Me Since You

by Laura Wiess

  But if we move your stuff . . .

  If we get rid of the things you cared about, pack away the pieces of your life . . .

  Then there’ll be nothing but more empty space.

  Without your stuff around there’ll be no proof of your existence.

  Like this isn’t your home, like you don’t live here anymore.

  There will be nothing left of you to see or hold or touch, nothing left to give even the smallest comfort.

  Without your stuff, you will really be gone.

  Chapter 72

  Eli texts, Sorry this took so long. Met Rosie, she’s great!! Carleton and Cheryl are good people and we’re meeting for dinner to talk more. Send good thoughts, Row. They’re worried that if something goes wrong for Rosie in the future she’ll only have one kidney left. I get that but without the kidney Daisy dies. Can’t wait to see you. Have to go. Love, Eli

  Love, Eli.

  I smile to myself all the way to the depot and on the way back, eating ice-cream cones and ambling down Victory Lane in the dark with the lightning bugs flashing and the sweet scent of wild clover on the breeze, my mother and I talk about her going back to work, my going back to work, Eva’s new boyfriend and finally, Eli.

  “I’d like to meet him when he gets back,” she says after a moment.

  “You will,” I say, trying to gauge her mood because she’s gotten kind of quiet. “What is it, Mom?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking about what your father said when he got home that night,” she says, taking a lick of her butter-pecan cone. “After the whole overpass incident, I mean.” She glances at me. “He had to take Eli’s statement, you know, and he said he could have finished it in twenty minutes but Eli was so shaken up that he spent, like, two and a half hours with him just letting him talk. You know what really seemed to stick in his mind, Rowan?”

  “What?” I say, curious but nervous, too.

  “Well, let me see if I can remember how he said it,” she says, frowning slightly and gazing off into the darkness. “He said something like ‘He’s a good kid trying to make the best out of being dealt a rough hand. He’d make his father proud.’ He said he didn’t tell Eli that, though, because he didn’t want to overstep his bounds, but later he wished he had.” She looks at me with a small smile. “So now you can tell him that your father thought he was a stand-up guy, and that he was always an excellent judge of character.”

  “No, you tell him when you meet him,” I say as a strange and wonderful warmth floods my heart. “It’ll mean more coming from you.” I glance over and see an odd look on her face. “What?”

  She bites her lip and then says, “I probably shouldn’t tell you the rest—”

  “What?” I say in alarm.

  “Well”—she clears her throat, her voice husky—“he said, ‘That’s the kind of boy I’d like to see Rowan with someday. He’d always do right by her. I know it.’” She looks at me, eyes shining with tears, and laughs. “And look, now you are. Whoever said there was no such thing as miracles?”

  We walk along in thoughtful, companionable silence, my mother and I, eating our ice cream and gazing at the stars. My mother brings her hand up under a lightning bug and lets it flash in her cupped palm, then gently nudges it off to me. We watch as it crawls to my fingertip, spreads its wings and flies away.

  And when we get past the woods our house is there waiting—no, our home, with Stripe in the window and the porch light glowing a welcome. And for the first time since he left us, I get the distinct feeling that my father is smiling.

  There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love,

  the only survival, the only meaning.

  —THORNTON WILDER

  Grief Journal

  So is this how it happens, Dad?

  The beginning of the healing, I mean, because me and Mom are starting to reach for each other across the empty space you left between us and every new moment we share that’s just us changes something, makes the wound seem just a little bit smaller and just a little less hurtful.

  I don’t know exactly how I feel about that yet.

  I never thought life would keep going but it has, and sometimes I hate it but sometimes . . . I don’t.

  This fourth month is so different.

  We’re going to start packing away some of your things now.

  Not everything.

  Never everything.

  Just some of your clothes and stuff, I guess.

  We’re going to close the book you were trying to read and put it back on the shelf.

  Fold up your reading glasses and maybe set them on the mantel next to your urn.

  It drains me just thinking about it . . . but we’re gonna do it.

  Mommy was joking and said she’s going to give Vinnie that awful talking-bass plaque you have hanging in front of the wood shop door, the one Grandpa gave you for your birthday that starts wiggling and singing “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” whenever someone comes near.

  Come to think of it, maybe she wasn’t joking.

  Poor Vinnie.

  He’ll never get a girlfriend with that thing hanging in his apartment.

  Maybe I’ll do him a favor and go get rid of it before Mom gets to it.

  I’ll do it soon, if I can get through the weeds back there.

  Time to weed-whack again, I guess.

  And, Dad?

  I’m so glad you liked Eli.

  I like him, too. A lot.

  He’s really worried about his dog, Daisy, right now, so if you run into his dad up there maybe ask him to send a little something Eli’s way, okay?

  Luck or love or whatever he can.

  I know it’s a weird request but I don’t know what you guys are capable of anymore. What kind of powers you have, if any.

  In life you had it all.

  You were my hero, you know.

  Still are.

  Maybe now you could be my guardian angel.

  God, I wish you could answer me.

  Chapter 73

  I wake up to texts from Eli that he sent me at two in the morning.

  Hey, Row, are you around? No? You must be sleeping. Wish I was there, ha ha. Okay, well, there’s good and bad news.

  Oh no, now what? I rub the sleep from my eyes and keep reading.

  Good is that Carleton and Cheryl said yes to the kidney for Daisy.

  “Oh wow,” I breathe, propping myself up on an elbow and jiggling my feet so that Peach and Plum wake up to share the good news. “Daisy’s getting a kidney!” Peach yawns. Plum stretches. “Fine, be that way,” I say, and go back to Eli’s texts. “So then what’s the bad news?”

  Bad news is that now I don’t know if I should do it.

  What?

  Rosie is a happy, healthy dog. She survived Iraq and her people love her. How can I risk her life after all she’s been thru?

  I read on, at a loss.

  If I do this for Daze she might live another couple of years but she’ll have to be on antirejection drugs for the rest of her life and they have side effects, not to mention the pain of soft-tissue surgery. Trust me, I had my appendix out and it hurt like a bitch. Do I really want to make her even more miserable for a 50% chance of even surviving the operation? Quality versus quantity. A short, good life or a long, miserable one?

  “Oh God,” I murmur, scrolling further.

  I went to my father’s grave and told him everything, hoping I’d get some kind of answer or big revelation, but nothing. So I guess I have to make this decision on my own.

  Hmm.

  Maybe that WAS the answer.

  Anyway, there are a couple of vets down here I want to talk to and see if they have any other ideas. I’ll be home in a couple of days. Miss you. Bye. Xoxo

  “Damn,” I mutter, and fall back on my pillow.

  “Row?” My mother raps on my bedroom door. “Are you awake?”

  “Yeah,” I call, putting my phone back on the night table.

  “There’s cof
fee downstairs and we can start any time you’re ready,” she says.

  “Okay,” I say uncertainly, thinking, Start what?

  Oh, that’s right.

  Today we start packing up my father’s life.

  | | |

  We begin with his bureau and immediately hit a snag.

  We don’t know what to do with his underwear.

  “Some of it’s almost brand-new and I hate to throw it out, but what am I going to do with it?” my mother says, standing in front of the open bureau drawer and gazing at me in dismay. “I can’t give them to anyone. I don’t even think the Salvation Army would want them.”

  “Probably not,” I say, and busy myself opening a second garbage bag. “I guess we can make this the get rid of bag.” Because it’s just too wrong to say throw away.

  She stares at the underwear for a long moment. “Why is this so difficult? It’s just underwear.”

  Yes, but it’s my father’s underwear and throwing it out is so final, an absolute acknowledgment that he really isn’t coming back.

  “So, save a pair and pack it away and get rid of the rest,” I offer. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, Mom. We can do it any way we want.”

  And that seems to break her paralysis, because she chooses one of the newer pairs and drops it in the pack-away bag, and then drops pair after pair into my garbage bag, finding stray buttons, his extra police tie clip, a small wad of singles, his rookie number twenty-nine badge, his pin-on commendation ribbons and an old photo of the ceremony with us and his parents all gathered around him beaming with pride.

  “He missed them so much,” my mother murmurs.

  “Well, I bet they’re really happy to see him again.” We gaze at it together a long time and then, wiping her eyes, my mother sets it gently aside.

  We move steadily through the rest of his bureau, dividing his new sweat socks between us, tossing the rest, keeping his favorite T-shirts and jeans and donating the rest.

  And in every drawer we find bittersweet surprises: the Father’s Day card I gave him last year with a brief, scrawled Love you, Dad!!! You rock!!! that makes me wish I had taken a little more time and thought of something better to write, an old love note that my mother gave him way back when they were first going out that she tucks away for later, a big, smiling butterfly I drew him once, scribbled in crayon, a bunch of wood screws, ChapStick, a pen, and his father’s old, engraved Zippo lighter from the war.

  “You know, for a man who dealt with tragedy for a living he certainly was sentimental,” my mother says, closing the last drawer and rising. She hesitates, staring at his limp, terry-cloth bathrobe still hanging on the hook, says, “Not yet,” and moves to the closet. Takes a deep breath, says, “This is going to be hard,” and opens the doors.

  The faint scent of his cologne and the sight of his uniform hanging there freshly cleaned and still in plastic hits me like a spear through the heart.

  “Oh my God,” my mother whispers, voice wobbling, and lifts it from the rod. “Oh, Nicky.” She hugs it to her, lays it across the bed and gazes down at it. “I knew this would be hard, I knew it would, but I never thought . . .” And then her voice changes. “There’s only one uniform here.”

  I wipe my eyes. “What?”

  “We buried him in one, and here’s one. He had three pair of uniforms, Row. We’re missing one,” my mother says, turning back to the closet and rummaging through the sport shirts and dress slacks hanging inside. “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know,” I say with a shrug, and then a vague memory stirs to life. “Oh, I bet it’s still down at the cleaner’s. Daddy asked me to take it in right before he died and I totally forgot to pick it up. Wow.” I lie back on the bed. “What do I have, amnesia?”

  “Temporary amnesia, I think, and join the club,” she says with a sideways smile, and turns back to the closet. “Bring it home with you tonight, all right? I want to keep everything together. I don’t want pieces of his life getting lost or left anywhere.”

  “Okay,” I say, and, sitting up, glance at my watch. “Whoa, I have to get ready to go. Do you want to wait on doing the rest of the closet until tonight when I get home?”

  “No, you go ahead,” she says, pulling a navy blue dress shirt off the hanger and holding it to her cheek. “He looked so handsome in this.” She carefully folds it and puts it in the pack-away bag. “I’ll just do what I can. I won’t throw anything away until you look through it later. And who knows, maybe he did leave something tucked away for us somewhere, Row. Maybe it’s here and we just haven’t found it yet.”

  “Maybe,” I say softly, because I didn’t know she was still hoping for it, too, and hearing it makes me realize how futile that hope really is.

  “I should go through all that mail next,” my mother says. “God only knows what’s in there.”

  “Good idea,” I say, and bolt for the shower, vowing to hide the autopsy envelope before I leave for work.

  My father isn’t the only one who knows how to protect our family.

  Chapter 74

  When I get to work Terence is still there pressing and the day’s lot of clothes is all lined up on hangers and waiting for me on the rack. “What’s this?” I say in surprise, as bagging the clean clothes is usually the morning clerk’s job and is done by the time I get there. “What happened to Helga?” I stop, frowning. “That was her name, right?”

  “She’s gone,” Terence says, bopping along to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles’ “I Second That Emotion” as he works. “Has been for months, thanks to three pens, an iPhone and a ruby necklace all wrecking my machine. The queen said go, and she’s gone. Good to have you back, little sister.” He grins. “You want a raise, you’d better ask for it now. The queen is flying high with this new man and you being back. She’s out there getting us all ice cream to celebrate. Take advantage of it.”

  “No, I’m good, but thanks for the heads-up,” I say, laughing and grabbing the first ticket and batch of clothes to bag. “I’m just glad to be employed again.” And I am, but I’m working the back and the front of the cleaner’s today at the same time, and trying to concentrate and remember all the steps of the job is easier said than done. Twice I have to sneak back up front while Eva isn’t looking and check the pockets of the clothes that I was pinning and forgot to search.

  In one of them I find a pen.

  “Damn it,” I mutter, rubbing my forehead. “Come on, you can do better than that.” Sweating, I pin the suit and shove it back in a bin. Hear the bell go off and trot up front, only to discover gross old Mr. Hanson standing there with his nasty, damp-pocketed pants. “Hi,” I say with a forced smile, and grab a blank ticket from under the counter. “One pair of pants?”

  “Oh, you’re here,” he says happily, his creepy gaze immediately fastening on my boobs. “That’s nice. This place wasn’t the same without you.” He licks his thin, livery lips with his terrible darting, lizardlike tongue. “The air-conditioning is very cold in here today, isn’t it?”

  And suddenly, I have had it. “No,” I snap, slamming a hand down on the counter and sending him back a step in shock. “What is wrong with you, anyway? I’m sixteen, you’re a thousand and it’s disgusting, so stop it.” I flex my stinging hand, willing myself not to wince and pick up a pen. “Now, when do you want these pants?”

  “Right now,” he gasps, blinking, and snaking out a hand, he grabs them from the counter. “You don’t talk to customers like that. I’m taking my business elsewhere.”

  “Good riddance, you old perv,” Eva says, coming up behind me.

  “It was a compliment!” he cries in a querulous voice.

  “Well, go compliment Dave over at One-Hour Martinizing and see how he likes it,” Eva says, licking her ice-cream cone and waving him away.

  “Dave will deck him,” I say conversationally.

  “Oh, I’m counting on it,” she says with a bright smile.

  Mr. Hanson stomps out, swearing and shaking his fist.


  “One down,” she says with a shrug, and toddles off into the back to call her boyfriend.

  A police car pulls up in the fire zone out front.

  My heart skips.

  Vinnie climbs out, his arms full of uniforms.

  “Hey, look who’s back!” he cries when he sees me, and, dropping his clothes on the counter, comes right around and grabs me up in a giant bear hug. “How long have you been here?”

  “Just today,” I say, laughing and prying myself loose. “C’mon, Vinnie, you can’t do that. You’re in uniform! Someone will see and complain.”

  “Let ’em,” he says with a huge smile, but steps back to the front of the counter. “I don’t care. This is a red-letter day.” He starts sorting through his uniforms, counting pieces and giving me searching looks at the same time. “So, how’re you doing? How’s your mom? I was thinking about coming by one night and taking you both out to eat. What do you think?”

  “We’re getting there and yeah, that’d be nice,” I say, watching him with fond exasperation. “You might as well stop. I have to count them myself. You know that.” I pull out a fresh ticket, write his name on it and count his pieces. “Two pants, two shirts. When do you want them?”

  “Tomorrow,” he says absently, listening to dispatch on his radio. “Gotta go. Can’t anybody drive without crashing anymore?” He flashes me a quick smile and with uncharacteristic gentleness, says, “If you need me, Row, call. I’ll always be around.”

  And then he turns and is gone.

  “He’s a good friend to us, Dad,” I murmur, sticking his ticket in among his uniforms, rolling them all up together and wedging them under the counter for pinning later.

  And the sight of them touches off a memory, something I’m supposed to do . . .

  “Oh, right,” I say, going to the ticket rack and spinning it around to the A’s. “Allen, Alonzo, Appleby . . . here we go. Areno.” I pluck the ticket, wrinkle my nose at Helga’s barely legible handwriting, check the date—more than three months old, so we would have been part of the quarterly reminder phone calls—and with a terrible, draining sadness at knowing this is the last time I will ever bring my father’s uniform home from the cleaner’s, I go over to the conveyor and hit the power button. The plastic bags rustle and whisper as they whoosh by and when my father’s ticket arrives, I stop the conveyor, reach out to pull the clothes from their slot and stop.