Fiction Helen Phillips , July 26, 2024

The Measurers

Library of Congress

I was staring out the window, as I so often am, when the hearse pulled up in front of my house. It’s strange to see a hearse doing something regular, like trying to parallel park in a tight spot. But the driver was adept, and, after some maneuvering, the hearse fit. I wondered idly why the hearse had parked right here. Only idly, though—there was, after all, a cemetery across the street.

Two people emerged from the front of the hearse. Unsurprisingly, they were dressed formally, in black. They were male, nondescript, and moved efficiently, closing but not slamming the doors of the hearse as they exited. Already my interest was waning. I had a long list of tasks to complete, and I should have finished my oatmeal five minutes ago. I turned my gaze away from the window and toward my bowl.

When the doorbell rang, I startled. No one ever rang my doorbell at this early hour. I would have ignored the doorbell altogether but, from the spot where I sat on the couch, I was visible to anyone who rang it, just as they were visible to me.

It was the duo from the hearse, standing there politely, heads slightly bowed, a pose almost of reverence. I did not want to open the door, but I saw no alternative. I had made eye contact with one of them. I stepped toward the threshold, twisted the lock, and opened the door.

“You have the wrong address,” I said before they could speak.

They gazed serenely at me.

“440?” one of them said.

And that was, yes, my house number.

But then I remembered, with relief, that my street address was only one digit different from the cemetery’s.

“You need 400,” I informed him. “Just on the next block.”  

“440,” he insisted.

“We were sent,” the other said.

“By whom?” I demanded.

“Don’t be afraid,” said the first one.

When he told me not to be afraid, I became afraid.

“May we please enter?” the second one said. “It takes less than ten minutes.”

Suddenly they were inside my house, though I didn’t recall stepping aside to let them through the doorway.

“What takes less than ten minutes?” I said.

“Bedroom upstairs?” one of them said. I couldn’t tell if he was addressing me or his companion. Anyway, I wasn’t going to answer his question, though the bedroom was indeed upstairs.

“Yep,” the other one said, and they went up the steep, narrow staircase (it is an old and rickety house) to the bedroom. I followed them.  

“Pretty standard, I’d say,” he said.

“Yep,” he replied.

I watched them examine the room. They took stock of the bare walls, the simple desk, the wooden drawers, and the rugless floor, before their gaze landed on the bed. 

One of them pulled a tape measure out of the pocket of his suit pants.

“Lie down,” he instructed me, “please.”

“What the hell?” I said, but when the words came out of my mouth, they sounded like, “On the bed?”

“On the bed,” he affirmed, and I couldn’t tell if there was a slight edge of impatience or mockery in his voice.

I knew I had to slam the brakes on the situation. I could feel it spiraling even as the three of us stood in apparent peace in the early March sunlight coming through the window. 

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” I said.

They glanced at each other with knowing smiles. 

“You have to leave,” I said.

“Of course,” one of them started. The other finished, “In five minutes.”

“You have the wrong address,” I said, but weakly.

“We were sent by someone who loves you,” he said.

Shocked, I sat on the edge of the bed. Someone who loved me.

“Thank you,” he said. “Now if you can just lie down.”

Dazed, I lifted my feet off the floor and onto the bed. Someone who loved me. I believed, or hoped, that a decent number of people loved me. My children and siblings, but they lived so far away and had their own shimmering lives. My parents, but they were elderly and absorbed in the failings of their bodies. My friends, but they had plenty of problems and successes to preoccupy them. My partner, currently at work, teaching toddlers how to bang on marimbas, who I knew would have warned me that this was about to happen to me.

“Lie all the way down, please,” the man said.

I obeyed, settling my head onto the pillow, the momentum of the situation clearly beyond my control.

“Very good,” he said to me, as though I was a small child.

The other one passed him the tape measure. The men stood on either side of the bed, across from each other. They measured above my head (with a few inches to spare) and below my feet (also with a few inches to spare). They measured the length of my right side.

“Do the left?” he said.

“Not necessary,” he replied, “but let’s do it for good measure.”

They laughed softly together, and then measured the length of my left side.  He pulled a small spiralbound notebook out of his pocket and scratched in it with a golf pencil.

I felt as though they had just measured me for my coffin. But don’t coffins come in standard sizes? A body isn’t ever placed into a coffin in the selfsame room where it dies, right? Doesn’t the coffin come later? And who was to say I would die in this very room? Besides, weren’t most people cremated nowadays?

I knew so little about death.

“Is this for my coffin?” I said bravely.

One of them made a noncommittal sound, more likely nothan yes, without looking up.

“So let’s think,” the other said. “Hmm. Maybe just give it a go?”

They were no longer thinking about me at all, and I lay on the bed in solitude while they navigated an invisible and unwieldy object (My coffin? My corpse? My mortality?) down the steep and narrow staircase.

“See, so this is where it would be tricky,” one said.

“Yeah, but if you could just, you know, up,” he made a heaving sound, “use the height, right?”

“Right, right,” the other said.

I was petrified, unable to move from the bed, but when I heard the front door open, I forced myself up. I ran down the stairs and caught the door as they were about to close it behind them. I didn’t know what to say.

“I’m upset,” I said.

“People are,” one of them said.  

“You’ve always prided yourself on planning ahead,” the other said.

Before I could ask how he knew that about me, they were gone.