Debris

Kathy spent the morning going through medical statements from the stacks of papers on the kitchen table. She’s good. Organized it all by date, careful not to throw anything out. I sorted the utilities. We made a group decision that each of us would take on one service, proportional to our income. Cole pays for electricity. Kathy has gas (as I like to say). I have water. Last quarter, the water bill was seven dollars.

Boxes filled the bedrooms, attic and basement. At first, I kept my arms around my stomach, holding myself close because anything I touched was something that urgently needed doing. But everything was contingent on something else getting done. And that thing was part of other things, concentric circles of things that needed doing. Sometimes I would decide to begin HERE! But in minutes I would be frozen, my efforts spiraling down to a dead end. For a week I stood in the middle of it, unable to get a breath, thinking I was dying. I called Kathy every night, sobbing into the phone. “I don’t know what to do.” I said it over and over. She’d say “Breathe,” or she’d count down the days until she and Cole would be there. She talked to me like I was a child. “Let’s say it together. Today is Tuesday. Say it with me: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday….” But she had limits. If she was tired or frustrated, sometimes she’d say, “Well little sis, it’s your house now.” Perhaps she was trying to throw me into the emotional deep end, figuring the circumstances would force me to swim. But it had the opposite effect, and I’d hang up the phone and sink to the floor. Or, perhaps having nothing left to say, she’d tell me, “Get some sleep,” not remembering what I kept telling her—the beds are under mountains of junk. In the end, she was sleeping in her TV chair. I almost slept in my car, but it was getting colder outside, and I’ve slept in that car enough.

I went five days in a fog, waiting for them, eating at 7-11, going to any meeting I could find: AA, NA, OA, grief support groups. They have them at churches, the Elks, town halls and Dunkin Donuts. I didn’t go back to the house except to sleep in a spot I carved out under the dining room table, using the very boxes that overwhelmed me to build a refuge. 

That’s how I stayed sober. Meetings, 7-11 burritos, and camping under the table with a Bible. I found my birth certificate in the mess, so at least I knew I was born.

And then it’s Sunday and they’re here, Kathy first, driving up in her new Volvo, and then Cole, coming in a taxi. They aren’t bitten to the quick. They come in like the calm blue ocean I’ve been told to envision. And all at once I’m not alone in the mess that was left. I had been furious with them–Cole for having an important job that always had to come first, and Kathy, more concerned with my nephew’s hockey games and getting him off to college. “It’s bad,” I would say to Kathy. “She’s bad. I need help.” But everything I say is taken with a grain of salt. It can’t simply be. They’d rather say nothing, their silences walling me out. They prefer to wait, and see for themselves. In light of everything I told them, how did they keep their distance? Because their separation took place years ago.  It’s your house now little sis. Kathy said it all the time, as the gutters filled up and the lawn went three weeks unmowed. She said it even before it was literally true.

They came in, looked around, then started doing things. Like washing dish towels and clearing off the basement stairs.  At first, I couldn’t see what good their little tasks would do, but they broke everything down into pieces. “Now we can wash dishes,” Kathy said, proud of her clean dish towels. She started to tackle the pile in the sink. “Help me push the car out of the garage,” Cole said. We did it, and all at once we had a place to sort through boxes. When I asked Cole what to do next, he suggested things that were practical and sane, things I’d never think of. When he said something, I wanted to cry over how simple it was. A dumpster arrived. I never even knew they’d ordered one.

Monday lunch. The table is cleared enough for places to be set. Kathy has spent two days uncovering the kitchen we once knew. While I make coffee and warm up soup from the vast collection of off-brand canned goods, Kathy talks to me about my finances. “When this place sells, there will be a big pile of money. Well, for you it will be.” I imagine a car that starts every time and a warm place to sleep every night. I think of a winter coat that I pick out myself. A little apartment of my own. But Kathy suggests a meager allowance that she would oversee. “To help you keep out of trouble.”

She stops talking when Cole comes up from the basement. The sight of him reminds me I’m not alone with her. He comes with no strings attached. With him I can fill my lungs easily. The structure he brings is like the air I need to breathe. But the reason he’s good at handling this chaos is the reason his phone rings. He answers it, saying “Coleman Garner,” and listens for two minutes then hangs up. “I have to go to Des Moines,” he says, and his face goes blank. Kathy and I know what it means.

“Is it bad?” Kathy asks him, wincing.

“A 777.”

“That’s a big one?”

“Yeah.”

I feel the oxygen in the room bleed out. “Do you know when you can be back?” 

“I only do initial material recovery and analysis now,” he says, as though this somehow answers my question. Cole looks down, mumbling “The DNA stuff is separate.”

Kathy refuses to acknowledge things have shifted. “Well, let’s eat some cream of chicken first!” Her voice is bright with denial, and she swoops in with the saucepan to fill his bowl halfway. She’s twelve years older than me, seven years older than Cole, and, like a mother, she’s sentimental about our childhoods. “Dip the toast the way you used to.” But Cole is looking at his phone. “You always had to have toast with soup,” she says. 

“Remember?” There’s a strain in her voice. He scrolls through a dozen screens, entering usernames and passwords, and he acknowledges neither soup nor toast. 

He comes back to us for a moment, lifting his gaze to say, “The garage has three sections; items of value for estate sale, donation, and garbage.”  

“We can manage,” I say, as though managing is something I do, then add, “I’m so proud of you,” as if pride is something I have to give. I don’t want to lose him to Des Moines, and I hold up two ugly bookends, trying to keep him with me, even if only for a second. They’re knots from the trunk of a jack pine that resemble grotesque little faces. Someone set them on bases that were spray-painted gold.

He looks at them, frowning. “Donate. Trash maybe. I don’t know right now.”

Kathy glances in my direction. “Trash,” she says, and then turns toward Cole. “When do you need to go to the airport?” She’s practical like a mom, always thinking what’s next? I feel it slipping.

Cole holds his phone at arm’s length but still can’t read the small print. He whips out his readers, one-handed, a motion that’s efficient. This is who he is when he is working.  

“I need to go right now,” he says, then looks at me for the first time since the call came. We hug. I follow him outside, Kathy behind me. “I’ll let you know when I can come back. Six days. A week probably.” It’s too long, and his time away has already unraveled, right here in front of me. Cole gestures at the yard. “How long do we…?” He means the whole thing: yard, bedrooms, dining room, attic, basement.

“Until it’s done. Or until we can’t go on.” Kathy says, already giving herself an out that she can use at any time. When he gets in her car to go, all he has is a small carry-on and a phone charger. Kathy backs the car down the driveway. She’s shaking her head and saying something I can’t hear. She’s looking in the mirrors and talking, and he’s staring down at his phone. She backs the car away from me and they get smaller but stay the same—her talking, him staring down. Then they’re out on the street. They drive away.

Inside the house, the system we had is gone. With me, there are no checks and balances. I can’t make any decisions. Chaos rises up out of the piles and spins around the room. Confusion returns. It’s hard to breathe the air. I go to the kitchen.

Kathy lives near the airport, so she won’t come back here tonight, but then I realize that once she’s home in her lovely five-bedroom house, she won’t be back at all. Plans will change. Cole will be delayed or another plane will crash. There won’t ever be a moment when we are working all together. They’ll make decisions, then tell me what they’re doing. There never was a to-do list. Cole just announced what was next and we all did it.  

The cream of chicken soup is still warm. I dip into it with toast, then move some papers and sit down in her chair. On TV, Shirley Temple is sitting on a man’s lap while reciting a poem. He’s charmed. Everyone smiles. Everyone dotes on Shirley.

It had been moving along. I was actually part of it. I had a role. We were working together.  But it was too fragile, too ready to break apart. His phone rang, and in a half hour, I’m sitting alone, watching Shirley Temple and eating soup out of the pot.  Now that it’s just me, I can’t bother to wash a bowl. 

I hear Kathy’s voice in my mind. It’s late and she’s tired. She tells me it’ll all take some getting used to. I hear myself saying I need your help. When are you coming? I hear nothing. The phone is quiet. Then Kathy yawns. It’s your house now, little sis. She yawns again as I clutch the phone with both hands. 

It’s your house now.

Christopher Hadin is a writer, naturalist, and first-grade teacher in Detroit. His work has appeared in Danse Macabre, The Night Picnic, Sortes Magazine, Sky Island Journal, and West Trade Review. He lives in Ferndale, Michigan.

A Song for Christopher