Still Life

by Christa Parrish

  A shirt Katherine bought for him.

  She slices her debit card through the machine and mashes her pin code into the keypad, grabs all five of the bags, and stumbles to the car. After dropping the plastic sacks into the backseat, she turns the key in the ignition and sits, feeling the idle through her hands, breathing deeply. Her entire body stings. Evan climbs in beside her and sits quietly, contorting his double-jointed fingers into odd positions.

  “Mom?” he asks finally.

  “I’m fine. Just a sudden headache.” She maneuvers the car out of its parking spot and, once home, she and Evan climb the back deck with grocery bags swinging from their arms. A box waits by the door, a stripe of decorative rainbow tape around the center, holding it closed. “That looks like something Aunt Jen would send,” Evan says. He drops the bag and finds the package’s shipping label. “It is from her.”

  “Bring it in,” Katherine tells him. “And don’t trample the eggs.”

  She has her way of unpacking food. All of it comes out of the bags, lined up on the kitchen island. Freezer items get put away first, and then things for the refrigerator. Pantry items. Toiletries, paper products, and cleaning supplies. She sends Evan to take out the trash and recycling, cuts through the thick tape with a steak knife, something Will hates. Use a scissor, he complains when he sees her. She has an idea what the box holds, and when she pulls back the flaps to plastic-wrapped marshmallow white, she knows she’s right. Her coat. Jennifer sent it back to her with a note: As much as I love it, I knew you wouldn’t want to lose this. Call me when your head is on straight . . . J. And a big smiley heart.

  “What is it?” Evan asks, coming up from the basement.

  “My coat. I accidently left it at your aunt’s house. Wash your hands.”

  “I know. I know.” He drizzles blue Dawn into one palm, rubs, and rinses with cold water. “Need help with anything else, or can I hit the Xbox?”

  “Homework first.”

  “Don’t have any.”

  “Fine, then.” She sighs. “You can play for a little while.”

  Evan points at her with both hands, as if his fingers are guns, and makes a loud sucking noise. “Thanks, Mom. You’re the best.”

  “Tell me that when you’re not getting your own way.” Katherine flips a bag of Doritos at him. “And take these. But don’t eat them all. It’s tacos for dinner.”

  “Kay-kay.” He disappears into the family room.

  She wants to think she’s unpacking any garment, removes it from the static-charged plastic and shakes the fabric. Without looking, her hand finds the business card in the pocket. She opens the junk drawer and buries it beneath the chaos of loose receipts, Post-it note pads, old birthday cards, highlighters, and batteries that may or may not be dead. She takes a 9-volt and holds the terminals against her tongue, creating a sour twinge, and then drops it back with the others, slamming the drawer closed. The coat she tosses on top of a black trash bag of to-be-donated clothes in the laundry room. The box she kicks down the basement stairs; one of the boys will throw it in the recycle bin tomorrow.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Julian planned for her, should something happen to him. She doesn’t know if this is because he had some sort of premonition, or because he knew she would be lost within the labyrinth of mopping up death. But he had taken all his important papers to Hortense and Mark—bank accounts, life insurance policy, a list of bills, the deed to Julian’s building, and title to the Jeep—and they are able to go through it all with Ada, helping her fill out claim forms and catalog what needs to be done each month.

  “We can take care of it all for you,” Mark offers.

  Ada shakes her head. “I need something to do.”

  “Are you sure you want to stay . . . there? Downtown, I mean. In the brownstone,” Hortense asks. “You’re welcome to come here with us.”

  Ada doubts either Hortense or Mark would want her in their home, but Hortense offered because Julian would have wanted her to. Perhaps he made her promise. Both their faces furrow at the offer, lines etched more deeply than they’d been four weeks ago. Ada rubs the rolled hem of her sweater; it needs to be steamed down and pressed but she doesn’t iron anymore. That had been one of her chores in the community, keeping her father’s clothes wrinkle free. She’d gladly never touch an iron again.

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’ll be fine,” she tells them.

  She thinks that’s true, so far. She’s been able to get what she needs when she needs it—groceries, cash, even fast food one afternoon at the Wendy’s two blocks down, a baked potato and lemonade. She spends time reading through random articles on Wikipedia, fascinated by the world past and present. She considers again Julian’s encouragement to try college, even a single class online, and studies the GED book he purchased for her because she needs a high school equivalency diploma before she can apply to one of the local universities. And she’s made the spare room in the brownstone her own, though she’s told no one about this, carefully scrubbing the cheerful yellow paint from her cuticles before meeting with Hortense so no questions will be asked. The walls are bright as dandelions, the bedding from Holy Zion’s thrift store, the framed pictures torn from one of Julian’s oversized art books. Van Goghs, all three. And her turquoise vase, the one she found in the free pile on the curb just weeks after she and Julian married.

  She hadn’t left the house without him. He took her someplace each day: a restaurant, a park, the bank, shopping, museums and college theater shows and the Saturday farmers’ market. This particular day he’d been in his studio all morning and afternoon, clicking around on the computer. “Why don’t you take a walk?” he asked her.

  “Alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can wait for you.”

  “I’m swamped with work, Ada. These photos should have been edited, well, a while ago. I just need to get through them.”

  “It’s because of me, isn’t it?”

  He sighs. “Not everything is your fault.”

  “But if we weren’t married, you’d have time to—”

  “Enough, okay? I’m not having this conversation again.” His voice, usually no sharper than a butter knife, digs with tiny, serrated teeth.

  “I’m sorry.” She twisted the thin gold band around her finger. They didn’t have rings when they married. Julian purchased these a couple weeks later. She chose.

  Julian stopped clicking, spun around in his chair, and then stood to hug her. “No, I am. I shouldn’t have snapped. I’m going to be at this all night, though. Really, take a walk. It’s gorgeous out. I can call Hortense and see if she’ll go.”

  “No, no.” She wasn’t comfortable with her husband’s friend, the way she laughed so easily at everything, the way she sometimes looked at Julian like the women in her community looked at her father—in awe of the prophet, but also desiring him. “I’ll try.”

  “Just walk straight in one direction on the sidewalk for ten minutes, then turn around and come back. Don’t turn or cross the street and you won’t get lost. But take your phone. Call me for any reason. I’ll come get you.” He suddenly looked more nervous than her. “You don’t have to go. I’m not making you.”

  “I want to,” Ada said, though she didn’t. She thought he wanted her to, so she would do it. Because she interrupted his work. Because she was more of a child to him than a wife.

  She tucked her cell phone into a small purse she slung across her torso. After groping with the doorknob several seconds too long, she stepped onto the sun-warmed stoop, down to the uneven sidewalk. Then she walked, head down, watching her sandals, occasionally seeing another set of feet pass hers. She checked the time at every corner, and after exactly ten minutes she stopped, planning to turn for home, but instead saw three children poking through a heap of household items at the curb. They loaded things into a plastic milk crate tied to the seat of a bicycle. “What are you looking at, lady?” the tallest boy, the one holding the bicycle upright, said.

&nbs
p; “I, uh, well, nothing,” she stammered. Her hand went into her purse for her phone.

  “It’s free, okay. See that? F. R. E. E. Free.” He snapped his fingers at a small round boy. Pointed. “Show her.”

  The little one pulled the plastic sign from the ground. One side announced GARAGE SALE in orange letters. The other did, in fact, have the word FREE written on it in purple Magic Marker. “You want something?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “More for us,” the tall boy said. “Come on.”

  He pedaled away. The other boys followed, running, one waving a curtain rod in the air. Ada peeked at the mound. A box of dishes and coffee mugs and drinking glasses. A baby swing without the fabric seat cover. A nightstand, missing the drawer, a corner gnawed away. Another box of broken toys and little plastic Happy Meal figures. And a third box of this and that—acrylic yarn, placemats, panty hose, snowmen figurines, and something aqua. She took a few steps closer. A vase. She looked both ways and, seeing no one, took the vase from the box. It was the color of the sky, milky before the snow, the glass surface textured with raised bubbles. Trumpet shaped and only four inches tall, the top ruffled somewhat unevenly, and the bottom ended in a round base.

  She walked home more quickly, clutching the vase. The glass warmed and seemingly disappeared into her palm, the tiny hobnails a reminder she still held onto it.

  In the house she moved it between different surfaces before finding its place, on the front windowsill where the sunlight shone around it and she could see it from anywhere she stood or sat. It was the first thing ever that was hers alone, and the only item here in Julian’s home that did not come with him. When he finally wandered downstairs to grab something to eat, his eyes flickered toward it but he said nothing, letting Ada have it all for herself.

  She thinks people are looking at her differently as she walks to the corner market, and then does her best to shake the paranoia from her mind. She blames the weather, a drab, neutral day with equal parts sun and cloud, and the grainy air of impending rain. Normally she wouldn’t go out on such a day, especially since she has no umbrella, but the refrigerator is empty except for bottles of catsup and relish, and a nearly expired container of Greek yogurt.

  The automatic door swishes open and there’s an initial blast of hot air on her head before she moves deeper into the store. Here the odd glances seem longer and accompanied by whispers. She checks the back of her skirt, the soles of her shoes, just in case she’s dragging toilet paper, or worse. But no, nothing embarrassing goes on behind her. She uses her canvas market bag instead of a cart, fills it with apples and celery and bagels, and goes to the checkout line. A vacuum-like sensation surrounds her, as if all the customers have collectively gasped and then held their breaths, and there’s no longer any oxygen for her to inhale. Her vision flickers, and she realizes she’s looking at the cover of People. On it, the headline, The Final Moments of Flight 207. And there’s a photograph of two women clinging to one another, eyes squished so tightly closed they fold beneath their fat cheeks, heads conjoined. At the bottom of the photo, in smaller but still bolded print, The Last Photographs of Julian Goetz.

  Ada dumps the contents of the basket in front of the clerk, adding a magazine to the mess. Once she pays, she takes her bag and rushes out of the market, down the street, and locks herself into the brownstone. The grocery bag she drops next to the front door. She wheezes, leaning on the wall, magazine rattling against her thigh. Her joints lock; she can’t bend to sit on the floor, but slides down the painted sheetrock until her tailbone catches on the baseboard molding, bumps over it, and settles against the oak plank flooring, legs splayed stiff and straight before her.

  The pages are slick beneath her fingertips. She leafs through the table of contents and award show gossip before landing on the first photo, the one from the cover, the caption naming sisters, both in their fifties, returning home from visiting their mother. Ada turns the page. The next picture of a man kneeling in prayer in front of his seat, one stiff arm held toward the stewardess who appears to be trying to get him back into the chair. The man doesn’t look at her, his forehead against his fist. His other palm is turned up toward the uniformed woman. Stop, it says. Leave me.

  Another page. Another picture. This one of a young mother hugging her sleeping infant beneath her chin. Then a shot of the oxygen masks dangling from the ceiling, a twenty-something woman sobbing as she tugs it over her face, eyes and cheeks blackened with runny mascara. Three stoic men, eyes closed, hands clasped. Another man, mouth frozen in a terrified O. Another stewardess, helping an obese woman adjust her mask, touching the passenger’s hair with her manicured nails, stroking it. It will be okay, her fingers say.

  And then the photo meant only for her. An airline napkin stained with a half-moon of coffee and Julian’s unmistakable lettering in ink:

  A-

  I love you

  –J

  Finally, the last picture—the back of seats and a flash in the upper left corner. The caption speculates this was the explosion that blew the plane from the sky, throwing it down into the river, ablaze, like Lucifer himself.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Katherine shows a house at ten in the morning, a charming Cape Cod with a two-car garage and gleaming oak floors. Great schools. Great street. The couple isn’t in love with the upstairs bedrooms—too small, they say, and the slanted ceilings don’t help—or the one-and-three-quarter bathrooms, as they really wanted two tubs rather than a tub and a tiny walk-in shower. She knows she’s lost them when they learn the washer and dryer are in the basement, and tells them she has three more homes in their price range that might work better for them. They have to get to work, though, so they want her to send them links to pictures on the realtor website and they’ll get back to her if they want to schedule showings.

  She waves good-bye, knowing she won’t hear from them, and locks the doors.

  People used to be less particular about home buying. Good bones and a fair price in the right location were often enough to close the deal. People didn’t mind putting in a bit of sweat equity or—God forbid!—buying what they could afford and slowly, room by room, improving the house as a little extra money became available. Not anymore. Now outdated meant appliances more than three years old and the living room walls painted in last season’s trendy color.

  She misses the feeding frenzy of ten years ago, when houses were purchased like fast-food meals, when she first began and couldn’t believe how easy it was to make money. Now she’s fortunate to sell two houses a month. Whoever said the poor couldn’t afford to be picky had it wrong, at least in her experience. Those with the least to spend want more than the wallet allows because they know they’ll be stuck with it for a long time.

  Will thinks she walks women—dragging their husbands—through house after house as the ladies judge everything from the ceramic tile to the picket fence. She does more than that, though. She finds people homes. Single mothers who are forced to relocate after their marriages unravel. Newly wed couples expecting their first child, jittery with the responsibility of another life, the transition into adulthood. And she helps people say good-bye to pieces of their hearts when she pounds that FOR SALE sign into their property. The widower, downsizing, running from memories. The family in the midst of job loss or illness or crisis, desperate to find a way to cram two thousand square feet of stuff into an eight-hundred-square-foot apartment. The empty nesters, weeping as they scrape their name off the mailbox in front of the place they raised their family.

  No more work to do today, except browse the new listings. Katherine drives to the office—a one-room storefront that used to be a hairdresser’s studio—and instead of her business partner sitting at the other desk she finds Grace, Robin’s daughter, clicking on the Internet. “Aunt Kate,” the fifteen-year-old says, though they are unrelated by blood, “you’ve gotta see this.”

  “See what? And where’s your mom?”

  “Bathroom.”

&nbs
p; “No, I’m here,” Robin says, wiping her hands on a paper towel as she emerges from the water closet. “Have you seen them yet?”

  “Not yet, unless she’s got the magazine,” Grace says.

  “What are you two talking about?”

  “Kate, you won’t believe it. There was some photographer on the plane that crashed. He was some big deal, I guess, though I never heard of him. He only lived three hours from here, too—”

  “Mom. Not important.”

  “Don’t be snotty,” Robin says. Grace sinks lower in the oversized leather chair and wheels it from the desk. “Anyway, this guy, Julian Gotts, Goats—”

  “Goetz.” The girl swivels in circles.

  “Right, Julian Goetz. He actually took pictures while the plane was going down.”

  Katherine moves to the computer. “What?”

  “I know. Insane, right? He’s about to crash. What’s he doing with a camera? But the camera was found in the wreck and someone leaked them to People. They’re horrible, Kate. I can’t describe it. You just have to see for yourself. I mean, I don’t think anyone knew they were absolutely going to die. They look really scared but not desperate. But we know. And I keep thinking, you could have been in one of those pictures.” Tears catch in Robin’s mascara-clotted lashes; she blinks to dislodge them.

  People’s website is up and Katherine sees the first photo, two women in oxygen masks clutching one another. She brings up the second, a man in prayer. And a third, an airline napkin with a scribbled love note on it. “I can’t look at these.”

  “There aren’t many more,” Robin says, wriggling next to Katherine to take the mouse. “Not on the site. They want you to buy the magazine. The rest are in there.”

  “No. I just—” She clamps her hand over her mouth as she runs to the bathroom, stands over the toilet, and swallows back her vomit. It burns going down, and she waits, still covering her lips, knowing no wall of fingers can prevent her from getting sick if her stomach decides to erupt again. She sees her reflection in the bowl, flushes it away, but it returns in the stillness of the blue water.