The Birthday Suit

It was a plastic face; too smooth on the exterior, and too hard beneath. The familiarity was there, but something was off in ways that were difficult to make sense of. Rachel didn’t feel sad for this man because this man wasn’t real; this corporeal sham was explicitly crafted for the conspiracy. A conspiracy by whom? And to what end? Rachel did not know. But whether nefarious or in humor much darker than she could appreciate, this thing lying in a box in front of her was not her father.

Her mother sobbed and moved down the line, but Rachel stayed where she was, pretending to say her goodbyes. She searched the face, and then looked at the hands; whoever had created this masterpiece got every line in its face perfectly etched, every freckle (even the ones on his knuckles) shaded and dotted with uncanny accuracy. But still, there was something off; it was him, but it wasn’t.

Is it his lips? thought Rachel. Or the bridge of his nose?

She put her hand inside the casket and touched its face. It was cold, but not as cold as she would have expected. On television, corpses were made to be as cold as ice, but whether this was true or not, Rachel could not say, but she knew (did she know?) that this body wasn’t organic. She placed her hand up its shirt, running her fingers up and down the length of the torso.

“Rachel, what are you doing?” asked her grandma (her father’s mother.)

In Rachel’s head played a song. It was one that her father used to sing as he did his chores at night.

Everybody’s talkin’ at me, I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’, only the echoes of my mind…

“Rachel, stop that,” said her mother, confounded by her daughter’s actions.

…in the pouring rain…

Hello, Rachel. We’re going to have a little chat, but I want you to know that everything you say here today is between us. So be honest, and that’s how we’ll make the most progress. Sound good? Ok then, how did this all start? 

It seemed unfair to Rachel that the birds should still chirp, and that the leaf blowers should still moan; her father was dead. She sat on her bedroom floor, metal bars and thick screws scattered about, an instruction pamphlet on assembling a futon bed in her hands. It was all unfair—her mother had said that this bed was her birthday present, but even though she had asked for a new futon earlier in the year, the intentions of this purchase had little to do with her request; the futon was not for her, it was for her grandparents to sleep on while in California, attending their son’s funeral. And who gets a futon as a birthday gift anyway? Rachel thought. And tomorrow—as an added birthday surprise?—she was invited to pick out the casket that her father would span between now and eternity in. In Rachel’s mind, she saw a hexagonal present wrapped with the pouncing kitten paper that her mother, unaware of the impending tragedy, had purchased to cover her birthday gifts. On top of the neatly wrapped box was a red bow, and inside the box, a decomposing body.

And so the next day, at the funeral home, in the burial showroom, Rachel and her mother were greeted by a man wearing a stiff brown suit, whose face seemed full of gravity but without a hint of moroseness. This man, who dealt in the accessories of death, sold the burial packages with a skillful detachment, which made Rachel angry. All should weep; her father was dead. 

The man in the brown suit walked them through the casket room, his hard shoes echoing a dirge. Almost immediately, Rachel’s mother became overwhelmed with grief, pointing to a blue coffin that looked to Rachel like it had originally housed a pair of loafers. 

“That one—it doesn’t matter! He’s gone!”

And so her father was given the least expensive coffin for his final resting bed. 

Rachel agreed with this decision, because her father wouldn’t have wanted them to spend money on a fancy coffin, and not because he was particularly frugal, more that he didn’t believe a body was worth much after it had stopped working. But Rachel couldn’t help imagining what that coffin might look like in 5 years time, ten years, twenty. In her mind was an image of a wet shoe box in a garden, a dead pet poking through the deteriorating cardboard.

So, what first made you think your father might still be alive? 

The room was large because there were many people to accommodate, and they didn’t want a scene in the halls. The chairs were grey, a soft grey, a grey that was meant to be serious but also comforting, which it wasn’t. Rachel looked at the faces of the people who sat around the rectangle conference table; the doctor was at the head, her mother to the left, and then after that, a collection of characters who thought they were being supportive, but really, they were imposing and unhelpful. 

The doctor began to cry.

Chin up, kid, thought Rachel. We’ll get em’ next time. But then, after that millisecond of cheekiness, the implications of what those tears meant hit her in the gut, and when she looked at her mother’s face, twisted in anguish and denial, she knew the score. Her father didn’t make it. 

But then, who saw him. Who saw his body there, dead. In her mind, Rachel considered this, turning it over and over within her head, always coming up with the same answer: nobody saw him—and so, was she, were they, meant to just take the word of this doctor? 

Before surgery had begun, they told Rachel that her dad was in no state for a visit, the drugs had already kicked in, but her mother offered to deliver him a note. So she handed her mother a crudely scribbled platitude on a torn sheet of paper. 

“Did he read my note?” Rachel asked of her mother later that evening. 

“Yes, he read it. I think he understood it.” 

I’m sorry, but I’m still unsure what led you to believe with such confidence that the body at the funeral was not your father. Was it because you didn’t see him at the hospital? Or was it because of something else? 

“Rachel, wake up,” said her father. 

He had been drinking, and when he was drunk, he couldn’t resist waking up his little girl to tell her all of the things that his sober self could not: all about how his world was nothing without her, all about how the first time he saw her face he cried, it was that beautiful, and about how he had known right there and then that life was finally upon him, and that his role in the story of the universe was now clearly defined. “Wake up. I need to tell you something.” 

“Dad, can we just talk tomorrow?” 

“This will only take a second, Rach.” 

“Ok, what?” 

“I want you to know that I will always be around no matter what happens. You might not see me, but I’ll be there.” 

“What are you talking about?” said Rachel, wiping her tired eyes with the back of her hand. 

“I’m just saying that I will always be here with you.” 

The nightlight made her father’s cheeks glow, and she could see the wetness beneath his eyes. He reached out, cupped her face, told Rachel that he loved her more than the stars, and then unsteadily left the room. 

When Rachel brought it up at breakfast the next day, her father and mother had laughed. 

“No more vodka for you!” her mother had said to her father. 

When your father told you that he would never leave you, did you think that he was being literal? 

It was not a zipper; they were buttons, which surprised Rachel, zippers seeming like the more obvious clasp one should use to seal a fake body. She flicked her index finger at the first button, which was located just below its rib cage. The chest expanded.  

“Dear God, Rachel, stop this immediately!” said her mother, pulling her daughter’s arms away from the corpse. But what was that muddled yelling behind the song playing in Rachel’s head, she didn’t know, so she focused harder on the lyrics—

Everybody’s talkin’ at me, I don’t hear a word they’re sayin’, only the echoes of my mind…

Rachel flicked the second snap, and the torso expanded even more, its barrel chest pushing against the blazer like the lace fat on a sausage. Now she felt her family and friends pulling at her, the world pulling at her, trying to prevent her from ruining it all—but she felt vindicated, and that feeling of vindication granted her enough strength to flick the final snap. 

And the blazer popped. 

And the body ripped open. 

Rachel reached inside the vessel and pulled from it a handful of mewing kittens. There were five—no, six!—kittens of all colors (tuxedos, gingers, grey tabbies, calicos, black, white) suspended over the hollow chest of her dad’s lookalike; their little legs extended, paws splayed and looking for purchase. Rachel turned around to face her family and friends. 

“This has been the best birthday. Thank you all for this wonderful surprise!” said Rachel.