Breathers (3 page)

My mouth is sewn shut.

Frequently, prior to the embalming process, the mouth is sewn shut to keep it from dropping open. A curved needle enters the nostril, comes out behind the teeth, and then goes around and around until the jaws are sutured shut. But since I think I'm still among the living, I don't understand why I can't open my mouth. So I thrash my right arm around, make a lot of grunting noises, and stagger toward an old man and his wife who run away like Olympic sprinters.

When I hear the sirens and turn to see the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's car pull into the parking lot, I think I'm finally going to get some help. When I see the white Animal
Control van pull up moments later, it occurs to me that I might be in danger. Not from them, but mountain lion sightings are common in Santa Cruz County, so I turn around, my eyes wide, wondering when this bizarre nightmare I've awoken into will end.

Confused, scared, and overloaded, I don't hear the approaching footsteps behind me. The next thing I know, I have one snare around my arms and torso, another around both legs, and a third around my throat. The Animal Control officers guide me into the back of the van, while the sheriff's deputies assure the growing crowd of onlookers that everything is under control.

I spent two days in a cage at the SPCA until my parents finally came to pick me up. The stigma of claiming your undead son and bringing him home to live with you can wreak havoc on your social status, so I can't exactly blame them for not rushing out to claim me. But one more day and I might have been a crash test dummy.

The normal holding time for a stray zombie without identification is seventy-two hours. Seven days with ID. For stray cats and dogs, it's the reverse. But without regular formaldehyde fixes, most fresh zombies start to spoil within three days.

After the requisite holding period, unclaimed zombies get turned over to the county and salvaged for body parts or sold off for medical experiments. The SPCA is working to save more of us by soliciting zombie foster volunteers and implementing a companion zombie program, but those ideas haven't caught on yet. And since the majority of SPCA funding comes from private donations earmarked for animal programs, the accommodations for zombies at the shelter are pretty limited.

My stay at the SPCA wasn't as bad as you might think,
once I got over the initial shock. They gave me a bowl of fresh water and some kibble, along with my own litter box and a few squeaky toys to chew on. They even gave me a pair of dull children's scissors to cut out the mortician's stitches so I could open my mouth.

When we got home, my parents set me up with a mattress in the wine cellar. They didn't say much. Mom cried a lot and covered her nose and mouth with a towel to keep from gagging on the smell, while my father kept asking me why I couldn't have stayed dead like a normal son.

My mother spoke to me once, asked me what I wanted. I tried to answer, but the words came out in a croak and a screech. My vocal cords were so badly damaged in the accident that I can't talk, so I have to wear a dry erase board around my neck to communicate.

While my mother at least makes a pretense of understanding how difficult this has been for me, my father complains about the smell and the stigma and the expense of supporting a zombie. He even asked me once what I intend to do with myself.

As if I have some kind of an answer. It's not like I reanimated with a five-year plan. And no one exactly prepped me on How to Be a Zombie. It's a big adjustment, harder than you might imagine. After all, I still have the same basic hopes and desires I had when I was alive, but now they're unattainable. I may as well wish for wings.

On more than one occasion I've heard my parents discussing me, with my father suggesting that I find my own place to live. Some kind of zombie shelter. I've even heard him mention the idea of sending me to a zombie zoo. My mother tries to explain that I need support and that I'm just going through a period of adjustment.

“Like puberty,” she says.

She assures me my father will come around and that if I believe in myself enough, everything will work itself out.

She says this with a straight face.

For a moment I believe her. Then I go to take a Pine-Sol bath and I look in the mirror and I see the jigsaw puzzle that was once my face and I wonder if my mother has lost her mind.

Either that or she's on Valium again.

ndy?”

It's eight thirty in the morning and I'm drinking a bottle of 1998 Chateau Montelena Cabernet Sauvignon and watching
SpongeBob SquarePants
on Nickelodeon. Occasionally I flip the channel to the two cable PBS feeds and watch
Sesame Street
or
Barney and Friends.
I'd rather watch
Leave It to Beaver
, but we don't get TV Land.

“Andy? “

I feel like I'm six years old again, staying home from school and watching TV in bed while my mom makes me Cream of Wheat with sliced bananas and cinnamon toast. Except instead of comic book hero posters spread across my wall, I have bottles of wine.

And my mother isn't making me breakfast.

And my heart is no longer pumping blood through my veins.

“Andy? “

I've been living in my parents’ wine cellar for nearly three months and my mother still calls out for me expecting an answer.

With a sigh, I turn off the television and get up from my
mattress. Dragging my left foot, I shuffle over to the stairs. At the top of the stairs, silhouetted by the light pouring in through the kitchen windows, stands my mother.

“Your father needs some help with the new disposal, honey,” she says. “Can you come up for a few minutes and give him a hand?”

“I don't need any help, Lois,” says my father from somewhere behind her. “Will you just let it be?”

“Oh nonsense,” she says. “Andy would love to give you a hand. Wouldn't you, honey?”

I stare up at my mother and blink, wondering if she lost her mind when I died in the accident or when I showed up three days later at the SPCA needing room and board.

Behind her, my father reasserts that he doesn't need my assistance, adding that he would rather not have to breathe the stench of my rotting flesh.

“It's just for a few minutes,” my mother whispers to my father, her head turned away from me. “It'll make him feel useful.”

She says this like I can't hear her.

“Well don't just stand there dawdling,” she says, turning back to me. “Come on up and help your father.”

I could try to ignore her and just stay in my room watching TV, but she'll keep calling my name over and over and over, like a chant but in a high pitch that goes up one octave on the last syllable. Even turning up the television doesn't drown her out. I've tried it before. She's relentless.

It takes me nearly two minutes to climb the fifteen steps from the wine cellar to the house. The entire time, I hear my father grumbling about how other men have normal families.

Not every corpse that reanimates moves in with his or her
parents or has a friend or relative willing to take them in. Nearly half end up homeless or in shelters, with the less fortunate getting harvested for parts and sold to medical facilities or impact testing centers. And it's rare for a spouse to take the undead back into the fold, especially if there are any Breather children. I don't know about the other states, but California's Child Protective Services frowns upon single parents who allow a zombie to live at home. And when it comes to visitation rights, the undead have zero.

After the accident, my seven-year-old daughter, Annie, went to live with my wife's sister in Monterey. As far as Annie knows, I'm dead. But during the first few weeks after I reanimated, I would call my sister-in-law's place every day, hoping Annie would answer the phone just so I could hear her voice, until her aunt and uncle got an unlisted phone number.

I wrote several letters to Annie but the letters never made it out of the house. Mom and Dad confiscated and destroyed the first letter when I asked for a stamp. The second letter vanished from under my mattress while I was soaking in Pine-Sol. The rest got intercepted at different points along the path to Annie before ever getting stamped with a postmark.

After a couple of months, I gave up. Eventually, I decided my parents were probably acting in the best interests of my daughter. As much as I miss Annie and wish I could see her again, I don't think it'd be a good idea. Knowing that her father is a zombie might not be something she's ready or able to accept. Besides, I don't want her to remember me this way. And I don't exactly think she'd want to take me to any father-daughter picnics.

Show and tell, maybe.

When I reach the top of the stairs and step into the kitchen, my mother sprays me with a can of Glade Neutralizer
fragrance, circling around and covering me from head to toe, emptying the last of the can in my hair. My parents buy Glade in bulk. Mom prefers the Neutralizer fragrance because it works directly toward the source of the odor. I'm partial to Lilac Spring, though Tropical Mist has a nice, fruity scent.

My father is on his back under the kitchen sink, his head and upper torso inside the cabinet. Several wrenches, screwdrivers, a can of WD-40, and assorted tools lay on the floor around him. A brand new garbage disposal sits on the counter next to the sink.

“Harry,” my mother says. “Andy's here to help.”

“I don't need any goddamned help,” he says, straining to loosen a bolt on the old garbage disposal.

“Oh nonsense,” says my mother. “You've been under that sink for over an hour already. Of course you need help.”

My father could probably pay a plumber and have the disposal fixed in under an hour. Instead, he'd rather spend three hours growing frustrated and swearing at inanimate objects so he can save one hundred and twenty dollars. After all, he is a de facto expert.

“Lois,” my father says, going after the bolt again. “I'm going to say this one last time. I don't … need … any … help.”

The wrench slips and my father's hand smashes against something hard and metal.

My father slides out from under the sink, holding his right hand and reeling off a string of profanities that would make me blush if I still had any blood in my cheeks. He storms out of the kitchen, making sure to give me a wide berth and holding his breath while avoiding eye contact.

“Don't mind your father,” my mother says, walking over to the oven as the timer goes off. “He's just in a mood.”

My father's been in a mood ever since I came home.

My mother removes a cookie sheet filled with Pillsbury cinnamon rolls from the oven and sets it on the counter, then grabs a knife and starts to slather the cinnamon rolls with the prepackaged icing.

There are a lot of things I miss about being alive:

Going out to the movies with Rachel.

Watching Annie play soccer.

Sitting around a beach bonfire without having to wonder if someone's going to try to throw me into it.

And sometimes, I miss food.

It's not that I don't eat. I eat all the time. But one of the major drawbacks of being a zombie, aside from the decomposing flesh and the absence of civil rights and the children who scream at the sight of you, is that food has lost most of its flavor. Everything tastes unseasoned, unsweetened, watered down. Even the wine I drink I can't appreciate. And I don't get drunk. You need a functioning circulatory system for that. So mostly I eat out of habit or boredom, with perfunctory pleasure and no definitive memory of how anything is supposed to taste.

But as I watch my mother spread icing across the cinnamon rolls, I'm overcome with nostalgia. It's like thirty years have been wiped away in an instant and I'm sitting at the breakfast table, my stockinged feet dangling above the floor, a mug of steaming hot chocolate in front of me as I wait in anticipation for my mother to finish icing the cinnamon rolls.

I want to tell my mother that I love her but I can't. I want to give her a hug but I don't because I'm afraid she might scream. Or else open up another can of Glade on me.

Sometimes I feel guilty about what I've put my parents through, but it's not like I've done this on purpose. Still, I appreciate what they've done for me, all that they've sacrificed.
They could have left me at the SPCA. I guess that just proves that you never stop being a parent, even after your son comes back from the dead.