Read Online Putting Makeup on Dead People by Jen Violi - Free Book Online Page A

handwriting looks like—kind of blocky, without a lot of frills or loops.
    I start on the first application question. It turns out I don’t quite have an answer I can write yet, so I go to number two. For this one, all I can think of is: Grandpa-like. Nice. Sturdy hiking boots. Doesn’t talk too much. I close my notebook and decide to take a nap.
    After dinner, Linnie brings her dirty clothes down to the laundry room and leans against my desk, flicking one of Maurice’s dangling arms. “This is a little creepy.”
    “It’s a present from Liz.”
    “Still, creepy.”
    I wouldn’t think my sister, with her green hair and eye makeup springing from a color palette I’d call “Bruised,” would be bothered by a skeleton. “ You’re creepy.”
    I move Maurice a few inches away from Linnie. Now both bony arms swing and shake—skeletal jazz hands. Maurice must know it’s almost my birthday. Jazz hands go with birthdays.
    “Mom won’t like it,” Linnie says, reaching for Maurice again.
    Maurice laughs in the way skeletons do—at me, at my sister’s hair, at the black stapler, and the retractable pens sprouting like plastic weeds out of the white mug with the blue lettering: the play’s the thing—we all got them from Father Bill for Christmas.
    “Mom doesn’t have to look at it.”
    “Whatever,” Linnie says. “I’m going to watch TV.”
    I put on my pajamas and crawl into bed with my ocean notebook, still contemplating essay questions I can’t answer.
    Mom knocks on my door and walks in. “What time do you want to go?”
    I know she’s talking about Dad’s grave. On the first birthday I had without Dad, I asked Mom if we could visit him. And every year on my birthday since he died, we’ve gone and planted flowers. Maybe planting flowers is a Cemetery Issue. I don’t know. “Is nine okay?”
    “Yes.” Mom walks over to my bed and kisses me on the forehead. “Happy almost birthday.” Maurice catches her eye, and she turns toward my desk. “What is that?”
    “My skeleton.” I decide not to tell her his name. Maurice prefers to go incognito.
    Mom folds her arms, like she’s about to give me a lecture. “Donna, that’s a little dark, don’t you think?”
    “Liz gave it to me for my birthday.”
    “Oh.” Mom seems stumped. Now that the skeleton came from Liz, maybe it seems more interesting than dark. “Okay.”
    When she leaves and I’m alone again, staring at my notebook and the Chapman application questions, knowing Maurice is watching me, I feel sad and a little angry. I guess some part of me thought figuring out what I wanted to do would make everything better, would make me happy and full somehow. Instead, I’ve now inherited more questions I can’t answer yet.

Wilbur Wright, 45
    Cause of Death: Typhoid fever
    Surviving Immediate Family:
Father: Milton
Brothers: Reuchlin, Lorin, Orville
Sister: Katarine
    Open-casket viewing
    Funeral Incidents:
Hearse drawn by white horses
The Dayton Daily News reported, “Thousands Follow Sad Cortege.”
    Saddest thing someone says: “Wilbur had plans no one will be able to carry into execution.”—Orville Wright
Orville Wright, 76
    Cause of Death: Heart attack
    Surviving Immediate Family:
None
    Funeral Incidents:
New jet fighter planes fly over Woodland Cemetery in tribute

five
    “W hat’s the matter with you?” Mom asks, shaking the extra dirt off of the silver spade.
    “We’re at the cemetery,” I say. “People are often troubled at cemeteries.”
    “Donna Marie, we’ve been coming here for almost four years.” She gives some final pats to the dirt around the red petunias we just planted in front of Dad’s gravestone. “I’m not talking about the cemetery.”
    I touch one of the flowers, feel the satiny petals. Dad loved petunias; so do I. Silently, I say hello to him. As usual, I wish I could talk with him in person, tell him my big news, get his approval.
    “So?” Mom asks. “Is it because you turned eighteen