mother’s bed and sleeps there next to her. In the middle of the night, she wakes up restless. Underneath her pillow, she finds an old T-shirt that belonged to her father. She replaces it quickly. Turns on her side. Traces the contours of her mother’s sleeping face with just her eyes, roaming over sharp nose and thin, crisp lips and new wrinkles at the edges of her eyes. “Crow’s feet,” Avery whispers. Her mother snores. 

Avery turns on her back and gazes at the empty ceiling. As she falls asleep, she thinks about the morning. The angle of the sun, light pouring through the windows, and she wonders if her presence will startle, if her mother might, for one brief and sleepy moment, mistake her daughter’s body for his. 

Summer is hot and sticky. It smells of dust and dirt and baked manure. Avery wants to peel her skin off, strip herself of sweat and stink and the treetop smell of living in the woods. She goes on hikes, swims in the river. She sees so many young people around it makes her want to die. They float on inner tubes. They drink too much beer. 

At home, her mother lives in a one-piece bathing suit and eats nothing but fruit salad with too much pineapple in it. She looks refreshed. She says she started painting again. Avery asks to see her work, but her mother shrugs it off, pretending not to hear, disappears into her studio. 

Jackson is seeing a woman again. He says that he’s in love and starts doing things he’s never done before. Mainly hiking, camping, and yoga. “What is she, a fucking hippie?” Avery says over the phone one afternoon. Jackson laughs, but says nothing. Avery asks when they can meet her. Jackson says he has to go. They’re packing for the Poconos. 

The urn. Avery has not forgotten about the urn. She has, several times, washed it in the cool creek behind the barn. Once, she took it swimming in the river, but learned her lesson when it slipped from her pruned fingers and she had to spend fifteen minutes looking for it. She found it hidden among the rocks, all of them like chicken eggs and duck eggs, all of them so heavy.

It’s the middle of the night and she can’t find him. He used to be right there on the bedside table, underneath the picture of his predecessor. Disney’s Magic Kingdom. Again, an accidental altar, or a necessary one. Avery isn’t sure anymore. The urn is gone, gone from her pillows and pillowcases, the slippers next to the bed; she checks their cavities. 

Finally, she moves the nightstand away from the wall and there he is like a lost child. Avery leans down over the table and can only reach him with her fingertips. The room is dark, but her eyes are adjusted to the dark. And she can see each shadow, each silver stroke of moonlight on her dresser and the patch of hardwood floor, so cold on her bare feet. The bed, ransacked and dismantled. Avery is careful to sit in the very middle. She clutches the urn close to her heart like a precious animal, a baby chick, a guinea pig. She shakes, shakes the urn right next to her ear and she can hear her father’s bones as they turn and clatter in their canister. Like the distant noise of heavy rain on metal. 

Jackson says he’s getting married and moves in with the Hippie. Avery’s mother thinks it’s good for him, to be in love. She’s been in her studio all summer long painting God knows what and Avery’s sick of it. “Why won’t you let me see it?” she asks. Her mother chews her pineapple, pops a blueberry, says it isn’t ready yet. Retreats into her cave. 

Avery notices the urn is moving constantly. She finds it on her bedside table. She finds it in the kitchen on the windowsill in godly sunlight. She finds it in her laundry hamper. She finds it in her pocket where it ought to be. Heavy, heavy, she whispers to herself. 

The workers at the movie theater know her now. Every Thursday afternoon. Almost a year. Every week, a movie. A bucket of popcorn. The cool, dark theater, extra satisfying in the summer. It is the only time she sleeps, really sleeps. At home, at night, she stalks the hallways like a bitter ghost. Restless, angry, but she can’t remember whom she’s angry at. She stays up to 2 a.m. eating sliced turkey sandwiches on potato rolls and watching Chopped. In the morning, she finds the urn in the refrigerator. Next to the milk. 

August comes. One month. One month until Avery will go back to college and resume a normal life and think of things like Let's suppose the force that the sun exerts on Mars is exactly 1022 Newtons. What would the force be if Mars were twice as far away? A sophomore now, she is studying the sky, because she thinks that it’s romantic. 

Celestial. Avery holds the word in her mouth one afternoon out on the patio. It’s too hot, but the umbrella is covered in spider webs and spiders. Avery bakes. She fiddles with the urn in her hand and the metal is warm and tacky with humidity. She looks up at the sky. Cliché, she knows, to expect something from the sky, but she allows herself to imagine something other than the body. Something more, maybe, than a tin of ash and bone. She read somewhere that they don’t even get it all when they burn you up. There is no way to harvest all of the remains from the machine. 

Her mother is out this afternoon with friends. Avery pictures them in sunglasses. Iced tea and Caesar salads. She turns the urn again, and it reflects harsh sunlight. A laser beam of light falls on the door of her mother’s studio and it’s decided. Avery gets up and goes inside. 

The space is dark and warm. The walls unfinished, lacking drywall and plumes of insulation, and there are so many canvases, some small as the cover of a cookbook, some of them taller than Avery and wider than the front grill of a pickup truck. Some of them are facing out—a painting of a lily pad, a landscape of a nearby Amish farm—some of them are turned to face the wall like they’re ashamed. Avery’s footsteps are too loud, even though they’re quiet.   

Like pornography, she knows it when she sees it. 

The painting is not him. But it is not not him. The canvas is textured and black, with hues of purple, grey, and maybe green. There is movement. Streaks of paint across the middle. Nothing is symmetrical. But there is a gradient: dark around the edges, lighter in the middle. 

And it is not his face. There is no face. No body. No recognizable shape, human or otherwise. 

And still, he is there somehow. Like when people look at Rothko paintings, just three big blocks of color, and wind up seeing God. 

Dinner on the patio. Her last night at home before going back to school. Jackson brings the Hippie and potato salad, Avery’s favorite. And Avery’s mother makes grilled chicken, grilled zucchini, discs of eggplant, everything charred and salted to perfection. The evening is cool and the Hippie cracks open a beer. Avery has to admit, she loves the Hippie, too.

As the sun dips low, fireflies circle them, blinking yellow light. Jackson looks happy. He’s lost weight from all that yoga. The Hippie wipes his chin with her own napkin when oil drips from his mouth. 

Avery’s mother is eating well again. Her plate looks heavy with the cookout and she sips a bottle of rosé, chilled and sweating condensation. 

Everything is good now. The weather, the food. 

Avery eats until she can’t eat anymore, leans back. Listens to the chatter of the table. Her mother laughs at something the Hippie says. Jackson is radiant with luck and joy.

When Avery looks over, she is surprised to see her father’s chair is empty. And the second jolt—how can she still expect to see him there? Her mother is telling a story from art school, one they’ve heard a million times about a raccoon in the studio, a garbage exhibition, the stink of trash all through the building. Avery listens, puts a hand in each of her pockets, and remembers. The urn is inside on top of her dresser. 

Her mother’s studio has dirt floors. Avery rolls the urn in the palm of her hand. It is almost ordinary now. Almost like this is nothing but a music shaker, a stress ball, a Pinky Ball from childhood. 

The painting hasn’t changed since Avery first looked at it, and she wonders what her mother does each day, holed up in this old shack. Maybe, all she does is stare at it; Avery doesn’t blame her. 

The floor is harder than she imagined. Rocky and compacted by so many years of her mother’s feet treading back and forth and back and forth. Avery’s arm is tired and she lets the shovel fall. She looks at the urn and sees a lot of things. 

Movie tickets, popcorn, duck-egg rocks in the river, pocket fuzz and orange Tic Tacs, and laser beams of light and moonlight and bedside tables and fanny packs and Disney World. She tries, again, to pop the top off but can’t do it. Thinks that, maybe, she really doesn’t want to do it, that her body is protecting itself. That her body won’t let her crack it open. That she knows already what’s inside: dust, bone. 

Avery squeezes her egg of ashes, squeezes tighter. Drops it in the divot in the floor. Covers him with dirt and soot. Covers him like flower seeds and plant seeds and other things that grow. Does so carefully, gently, like he is something sacred. Presses her fingers down, hard into the ground. Leaves her fingerprints all over it. Looks back up and sees his face trapped in the ether.

Published July 25th, 2021