Footstone
by Emily Costa
The lady at the door asked us what we needed help with. My uncle was trying to explain. “We need some kind of grave marker,” he said, “not a headstone, there’s already a headstone.”
“So a footstone?”
“No, there’s already a footstone.”
We were in what I guess was the reception area. It had a TV playing a show where people go see a doctor about getting cysts extracted. Near the TV was a little dog bed with toys but no dog. The lady was getting kind of mad. She coughed into her arm, her silver bracelets jangling. “Well why don’t you just describe what you’re looking for,” she said.
My uncle started explaining that my dad was cremated, and that we knew you could bury cremains on top of already buried people. Up to two cremains, I think, per coffin burial. In this case, my dad was being buried on top of his mom, their mom. We needed something saying my dad was under there, too.
“So a footstone?” she said. “What you’re asking for is a footstone.”
“But there’s already—yeah, okay, a footstone. Another footstone.”
Molly and I were quiet. We were trying to breathe because the stone place smelled like people had been smoking inside of it for sixty years. Our masks weren’t filtering anything. Our tongues tasted of ash.
The lady brought us through all the headstones. They were on display like a maze, barely enough space to walk through. I was scared I’d bump one and domino them, but I guess they’re too heavy for that. She showed us the rows of footstones on the wall and said to pick one and then went somewhere in the back. I figured it was to go smoke.
We stood in front of the wall of stones. I was reading the fake names. They were all Italian or Irish or Polish. That’s the kind of city we’re from. This is the kind of store they have in the city we’re from.
“I hate this woman,” my uncle said. We agreed.
“Look,” Molly said. She pointed to a footstone with Goofy on it.
“Oh, God,” I said. “Goofy died.” We were trying not to laugh. We kept pointing and trying not to laugh at things, because we were so sad and we didn’t know how to show it. We couldn’t cry every second. Then nothing would get done. I had been at the funeral home with my uncle the day before. They were trying to upsell us on everything. They said we needed thank you cards and prayer cards and a big fancy book for people to sign. “But there’s no service,” we said. “It’s virtual.” They still thought maybe we could use the cards.
“I like the one with the book,” I said, pointing to a stone on the wall.
“Yeah,” Molly said. “Dad would like that.” My dad wrote a lot, had self-published two books. He was always telling me to self-publish but I said no. I needed someone else to tell me I was good.
The woman came back. My uncle said, “We like this one with the book.”
“Where’s he getting buried?”
“Calvary,” he said.
“Okay, then the stone’s gotta have a cross somewhere on it.”
An old woman came out of the back with no mask on carrying a Styrofoam plate full of some wet-looking salad.
“Okay,” we said.
“Here’s a book of more choices,” she said. It had laminated pages. “You need to figure out what you want it to say, too.” She cleared her throat and went off in the back again.
We looked through the book. There were a lot of really sad ones for children. Some had sports teams. I hoped when I died someone wouldn’t boil down my essence to “she liked this sports team,” but I guess I don’t have a say in it. My dad certainly wasn’t getting a say.
We picked a stone with a book and a tiny cross. We picked Frank Sinatra lyrics. It seemed like a good thing to do, the right thing. The lyrics were about music but also about things ending. My dad played piano and guitar and accordion. He made cassette tapes of his keyboard songs and made us listen to them in the car. He also made us listen to the Jerky Boys, which I liked.
When the lady came back, we gave her our selection. She brought it over to this old, old man behind a giant computer monitor. None of us had even noticed he was there because he was kind of behind the headstones. He was playing computer Mahjong. He was also eating the wet salad.
We waited as he typed a mock-up. It took three hundred years. We could see him type every letter because the monitor was so big. We started looking around while we waited and noticed there was this forest theme in the place. The beams holding up the ceiling were sponge-painted brown to look like tree trunks. There was a fake squirrel attached to one.
“I gotta get out of here,” my uncle said.
When the lady brought us back the mock-up, we decided we needed the fonts changed. The lady huffed away back to the old man. I didn’t feel bad we were making her redo it, even though normally I would. Even on the second redo, I didn’t feel bad.
She brought us to her desk. There were only two chairs but my uncle told us to take them. We sat, sunk in. The lady had me sign stuff even though my uncle paid. I had to sign a lot of things those first few days, which I guess you do when you’re the oldest child.
She had to do some calculations, had to fill out forms. She yelled, “What’s the plot number for these people?” She was yelling to the old woman who was eating salad and watching the cyst show. The woman yelled back the plot number, which she must’ve looked up earlier, although I kind of hoped she’d been working there so long she’d memorized the cemetery.
We got up to leave, to go out into the clean air. “They’ll put it in when the ground softens,” the woman said. “In the spring.”
I started thinking about the spring, how maybe by then it all wouldn’t hurt so bad. I pictured myself walking around outside, the sun warming me. Something softening. Something thawing out.
Emily Costa teaches freshmen at Southern Connecticut State University, where she received her MFA. Her work can be found in Hobart, Barrelhouse, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Atticus Review, and elsewhere. You can follow her on twitter @emilylauracosta.
