Mr. Dientz remembered Perry from Cub Scouts. His own son was many years older than Perry, so they’d overlapped for only a year, but he gave Perry a hearty handshake and said, “Lord. What did your parents feed you, boy?”
Perry asked after Paul Dientz, who was in mortuary school in North Carolina, and then introduced Professor Polson. Mr. Dientz was obviously surprised, and not necessarily pleasantly so (a quick raising and lowering and raising of his very bushy gray eyebrows) to find that the professor was a woman. A young woman.
On the phone, he’d said, “Perry, since I know you, and since you say you’re doing this ‘research’ ”—the word had come out of his mouth like something from a foreign language—“I’m willing to indulge you and your professor, of course, and have I mentioned how impressed I am that you’re attending our state’s finest institution?”
Perry had assured him that he had.
“But it’s a part of my job I don’t relish. The reopening of old wounds, so to speak. Perry, it would amaze you to learn how many family members and friends in the weeks, months, years after a funeral—especially in the case of cremations and closed coffins—become convinced that there has been some case of mistaken identity. They think they’ve glimpsed a deceased brother or son or daughter on the street, or in a magazine, or they’ve gotten a hang-up call in the middle of the night—and, if they weren’t at the scene of the accident or the one to identify the body or if there were issues of identification, because many untimely deaths, Perry, let me be frank, leave behind corpses that do not resemble the living person—well, they can become fixated.
“Again, in the interest of ‘science,’ I am willing to meet with you and your professor and go over the record, but I must admit I can’t recall all the details, except of course the terrible tragedy of it, and, as I recall, the Werners did not take our recommendation to view the body. In the case of their lovely daughter, it would certainly have been horrific, but there’s really nothing better for a sense of finality, if you know what I mean, than to see the deceased with your own eyes.”
“Well, welcome,” Mr. Dientz said, sweeping his arm toward two plush red velvet armchairs across from his desk. “I’ve gone through my files, and as soon as you’re settled, I’d be happy to show you the reconstructive photographs.”
Perry had no idea what reconstructive photographs would be, but he did know, because Mr. Dientz had told him on the phone, that the funeral home kept a digital library of photos and information about their ‘clients.’ He would be showing them photographs of Nicole? Now? Perry looked toward the door, wondering if he could excuse himself for a moment, but Mr. Dientz wasted no time booting up his Mac, and turning the screen toward Perry and Professor Polson, so they could see.
“You may well ask yourself,” Mr. Dientz said, his voice shifting into the tone of a man on a radio commercial, clearly getting ready to say something he’d said a million times before but that still held meaning for him, “why it is we would spend the many hours we spend here at Dientz Funeral Parlor reconstructing the likenesses of decedents who have been disfigured by accidents or illness when, in fact, most funerals at Dientz Funeral Parlor are now closed-casket, and, in especially the most extreme cases, even family members will not be viewing the bodies?”
He looked at Perry and Professor Polson with rehearsed animation, as if gauging to what degree they had each been asking themselves this question.
“Well, I answer you with an anecdote from my earliest years as a mortician,” Mr. Dientz went on. “A young man had been killed in a motorcycle accident. I won’t go into the details, but like your friend Nicole, identification was difficult. Injuries, burns, even dismemberment. Everyone in the family insisted, as so many so often do, that they only wished to remember their loved one ‘as he had been.’ Of course, someone had identified him at the morgue, but it was a distant relative, and the identification was done mostly from clothing and a ring. The family insisted that they didn’t want any kind of reconstruction, no embalming. They didn’t even care what the deceased would be wearing in his coffin.
“Still, this was a very traditional family, and after ascertaining that they would not object to reconstruction and embalming, I went ahead with my usual practice of preparing a body for viewing—although, I will tell you, I did not charge the family for these services, or even inform them that I was going ahead with them.
“As I’d imagined might happen, at the funeral there was a great emotional outpouring. The mother was beside herself. The father had become almost violently inconsolable. One of the brothers threw himself against the casket weeping, and one of the sisters became hysterical, insisting it was impossible—insisting that her brother wasn’t in the casket, that this was a terrible dream or a mistake, and this got the whole family and even some of the young man’s motorcycle gang friends making similar outcries. A fight nearly broke out before the father pushed his other son away and flung open the coffin.
“Perry, Professor, let me tell you that if I’d had that coffin locked or sealed—or, if I hadn’t and that young man had been in there in the condition the county morgue had delivered him to me—well, this is the reason I always insist on reconstruction if I am going to have a body in a casket at Dientz Funeral Parlor.
“Because of the reconstruction, the family and the young man’s friends were able to gather around his casket and grieve properly. He was the young man they remembered. He was dressed in a decent suit. His hair was combed, and I’d remodeled what I could of his face based on the photograph they’d run in the newspaper.
“Nothing, nothing, makes a death as believable as being able to see, to touch, the loved one’s body. We are physical creatures, Perry, Professor.” He nodded at Professor Polson. “And although much has been done to ridicule and malign the ‘death industry’ in America, I can tell you from experience that there is tremendous comfort taken in being able to view a body, in repose, nicely dressed, tastefully remodeled, eyes closed, clearly at peace. And I make it my job to be able to offer that comfort to those who may not know, until the very last moments, that they will need it.”
“But Nicole’s family?” Professor Polson asked.
Mr. Dientz shook his head. “No,” he said. “Nicole’s family couldn’t bear it.” He shrugged, as if to say, you win some, you lose some. “Now,” he said. “The photos!”
Mr. Dientz whirled around in his chair with a flourish fit for the unveiling of the Mona Lisa. He waved his hand over his keyboard, took up his mouse, and then clicked a file in the center that read, NWERNER, and then JPEG10, and in less than half a second an image opened and filled the screen, and before Perry even realized that he had seen it, he was scrambling out of his velvet chair and across the room with a hand over his mouth, and then out of the office and into the men’s room near the entrance of the funeral home.