My father told a story about some forensic pathologist friends of his. Why he had many forensic pathologists as friends is another story, but the reason can be inferred by people good at making educated guesses. Some of these pathologists were medical examiners.
Number one. He said they were always together, like bananas. Every one of them wore glasses, except for Martin, who claimed that his vision was still 20/20.
“And he was the oldest of the lot of them,” my father said.
Number two. He said they would tell him stories about dead people and that they had a particular interest in the way dead people looked when dead. Not as they were cleaned up on the slabs of their laboratories or as cadavers, but as people who were found dead, as in the man who’d been found on the pier with a fishing poll glued in his fists or the child pulled out of a chimney or the woman who’d been found at the edge of the lake wearing a Sox cap and shoes a few sizes too big for her feet.
“We’d have beers,” my father said, “and before long Martin and company would be on the subject of the dead and the certain, curious looks that dead people have on their faces when either examined at the scene, observed in photographs, or packaged up and brought to their offices.
“One of the cases was particularly troubling,” my father said. “We’d had beers and Jerome brought up the case of a woman who’d been found in the middle of a downtown street at 5:31 AM by some college kids. Reportedly, the morning had been quiet and the night before was nothing out of the ordinary. Neither the month nor the year was extraordinary. Remember that some years are special for phenomenon, the year, for example, of the big downturn, when death was at a spike. Some months are especially interesting, such as December.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Don’t give me any ‘maybes.’ But in this case, according to Jerome, there was nothing odd, out of the ordinary, or strange to expect of the morning at 5:30 AM sharp, except that the body of the young woman had been found by the college students in the middle of a downtown street. The body, according to Jerome, was in a gentle supine state, what you’d expect of someone who’d lain on a very comfortable bed or couch, but in this case completely clothed. The clothes were significant, as on a living person they would’ve been perfectly fine, but on a young woman found dead in the middle of a downtown street they became the stuff of elaborate mystery and thick multi-chapter novels. A beige sweater, pleated skirt, brown shoes, pretty much the stuff of average garb, according to Jerome. But they were arranged as if this was all normal or made to appear so, the shoes un-scuffed, the sweater buttoned and pristine, according to Jerome.
“The conversation, however, focused on the woman’s smile. The college students swore that they’d disturbed nothing, hadn’t moved or touched the body or in any other way discomposed the scene. Jerome said that the woman had the smile of someone expecting a lover to step down from the train or waiting for the approach of a beloved pet or . . . the way he put it or as he sought accuracy, he came up with this one: that she looked like someone who has raised her face into a pleasant breeze while watching the stars or a meteor shower. This dead body, this woman, this young woman, Jerome said, had such a pleasant and beautiful look on her face, that the police, emergency personal, and yes, Jerome himself, couldn’t get the young woman out of their minds, that she stayed with them. She, soft on that hard cold place downtown, the back of her hair soiled by the road surface, the dew collecting on the ridges, seams, and edges of her sweater, skirt, and eye lashes. And yet, smiling, smiling as if offering some message of wonderful after life to come. Or, smiling as if what had done this to her had been a pleasant thing, provoking an ever increasing feeling of joy the closer it came and a lovely ecstasis at the moment of its inevitable arrival.”
“But Jerome must have known why. Why she’d died, and why she’d been arranged just so,” I said.
“Certainly, the cause and the details were all determined soon enough. But my point isn’t causes, and the point of the discussion then with Jerome, Martin, and the others had other ends,” my father said. “No, what took the people over and stayed with them to this day was the smile, the beauty of that smile, its strange, quiet and disquieting beauty. What had she seen, what had she wondered, what last thought or lead-up thoughts did this smile express outwardly and with such cold and contradictory elegance, so distilling death and its horrible history for these gentlemen down to an impression of simple happiness, the happiness of something perhaps as regular in our lives as that moment prior to the return of a lover or the approach of a snuffly pet or a fresh air gently pushing through the trees after the day has baked us through?”
“But why was she smiling?” I said. “Why was she smiling, damn you?”
