Shadows & Tall Trees 7

by Michael Kelly

  “No one else has turned up,” said Fiona.

  “Oh,” said Glenda. “Well, I have to take the car home, then I’m going to walk back down here and join you. Even if it’s just the two of us, we can still march down to the factory. We can still make some noise.” She drove home, passing a car that was so badly parked it looked as if it had just been abandoned mid-manoeuvre, and stopping to move a child’s bike that had been left lying across the road. She backed her car into a kerbside space and took the weedkiller inside. She put on some sunscreen and checked her appearance in the mirror. She was wearing the olive-green eyeliner that Dougie had once said brought alive her copper-coloured eyes, but now she wondered if it was just making her look a bit ill. She put down some food for the cat. By the time she got back down to the corner with her placard, Fiona was no longer there. Glenda thought about going to the factory anyway, on her own, but she did not really think she had the energy.

  When Glenda got home again, she filled a glass with water from the tap, and drank it standing at the sink. It was past lunchtime, but she was not hungry, and there was still food in the cat’s bowl from before. She went through to the lounge and sat down in an armchair, next to the second-hand table with the phone on it. She had disliked that table, she thought, but now she could not really see what was wrong with it; she did not have any strong feelings about it either way. Next to the phone were her phone numbers. There was the number for the council—she would have to call them again at some point, about that letter she had sent to them. And there was Fiona’s number—she ought to call her; she ought to call everyone. The protest would have to be rescheduled. The numbers seemed to blur; she must be tired. She switched on the TV and watched the afternoon programmes. She was still sitting there when Dougie came in from the factory. He lay down on the sofa.

  “Have you seen the cat?” asked Glenda.

  “Uh-uh,” said Dougie.

  In between TV programmes, Glenda said, “I’m going to go up to bed,” but she did not actually move for a while.

  Eventually, she got to the bathroom and picked up her toothbrush. She looked at herself in the mirror. It felt like being stared at by a stranger. Her eyes were the colour of dull pennies. She left the bathroom and got into bed. She looked at her book but she felt that she just wanted to sleep. She realised that she had somehow not cleaned her teeth after all. She thought about her unbrushed teeth rotting in the night, but she did not get up again; she just left them.

  A week and a half later, Glenda found the cat beneath the back wheel of her car, against the kerb. It must not have moved out of the way when Glenda was parking. She had not been anywhere since the previous weekend, when she went to fetch that weedkiller.

  She stood at the kerb, trying to remember what she had come outside for. There was no point driving over to Fiona’s house: the group had dissolved.

  Glenda’s placard was still propped against the front wall. She picked it up, looking at the faded lettering: WE WANT ANSWERS! Had she written that? It did not sound like her, like something she would say. Perhaps she had got somebody else’s placard by mistake. She stood on the pavement, near the kerb. She could see the factory chimney in the distance, down by the river, belching its mustard smoke into the sky. Dougie would be taking his lunch break soon. She could walk down there and try to see him, see if he was feeling any better. If she found, on the way, that she did not want to keep carrying the placard, which may or may not have been hers, she could just leave it somewhere.

  She stepped into the road, with the sign hanging down, the message (WE WANT ANSWERS!) dangling in the gutter. She moved out into the road, slowly, as if she were stepping through the mud at the edge of the river, mud in which Dougie had seen fish lying belly up.

  She did have a sense of the size and weight of the vehicle that was coming towards her. She was not oblivious to the juggernaut that was bearing down on her. But it felt more peripheral, more distant, than it was. She was moving forward, looking towards the far side of the road, but with no great sense of urgency.

  CURB DAY

  Rebecca Kuder

  EACH YEAR IN MAY, WE MUST HAUL A ghastly number of items to the curb. It’s mandatory. For years now. We don’t even question it anymore.

  They start collecting the third Friday at dawn. They start at a different house each year. No one knows how they choose. We have to be ready. We have to produce. They measure what we put out.

  I hate the scramble. Stacks and boxes and cabinets to paddle through. I need to touch each scrap, have a conversation before discarding. I promised myself I would start early this year: the bottom of the house, because that’s where time and gravity rule the world of accumulation. In the basement last Thursday, I unfurled three new bags, thinking it would be easier to add scraps as I found them. Into one bag I tossed parts of several broken coffeemakers full of mealy dust, a chipped mixing bowl, two ancient light fixtures that will never shine again, and reams of disintegrating-rubber-band-wrapped greeting cards from when I was a child and forced by Mother to write too many thank you notes (those whimsical bunnies, kittens, now greeting no one).

  Despite all this gathering, I still need more.

  On the basement shelves last Friday, I found a box marked fragile. Grandmother’s handwriting. As I opened it, the box fluttered apart. Inside I found stained lace curtains used as padding. I unwrapped them and extracted the first treasure: a Depression glass refrigerator dish. Grandmother kept butter in it. For nearly thirty minutes, I held the dish. Its lid is chipped. I don’t use it, clearly. Into the trash bag nest it went, with the padding. In a rush of energy, I opened another box and found several bottles of Dickinson’s Witch Hazel. One still had a lick of amber in the bottom. I held this bottle even longer than the butter dish. Finally, I opened the bottle, its corroded metal lid snowing bits of rust on my lap, and inhaled. Grandmother … long-dead … setting her hair, cotton balls of witch hazel baptizing strands of silver, twirling hair and pinning the pin curl clips … Next, her ancient Noxzema jar, with a layer of cracked white glazing at the bottom. The things that she touched and used. The invisible backdrop to her days. The second bag would wait. I stopped to fix lunch.

  The light fixture and butter dish bag waits at the foot of the basement steps. I’ve been tripping over it since I left it there last week. The object (trash bag) becomes an action (trip), becomes more and also less than what it actually is. The bag is no longer a bag. What it actually is shifts, is another way of putting it.

  All this tripping over bags. You would think I’d just stop going down there, but the yearly collection won’t allow me to avoid a single corner of this gaping house. So much for starting early. Before I bring that bag to the curb I will have to peer inside again and confirm I can jettison the contents. Must double-check. Starting early only makes more work.

  I had a visit from the local government. They knocked at the door, said they want us to produce at least a third, one whole third more than last year. Hard to fathom how. Last year was brutal. Last year I put out three bags and still earned a caution notice. But the more we produce, so they claim, the safer we are, and the less they will bother us. The less they will come knocking at the door, faces full of cheer, plastic-framed mouths buttering us as if we are warm toast. Oh, excuse me, but in searching our records, we find that historically, you haven’t put out enough. Our records indicate that last year, you didn’t seem to be in earnest. This is your complimentary warning. We assume you plan to endure? Words spoken in that tone of buttering, nothing in writing. I have looked in several of the mirrors recently. Behold, I am not warm toast. I am human. The plastic butter-ghosts stood on my porch with their knives to spread spread spread buttered requests and warnings, as if all we live for is to lug out some ever-increasing amount. Each year there is math, and each year the only thing that accumulates is my unwanting. Now, a fourth bag?

  No one objects or complains. And with what we’ve seen, why should we? We follow rules and drag, drag it all to the cur
b. But I worry there might be something in those bags that I will need again. Some wire, some lace. Can’t some of it stay in my house? Deciding what to expel is excruciating. I spent yesterday hunting an appliance until I remembered I had bagged it last year; it’s gone. How will it be possible to find enough?

  I have been moving up and down flights of stairs all morning. Up, down. I go to the basement. Groping through the butter dish bag, something sharp bites my hand, rips the bag. The flimsy membrane of the bag won’t hold it. Why do I always buy such cheap bags? Mr. Warner next door—his bags are ridiculously sturdy. No one on our street produces like Mr. Warner does. He walks from house to curb carrying two at a time, off the ground. No dragging, not for Mr. Warner. An optimist. Yesterday I heard him whistling! Something from the ’50s. Those bags of his are big enough to hold a dog’s carcass, a wet one. A wet dog’s carcass, I tell you. I tell you I’m going to take one of his bags. He puts them out days ahead, no fear of anyone taking one or two; he has so many. I would hide one or two fat ones in my basement for next year. I would.

  It’s going to be tight this year. Yes, I admit I have trouble letting go. But even if I didn’t. The noise in my house is quieter when scraps and layers remain undisturbed. With my scraps intact it’s a warmer house; my walls are safer; I can exhale. Sometimes I can relax. You might not believe this but when I keep scraps, the house exhales and sometimes relaxes. Without the scraps, the wind comes through, even on a warm day. Those scraps are all that is keeping me safe.

  But they said one third more and my hand is bleeding. Damn that sharpness, which has now squirmed to the bottom of the frail bag. And the bag is leaking. Just now I dragged it up from the basement to the parlor and was followed by a glistening trail, something a slug would leave behind. Bile, it’s more like bile than the iridescence of a slug. No slug glitter. Just gut glitter. I can smell it. I bet you can, too.

  Why won’t they allow us to put out casings or gears? I have plenty of those. Of course I have the old windows, but they are uncharacteristically firm: they will not take old windows. No, the plastic mouth-frames say no, and say it so kindly, with thick, buttery shine, no, none of that, sorry dear, we don’t deal in that. It’s Curb Day, I say, so who cares? Come the third Friday it will all get eaten by the machines anyway. What’s the difference? They never answer that one.

  This afternoon, Mr. Warner whistled out another two bags, show tunes, and now two more bags before nightfall! He must have skipped dinner. Where does he get all his contents? That last bag, I swear, is the shape of a commode. Hulking as if it’s waiting for a fight. What else can I pry from my house to lug out there?

  Before it’s really dark I should go ask Mr. Warner where he gets those extraordinary bags. He probably buys them in bulk. He must have a couple of empty bags for a neighbor, but he’s never shown a shred of sunshine my way, so why should I expect it this week, of all times? No, it’s each for themself right now. Survival. My puny pile will make his pile look better, more correct. And to ask him, I’d have to crawl across the house and turn on the water, make myself ready to present.

  I used to admire him so much, though I never told him. Should have done.

  Yesterday I tried to go ask, but he was out all day, likely at the bag store. He was likely thinking ahead. But I go at things the right way; I examine the scraps. Take my time. He must have found some shortcut. There’s no way he could do it all, do it properly, and have so much to put out. I have a theory he’s been rooting through the alley. I have a theory he has something buried back there, waiting to fill bags. I have a theory he puts his stale food in there. Food is prohibited. Everyone knows that.

  I am not going to the attic unless I have to. I can’t breathe in the attic. It is thick and humid like stepping into someone’s mouth.

  Curse this third Thursday, bright and shiny like a slap in the face. Me with only the one bag and no more scraps to sort. I need at least four. Four! It will be impossible to avoid the attic.

  The attic door is sticking. Who did that, was it the humidity and the old scraps pasting themselves in the crack? At midnight, I violate whatever is holding the door shut, yank it open and go up to find the one box I’ve avoided all year. I look everywhere up there in that mouth. In the layers of stacks I find plenty I must keep, but cannot find that box.

  I rake the entire house; I look inside the walls. With only seven hours until dawn, I lean into bed and cough out a breath, exhale. It hurts my lungs; even the air is against me. Something, a fin beneath the mattress, jabs my side. I roll over and peel back the bedding, the heavy lumps of mattress. It’s the box. She’s there after all.

  This box holds what remains of my mother. I really cannot put her out there, not this year.

  I should not say that Mr. Warner has never shown me any sunshine. He came to my door one day with a stack of things. Months ago now, but he did come. He knocked. I had been watching, so I knew it was he. (I have that window on the top floor. If he had looked up he might have seen me. There are a lot of hatboxes in that window, but I rigged a place to watch when I need to.) When I answered the door, he was so polite, so upright, as if the only thing on his conscience was whatever propelled him toward my porch.

  I tried to act surprised in the way we are supposed to do. Not seeing each other, fortresses keeping to ourselves, upholding the social contract as if he could have been anyone and not my neighbor of twenty-seven years. As if he hadn’t been over there combing his tidy yard when my Joe left me, as if he didn’t see any of that. Oh, yes? May I help you? I said to Mr. Warner, as if I didn’t know and hadn’t studied the (perfect/ineffable/imponderable) drape of his trousers.

  He looked at me and for a moment he smiled. Finally he said sorry to bother you, but your mail was delivered to my box. Some of my orders, a pile of things I was waiting for and had forgotten to expect, so many items coming and going, so many scraps, too many to remember.

  He could have kept my orders for the collections. He didn’t have to bring them to me. But he handed me the stack and left.

  Mr. Warner lives alone, now. Mr. Warner and his multitude of upright bags. Like a brood! If I had that many bags, maybe I would walk around with that straight a back, such a straight back. When he came to my door months ago I felt he had broken my skin. Months ago and I still feel it. He had never been to my porch before, never breached my front walk. He had always stayed on his side of the fence with yard work, his side so tidy, but there must be frayed edges somewhere; no one is that clean. I don’t like to think of him on my porch, the time he spent there standing so upright, the crooked boards beneath his feet.

  When the municipality first announced the Collection Program, they held a meeting for the town. So many years ago. Strange and almost sweet to think back. The meeting was well attended: hundreds of us went to the town hall because it was back before Distraction and Apathy. Mr. Warner was there early, and so was I, and a handful of others. Joe was already gone by then. Mr. Warner has always been upright, one of those scrubbed people who look shinier than the rest of us. At the meeting, Mr. Warner asked questions about volume and purpose, about usage. The dignitary who officiated wasn’t very forthcoming, so Mr. Warner had to shift how he asked questions. He became more direct. There was a look of glee on Mr. Warner’s face as he asked his questions.

  If I’m honest, I’d say I thought him fabulous back then. I’d even say I felt an affinity, a peculiar crush on him. His skin so shiny and clear, how his lips moved when he asked questions. When the dignitary spoke, Mr. Warner wrote more questions on index cards, scribbling as the dignitary described the Collection Program. Every mote of dust surrounding his body was dancing, itchy and ready to learn, ready to follow the instructions if only they were clear enough.

  The dignitaries probably didn’t care what people thought of the Program. Our town never specialized in clarity. It has always been a place of blur and innuendo, a place where you could get around just about any obstacle by thinking it through and finding ambiguity. But Mr.
Warner demanded clarity. Mr. Warner wanted specifics, to understand the requirements, dimensions, and scope, essentially: how many bags would keep him, or anyone, alive. His whole posture demanded to know, and when these relatively new dignitaries announced the Program, it was as if a thing awoke in Mr. Warner, a beast with a need for order. As if this meeting liberated something that had been hiding in his spine.

  He also asked what would be done with the Collections. On the stage there were uncomfortable shiftings in seats when he asked about that. I myself had been wondering and hoping someone would ask. Of the hundreds gathered in a sea of awkward yellow folding chairs, Mr. Warner was the only one who wrote questions on index cards, and asked them. I was proud he was my neighbor, at the time. Now it’s all mixed up and muddy: my cheap and leaking bags and his sturdy and incontrovertible bags, if that’s the word I want. It’s all tangled ropes.

  I don’t sleep much at this time of year. When I do, it’s accidental, the human body crashing against the need to emerge from under water so it can keep beating its heart. Pitter pat. How things in my cheap plastic bags do, and don’t. Perry won’t pitter-pat anymore, hasn’t for years. Poor Perry. Perry was a songbird, was a song, so long ago, Perry such a pretty bird, didn’t ask to be frozen like that, poor Perry. I will go and find Perry. Not a good true just end for that winged creature, not the best epilogue, but I must find all I have and give it over, can’t give my box of Mother up, not this year, and this other winged creature, the one I sometimes fancy myself to be, must live. Perry is the way. Perry will save me, will keep me from being stuffed into one of those bags. My own are too cheap, but Mr. Warner’s heavier bags would fit me, would carry me off the ground to the curb, elbows and all, and if I don’t take Perry out there, poor little popsicle, it will be me. I have time now, before dawn, time to pickaxe Perry from his protective ice layer, poor little song, poor little mite who might have been a song forever. What’s wrong with a forever song? I can’t leave him for whoever would find me.