Mum’s Ashes
Ashleigh Davies
He wore the air hostess’s number like a pocket square. She had scribbled it hastily onto a napkin and given it to him on the plane. Her name was Cindy – it said so on the name badge that had fallen from her blouse and landed in the toilet bowl. He had fucked her on the sink of the aeroplane washroom. After they finished she wiped herself with a tissue and hauled up her tights. She retrieved the badge and pinned it back on without even rinsing it. She had a hard face and made a joke about doubling his air miles.
The truth was that they both could have done without it. Fallon had made some bad decisions but that was nothing new. He was impatient at the baggage carousel. Eventually his duffel weaved into sight. He took it into a bathroom stall and laid it on the toilet seat. He had expected a tarnished bronze urn or a sleek mahogany carton – something dignified and ceremonial. Instead he had been given his mother’s ashes in a cardboard box.
Her death had uncovered a stillness that sat right at his core. It was a void that demanded his attention, like a hangnail or a tick under the skin. As he walked through the terminal he tried to glance her eyes in the faces of strangers. He heard his voice being called and yet when he turned to look there was nobody there. Since the death of his mother he had given up wanting things. He had seen the air hostess – Cindy – but he had not wanted her. Not in the animal way that he had wanted women in the past.
The cab driver wore a lime green guayabera. There was a rosary hung from his rear-view mirror that emitted a litany of small clacks as the car took corners. When they stopped at a red light the driver turned and foisted a pamphlet into Fallon’s hands. There was a Warhol-style picture of Jesus Christ on the cover. A cursive slew of letters beneath it read I am the light and the way.
The driver gestured towards the pamphlet. He talked loud and told Fallon that Godlessness was like a cancer. He said that some people would let it grow inside of them and say nothing. He said it would kill them eventually. He told Fallon that it wasn’t too late to repent of his sins. The light turned to green and the car rushed forwards. The rosary kissed the windscreen and Fallon thrusted the pamphlet into his jacket pocket.
“Take me for instance,” said the driver, his eyes looking at Fallon’s reflection in the mirror. “I was all kinds of messed up. You name it I either shot it or shoved it up my nose, you know what I’m saying?” he said. “Anyone can change.” There was a gold tooth in his smile.
Fallon asked the driver to stop at a casino. He played a few slots and spent some money. The fruit machines had names like Tunnel of Love and Big Kahuna. There was a rhythm to the floor; the thwump of levers and clatter of coins. Beautiful women laughed and dealers tossed chips onto green-felted tables. People won and people lost. There was a general rushing of white noise as the evening slipped slowly away.
He was drunk when he dialled the air hostess’s number. She was in town overnight and had agreed to dinner. Fallon met her in the lobby and she suggested Italian food. She looked different than before, wearing her slate-black hair down and over her shoulder. She had eyes like chocolate caramels and her red dress filled her to the neck. He took her instead to a Chinese restaurant with windows that ran with condensation. She ordered slippery morsels of dim sum and ate noisily. She told Fallon that she was an actress but hadn’t managed to make it pay. He imagined her face on a big screen, projected onto the screen by a light that suspended particles of dust in mid-air.
At some point over dinner he insulted her. She laughed it off and suggested that they go back to his room. He said it had been disgusting, the way she had fished her name badge from the toilet bowl of the plane. She removed her high-heels on the kerb and held them up to flag a cab.
They went back to his motel and noiselessly undressed each other. The blanket was scratchy and irritated his calves. She kissed him hard on the mouth and he ruminated on what it was he was doing; it was very possible that his hands were groping through the shit of his own life. He was reaching for something. They were over each other. Somewhere past this he lost it. There was an embarrassed fumbling – first from her and then him.
He felt hollowed and ashamed. He said some things he didn’t mean and Cindy skulked nakedly against the headboard. He looked towards her, at the tender folds of skin on her stomach, the rash of her thighs. He considered her to be objectively ugly and said so. She took the red dress from off the floor and disappeared into the bathroom. His mother’s ashes were on the cistern. She emerged full dressed apart from the high heels which she held in a fist. She left the room and he heard her bare feet clap on the iron stairs that led to the parking lot.
It wasn’t until the next morning that he realised the box of ashes was gone. He rummaged through the duffel until the floor was a patchwork assemblage of creased shirts and slacks. He tipped the contents of his overnight bag into the sink and with it went his wedding ring. It skittered around the porcelain before shivering down the plughole like a groundhog. There was cursing as he removed the panel from beneath the sink and began working at the nut on the P-trap. His hands were hungover and he lost his grip a few times but eventually got inside of the pipe where the smell made him retch. He dug his fingers through a black slurry and managed to fish the ring up and out of the trap. He sat back against the wall and looked into the toilet bowl.
Since his mother’s funeral Fallon had felt as though life was something that was merely happening to him. He could only submit. He had reached a point where living was mostly just not dying. The stillness was buried inside of him like an iron rod. If he jumped in the pool he would sink to the bottom. He would breathe underwater until the rapture.
about the writer
Ashleigh Davies is a writer of poetry, fiction and reviews. His work has appeared in Magma, The Interpreter's House, Poetry Wales as well as Cheval 11 and 12 (both Parthian).