1 Table of Contents
Cadavers … 2 Tricks of Light … 6
Open House … 12 In the Garden … 18
The Cello … 20 Fellow Travelers … 28 A Whirring of Wings … 32
Suitcases … 42 Linville Falls … 52 Our Lady, Theresa … 61
2 Cadavers
The sides of the black plastic body bag peeled away to reveal the sloping curves of a woman. A fresh cloud of formaldehyde, phenol, and other chemicals that gave extra time to those who didn’t need it anymore rose out of the bag as it opened. Trent looked around the room for another female cadaver, catching the glances of his fellow first-year medical students
surveying the other bodies as well. All except one other cadaver in their gross anatomy lab section were older men, with cascading folds of limp skin sagging and spilling over the sides of their torsos.
Their woman was middle-aged, but still probably the youngest body of the group by a decade or two. Her skin swelled from the embalming fluids, stained an industrial yellow intensified under the fluorescent lights, but suggestions of suppleness lingered in the body’s frame.
3 of the probing eyes and hands of four medical students. At least on the outside, her body
faithfully kept whatever secrets its former occupant may have had.
The smell of spiced ground beef hung like a veil inside the doorway of his apartment, settling heavy on his stomach. Allie arched her back to peek around the opening into the kitchen, her blonde curls gathered into a loose bun at the nape of her neck, “So, how’d your big first day go? Wasn’t too gross was it?” She arched an eyebrow like she was waiting for the prerecorded audience laugh track to play out. He didn’t say anything, wandering into the den to set his backpack down on the couch. “You’re right, that was bad. But I’ve been working on it all day and that was the best I could come up with,” Her lips lightly landed on his as he walked up next to her, the side of their hips slightly brushing, standing above the spaghetti cooking on the stove. Even though he changed out of his scrubs at school and left them in his locker, the smell of the chemicals from the lab clung to his skin.
“Lab was fine,” Trent wrapped an arm around Allie’s waist, sticking his thumb in the
elastic band of her exercise shorts, and let his chin rest against her shoulder, feeling her pulse beating just underneath the surface. Her skin was warm. “I’m never going to use any of this information again though. None of us will, really. I know my dad doesn’t need to be able to point out exactly where the Thymus gland is to diagnose coughs and arthritis in a bunch of tobacco farmers,” and he wouldn’t have to either when he inherited his family’s practice in their small town.
4 A wave of thick humidity had rolled through town, a last gasp of summer in the middle of October. Trent lay awake in bed, counting the spackled dots over his head. The bed sheets clung everywhere, trapping him in fabric the more he tried to wriggle out of them. He turned over in bed and saw Allie laid out on her stomach next to him, arms tucked under her torso and her bare back illuminated by the street light outside their window creeping in between the blinds.
Trent reached out towards Allie lying next to him and traced all the cuts they had made in class that day with his index finger, barely dragging his nail along the paths of the incisions. His finger left a trail of tiny ridges and bumps behind it, and he wondered if he would wake her. He prodded for the yellow sponge of fat just under the taut surface, like he had seen underneath the flayed pieces of his cadaver’s skin. No anatomical dummy had ever prepared him for the take and give of a scalpel slicing through skin, for accidentally cutting too deep and into a muscle below.
Trent traced the curve of her spine, dipping into a valley above her hips. The shape wasn’t very different from the contours of the cadaver. With the sheets loosely draped over her
waist, long hair covering her face, and her slow breathing, Trent could almost picture her laying on the cold silver table in the lab. But Allie smelled like sweat and vanilla perfume and lavender shampoo, not decay and a chemical cocktail. She was a yoga instructor, drove an extra thirty minutes to buy organic groceries, and made plans for when she was eighty. Maybe the woman lying on his table in the lab had similar plans, though.
6 Tricks of Light
I could tell Natalie was still awake. The thin slits of moonlight that squeezed through the blinds illuminated the whites of her eyes. We were lying in bed, teeth brushed, flossed,
goodnight kisses exchanged, the whole routine completed. She’d slept so much these past few months during her first round of chemo treatment that apparently, it’d triggered a reactionary case of insomnia. “I’ve slept enough for a lifetime,” she told me when I tried asking her about it.
Most of the time, even though she wouldn’t be able to sleep, she’d still come and lie down with me so that I wouldn’t have to go to bed by myself. It took a while for me to actually fall asleep though because I wished I could stay awake with her. When I started snoring, she’d get up but she would always come back to bed and be there when I woke up. While she was making breakfast, Natalie often performed dramatic reenactments of the infomercials she watched the night before since there was nothing else on TV.
7 returned in a different place. It had traveled up through the veins from the breasts and settled deep into her bones. He said if we wanted to go anywhere, do any traveling, we better do it soon before Natalie started in on chemo again. When I woke up and saw the bags by the door, I rolled over on my side. She was lying on her side as well, facing me. She spoke up before I had the chance to say anything, “Let’s go on a trip, get away for the weekend. You’ve got a little vacation time saved up, right? Let’s go to the beach.”
On our last night there at the beach, when she was sure that I wasn’t asleep, she turned to me and whispered, “Keith?” I didn’t respond but she kept talking anyway, “Do you want to go outside?” We changed into our swimsuits quietly, even though we were the only ones in the condo. The stark red letters on the alarm clock sitting on the bedside table read 3:13 AM. Once we were dressed, we tip-toed through the den and closed the back door softly behind us as we walked across the porch and onto the deserted beach.
8 The moon climbed higher up over our heads, pulling the tide in with it until the water lapped at our stomachs. I hadn’t realized it, but Natalie had grabbed the bottle of chardonnay we’d opened for dinner on her way out of the condo. She held it up to the moon and then took a pull from the bottle. Then she held it out to me and I took a sip.
The full length cover-up Natalie had put on over her suit began floating up around her, buoyant in the water. The thin, gauzy white fabric glowed in the moonlight. She sank down in the chair and let her legs float up with the dress, tiny red painted toes bobbing up out of the water. She looked out across the bay, “Do you think we could just float away with the tide? Float all the way out to sea?” The truthful answer of no didn’t seem right in the moment, so I didn’t say anything. She continued talking, “Where do you think we’d end up?”
“The currents would probably take us up to England,” I said while burrowing my feet into the sand.
“England? But that’s so far north. And cold. And rainy. We’d freeze before we get there. I’d want to end up some place like Spain.”
“You’d most likely land in Portugal first.”
She shook her head, “Then no. I’d want to float to Morocco. Everything there is so colorful. I was flipping through a magazine the other day that was filled with pictures of the markets there. They sell spices of every kind. And beautiful fabrics. And the cities have these tall spires.” Trying to invoke a foreign rainbow hued city in their grey-washed world at the moment felt wrong. Natalie looked up at me, “Where would we have to leave from to float to Morocco?”
9 gulf coast eventually ended up and around the coast of England, but why? What made it move that way instead of a different direction? I gave my best guess anyway, “Mexico? Brazil? I don’t know.”
Natalie hummed and sunk even lower in the chair until she was submerged up to her nose. She inhaled deeply in through her nose and then blew bubbles out through her mouth. Meanwhile, I was fighting against the tiredness that beat against me just as often as the modest waves. It felt like all of my nerves endings had floated to the surface of my skin and every touch sent off an explosive network of stimulants. But I pressed my hands into the plastic armrests of the chair and tried to stay awake.
10 have a shaved head and the tired eyes of the other patients at the clinic betrayed their jealousy when she walked by.
She kept her arms pressed close to her sides while her legs pumped up and down. Her skin was dyed white in the water. She really did look like a strange fish swimming too close to the surface, or some sort of mythical sea creature that had bobbed to the surface from the deep. Not quite a mermaid, but something else.
12 Open House
Josie loved the house at 425 Gretel Drive. She drove past it on her way to and from work every day. She also made a point to jog past it when she took up running, even though it added an extra mile to her route. There were nicer and bigger houses in the neighborhood, but 425 Gretel Drive looked like a life-sized dollhouse. The siding was a light mauve, the shutters a darker shade; there was a turret, scalloped trim detailing, and a second story wrap-around balcony. Growing up in a small, red brick ranch house, second floors still felt luxurious to her even now. Not to mention a second floor with a porch. There was no other house like it in the neighborhood.
She never thought she’d actually get to see inside it, though.
13 as she’d been gawking at the house on her drives and jogs, Josie had never put serious thought into what it might look like inside. When she tried to picture it, her mind only brought up images of the intricately crafted dollhouses she loved to look at in toy stores when she was young. But now she had the chance to know exactly what lie within the exterior and more importantly, to see who lived in such a picturesque house. Obviously somebody must live there, she realized, but just like with the interior, Josie hadn’t tried to imagine who was lucky enough to live in such a whimsical house. It seemed more museum piece or ambitious public artwork than practical residence.
14 she hoped they were the type of people to buy a fancy tea set at a flea market and then actually use it. The room had obviously been curated by a careful eye so maybe it wasn’t too much to expect that the owners would use what they had taken time to pick out. That she had started picturing a husband and wife with tastefully greying hair sitting in here sipping loose leaf tea made Josie stop. Since when did she craft detailed life stories for people she didn’t know?
The real estate agent had probably tried to make this house look like a lived in but blank canvas for potential buyers to make their own, cleaning up everything that didn’t fit into that narrative. A few pieces of the family remained throughout the room though. “The Flemings” was cross-stitched in blue hatched threads on a hand towel that was discolored with age and grime. A handwritten card that read “Happie Birfday, Mom!” was pinned to a corkboard above the counter near the phone. Hanging next to it was a calendar depicting sweeping Italian vistas, weeks filled with appointments in red pen. A recipe box painted like a bank safe sat open on the counter.
She could imagine that dinners would be noisy in this house. In the hallway connecting the living room and kitchen there was a painting of three small blonde children. They would grasp onto their mother’s legs as she cooked dinner while her husband sat at the table and read the newspaper. No, that was a little too Norman Rockwell. The mother would be on the phone complaining to her mother about the Homeowner’s Association measuring the height of their lawn with a ruler. The father would be watching football in the den while the kids were curled up in his lap, concentrating on the electronic tablet in front of them.
15 out. The couch in here was fluffy and yellow. She sank into it and the numerous decorative pillows as soon as she sat down. Across from her, there was a fireplace that looked to be real and working, something she hadn’t seen since camping during college. A basket of wood sat beside it. What a perfect thing for the cold, wintry nights in a few months.
After a moment, she pulled the throw blanket folded on the arm of the couch over her and in her mind, she could see a tall blonde man draping his arms over her shoulders and pulling her into his chest. He would be a man of few words. The delighted squeals of their two beautiful children playing outside in the snow blended with the crackling of the lit fire in front of them, a staccato hum in the air. A Saint Bernard would jump up on the sofa no matter how many times they told him not to, but none of them actually minded. He would rest his large head on her lap. From their view on the couch, she could see the squat mounds of bushes hidden beneath a layer of snow. In the spring, those would be the bushes she’d clip flowers from to bring inside and arrange in a vase passed down from her mother.
When Gavin had asked her about it as they graduated college together, Josie had said she was fine with staying in the city with its expensive rent and small spaces. She’d never lived in anything nice to miss it and growing up in a small town made the city with its infinite
opportunities exiting. But now, sitting here in the sprawling comfort of 425 Gretel Drive, Josie wondered if there wasn’t something to this.
16 thinner than you’d like to think. She waited and heard the voices and footsteps heading towards the dining room on the opposite side. It wasn’t like she was doing anything wrong, but she got the feeling that seeing a sweaty, bedraggled might involve more backtracking and apologizing than it was worth.
When she finally got back to the apartment, Josie laid down on the scratchy blue carpet which scratched at her exposed arms. This was their dining room, living room, and den all in one, with an open layout into the kitchen. She stared up at the light grey walls that they hadn’t bothered to decorate except for a tin sign advertising “Coffee!” which Gavin had found discarded on the side of the road. Besides that, there was a tall, waxy potted plant shoved in the corner and mostly hidden by their two couches which had been left by the previous tenants.
“What did you do, run around the entire city?” Gavin asked her, walking out from the bedroom and coming to stand over her. Josie closed her eyes and groaned, the fluorescent light too bright behind his head. He stepped past her and walked into the kitchen to grab an apple.
She rolled onto her side, head propped up with her elbow, still unable to find the strength to lift herself all the way up off the floor, “Gav, what do you think about moving into a house?”
He turned to look at her and took a bite, “But I thought we liked apartments? Cheaper, easier upkeep, convenient locations…” He continued on their rehearsed litany of the virtues of apartment living. And all of it was true, especially for young grads like themselves.
17 A few days later, when Josie went jogging again, she stopped outside of 425 Gretel Drive. The open house sign had a big sticker across it which said “SOLD” in stark red letters.
After she came home and showered that night, Josie drove around out of the city, looking for an open house in the neighborhoods. It didn’t matter where in particular. She found one
twenty minutes away from Gretel Drive – a relatively standard brick affair in a spacious neighborhood where the houses were set too far back from the road and the trees too small because the old ones had to be cleared away. The real estate agent walked her through the house, delicately inquiring about her income and tastes, but nothing stood out to her. All of the rooms were painted some shade of blue and the furniture ordered from a catalogue. Nothing about this house seemed as special as Gretel Drive, she couldn’t imagine anything about this family. Josie wanted that feeling again, to know if this was something she was missing out on or just the magic of one place.
18 In the Garden
I pull back the beige plastic curtains over the sink in the kitchen to see the sharp gash you tore through the front brick gate with our car. A carton of cracked eggs slammed into the
dashboard and on the windshield; the thin yolks and slimy whites slip between the jagged shards of a shattered whiskey bottle. Even if we can repair the car, the upholstery will smell like a rotting drunken breakfast.
You tumble out of the driver’s seat and fall into flower bed below. You frantically shovel dirt back into the deep ridges the tires carved into the loamy soil, trying to set trampled roses back up straight in the ground. We planted that flower bed only a couple of months ago, but since the plot was usually bare, we’d forgotten about it until the small shoots moved the earth and pushed their way up. The velvety red petals were now pulp crushed into the tread of the tires.
19 the creamer you were supposed to pick up is spilled all over the front seat. I wait for the coffee to finish before I go out to you.
All of the windows in the houses next to us are still dark. The crash didn’t seem to wake the neighbors like it woke me, so we have a little time to clean things up before anyone else notices. Although a broom and a dust pan won’t be able to sweep everything up this time.
My mother will devour this story tomorrow when I see her for lunch. Her lips will twist into a smile and she’ll say “Oh Mad Ann, always good for a laugh. You always did like the more eccentric ones.” I’ll shove a forkful of pasta into my mouth instead of saying anything. I don’t see what could be funny about a smashed gate and a totaled car, but I didn’t laugh at the broken wine glasses and days she couldn’t get out of bed either.
Out in the garden, you give up on replanting the roses and wipe the soil off onto your pink silk robe before you wipe at your eyes. When I gave you the robe last Christmas, the French silk hugged at curves that have since sunk in and flattened. You strutted up and down the hall, turning it into a makeshift catwalk, your shoulders thrown back. But all you do this
20 The Cello
21 Martina gave up on tuning the rebellious string so that she could slip her hands back into the pockets of her jacket, stealing another moment or two of warmth before she had to take them out again. Fingerless gloves didn’t do much to help against the piercing little needles of early December cold that sank in below your skin. Nobody would want to stop and listen tonight, but she and Lukas, an old bandmate of her father’s, had to scrounge up enough money to fly back to Cincinnati for her father’s funeral by tomorrow. Stretching the money they made between her husband’s freelance photography and her intermittent gigs and cello lessons had been exciting when they first moved into their studio apartment together. Spending long nights under blankets together with only candles to light the room was only romantic for so long though.
On her way here from the train station, Martina had stopped into the pawn shop a few blocks down. She walked in every time they played in front of Pennyloafer’s. The owner, Michal, was a fan of her father’s music and eager to purchase his famous cello off of her. Like a ritual, every time Martina walked in and asked him, “Michal, how much would you give me for my father’s cello?” Then Michal would name a price, but every time she would refuse it. “That’s not nearly enough. I can make more playing on the street than that.” And sometimes she did, especially on balmy summer days. But tonight, she wasn’t quite so sure. If they couldn’t make enough to buy plane tickets, she may have to walk back to Michal and consider his offer seriously. Would her father appreciate the humor in having to sell her last piece of him in order to pay her respects? Martina leaned back on the hard plastic of the folding chair she had brought. The cello fell back and rested against her. She pulled her husband’s coat tighter around her.
22 together in his throat. The orange light from the shoe store’s neon sign carved strange shadows out of the wrinkles on his face. At first glance, she almost didn’t recognize him. The wet sidewalks reflected the light and bathed the street in a strange, hypnotic haze. But the warm color held no heat tonight. Absent-minded, she started humming along to the constant whining buzz of the store’s neon sign when her thoughts drifted back to pawn shops and babies and the sound of a cello with a string missing.
Martina cradled the coffee close to her lips, breathing in the warmth and scrunching her nose at the bitter scent. She hated the taste of black coffee and how it stayed on her tongue for days, but she had learned how to drink it since meeting Lukas. The old man never took it otherwise. “Thanks,” she said after a sip.
“I tried to get the spot in the 51st Street tunnel so that you would not have to sit out here in this cold. But that damn Brazilian slouch with his buckets said he reserved it. He threatened to call the street musicians council on me for violating the space rules, I told him go ahead! I will tell the council that he is not a real musician! Banging on plastic buckets. It is amazing what passes as music in this city.”
“You should get your instrument out before I do freeze to death,” Martina laughed. Lukas chuckled without looking up, keeping his eyes focused on rosining his bow. Lukas stood up and unpacked his viola, “What did your husband have to say about your coming out here tonight? Didn’t want to join and come photograph us for his collection?”
23 Her husband had met Lukas for the first time when he came to see them perform at a folk art festival held by a small local college. When they were on the train home later that night, her head on his shoulder, she asked him what he thought of Lukas. He leaned over and said under his breath that they were nice but they kind of smelled like sweat and sauerkraut. Martina didn’t say anything, not sure what even to say back to that. For the next few weeks after that, she had dreams that he would roll over in bed and gag at the overwhelming stench of fermenting cabbage coming from her. Sometimes she’d be bathing in a tub full of sauerkraut. Was the scent
genetic? She couldn’t remember either of her immigrant parents smelling like that, but then the smell of sauerkraut had never bothered her. The sour smell of the vinegar brought her back to Sunday night dinners after mass when her mother would boil massive pots of it on the stove.
Lukas pulled his viola up and played a scale. His eyes waded through the stream of people moving past them, a flowing river of bodies caught up in perpetual motion, “One day when you have a little one, we shall have to teach them how to play. They shall be your replacement for when you finally gets sick of hanging out with such old wrinkled men. Or maybe you can start own family band.” Lukas turned around to grin at Martina, “What good luck. I never expected to play with such a beautiful young lady!”
24 said. Martina wished now that she’d paid better attention to the parsed Polish her parents used to speak to her but which sat dead on her tongue now.
“No, I’m sorry. He lives in Cincinnati.” She didn’t remember too much about her father since her parents had divorced just before she started junior high and he moved out. Her mother had stood in the front doorway one day and told him that the Communists had chased her out of her home too, but she didn’t mope around the house like a scorned lover. At first he only moved across town and Martina saw him every now and then. Whenever she visited him, he rubbed his wrinkled temple every time she corrected his English pronunciation or sang along to a song on the radio.
While the passing years had eroded many of the details about him from her mid, Martina never forgot the music that always seemed to follow him, that clung to him like a scent. If he wasn’t near an instrument, he would begin humming or tapping out a beat with his fingers. Whenever they were together, her father always ended up bringing out his cello and sitting next to her on his sunken couch to teach her the old folk tunes he was chased out of his country for playing.
Before she’d met Lukas, Martina hadn’t really thought about her father in years,
successfully putting it from her mind. But now the melody of the old country refrains he used to play looped through her mind ceaselessly. After not hearing those songs for so long, they flooded her mind, sometimes playing over each other, creating a dissonance that gave her a headache.
25 still could as the three of them played the songs only Lukas and her father remembered from their old Polish village. Although she could always hear the music perfectly in her mind, she’d hadn’t played the songs for years before she met Lukas. For months after that, her fingers could only manage imperfect snippets. Whispered memories of her father’s voice would echo in her ears, correcting her fingering or her tempo.
It took a while for her to relearn the songs her father had taught her. Her father or Lukas or anybody had never written them down, playing the tunes by memory like Michal’s father had taught them. That first time they met, when Lukas found her, she’d invited him inside and he’d explained that he grew up in the same small Polish village as her father. They were the last people who knew the music specific to their village. The Communists had eventually begun cracking down on folk artists, so they hadn’t been allowed to play or teach anyone else after that. But they were patient while Martina carefully watched their fingers dance across the strings, listen and figure out where her part fit into the harmony.
Falling easily into their usual set list, a few people paused in their path to listen, never for very long. A couple of people walking out of the bar across the street recklessly swung each other around, laughing, as the three of them played a bouncing polka tune. Martina followed each passerby with her eyes, trying to will them into parting with a few dollars.
As they began playing the first few measures of their last song, Lukas sang a few words in Polish. His usually raspy voice rang out clear. She remembered her mother used to sing along to this song in a soaring soprano voice when he father would play it. One time, she explained to Martina what the lyrics roughly translated to:
26 Abandoning your paternal homeland,
Spruce forests and chalets
And the silver streams?
So the highlander stares at the mountains
And with a sleeve wipes away his tears,
For the mountains must be sacrificed,
For bread, sir, for bread.
After the last verse, all three of them drew out the last couple of notes for as long as they could. They looked up, but no one stopped. And that was it. Lukas passed roughly forty dollars to Martina. She stared at it, too light in her hands. It wasn’t enough. Lukas slowly lowered himself down next to her. The quiet was too loud without the swell of strings. The sound of him snapping the clasps down on his case brought the reality down like a thud on her. Looking at the older man, it also distressed her that hedi dn’t seem as distressed. Lukas stood and the sounds of the city surged back into the spaces their music had just filled. The sounds of water sloshing in the gutters, impatient horns honking out erratic rhythms, and police sirens rising above the din harmonized together in their collective dissonance. Finally, Martina stood and packed up her father’s cello as well.
She looked down the street in the direction to the pawn shop and turn to say goodbye to Lukas. He stopped her before she could turn around though, “Here, take this with you.” She stared at him as he held out his cut of the money to her.
27 “Please,” he asked, but she just shook her head, “I don’t need to go. I’m so old, I’ll probably be seeing him on the other side soon enough.” Her hand holding the cello case had gone numb. Lukas closed the space between them, took her free hand from her coat pocket and wrapped it around the money, “Let me do this, to make it up to your father. The Communists
chased him out of the country, but I was too scared to follow him. And then it was too late. Let me do this for him.” He let go of the case and kissed her on the forehead before walking the opposite way. He looked too small without carrying his violin case.
28 Fellow Travelers
It was waiting for her when she got home. Or should it be “she?” Regardless, Sinclair had just gotten back from the airport, dragging her luggage behind her. And there the box sat on her kitchen table, as cheery as a box could be, happy to be in a new place. The addition of the box was instantly noticeable in a home that she barely stayed at in between layovers and to do laundry. A few seconds passed before she even registered what was inside the pristine white façade of the cardboard.
Thinking back, this was the first time Sinclair ever had someone to greet her when she came back home from a trip, dead or not. So she said, “Hi Mom,” before she could stop herself because Consultant of International Affairs for several restaurant chains Sinclair Brendle does not talk to, being honest, what is nothing more than an inanimate object now.
She dropped her bags and approached the box. Reaching out, she lifted off the note taped to the top and read it:
Sinclair,
Sorry you couldn’t make it back into the country in time for the funeral! It was
beautiful, Mom would have loved it. We thought you could handle the remains so
29 somewhere nice? You’ve been everywhere, so you should be able to think of a
place she’d like.
If you need anything, call me. –Donna
Siblings. It figures. Don’t even postpone the funeral for her to get back to the states from a business trip and then they stick her with the remains. Some sick idea of “including her” while simultaneously giving her the shittiest part of this whole ordeal. Between the four of them, the busiest one shouldn’t have to be stuck with this. Also, she had no idea what led her siblings to cremation at all. Their mom had died from an aneurysm and she couldn’t remember her mother ever mentioning it. Her stomach dropped when her mind began picturing the stout frame and untamable curly blonde hair of her mother contained within this small, everyday object. The bland white didn’t suit her either; her mother wore enough colors and patterns to be mistaken for a suburban shaman.
In the week since coming home to find her new roommate, Sinclair took a few hours each day to commit the box to memory. There was the name of the cremation company underneath the note and the name, “Louise Brendle,” printed in small box letters on a sticker with a barcode. She imagined her mother being processed though a computer system like inventory. Well, at least the company hadn’t lost the box. At first, she didn’t try to talk to it again. That was some over-the-top mourning process that would just become a sick habit she couldn’t break.
But the more she stared at the box, almost as if in communion with it, the more Sinclair felt her mother seeping out of it. Suddenly the whites of the box weren’t quite so dull and
30 “Why have I never opened this candle before? It smells so good,” or “It’s too hot today.” And even in the following silence, her mother seemed to be there.
Sinclair was clearly staying in one place for too long if she thought a box was developing a personality.
Her initial thought was to schedule the trip for someplace where should could do business at the same time, but she felt the presence of her mother boring into her back from the box on her dining room table. So she opened a new page to search, “Hawaii flights.” Surely there would be a beach where Sinclair could spread the ashes. A small part of her mind felt that choosing such a tourist magnet for her mother’s final resting place was a copout- exotic but easy. But with her fingers poised to type in a new location, she realized she didn’t really know where her mother would’ve wanted to be spread. Browsing through hotel rates caused her to recall all the times Louise’s husky voice had complained on the other side of static-ridden international phones about how Sinclair was always travelling to these fantastic destinations yet could never be bothered to take her dear mother along with her. Back then, Sinclair rolled her eyes and recited like a chant, “Next time.” Well, they finally had their mother-daughter trip.
31 on impulse during one of her first trips, either Malaysia or Singapore. Returning into the dining room, she draped the silk around the box, finished in a tidy knot.
At the airport, Sinclair ported the now festive ashes underneath her arm. She bought two tickets for Flight 424 to Honolulu because there was no way the box could be properly stowed beneath the seat in front of her and the overhead bin with all the other recklessly strewn bags was not an option. The attendant checking her ticket shot her a questioning look with one overly-plucked eyebrow raised, but Sinclair kept walking.
32 A Whirring of Wings
The thing I remember most about my grandmother was that she had hundreds of glass bird sculptures. Well, maybe not quite hundreds but to a kid it certainly seemed like that many. I remember other things too of course - like the smell of the blush she put on everyday even though she rarely left the house and the way you could feel her thin bones underneath parchment-like skin stretched over top. But whenever I see an old woman riding the bus by herself or picking through cucumbers at the grocery store, my first thought is always of the birds.
When I was seven, my mother convinced Grandma to move into an assisted living home that her teaching pension would help cover. The floor of her house was sinking, weighed down by the years, and they couldn’t afford to repair it. “Mom, you’re not actually going to fall through the floor if you stay there, but it’s time to go. You heard what the inspector said,” my mom said into the phone as she prepared lasagna from a mix. From where I sat at the
33 store a few blocks down from our apartment. Mom set the phone down on the counter, rubbing her ear and rolling her shoulders before picking it back up, “We can put the furniture you don’t need and other stuff in storage for a month or two until we can figure out what to do with it. But Willow Way has a spot opening up soon and it’s not safe for you in that house, especially by yourself.” She separated the ground beef while waiting for Grandma’s response, “What about the birds? Of course you can’t bring all of them.” Mom pulled the phone away from her ear as the mosquito-like buzzing intensified, “What did you expect? The entire… flock can’t come. It’s just stuff to sit around and collect dust. Mom… Mom?” She set the phone down on the counter and threw the dish into the oven. I was drawing wings on my green and purple rabbits when Mom came up behind me and tangled her fingers through my thin brown hair, the same as hers and Grandma’s. “When I get older, I promise I’ll try not to give you a hard time.” We stayed like that for several more minutes, her chin resting on the top of my head, until she wrapped her arms around me, grabbed a crayon, and drew some carrots for my rabbits.
Armed with all the boxes and old newspapers we could scrounge up around our
apartment complex, we drove the forty minutes out of the city to Grandma’s house. Even then, it already looked small, dwarfed by developments encroaching on every side. Many of her
neighbors had already sold their lots. When we got there, Mom laid out all of the packing materials on the green polyester couch and then turned to Grandma who was sitting in her armchair in the far corner of the room, “Alright Mom, which ones will it be?” There were bird sculptures scattered throughout the small house on any and every surface – almost every
34 the cabinets in the bathroom. Grandma hobbled across the room and grabbed the sparrow that grandpa had given her on their first date. It was always her most favored bird.
Mom and I started taking birds down off the shelves in the den, and rolling them up in the old newspapers. I kept getting distracted by the articles in the paper, stopping to read them, “Mom, there’s a recipe for Dandelion Salad in here. Can we try it?”
“Where do you think we’d get dandelions from?” “Mrs. Bronson has some growing in her window box.”
“I don’t think there’s enough to make a salad…” She tried sometimes, but Mom didn’t often go along with fanciful lines of thought, her imagination draining quickly in the constant barrage of practical problems like food and rent.
I finished winding the dandelion recipe around a blue and yellow striped macaw with its head tilted in a permanently piercing gaze, taking you in, then stood up and walked over to Grandma. She had been watching us from her armchair, cradling the glass sparrow. “Grandma, tell me how you got that bird,” I asked, even though I already knew the story. But Grandma was
more likely to entertain me than Mom was, though neither had much of a stomach for wistfulness.
35 the sculpture in her hands like it might fly away. “Birds are so beautiful, and they’re always there no matter where you travel. There’s always some sort of bird nearby.”
“They’re not going to the center with you though,” Mom muttered under her breath. Grandma just quietly stroked the back of the glass sparrow, so I don’t think she heard the snide
remarks across the room.
When we helped move grandma into Willow Way Assisted Living Center a month or two later, her room wasn’t much bigger than our apartment, “It’s a shoebox.”
“It is, but at least it’s private.”
We set down the boxes and bags we were carrying. Mom started hanging Grandma’s dresses in the closet while I filled the dresser with sweaters and socks. Grandma lowered herself into the twin bed and dug into her purse, unwrapping the glass sparrow and setting it on the bedroom table.
After we were done unpacking her, we walked around the complex, stopped every ten minutes by kindly nurses and volunteers in blue scrubs asking if we were lost. Some of the residents watched us with hungry eyes, craving the love of their own absentee family members. When Grandma got tired of walking around, we went back to her room and at that point it was about time for me and Mom to leave. “Let me go to the bathroom first and then we’ll leave,” Mom said after she helped Grandma sit down even though she was shooing her away.
Once she closed the door, Grandma grabbed my forearm and pulled me over to her, shushing me, “Piper, do you know where your mother put the boxes with my birds in them?” Her thin, bony fingers wrapped all the way around my arm.
36 She let go of my arm and smoothed out my shirt, “Good girl. Could you do a favor for your Granny?” I nodded. We could hear Mom flush and turn on the faucet inside the small bathroom. Grandma leaned in close, her breath thick with the roast chicken we had for lunch in the cafeteria earlier, “Could you please bring me some more of my birds? I miss them so much. I’ll give you something real special if you do, okay? And if you keep it a secret from your mama.” She pressed her finger to my lips so I couldn’t say yes, but I nodded. My mind was racing with the promises of what my reward would be.
Before we visited her the next month, I snuck into Mom’s room after school one day
while she was still at work. Mrs. Bronson, one of our neighbors in the complex who would pick me up from my bus stop and keep an eye on me until Mom got home, fell asleep on the couch while watching a talk show host discuss “the Portuguese-Chinese fusion recipe you didn’t know you were missing.”
I picked at the jagged edges of the packing tape until I could lift up. I grabbed the first newspaper-wrapped bundle on top and then did my best to make the tape stick again to cover my tracks. I stuck the wrapped bird in the bag I kept my coloring books and crayons in. Then I’d bring the back with me and hand the bird to Grandma at some point while Mom wasn’t in the room. This system worked pretty well and I continued doing it every time we visited. The more times I got away with it, the more daring I got, bringing several birds with me at once.
37 anything. Mom tried pressing her one more time, “Because you realize right, that we can’t take you in. There’s not enough room in our apartment and you couldn’t handle four flights of stairs to get in and out. This is our only option.” When Grandma still didn’t say anything, Mom let it drop and went over to adjust the blinds on the window.
Every time they came to visit after that, another bird or two would have appeared on the bureau. And then another. And then another. Slowly, almost every counter space in her room was accumulating glass birds, just like in her house.
Eventually, one of the nurses pulled Mom aside as we were about to leave and said, “Ma’am, I’m sorry but those statuettes are a hazard to both her and the staff. If she should fall
and knock them over, she may seriously cut herself. The same goes for the staff. If they’re not taken out, we can suggest another residence for her.” Mom just gave a quick nod and pulled me behind her out the door.
The next time we visited, Mom bent down in front of me out in the parking lot before we went inside the complex. I wasn’t going to come with her that day, but Mrs. Bronson had to
cancel at the last minute and no one else was available, so there she was. Mom smoothed the front of her orange dress out where it had gotten wrinkled by the seatbelt and then held me gently by the shoulders, “Piper honey, I’m going to take Grannie on a walk outside today and talk to her about grown-up things. Can you be a good girl and sit in Grannie’s room quietly? If you’re good, we’ll go see the bunnies at the pet store afterwards.” Since we weren’t allowed to have pets in their apartment, Mom would take me sometimes to the pet shop down the street that would let you play with the animals.
38 Saturday. I unfolded them with pawing fingers, digging for the crayons tucked inside.
Meanwhile, Mom turned the TV off. “What’re you doing?” Grandma asked from where she’d been watching, in a chair next to the bed.
Mom grabbed an extra wheelchair from out in the hallway and unfolded it, “Come on, Grannie. Let’s go have a chat.” Grandma relented and let herself be wheeled out of the room. Mom pulled the door shut with her foot as they left.
I swung her feet back and forth over the edge of the bed while coloring in the claw of a lobster a shade of green. But the birds caught the setting sun from Grandma’s small window across the room, refracting the light in small rainbows splayed across the walls, and it was impossible not to look at. Usually, when I was near the birds, Grandma made me stand with my arms straight down at my side and she would whistle at her through her teeth if I reached out to grab for one of them. It always scared me since most of the time her grandmother barely spoke above a whisper, but boy could she whistle loud.
But now Grandma wasn’t here and I was all alone by myself. I jumped off the bed, went
over to the dresser, and picked up an elegantly curved crane Grandma had bought while at the beach on her twenty-fifth anniversary.
Setting it back down on the dresser, I reached for other birds – a flamingo, blue jays, cardinals, and woodpeckers. I picked up and held some of the sculptures, examining them from every angle, looking at the colored pigments frozen inside the glass. Others I ran her fingers over, just to touch them all and take advantage of this stolen privilege.
39 name of and ones I was sure were too pretty to be real. The rays from the setting sun made all of the sculptures look like they were glowing from some inner light.
Even with the chair, I still couldn’t reach the very top shelf of the dresser. I wondered how Grandma even managed to get those birds up there since she couldn’t straighten her back out. Maybe she heckled one of the attendants into helping her. I tried to reach up again, standing on the edge of the chair and stretching upwards. When it was still too far to reach, I stepped up onto the first shelf and pressed my body to the dresser, clutching the side with my left hand.
Finally I could reach the top shelf, where Grandma kept her most special birds. I picked up first the glass sandpiper Grandma had bought when I was born. Every time I would come over to her house, Grandma would take it down from the shelf and sit me in her lap and explain to her that this was my bird. Mom denied that she named me after a bird, said she had no idea what a sandpiper was. Grandma would yell back at her, “Hogwash! Of course you did.” This was the only sculpture I’d ever been allowed to handle, and only for a short amount of time. It
had a plump, milk-colored torso and brown-striped wings tucked in. Its legs were long and straight while its beak stretched out in an exaggerated long curve.
I’d never seen a sandpiper in person before. I hadn’t even been to the beach. My friend Rachel said it was ginormous and it looked like the edge of the earth. One time I’d gone to a lake with her mother but it didn’t seem like anything special. The other shore looked close enough to swim to. I held the sandpiper above her head and tried to picture it in motion, but its wings remained frozen to its sides, refusing to spread and fly.
40 like the birds of paradise with exquisite curved tail feathers. I wanted a different bird to claim as my own. I shoved the sandpiper sculpture into the far back corner of the top shelf, where you couldn’t see it from the ground. Then, I bent down to reach for one of the prettier birds on one of the lower shelves.
As I was bending down though, still holding onto the side of the dresser, I felt the whole piece of furniture start to tilt. I tried to stand up and reestablish my balance, but the dresser was already falling. I jumped off onto the floor at the last second, off to the side. As I turned around, sitting on the ground back on her hands, I saw the dresser fall. Many of the sculptures were already sliding off the shelf as it tipped over, through the air in flight for the first and last time, a whole crystal flock. The sculptures’ flight came to an end with a final bird song, the sound of them shattering on the ground ringing like tiny bells. The finality of the thud of the dresser slamming down on top of the birds followed.
It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
A scream tore through the settling air and I was shoved aside as Grandma fell forward out of the wheelchair onto the ground. I crawled backwards out of the way as Grandma grabbed at the pieces of her birds. I think she was sifting through them to try to find her sparrow, but all of the shards had mixed together and bit through her thin skin. Blood started flowing in thin, angry lines between her shaking fingers and sobs choked her and shook her bony shoulders.
42 Suitcases
When she was young, Leah would pack suitcases for imaginary trips she would never take. It started after she got appendicitis and was hospitalized for a few days after the surgery. The hospital was too small to have anything for entertaining young kids around and she’d only be there for another day or two anyway. Someone before her though left an old Explorer travel magazine in the room and so Leah read it cover to cover ten times before she was discharged. The cover was a picture of the Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the world’s largest salt flat. When it rained, the flat flooded and the water was so clear that it reflected the sky and it looked like you were walking on a mirror. Or at least that’s what it looked like in the magazine’s pictures. But it was nothing like she’d ever seen before in Yemassee, where all there was to see was one
abandoned farm after another. Leah loved the salt flats so much that she took the magazine home with her after she was discharged and read it countless times.
43 still had it rather than the hat box being preserved for any sentimental reason. The faded green paper covering was tearing at the edges and sides but the color reminded her of the sherbet her mother used to serve on the porch after dinner in the summer. Leah carefully compiled the things she thought she’d need – crayons worn down to a nub, a Barbie doll with knotted hair to
keep her company, a plastic compass from a cereal box, and a pair of binoculars. Sometimes she would imagine herself traveling to one of the other places in the Explorer magazine, so Leah would pack accordingly. She packed swimming goggles for an excursion to Aruba, a hair bow for the halls of Versailles, and some grass for the alpacas at Machu Picchu.
Placing the lid on the box and tying the fraying pink ribbon on top, Leah would go to the kitchen to tell her mother that she was ready to go. Her mother opened the hat box and examined the contents but noted that Leah hadn’t packed any clothes yet. So she went back into her room, put in all the clean underwear she could find, a raincoat just in case, and one or two t-shirts. When she got wherever she was going, she would barter with the locals and get some nicer clothes.
Once she had everything she needed, Leah would head out the door, say a goodbye to her mother over her shoulder. Her mother used to pretend like she was so sad that her daughter was leaving her to have grand adventures across the world, her wails echoing from the kitchen throughout the small ranch house. As Leah got older though, her mother stopped playing along and would send Leah off with only a reminder that dinner was at six o’clock tonight.
44 the water. Sometimes, when her body and imagination were exhausted Leah would lie on her back in a cleared patch of dirt and watch the tall trees above her rustle in a breeze too high for her to feel. One day she would make it there. One day, she would make it to all of the places in the magazine and out of Yemassee. Leah would repeat in her head, if only. If only, if only, if only. Then the stillness of the air would press down on her and she would hop off the ground, grab the hat box, and make her way home.
Leah hated the bag her parents made her pack in for her first summer at Camp Chenoa when she was twelve. Any time she complained about packing in her father’s bulky leather, her mom would pick it up off Leah’s bed and say, “Fine, I guess you can’t go to camp if you don’t have any clothes.” Leah always gave in because her friend Rachel told her stories about
swimming in the big lake and orienteering through the woods. It was Leah’s first overnight trip outside of Yemassee.
So she laid out all of her khaki shorts, t-shirts in every color, and a brand new pair of tennis shoes with bright blue shoe laces. Her old binoculars were packed in with a new address book she’d bought to keep track of all her new camp friends after they went back home. Tucked in with her socks was a disposable camera and on top was her creased Explorer magazine.
45 mother embroidered “Leah” in pink thread on the ribbon-handle from her old hat box. She was biting back a smile while Leah tore off the wrapping paper.
Leah let the silk slide between her fingers and managed a smile, but she was sad to know that somewhere in the house, the hat box had been mangled with a pair of sewing scissors. She also hated her name and didn’t need a neon pink reminder of it to follow her to camp. “Leah” sounded like your tongue was fumbling around with a rock inside your mouth until it tumbled over your lips and out into the room. Sometimes she felt like she was that rock, stumbling into the world and sitting there, weighed down and unable to move.
46 took a pair of blunted scissors to the damn ruffles and only wore the mangled suit once, as the anchor on the winning all-camp swim relay contest.
Leah had already packed enough boxes to fill the hallway outside her room a few months before she was supposed to leave for college. The already small walkway became
claustrophobic; one step in the wrong spot or hand pressing on the wrong box and a cardboard avalanche might be triggered. Leah couldn’t even remember what was in these boxes, her mom had packed some of them for her, “They’re essentials. You’ll thank me later,” her mom would say as she came back with shopping bags from the dollar store crowding for room on her arms, looking like a retail octopus.
But instead of shipping these boxes to the small college in Vermont that she’d received a scholarship from, Leah was loading them in the back of her 1996 Honda Pilot and moving into an even smaller house not fifteen minutes away.
47 But one positive pregnancy test later, she withdrew from school and Charlie was
transferring to USC Beaufort. Leah had tried to discuss alternatives with Charlie, but all he would say was that they had a responsibility to their child now. She wondered why at the moment of conception when Charlie told her life began that her life had to end. With nothing else to lose, the two of them decided to try living together.
In the middle of the night, when the knowledge that she was trapped in Yemassee would grip her around the throat and squeeze, Leah summoned images of the Salar de Uyuni and its infinite sky. As her belly swelled over the next few months, she imagined that infinity inside her – herself being reflected and refracted in into this new shape.
Two years later, Leah woke up one morning knowing she was going to leave Charlie, in the same way someone woke up knowing what they wanted to eat for breakfast or what the weather was going to be. It felt decided for her before her waking mind could have a say, but she was okay with that. The impending end sizzled in her scrambled eggs and infused in with her tea, she could taste it.
Leah left for work that morning without yelling goodbye down the hallway as he shaved in the bathroom. But she didn’t go to the general practice clinic where she was a receptionist and to her office chair that had molded perfectly to her ass these years since graduation. Instead, she drove to a department store in Savannah. Leah finally bought the bag she had wanted all those years ago for camp, settling on a dull green roller suitcase. It wasn’t the cute, colorful bag she’d dreamed of on Christmas Eve when she was young, but it was hers. If there hadn’t been
48 those bright pink backpacks or tote bags with flowers for her daughter, sewing “Allison” in swirling letters on them like her mother had done for her.
Leah went home and packed while Charlie was still at work. It was good, efficient work. Rolling shirts and stashing socks reminded Leah of packing for the hiking trip she and Charlie took last year in Georgia for their anniversary. After Allison was stillborn, they fell into a relationship more so out of convenience than any real passion or desire. They got along together fine and neither person had the will to move out first. It was a suitable. The night before
however, Charlie had lifted her hand off the table at dinner and slipped a diamond ring, plain and modest in size, onto her finger. He laid her hand back down with little fanfare; their eventual marriage was already a done deal, implicit. And then she woke up this morning knowing it was her last chance to get out of Yemassee.
49 As she was walking out the door, Leah twisted the diamond ring on her finger. Out of everything, this should be the thing she left behind. It should. So she worked it off her finger, but then Leah dropped it in her pocket. She was walking out the door with only $40 dollars in her wallet and if she wanted to get all the way to Bolivia, she would need all the money she could get.
After that first time, leaving got much easier. In fact, Leah liked it more than she was ready to admit. First, she slept on her cousin’s old roommate’s couch in Savannah. She was one of the few people Leah knew outside of town. Most of them were in the same state of post-high school languish Leah found herself mired in, so those friends wouldn’t be any help to her. Through the Savannah connection, Leah met more people with more couches to sleep on. Eventually, she even started dating again, spewing words of commitment and affection to speed up just so they’d take her somewhere new, different. But then in the middle of the night, she’d want to leave and that thought would consume her entirely until she was sitting on the first bus or train out of the city.
Long ago, Leah had traded the green roller suitcase at a high school friend’s sister’s house for a backpack. She only took what she needed now: a few t-shirts, one or two blouses for dates she’d be wearing since college, one pair of blue jeans, and one pair of slacks. The clothes were wrapped around whatever random assortment of liquor she had on hand at the time, always a useful tool if she needed to bargain for something or more time at a friend’s. Besides a
50 would do. When she settled in somewhere new, she would claim a drawer or a counter and create a tiny niche in whatever space she found for herself. She laid everything out and knew she was looking at everything she owned in this world. Then when the itch to leave touched her in the night, Leah picked up every piece of clothing down to the last pair of embarrassingly saggy underwear, carefully folded it, and placed it in the backpack. It was soothing, taking account of everything in her life, figuring who exactly she was at the moment by the new things or the things left behind, and who she would always by what stayed. At a time when she so often changed, she needed this cataloging of herself.
Leah saves up her money from temp jobs as she drifts from one acquaintances’ lodgings to another until finally, she’s scrounged together enough for a plane ticket to Brazil. Her backpack was light with only a change of clothes or two and her passport. All of those years, ever since she the hospital when she was young and maybe even a little bit before that, Leah believed in Salar de Uyuni. The image of a person walking into a horizon you couldn’t
distinguish on the cover of the Explorer magazine was seared into her mind. She’d finally lost the magazine somewhere along the way here, maybe in O’Hare.
52 Linville Falls
I woke up to a brown spotted spider crawling across the silver hairs of its web, turning an emerald mantis over and over in its legs, wrapping it up into a snack for later. The arachnid’s beady black eyes, all eight of them clustered together, stared straight out of the TV screen at me as its legs worked mechanically.
I’d fallen asleep on top of my brother’s bed again, lying horizontally across it and using a rolled up sleeping bag as a pillow. For some reason, I thought if I crafted the most
uncomfortable sleeping position possible, I would actually stay awake and finish packing
everything up. The sleeping bag’s zipper left tiny indents on my cheek, but I lay back down and followed the hypnotizing motion of the spider. The deep droning voice of the documentary’s narrator had been a reverberating hum running through my dreams.
53 high school sweaters. While she swathed herself in her grief, let it encompass her, I held mine tightly to my chest. I took care of tackling the logistical arrangements because if I stopped moving, I was afraid I would fall apart. So when his roommates in Boone called to ask about what we wanted them to do with Ryan’s stuff, I set out first thing the next morning.
His room here looked just like his one at home - clothes spilled over out of the small closet, strewn across the floor, on the bed, and burying a chair in the corner. He’d never grown out of leaving his clothes in a pile wherever he took them off, like a snake shedding its skins. On laundry day, he’d retrace his steps through the house and pick up the piles as he went. A map of the Appalachian Trail was hung with push pins in the wood-paneled walls, framed with torn magazine pages of mountainous landscapes. When we were young, Ryan would pull up his shirt and run a finger along the raised appendectomy scar on the side of his stomach as he explained that the mountains were like a geological scar, made from two land masses colliding and how cool is that?
54 I’d popped in the disks for background noise on the first night as I was packing, but after the first few minutes I ended up clearing a spot for myself on the bed and laying down to watch. The next two nights since, I’ve done the same thing. The documentary ended and returned to the menu where a swelling orchestral arrangement played on loop over scenes of sapphire parrots, yawning lions, and wide-eyed lemurs. I could hear Ryan’s roommates on the other side of the door moving around, closing cabinets and showering and boiling water. They were going about their normal morning routines, going about their normal lives because that’s what people do, but I still couldn’t get used to it. I was due back at work tomorrow with people who still answered e-mails and could call their brothers whenever they wanted. I couldn’t understand my mother,
who had not moved beyond her bed or the couch since the park ranger called her saying her son had gone for a hike and not come home, but I couldn’t understand how people could be
following their routines as usual either. I bit the inside of my cheek and focused on the weight of each breath in my chest.
I waited until all the movement outside quieted down before I got up, pulled on one of Ryan’s flannels that was balled up on the floor, and went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee. To be fair, his roommates had been incredibly accommodating, not saying anything of their friend’s bereaved sister who was only supposed to be here one day and so far had stayed for the whole weekend. I felt self-conscious for imposing on a house of college-aged guys four or five years younger than me who looked like teenagers with unkempt beards taped on.
55 The roommates had left some coffee in the pot and I wasn’t sure if thinking they left it for me made me feel better or worse. I poured it into an earthenware mug and curled up in a kitchen chair as I drank it. As I sat there and sipped, looking out the window over the sink at the
morning fog clinging to the hillside, I could hear a door opening across the house. Apparently, one of the roommates was still here and I fought down the silly urge to sprint back into Ryan’s room. I watched him walk into the kitchen out of the corner of my eye. I hadn’t talked with any of them a lot, but I remembered this one because he was so tall, his top half swayed slightly as he walked. It was sort of like watching a tree in the wind. He noticed me as he walked into the room and halted with a hand on the refrigerator door, “Oh, sorry. Didn’t mean to…”
“It’s your house, you don’t have to apologize.” I tried to be nonchalant because I was an adult, I didn’t abruptly stand up and walk away because I didn’t want to talk to anyone. So I pulled my knees up closer to my chest and sank into the thin vinyl seat cushion, trying to think of something to say. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name…?” I realized after I said this that it was embarrassing and insulting to have been here for three days and still not remember their names.
But he just held up a large hand as he opened the fridge and reached in, “No worries. I’m Clark. The one who gives rides up to the mountain.” Right, that did vaguely ring a bell.
56 I can help you carry? Like furniture or something. If you don’t want to take it with you, we can figure out something to do with it.”
“No,” I mutter into my knees, “just mostly sorting to do.”
He nodded, the empty bowl clanking as he set it down in the sink, “Alright. Well, if you need my help with anything, I’ll be around for another hour or so before I’ve got to start making trips up the mountain.”
He’d started walking out of the room but I looked up and called after him, “Wait! You’re taking people up the mountain today?” He nodded. “Any chance you’re going near the
waterfalls?”
Clark turned all the way around and leaned against the doorframe, his head almost touching the top, “Are you sure you want to do that? You don’t have to force yourself to go.” He waited a moment before he spoke again, “They already cleaned everything up.” The weight of my request sat on my chest, the idea of visiting the last place my brother had hiked. It wasn’t out of any over-dramatic notion of finding peace or a part of my brother or I’m not even sure what. But when I had to explain this, to come back to this moment throughout the rest of my life, I wanted to be able to see the place in my mind. I didn’t say anything but Clark said as he walked away, “If you want to come, be ready in an hour.”
57 blending into the trees. After he dropped out of Vanderbilt, I only spoke with Ryan every now and then. He was usually somewhere out of cell range and Mom would usually relay anything important to me. When we did talk, I got the sense of the mountains carving a new person out of the younger brother I’d always bossed around.
How was I supposed to know what Ryan would’ve wanted me to keep or not? Which of these books had been his favorite? They were all well-worn and dog-eared. I didn’t want to bring home any more clothes or else Mom may bury herself in them and never get back up. Hell, I hadn’t even thought to bring boxes with me when I came up here, all I could think was to jump into my car and get out of the tomb my childhood home was becoming. When she did get up, my mother would collect every photo of Ryan, every elementary school art project, anything she came across of his and collected it on the coffee table in the den as a makeshift shrine. I would walk in to check on her and dozens of Ryan’s would smile at me from the table at once.
I tried once again to sit down and begin sorting through Ryan’s stuff in earnest. I picked up a t-shirt with wolves howling at the moon on it, looked at it, said a silent prayed that he had bought it as a joke, and then set it by the door. I did that with a pair of worn jeans, a crocheted cap, and a jacket that may have been made out of more duct tape than fabric. Still, I hadn’t even taken three steps from where I started. This was going way too slowly.
I dumped the duffle bag of stuff I had already packed out onto the bed and started
58 me here longer. I wanted it gone, I wanted it out. So I threw it all in. Once I’d filled the duffle bag, I went out and grabbed some trash bags and kept going.
Before I left, I changed out of my sweater and into the smallest flannel shirt I could find although it still left me swimming in fabric. I also exchanged my flats for a pair of hiking boots with socks I stuffed in the toe because they were two sizes two big.
When I was done, I threw the duffle bag over one shoulder and looped all of the bags around my arms, their weight making the straps bite into my forearms. Clark was waiting on the couch, “Ready?”
I hopped in the front seat of his van and we headed to the public parking lot where the hikers were waiting for Clark. He would take them to places further away from the parking lots but still on the road. A group of college kids flagged him down and jumped in. When Clark pulled over to let them out, I started to get out too but he locked the doors from his side, “Hey there! Do you even know how to get there?”
“…I could ask. For directions.” I’m sure someone had to know where Linville Falls
was. But I took my hand off the door handle and settled back in as Clark drove another fifteen minutes down the road. He pulled over and we left the truck there as we entered the same trail that Ryan had been hiking through a barely marked and disused entrance. Clark insisted he carry the trash bags at least. As the small path met up with bigger trails, we got some strange looks for carting around so much stuff. I realized I didn’t really know what I was doing and probably shouldn’t have brought all this stuff with me. But I kept walking and Clark didn’t say anything about it either.
