body interest

by Carolyn Bennett

Crystal grinned. She couldn’t help herself. She pulled into the quarter full parking lot of the International Conference Centre near the airport in her new used Toyota Highlander.  Once inside the massive building, Crystal presented her ticket to a greeter at Exhibit Hall 4.  DeVry University's Gross Human Anatomy Lab presents: Body Interest. She slipped the ticket stub into the pocket of her new second hand Burberry trench coat and beamed. She'd add the stub in her scrapbook as a souvenir. She almost skipped as she entered the exhibition, excited yet repulsed to be seeing her mom.

Six months earlier to the day, cruising on Fenmar Drive while searching for Body Interest Inc, Crystal’s mom Sharon glimpsed at herself in the rear view mirror. At 63 she still looked good in spite of it all, could still turn heads at the gas station, could still get propositioned pumping diesel. She had let grey hair grow in and a striking silver wave framed her face. Just like a movie star.  Her skin like tapioca, her blue eyes radiating candour, Sharon figured she’d be a shoo-in. The one qualm she had about her appearance were her lip lines from years of smoking. She quit almost five years ago, went to the smoking cessation workshops at the hospital, but the cancer thought it would return. Nevertheless, she smacked her lips together, admiring the scarlet lipstick shade giving her pizzazz. Lightheaded, she searched the stretch of industrial park.  "Where are we? What does Google say?"

Crystal tapped her smartphone. "Oh, this thing is so useless. We're coming up to Toryork. I thought you said it was on Atomic?"

"Atomic is where the formaldehyde lab is. Toryork is the head office."

“I want you to know I think this is stupid. I know you feel like this is your last shot, but come on.”

“I don’t feel like this is my last shot. Don’t be an idiot.”

“Didn’t you say the other night that you could’ve been Miss International Plowing Match Ontario, but that you came down with mono and missed the finals?”

“What has one got to do with the other?”

Crystal smirked. She glanced at her own face in the rear view mirror, her nose bulbous, her face ruddy.  She scrounged through her purse, pulled out mascara and attempted to brush her lashes as the car lurched.     

"He's not gonna be looking at you, you know,”  said Sharon.

“Can I just –”

Sharon slammed on the brakes, which caused Crystal to stab her eye with the mascara wand. “-- fuck! Ma!”

They wheeled into a parking lot and stopped in front of a directory sign.  Midway down the business names, in between AJ Towing and Darak Pallet, was Body Interest Inc. Sharon turned to Crystal. "How do I look?"

“I don't know. Fine."

"You can take the bus home if you want. Why did you want to come anyway? Why did you take a day off work? It’s not like you can afford it?”

Crystal made a fist. Because I believe we love each other. “To see this for myself.” 

A receptionist took Sharon's completed forms, eyed Crystal, and walked them down a long corridor, small windowless offices on either side.  Crystal glanced in an office and saw a young woman at a computer, a poster of a skinned child riding a tricycle behind her. The receptionist led them to a row of folding chairs and told them to have a seat. They faced a wall lined with posters of anatomical hearts, pinkish bags bulging with veins, arteries, networks of webs of arterioles and capillaries. Sharon smiled and elbowed Crystal in the ribs "Look. The human heart. All spaghetti squash-like.  She pointed at a heart dissected down the middle. "Ladle on some tomato sauce, sprinkle it with Parmesan, and that's a tasty meal."

Crystal sighed. This woman gestated her for nine odd months, squeezed her out of her vagina, kept her fed, watered and sheltered for 26 years, but the jolts kept coming. Who is this person?

Sharon. This person is Sharon. Her mother.

Her mother had an annoying habit of flipping through TV channels, especially during a show Crystal enjoyed. Every Saturday night though, at ten o'clock on the dot, Sharon would halt the incessant flipping and tune in for her favourite true crime series. One particularly doleful night, Crystal noticed her mother's enthusiastic expression and thought she'd ask. "Why do you like these shows so much?"

Gleeful, Sharon responded. "Because it lets you see into the mind of killers!" Crystal had to look away. She clutched the popcorn bowl, wishing she hadn't turned down her friend's suggestion of doing shooters at the Eton House.

They both startled at a heavy door opening.  From it emerged a short, weedy looking man of about 70, jowly, with piercing dark eyes. He wore khakis, a blue shirt and a fedora. He extended a hand.

"Which one of you lovely ladies is Sharon?"

Crystal shot a sharp glance at her mother.

"That would be me," she said, rising from her chair, coughing into her hand and shaking his. “Are you Wilhelm?"

Wilhelm. Crystal rolled her eyes.

He led them into his office, a neat, compact room with a window that looked out onto a car on a hoist. They could hear a mechanic swearing loudly. Wilhelm lowered blinds on the tableau.

"Is that auto shop part of your business?" asked Crystal.

"What? That?”

She observed his delicate wrists, a stainless-steel watch with a prominent face fastened on his right. She made a mental note to remember its features and look it up on Instagram. It could be a Breitling, or it could be a Timex. And it could make a difference if she had to launch a lawsuit for any reason.

"So," said Sharon.

"Where are my manners? Please. Sit."

Wilhelm laid her documents out on his desk. "First of all, I want to thank you for thinking of Body Interest. How did you find out about us?"

"On Facebook. Your ad came up on my feed. I thought that's different, so I looked up your website and read about your mission and values."

"Education through plastination.”

"Sure. And it’s a show.”

"Everything seems to be in order here.” He shuffled the papers and looked up at Sharon. His eyes brightened. He came around the desk and leaned on it. Crystal crossed her feet and tucked them under her chair.

"I must say, it's not often we have a woman of your, dare I say, beauty, willing to offer her body to our organization. Usually, we have to ask governments if they have any executed criminals they wish to dispatch." He looked at Crystal. "Is this your sister?"

Sharon guffawed. "No."

“What governments?” asked Crystal.

“Governments that don't have the same kind of rights and freedoms we have in Canada. Nothing to concern yourself about,” Wilhelm assured. “So. You have questions?”

"Yes. Is my mother able to change her mind once she signs?"

"Of course. There’s a cooling-off period.”

Crystal shrugged. "Do you see a lot of donor remorse?"

"Actually, no. They're dead, and the governments involved are compensated accordingly."

Compensated?" Sharon’s eyes flickered.

"Compensated?" Crystal looked over at her mother.

Wilhelm pointed to a framed photograph hanging on the wall. "That's me in 2015 with Li Nigshen, a functionary of the Chinese Communist party. A nice man." Then he turned to them, becoming serious. "I will confide in you. Many people don't like what we do. I've been called a ghoul, a vulture. A sick man, even. Yes, I was sick, sick as a child with a rare blood disorder.  But I carried on because I believed in preserving corpses for public display. Why? That is a good question. Why corpses as sculptures, in specific? Because when a school group comes to an exhibition and sees a human body dissected, its anatomical systems exposed, they love it! The kids grasp our complexity.  Where is the soul housed?" He tapped his head. "It could be here, or –" he tapped his chest, "here, or –" he tapped his knee, "-- here. So, I commend you for allowing us to exhibit your dead body for educational purposes."

"Wait." Sharon raised her hand. "Whoa. Compensation? What – do you mean money?”

He rotated his wrists and cracked his knuckles, avoiding her gaze. "We recently changed our policy. Now we're offering financial incentives to mitigate any bad press. This way there's no doubt about consent. Our investors have doubled their interest. You'd be surprised how competitive the human cadaver exhibition ecosystem is now. You did read the consent forms?"

Sharon sat back in her chair, her eyes fixed and pensive.

"Can I just take a quick gander at them? Crystal wiped away drool that had burbled. “I’m her daughter.”

Wilhelm slid the papers toward Crystal. She sifted through them, until she came to the section Beneficiary Allocation. Under a small stain was her name and her mother's signature and initials. She covered her mouth with her hand to hide a smile. "Yes, everything seems to be in order here."

"I don't want any money to donate my body," Sharon said.

"You don't?" ask Wilhelm.

"No. I thought I'd be donating my body. You know, like how people donate blood, like an act of whatchamacallit.”

“You signed, madame."

"Yeah well, who reads what they sign anyway."

Crystal’s throat tightened, the words caught her gullet. You signed!

"Just out of curiosity, when would I get compensated? Now?”

"Upon collection of the body,” said Wilhelm, pointing at Sharon’s torso.

“My mother’s dead body?” asked Crystal.

“Correct.”

“Over my dead body,” Sharon said.

Wilhelm smiled. “Correct.” He stood and moved over to the door. "We have a ten-day cooling-off period. After that, you're legally obliged to honour the agreement. Of course, you can always involve your lawyers and sue to renege, but that's neither here nor there." He opened the door. "Why not think about it. The payment is really only an honorarium. Ten thousand dollars."

“What?” cried Crystal.

Sharon stood up and wheezed. "Question. Do I get a choice of what pose my corpse will be in? Can I play tennis? I always wanted to play tennis. Grace Kelly played tennis.”

Wilhelm tipped his fedora. "Your wishes will be taken into consideration."

"Another question. Will I have a description letting people know who I am, or was? You know, the way they have them in art galleries that tells you what the painting is supposed to mean?"

"You mean a biographical placard?"

"Yeah. Information about me. My name, where I lived. My likes and dislikes. What I did for a living. Did I have any pets? That sort of thing."

He pushed the door open some more, until the doorknob hit the wall. "No. We don't identify individuals per se."

Sharon turned to Crystal, who was still seated, wearing an odd expression. "Let's go. I need to think about this."

Crystal rose from her seat and followed her mother. As Sharon went to leave, Wilhelm stepped in front of her. "Do you mind if I touch you?"

"Depends where."

"Your face."

"Make it quick.”

He held her chin with one hand and caressed her cheek with the other. "You’re magnificent. Oh, what lies beneath. What engineering! I would like your body very much.” He let his finger go from her face. Sharon coughed, barking into the air.

Four days later, Sharon still ranted about Wilhelm and Body Interest.

"That guy was full of shit. You know who he reminds me of? Your father.” She stood up and stretched her lower back. Along the sides of the small, narrow backyard, perennials had broken through the soil: chives, tulips, crocuses and daffodils, a haphazard border on the patchy lawn. Crystal sat cross-legged on the dilapidated deck, drinking diet coke and absently spilling potting soil in a clay pot.

“Don’t waste the soil! That’s the last of it,” Sharon snapped. Peanut, their thirteen year old cockapoo, yapped behind the kitchen screen door.

“He wasn’t full of shit,” Crystal insisted.  “He said you were an engineering marvel.”

“Peanut! No barking!” Sharon rasped. She twisted a plastic shopping bag containing weeds. “Does this go in recycling or yard waste? Ah, fuck it, I’ll put it in the garbage.”

"I thought you wanted to educate people?"

"You said I was nuts for wanting to be in a dead meat freak show. Someone can't make up her mind."

Crystal wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth. She was ready to erupt over the years of contrary messaging, the putdowns, the missed opportunities to better their situation.  She stopped mid-rock and said it, as matter-of-factly as her rushing emotion would allow. “I think you’re being selfish for not donating your body, like you said you would.”

"Pardon me?"

Crystal clamped her jaw to damn vitriol. She shook her head and took a sip of cola. “Nothing.”

Sharon grabbed a ratty lawn chair and plopped down. “Listen. I'm not a prostitute."

Crystal threw up her hands. "What are you talking about? You'll be dead! You're not a sex worker."

"He wants to pay for my body. In all my years I swore I'd never go that route. I could have. The pervs at the corner were always propositioning me when I was a teenager, but I said no.”

“Well, what do you think modelling is?”

“That’s different. My mother paid for all my dance classes and poise classes. Back then being on display meant something. It was a higher calling.” Sharon coughed long and hard. Crystal looked at her mother with a mix of pity and disgust. Sharon pulled a tissue from her apron and turned away to cough and expel bloody mucus.

Helpless, Crystal clasped her hands. “Mom. Are you okay? Do we need to take you to the hospital?”

Sharon shook. “Where’s the basil?”  

Crystal let her mother change the subject. “All right. Fine. Have it your way.  It’s right here. I am putting the basil in the pot as we speak.” Crystal dug a hole in the container and transplanted the seedling. “See. Look.” After a minute, Crystal tried again. “I think Wilhelm’s into you.”   

“Come on! He’s into everyone.” Sharon huffed. “I bet he uses those cornball lines on all his female patients, or whatever we are. Are you my sister? Malarkey. And touching my face like we’re characters in a soap opera. I should have kicked him in the balls.”

“I think he meant it. I think he likes you.”

Sharon waved Crystal off. She went to stand but felt too winded. She sat, trying to catch her breath. “Damn allergies.”

Crystal’s gut clenched, but she didn’t say anything further. There was no point in trying to cajole her mother into sharing her fears or wishes. Instead, she moved the clay pot to the edge of the deck, the little basil seedling depressed in the middle of the soil. “See? Done.”

Sharon examined the pot, then took in her daughter’s limp brown hair, her thick fingers wrapped around the diet coke bottle, frustration in her dilated pupils. She felt breath stagnant in her chest. “Good. You did good.”

A moment later, Crystal uttered. “Why? Why do you make everything so hard?”

“What the fuck is it? Eh? Can’t you wait?

“Wait for what?” Crystal felt a surge of guilt.  

Sharon lowered her head and focused on the dirt. “Just, wait.”

Crystal kicked the comforter off her legs, the small bedroom already trapping mid-spring heat. The air felt prickly. In another month she'd have to install the air conditioner in the window, a loud irritating noise roaring from it. At least it drowned out the trains that rumbled behind their house. Mr. and Mrs. Pastelero had sold their bungalow across the street two years ago, the house torn down for a three-storey glass and wood beauty, grey stucco and brick exterior au courant. If she and her mother moved, their little wooden cottage would be bulldozed the minute the last Corningware serving dish was out. Maybe that’s why her mother was so reluctant to sell.  Would she even see a penny from a house sale? Crystal wouldn’t put it past her mother to fuck her over. Her mother. Sharon. A wildcard. Lately, Crystal kept vigil for her lost potential. Her regrets glowed in the dark. Why didn’t she go for that job at the Bay, instead of hanging back at Freshco, her shifts at the checkout counter secure but wearying. Maybe she could have had a nominal employee discount at the Bay too, she could have been able to buy some Dior or Chanel products. She imagined her cousin Melissa purchasing face cream from a dewy, lithe, raven-haired young woman, the woman opening a small pink jar and Melissa dipping a fingertip into the rose-scented moisturizer and dabbing it on her flat cheeks. Melissa, her cousin on her mother’s side, a real keener. Went back to school and took courses in Information Technology. Crystal hated when her mother would hold Melissa up as a paradigm of ambition and hard work. She felt like throwing it back in her mother’s face, how selling Avon products part-time until she had to get a full-time job at a gas station at 55 when the divorce from her father went through wasn’t exactly an inspiration. Crystal pressed her fingertips under her eyebrows to quell the thoughts, but they came. I hate you. I love you. I have to. She wanted to move out of the house, but where would she pay the $650 in rent that she forked over to her mother? Sadly, she had the best deal in town.

She decided to get up and pee. Shuffling down the narrow hall to the bathroom, she looked in her mother’s bedroom, and at Sharon on her back in the double bed, mouth open and snoring. A television on a dresser flickered, light strobing on boxes and clutter in the room. Crystal considered the scrawny, slurping woman in the bed, the woman she blamed for her own disappointing existence. Head propped up on pillows, slack-jawed and gurgling, her mother was a hindrance. So many pillows. One big down-filled pillow in particular.  She’d seen it on TV, on Sharon’s favourite show. A killer smothers a sleeper. A trope, but a trope for a reason? She could fight Sharon off, she could climb on top of her and use her full body weight to pin her mother down.  How long would it take? Five minutes?

Sharon let out a loud snore and opened her eyes. “Crystal?”

She scurried to the bathroom and flicked on the light switch to see globs of bloody mucus streaking the sink. She stared at the rusty gelatin and imagined it was blood from stabbing Sharon –  take that for all your insults, take that for your cruelty, take that and that and that. She ran the tap and wiped the slime down the drain. Her mother was very ill, a leaking apparatus. No point in even fantasizing about killing her.

She crept back to her bedroom and almost made it past her mother's room when Sharon whispered hoarsely. "Crystal?"

She stood in the bedroom doorway. "What?"

Her mother wheezed.  “I’ll do it. I didn’t take those poise lessons for nothing.”

Five days later, when the ER doctor told them to go home, that there was nothing more to be done, Crystal understood. Sharon twiddled the script for morphine. "This again."

"You should have said something."

"You should have noticed."

“Of course I noticed. You should have talked to me. Got it out in the open.”

Sharon leaned against a wall in the emergency waiting room and caught her breath. She looked down at her shoes. “I love you baby girl. That’s why I didn’t dwell on things. Don’t ask me to explain myself.”

Crystal cried herself to sleep that night. So many years of acrimony and being held at arm's length. Why? She wanted nothing more than to crawl in bed beside her momma and hold her thin, rattling body, always cold to her.  

She weaved her way through displays of plastinated human bodies drained of their fat and water, organized creatively to show different anatomical systems. She saw kids gathered around a cadaver wearing skis and crouching as if plunging downhill; heart, eyes and other bits flung forward and connected to the body by a network of tendons. The kids and their educators gasped and squirmed.

She overheard one educator say to another, "I can't decide whether this is fascinating or lurid." She noted another display that featured skinned poker players around a table, bellies protruding and revealing livers, intestines, stomachs and other organs. A middle-aged man and an attractive younger woman stared at the exhibit. He went to hold her hand and she recoiled.

Crystal meandered through the plastinated corpses propped to do various chores; a dissected body ironing, a human walking a dog, both with skin peeled back, their skeletal systems bright under accent lights, a corpse with eyes popping from its skull sitting in a chair watching TV. Crystal held her breath when she saw the sign for the respiratory gallery. She entered the softly lit space with reverence.

The gallery had two aisles of display cases. A focal point against the far wall exhibited a tangle of red and blue threads encircling the respiratory system, from the nose and nasal cavities, down through the trachea and to the lungs. It glowed from within, lit to amaze. To the left and right of the flesh sculptures on grey pedestals were copies of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Reflexively, Crystal crossed herself.

Inching toward a showcase, she held her breath and looked down at the three human lungs spaced a few feet apart; the lungs on the left like a piece of marble, flecked with dust particles, but otherwise a gleaming light pink; the lungs on the right sliced open, revealed a large tumour. Crystal's eyes began to water as she gazed at the middle lungs, two oversized pieces of charcoal, ready to crumble to ash. She touched the display glass and ran her finger over it. She read the accompanying information. These are the lungs of a 63-year-old smoker. Note the enlarged alveoli and the morbid grey-black color of the lungs.

She sighed and wiped away tears. She glanced around to make sure no one was near. She unzipped the new leather purse, pulled out a sheet of loose-leaf paper, and quickly taped it on the side of the display case. It read:  Sharon Foster. Mom, friend, sister, dog lover. Cashier at Gaz-To-Go. Free spirit.

A bearded man in shorts and a t-shirt came into the gallery, slowly making his way over to the lung exhibit. Crystal wiped her eyes again with the back of her hand and sniffed. He stood to her left and glanced down at the display. She couldn't help herself. "That's my mom," she said, pointing to the lung in the middle.

Photo of Carolyn Bennett

BIO: Writer and comedian Carolyn Bennett has written for television, film, radio, theatre, web, and inanimate objects in her office. Her debut novel, Please Stand By was released by Vancouver's NON Publishing in October 2019. She is at work on a collection of short stories, for which she received a 2020 writing grant from the City of Toronto. She produces and hosts the literary reading series Bright Lit Big City in Toronto. She is an alumni of the Toronto International Film Festival Writers’ Studio, and won the inaugural Jury Prize for screenwriting. She is a freelancer for the Toronto Star, Canadian Immigrant Magazine, The Fishwrapper, and the Montreal Gazette among other publication. She divides her time between Toronto and Brockville, Ontario. She was never very good at division. www.carolynbennettwritercomic.com