The Passion of Jazz and Other Short Stories
Page 4
dead can provide care for those of us still alive, long after their death, through our various care packages.”
“I don’t want a care package. I want my grandfather to live on in my memory and in my heart, not in some robotically created duplication of his handwriting, coupled with a check from an account which apparently resides somewhere in your company’s vaults. It’s not a hard thing I’m asking you. I’m asking you to cease with this care package. Let me be in peace.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Erickson, but your grandfather is our client, and this care is what he wanted and hired us to provide. It’s all in his will. There’s nothing further I can do.”
Carl did not say another word. He realized the conversation would have no further benefit. In a frustrated fit of rage, he slammed the phone down onto the receiver.
The ghost checks began coming the month after Frank’s death on December 27, 2024. Or Carl called them ghost checks. He had always received checks from his grandfather on Christmas and his birthday, but they had been actual checks from his living grandfather, accompanied by cards with thoughtfully written letters from Frank. Frank mailed these out without fail, he loved to show affection that way, and his grandchildren loved to receive them. However, it was a very different thing to receive handwritten checks and cards from Frank after he had died. Hence the name, ghost checks.
Carl first encountered a ghost check on January 28, 2025, his first birthday after Frank’s death. When he went to his mailbox, he was surprised to find a card addressed to him in Frank’s handwriting. He first thought the post had misdelivered it and it was just making it to him, having been mailed before Frank’s death. But he looked at the postmark and it said January 24. Surprised, Carl tore open the envelope and found inside a card with pictures of balloons. On the inside of the card, Carl saw Frank’s handwriting, the bumpy loops and curls whose resemblance he could still see in his own writing, having genetically been passed down through the generations. Carl saw the words, “Love you, have a great 32nd birthday and many more.” Written at the top was the date, 1/23/25. Also inside was a check for $500, the same amount Frank had always sent Carl for his birthday. Carl felt stunned. How had Frank sent this? Surely he could not still be alive? Had he asked someone to send this card after his death? But why?
Carl saw the mailman, Ernie Chen, walking back across the street, and he called out to him. “Ernie, can you tell when this letter was sent out?”
“Yeah, what’s the postmark say?”
“January 24, 2025. But are you sure that’s when it went out? Could it have been sent sooner, like a month before and it just got postmarked late?”
“No,” Ernie laughed, “that would very rarely happen. Not that much gets lost in the mail these days, or for that long.”
“Oh, right. And that still doesn’t explain the date on the inside of the card.”
“Right. Have a good one,” Ernie said and walked off.
Carl had no answers about the card, and so like he often did when he had no answers, he went to look for his wife, Beth. He found her in the kitchen baking a cake for his birthday. He said, “Beth, I found something strange in the mail.”
“Hm, okay.”
“Beth, stop cooking for a minute.”
“Oh, so you can take over and spoil it? You want a cake, not a lump of dough for your birthday, don’t you?”
“I know how to bake just fine.”
“Right, just like you know how to fix things, like you ‘fixed’ the car after it ran out of oil last week.”
“That wasn’t my fault—look, I’m not arguing with you about this right now. As combative as you can be, I know I can always depend on you for advice. Do you want to know what I found in the mail?”
“Go ahead.”
“I got a card and a check from Frank. It was postmarked January 24, and inside on the card is written 1/23/25. Frank died a month ago. How did he send this?”
“Let me see it.” Beth took the card and check and looked them over. “This is strange, it’s definitely dated in his own hand, but after his date of death. Look,” she said, turning the card over, “there’s a website listed here on the back. Let’s go to it and see if there’s any information on it.”
Carl got out his laptop and went to the website. The website showed pictures of elderly people and their families. At the bottom was a description of “Our Services.” Beth read aloud, “Choose from modern, electronic, or traditional care packages.” Next to the traditional link was a picture of a check and a card with balloons, just like the one Carl had received. Both the check and card had handwriting on them. “That looks like it,” Beth said, “Click on traditional.”
The traditional page described the service saying, “Our traditional care packages show your love and care in an old-fashioned way, with physical checks and paper cards sent out to surviving family members for birthdays and holidays. Your own cursive handwriting is replicated inside the cards, reminding loved ones of times past when you were together with them. With our traditional care package, loved ones are sure never to forget the blessed times they had with you.”
“So that’s how come the card came after his death,” Carl said, “the company printed the whole thing up. Kind of creepy, don’t you think?”
“No, I think it’s sweet. Shows he cared, or cares, I should say, he’s still with us in a way through that care package.”
“But he’s not still with us. He’s dead. I wish that company hadn’t sent this check, it freaks me out.”
“Can’t you just accept it and be grateful?”
Carl was silent, trying to make sense of what Beth was saying. Finally, he said, “Maybe, maybe if I just had more time,” and walked out.
At every birthday and Christmas over the next two years, Carl found in the mail a handwritten card and check from his grandfather. The checks for both Carl’s and Beth’s birthdays and Christmas were $500 each, and their children, Mike and Sally, each received $100 for their birthdays and Christmas. This was not new, Frank had always sent these amounts in the past. What was new was that now he was dead. But the checks kept coming. Carl never became used to this, he constantly struggled with the continual reminder of Frank’s presence and death.
Beth, on the other hand, found it easy to accept the checks, she simply did not see the creepiness of it. She saw an old man who had died at an old age, and who wanted his family to remember him in a positive light. With this in mind, in February 2027 for her birthday, Beth took her $500 check and bought a beautiful shiny diamond and steel necklace. She came home beaming in the afternoon with the necklace around her neck.
“How do you like my birthday present?” she asked Carl.
Carl looked up from his tablet computer he had been using, startled. “It looks expensive. How did you pay for it?”
“Your grandfather’s birthday check.”
“I thought we agreed we would just put those checks into a savings account for the kids.”
“No we didn’t. Frank would have wanted us to spend them however we liked.”
“I don’t think he would mean for us to become materialistic and splurge with his money.”
“Damn it, Carl, do you have to ruin everything?” Beth yelled and stormed out to the bedroom.
Carl could barely stand any more of the havoc that Frank’s checks were causing in his life. He called up the company and had the conversation with the customer service representative.
“It’s all in his will. There’s nothing further I can do,” the representative finished by saying.
Carl slammed the phone down onto the receiver. He felt frustrated that the representative had refused to change anything or stop the checks. Carl was at his wit’s end, he could hardly bear to see the cards again. He felt so angry Beth had spent her check on a gaudy necklace. He marched into the bedroom where she was sitting and yelled, “Get rid of it, I don’t want to see that false gift. It’s not from him, damn it, i
t’s from that company, that robotic ‘care package.’”
“No, I’m not getting rid of it. You’re just being ungrateful and stubborn. Why can’t you appreciate the kind gift your grandfather wanted for us?”
“He didn’t want this, he would never want this, if he knew how painful it was.”
“You call gifts painful, love painful? What kind of sickness do you have?”
“Shut up, you bitch,” Carl yelled and in a fit of passion, he ran to her and yanked her by the necklace so that she fell to the ground. The passion swallowed him, swallowed his senses and thoughts, so that he impulsively pulled the steel of the necklace tighter and tighter, until she collapsed entirely on the ground. Her face took on a bluish hue and she stopped moving at all, slumped over against the side of the bed.
Carl became terrified at what he had done, in an instant he had made everything so much worse than just dealing with the stupid cards and checks. He ran out of the house, down the darkened nighttime street, and into a nearby wood. He shoved trees and bushes out of his way, trying to push further, further, into some kind of escape. If he could just lose himself in the wilderness, things would somehow be better, there would be a release.
But instead of finding release, Carl began to cut himself as he shoved past the sharp branches of some high plants. He touched his right hand to his left arm and felt it wet with blood. Still he shoved