It is time. It is probably past time, but as a very wonderful new friend says, time is an artificial construct anyway. One more way we end up feeling bad about ourselves. Still, summer is over, and although my swimming hole (pictured) is still inviting, it is getting chillier. I take embarrassingly long hot showers after each shorter and shorter swim.
What is it time for except neoprene and fleece jackets? Writing. I haven't written anything except journal entries and bad poetry for 3 years. It is time.
Today I went back into my computer files to see if there were any good ideas worth revisiting. Because I often save snippets of stories that I just don't know what to do with but can't bear to delete. Digging around in old words is easier than manifesting new ones on a blank page. At least for me. For now.
I found this story. It is probably unseemly to love your own work, but I love this story and because I love it, I want to send it out into the world to make its own way. Thanks for reading.
Left Behind
by Laura S. Jones
The exterior of the white brick house still looks ready for a House and Garden photo shoot even as the inside now has more in common with some junkie’s trailer, although with nicer furniture. My sister kept up appearances until the end because absolutely nothing was more important to her, but when the wind is right and the weather warm, like today, the smell of rotting dog piss and stale cigarette smoke slithers out of that house and up your nose before you even set foot on the porch.
The last time I was here, I used a crowbar to pry open all the first floor windows. They had been nailed shut since Linda bought the place four years ago. So now the smell is better, but better than nauseating is still pretty bad. Up until about a week ago she smoked incessantly - in the bathroom with the door shut, as if that helped. I also installed a new toilet in the basement and changed the air filter, but mostly I either sat with my sister and watched her struggle to breathe, or I escaped the house entirely. She was adamant that she wanted to die at home, and my other sister figured it was because you can’t drink or smoke in a hospital. I think it was because her asshole ex-husband is a doctor, and she didn’t want him to see her like this, a bloated belly hanging off a jaundiced skeleton. We had known Linda was dying since the fall. We were ready for it. Shit, my brother and sister and I were almost looking forward to it. It wasn’t that we didn’t love her, even though she never made it easy. It was that without actually saying it to each other we were all hoping to spend some time in that place where death makes those left behind feel closer, at least for a little while.
My wife and I are back now for the memorial service. The last time I was in this house, Linda was alive, barely, but alive. Dying is so vastly different from dead. You wouldn’t think so, but it is. Now three days later, she is literally gone, her body hauled away by the people who do those things, and her kids have no mother. They didn’t have much of one for many years thanks to the booze, but there was always a chance things would change, right? They are at that funny age, 20 and 23, when they act all grown-up, but you know they aren’t, they’re just faking. They can’t be grown up; you weren’t at that age. And if they are, then you were a complete loser. When you are a kid, you think grown-ups have all this power, so you long for it, you hurry towards it. What no one tells you is that growing up is just one long process of losing power.
“How was the drive? You want some pizza?” Julie asked when we walked in. Julie is my remaining sister. She is good with details and procedure and manners and keeping busy. She was grown up at 20 without faking it. She is the exception to everything.
“It was harder than last time. More trucks.” I ignored the pizza question.
“I’m so sorry,” my wife said to our nieces and to Julie and to anyone she could see.
I, of course, forgot to say anything like that.
We were kind of stuck in the narrow entrance hall of the little house with its striped green wallpaper and tasteful botanical prints and brass sconces since the dining room was full of nieces and flowers and chairs and my brother, who takes up a lot of space. The two dogs that Linda let shit and pee wherever and whenever they felt like it are weaving between everyone’s legs, happy as all get out to have the company. She got the chocolate lab as a puppy, but the Pekinese came from the animal shelter with a BB already lodged in his neck. We always wondered what kind of monster shoots a six pound dog.
Being almost 400 pounds, my brother is probably the next to die. Our parents are long dead, so my money’s on him unless someone else gets really unlucky. I don’t want him to die, but I don’t know how to stop it. Every time I see Andy or talk to him, I’m reminded of how our lives are so completely opposite, like we are living on different planets in different solar systems in different galaxies and breathing different air. I know he feels it too; you’d have to be an idiot not to, and he is not an idiot.
“Brother!” he yelled when he saw me. Andy makes up for emotional connection by yelling. He gave me a hug and then one to my wife. But hers was a fake hug, all for show, and he let go of her like she burned him, nearly tipping her forward with the speed of his release. Too much is for show right now; it makes my head hurt, and it takes too much effort to respond with equal fakery. I am in pretty good shape, but it seems like death has sliced through all the muscles and tendons in my legs and I’m not sure when they’ll give way. I feel like the camel waiting for that straw.
We all shimmied around each other in the tiny kitchen to get beers from the fridge and then went outside where the stink was mixed with smoke from the firepit and there were more chairs. The beer made everything a little better, even though it was bad beer. Not as bad, though, as the wine in a box Linda refused to give up even as it was killing her. Our family likes to drink. A lot. Except for Andy; he likes to eat.
“Do you think I should mention the diet camp?” my wife had asked on the drive across the mountains. God no, not now, I wanted to say, but I never was that frank with her. She begged me to be, said it was okay, that it was what she wanted, but I never believed her.
“Uh, maybe later.”
“You’re right. This weekend should be about Linda and the girls. And you,” she added, reaching her hand to my neck with a tenderness that I know I don’t deserve any more but ache for. Just don’t ask me to reciprocate.
We had talked a couple of weeks ago about trying to get Andy into this diet camp, better known as a “health and wellness” inpatient treatment program at a big university hospital in North Carolina. We had even talked about kidnapping him, except we couldn’t figure out exactly how we would lift him into the truck once we had knocked him out. He has been trying to lose weight for at least ten years. At 51, he’s already had two heart attacks, and he also has a bad liver. He has to be careful about what kind of chair he sits in or he won’t be able to get up. Watching him assess the structural integrity of the seating options in a room the way an engineer would look at a bridge makes me sad and angry at the same time. Then again, everything about my brother makes me sad and angry lately. He has therapists and trainers and a whole fucking army of people supposedly trying to help him lose weight. All I can think about that is how they must be the worst professionals in the world because he keeps getting fatter and sicker. I want to line them all up and punch them in the face as hard as I can and then while they are lying there with blood on their faces punch them again and then make them give my brother all his money back. Money won’t save him, I know, but he shouldn’t be robbed on top of being fat.
We went to our hotel after an hour of drinking and not talking. The next morning came far too quickly. There has got to be some explanation for why everything seems so speeded up after someone dies.
“Dave, hey, come on, the service is about to start,” Julie says, grabbing my arm on the steps of the church. My wife had gone in ahead of me to use the bathroom.
I shake my head. “I’m not going in.”
She looks at me for ten full seconds, and I can see fear start to cloud her eyes. She nods her head, lets go of my arm and leaves.
“I just can’t,” I say, to no one in particular.
