The Green Coat
by Ray O'Brien
I looked up from my book when my brother muted the sound on the TV and our mother walked into the living room wearing her dead sister's coat.
"Well, what do you think?" she asked. She sashayed around as if she'd just bought it. "Does it suit me?"
The long green coat with black collar and trim didn't suit her but I was too shocked to say anything. Looking over at Martin, I saw a reflection of my own thoughts: For fuck's sake Ma, you can't be serious.
Aunty Joan had been dead six months. I tried to remember her wearing the coat but I couldn't stop thinking about Martin's description of his visit to her just before she passed away. The chemo had knocked her about so much, he said, that he only recognised her by the sound of her voice. Even the thought of how she looked terrified me and I never went to see her. I wanted to remember her as she was. Besides, I knew a visit from me would have convinced her that the end was imminent. Coward's excuses, sure, but they were good enough for me at the time.
I eventually saw Joan in an open coffin at the morgue. She'd "come back to herself", just as Great Aunt Kate had said she would. Her hair looked real enough but I could imagine my mother's shock when she told me the story about it.
One day near the end, as my mother brushed my younger sister's hair at the dressing table in Joan's bedroom, she glanced at the mirror and saw Joan staring at them intently. Suddenly Joan pulled the wig from her head and flung it across the room. "Here, brush my hair too!" she shouted. It caught on the edge of the mirror and hung there as my mother and sister ran from the room screaming while Joan roared with laughter behind them.
So there was our mother wearing Joan's green coat standing beside the bag of clothes our cousin had delivered earlier that morning. She took her hand from a pocket and held out a small packet of indigestion tablets.
She stared at the never-finished tablets open mouthed, lips quivering. We remained silent.
"Aw, poor Joan," she said finally.
She took the coat off and looked at us, her eyes watering.
"Oh lads, don't ever smoke."
We never saw that coat again.
Ray O'Brien grew up in Ireland, spent several years in London, and now lives in the Australian bush on the northern fringe of Sydney. He still wonders how he got there.