Mumma's House

by Ike Hamill

  “What will you do with it?” Jules asked.

  “Demolish the house and sell the land,” June said. “You guys have done a good job keeping this house mostly upright, but it is time to let it fall. We can get a good price on the acreage. There have been offers before that we weren’t able to take advantage of. As far as the proceeds, it will be an even split to each branch, five ways.”

  Everyone had nodded.

  Aunt Allison had been the one who came up with the plan for the objects in the house. She had distributed stickers to each person, all had a different color, and asked them to put stickers on keepsakes that they would like to have. Mumma Jay would get no stickers—everything that she wanted was already in her front room. Instead, she would mediate any disputes where more than one person wanted a particular lamp, or chair, or mixing bowl.

  They didn’t have any disputes. Nobody even used all their stickers. Once the snow melted, two guys with a big horse trailer had come to take the unclaimed furniture off to auction. Gus and his mom had supervised the guys from their car to make sure that they didn’t take anything from the front room.

  One night, at one of their temporary apartments, his mother had set down her fork suddenly. Gus froze with a tater tot halfway to his mouth. They had a million tater tots to eat. June still hadn’t gotten used to cooking in a real oven again and she seemed to have a need to fill up the cookie sheet with tots.

  “I just realized,” she said, “that I never asked you if you wanted any stickers.”

  “Huh?”

  “Back at Mumma’s house, when we were all putting stickers on things that we wanted to claim, I didn’t use mine and I didn’t give you any. Was there something you wanted from the house that you didn’t get to take?”

  Gus put the tot in his mouth and shook his head while he chewed. Everything he cared about had already been in their front room, and that stuff was automatically theirs.

  “Well, I’m sorry anyway,” she said. “I wish that I had taken Trudy’s slippers. They’re back in their right place, but I can’t help thinking that they might be lonely there. I bet I could have gotten them on New Year’s Day, but when I tried to find her nook the last time we went back, I couldn’t find it.”

  Gus nodded.

  The idea of Trudy’s nook made him think about his mother’s old room in the loft of the barn. When they had divided up all the stuff from the house, had anyone thought to go to the loft? Gus wasn’t sure. He could remember pictures and scattered belongings up there. It was curious that his mother had left all that stuff behind.

  Now, sitting in his dead tree, Gus wondered if he should try to climb up to the loft and take one more look around. It only took a moment for him to decide that it was a bad idea. He didn’t have any use for the memories he had made during that last week in the house. It would be best to let them go.

  # # # #

  June didn’t last long inside. She walked around her old room, checked the bathroom, and went through the closet again. Everything was gone from her quarters. Before she walked through the rest of the house, she went back outside for a breath of fresh air.

  She was standing in the yard, looking up at the house, when she heard the gravel crunching as a car came up the driveway. She watched the shape through the trees and didn’t even recognize the car when it came around the last bend. She squinted and visored her hand over her eyes, trying to see through the windshield’s glare. The car’s horn tooted twice, signaling a friendly visit.

  June smiled when the window went down, revealing her cousin.

  “Deidra! What are you doing here?” June asked.

  She gave Deidra a one-armed hug as she got out of her car.

  “I couldn’t let you do this last day alone. I thought you might be sad, or maybe you would need some help.”

  “Both,” June said, hugging her again. She gave Deidra two slaps on the back and broke the embrace.

  Deidra was looking up at the place.

  “And I came to say goodbye to Mumma’s house, I guess,” Deidra said.

  They stood, shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the house. June nodded and sighed.

  “Want to do the final walkthrough?”

  Deidra gave a low laugh. “That could take a while.”

  They climbed the porch stairs together. June surveyed the few pieces left in her front room, spinning them in her head and trying to imagine how they would fit in her car. Deidra must have read her mind.

  “I can take some of this in my car—follow you back to your house.”

  “Oh! That would be fantastic, thank you. I can’t wait to show you the place. We found this little guest house that my clients were trying to split off from their big place. It comes with a little land—they parceled off the back third of the lot—and through Gus’s window you can see the pond. It’s adorable. It’s downtown, but it still manages to feel a little rural.”

  Deidra smiled. “I can’t wait to see it.”

  June’s smile faded fast. It suddenly seemed wrong to be talking about how happy she was about moving. It seemed disrespectful.

  “Start upstairs?” she asked.

  Deidra nodded and they climbed.

  Travis’s empty room held no surprises. So far as June knew, nobody had come looking for the old man. Nobody in the family even had his current address. He had appeared that night from nowhere, it seemed, and now he had returned to that mystery. Their plan was simple denial. If anyone asked about Travis or Tommy, they would all claim ignorance. They hadn’t seen them. If their bones were somewhere in the house, Auggie and Jules hadn’t been able to find them after all their searching.

  Deidra stopped in the door of the bathroom.

  “Seriously?” she asked.

  “What?” June asked.

  “They took the tub, sink, and toilet. Who the hell would want that old garbage?”

  “Look up. They even took the fixtures and the old tin ceiling. I guess there’s a market for that stuff.”

  “Wow,” Deidra said.

  They continued down the hall, poking their heads into empty rooms and opening the doors of empty closets.

  “It really is empty. Hard to believe,” Deidra said. When June didn’t respond, Deidra added. “I mean, not just of stuff. It’s empty of everything.”

  “Yeah,” June said, knowing what she meant.

  Deidra didn’t say a word when she came to Uncle Tommy’s room. June’s eyes went to the scarred walls. The furniture tornado had smashed up the room pretty good. June still felt the violence of that night in her stiff fingers when she woke up every morning.

  “That sneaky old bastard,” Deidra said, pointing to the trapdoor in the floor. “That’s how he was getting in and out without anyone seeing him?”

  June nodded. “The ladder was impossible to see from the cellar.”

  Deidra shook her head.

  Across the hall in Dean’s room, June pointed out the closet and told the story about finding the poison hidden back there.

  When she was done, Deidra said, “Yeah, I think one of your brothers told me about that. You must have told them after we left?”

  “Yeah,” June said.

  “What I couldn’t figure out was, why didn’t the police find his stash? They searched his room, right? Where was the stuff?”

  June shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t care because he had already confessed?”

  “I guess,” Deidra said. She led the way as they continued down the hall to the wing. For several of the rooms, neither of them had a story. Now that the things were all gone, they had a hard time even guessing which of the rooms had held what. They came back down and worked their way through the first floor rooms and then went out to the sheds. Everything was gone. For a slightly higher percentage of the proceeds, the auction people had disposed of a lot of the accumulated garbage in the house.

  June stopped in one of the cold shed rooms. She reached up to a high shelf and found something that had been forgotten. Deidra came to her side as s
he wiped the dust from the lid.

  “Pickled garlic,” June said.

  “Can’t be good after all this time, can it?”

  “No. I guess not.”

  She reached up and put the jar back.

  “What do you think they’ll find when they plow this place under?” Deidra asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t they bury Poppa in the cellar?”

  June’s face went blank as she stared at Deidra.

  “Seriously?”

  Deidra nodded. “That’s what I always heard. He asked to be buried on the property, but it was winter time when he went. They talked about storing his body out in the barn until the ground thawed, but the corpse spooked the animals too much. Bernard dug a grave in the cellar and they dumped a bunch of lime on him and had a small ceremony.”

  June put a hand over her heart.

  “That is the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard,” June said.

  “How did you never know that story?”

  June shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s why Bernard lived down there. They said that someone had to keep watch to make sure that Poppa didn’t come back up. The only reason they let him bury Poppa down there was because he swore that he would always keep watch.”

  “I thought he lived down there because he was albino,” June said.

  “Who knows?” Deidra asked, putting up her hands. “Bernard died long before I was born. These are all just stories, I guess.”

  June nodded.

  “Let’s get outside. This place is like a tomb.”

  # # # #

  “Okay, Mister, time to go,” June said.

  “Mom! You found me,” Gus said. He was up in the tree, leaning back against the trunk and feeling the warm sun on his face.

  “Cousin Deidra is here to help us move the last stuff. This can be our final trip,” June said.

  “Oh,” Gus said.

  “Come on down.”

  Gus spun around and hugged the trunk while his foot found the next branch. Before releasing his grip, he gave the bark a quick peck goodbye. He slid down and then dropped to the ground. His mother put out a hand to steady him once he landed.

  “Good thing your uncle didn’t know about this tree,” June said. She peered up at Gus’s friend. “He would have said that it had to go.”

  “It’s okay,” Gus said. “It’s dead anyway.”

  June put an arm around his shoulders as Gus lowered his head. Deidra caught up with them and they walked around to the front of the house again.

  Gus stopped when he saw the cars, already full of stuff.

  “You got it already?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Cousin Deidra is going to help us move it into the new house. Isn’t that nice?”

  “Can I go inside again?” Gus asked.

  “Make it quick.”

  He was halfway up the porch stairs when he turned around and looked at her. “You coming?”

  “You go ahead. Make it quick.”

  When he was pushing through the front door, she called, “Leave the door open.”

  Gus nodded. He knew what she meant. She didn’t want him going too deep into the house and she wanted to keep an eye on him. She didn’t have to worry. Gus’s business was in the front room of the place.

  He stood where the coffee table had been and looked towards where his mother had her little kitchen set up. Living in a real house with a real kitchen was different. It wasn’t as cozy. In this apartment that they had made out of one room, he could sit on the futon and see the entire place. No matter where his mom went—even if she went out on the porch for a minute to clear her head—he could see her. Now, in the new house, if he wanted to watch her make dinner, he had to sit in one of the rigid chairs at their kitchen table. It wasn’t the same. He couldn’t lie on his back and watch a video while keeping an eye on her. He couldn’t doze off while she ironed her shirts a few paces away.

  She said it was nice to be able to spread out. Gus didn’t like it. He felt disconnected all the time.

  Things would never be the same.

  There were good parts to the new place. Now that the sidewalks were clear, he was allowed to walk to school with the neighborhood kids. The parents took turns, walking with the group of kids. June had adjusted her shift so that she could be one of the walkers. He liked watching his mom talk to the younger kids. She learned their names and asked them what they had brought for lunch. His mother even knew the names of their cats and dogs, and would ask about them as they walked.

  As nice as that was, they had lost some of their connection. His mother said that it was a natural part of growing up. All kids pushed away from their parents eventually, she said. He didn’t want it to be true.

  Gus wondered if this room somehow contained that connective tissue that had joined him to his mother. When the house was pushed over, he wondered if there would be roots that he could see if he watched really hard.

  He turned to go back outside just before she called to him.

  # # # #

  “Ready? On three,” June said. She and Deidra lifted after she counted. Gus held the screen door open.

  “You need help?” a voice called from the sidewalk.

  “No, thank you,” June yelled back.

  Deidra checked the guy out over her shoulder.

  “He seems helpful.”

  “That’s Carl,” June said. “He does seem helpful, doesn’t he? Somehow, he always manages to show up right when the hard work has just finished. He’s always walking that dog of his up and down the street, looking in everyone’s window. His daughter is sweet though. She’s a doll.”

  Gus raced around them to hold open the door to the bedroom. It had a tendency to swing closed on its own.

  “Right here,” June said, shuffling the corner of the bureau over next to the bed. “Perfect.”

  She turned to Gus.

  “Don’t you dare repeat any of what I just said about Carl. Rumors around here take on a life of their own.”

  Deidra smiled as Gus nodded solemnly.

  “Will you watch me throw rocks in the pond?” Gus asked.

  “We’ll watch from the porch, but after you bring in the drawers like you said you would.”

  Gus rolled his eyes and sighed until June pointed at him. Then he ran back to the car.

  “Let me give you a proper tour,” June said.

  She guided Deidra over to the stairs.

  “Originally, I think this was a carriage house or something? I don’t remember exactly what they said. Fortunately, they tore the old place down and build this one fresh about thirty years ago. Everything is up to snuff. There’s the one room and a bath upstairs. I suppose it was the master bedroom, with the balcony and everything, but I put Gus up there. I didn’t relish the idea of climbing those stairs all the time. I get enough of that at work.”

  “It’s spacious,” Deidra said, looking around. The room didn’t have much in it. There was a single bed and hamper. Gus’s clean clothes were arranged in folded piles.

  “It just looks that way because we don’t have any furniture for him yet. I’m sure that Gus will make the place seem tiny in a month or two. That’s his bath. This is the balcony. I would like to get some curtains up or something. Right now, he wakes with the dawn. The sun comes right through this window. Of course, he has only made it once or twice through the night up here. Most of the time he is down in my room a couple of hours after he goes to bed,” June said, punctuated by an exasperated sigh.

  “You’ll hate it until it stops, and then you’ll miss it like hell.”

  June nodded.

  From downstairs, they heard something drop on the floor and then feet running up the stairs.

  “I’m done,” Gus said, panting. “Come watch?”

  “Go ahead,” June said. “We’ll be out on the porch in a second.”

  “Okay,” he said, running off again.

  The women descended.

&nb
sp; “You’ve seen the living room and my room. This is the other bathroom.”

  “Very nice. Shower and tub—I’ve always wanted a separate tub, but I swear I would never find the time to take a bath.”

  “I will,” June said. “It has been years since I had a tub and I fully intend on using it. Over here is the kitchen. Gus hates it because you can’t see it from any other room. I kind of like that. Most of the places that I clean are these big, open-concept houses. I don’t know why people prefer that, honestly. It makes me feel like I’m on display all of the time.”

  Deidra shrugged. “I see the appeal.”

  “Not your place, of course. I love the way your house flows, you know? I’m talking about the kind of house where you walk through the front door and the whole first floor is like one big warehouse. It’s disturbing.”

  Deidra nodded.

  “Anyway, that’s about it. There’s a tiny office downstairs and the furnace and water heater and all that jazz.”

  “It’s adorable,” Deidra said.

  “I know that it’s small, but after being cooped up in that one room…”

  “I know,” Deidra said. “It will be a real treat.”

  They looked up when Gus yelled from outside.

  “We better go watch,” June said. “Apparently, it’s useless to throw rocks into a pond unless there is someone to witness it.”

  Deidra laughed.

  Chapter 51 : Family

  “GUS, TAKE YOUR COUSINS upstairs, please,” June said. She took off her coat and found a hanger in the closet near the front door. People were bustling in the kitchen. Auggie and Jules were out on the porch. Once the kids were upstairs, the living room was relatively quiet. June needed a moment to process. Everything had happened so quickly.

  Allison’s wishes had been conveyed by her lawyer in a brief document. She had already made all of her own arrangements. The process swept forward like a freight train. Trying to get in the way of it would have only led to getting knocked down and run over. By the time that June heard of her aunt’s death, her body had already been prepared and the date had been set for the burial.