Death in Texas

The airport scared her. She’d always hated them. The reward? A cramped seat, a plastic cup filled with ginger-ale foam, and all the sanitized entertainment you could watch in the 4-hour flight from Wilmington to San Antonio.

She closed her eyes and imagined she could sink into the rigid foam seats; at least she was sitting in the aisle, with easy access to the bathroom and only one neighbor. As the plane took off, she cursed her mom for choosing to live in San Antonio, and die in July.

“From all of us here at Delta, I want to welcome you to San Antonio, where the local time is 9:00 PM. If this is your final destination….”

She tuned the rest out and breathed as the anxiety rush returned to her head. The plane erupted into chaos as each passenger leaped up, crowding and elbowing each other in their haste to stand in the aisle. She could hear the rising pitch of her seat neighbor's breathing as he expectantly turned towards the aisle. With one last breath, she stood up and joined the static crush of rumpled clothes and heavy breathing.

It was dark, but the air was still hot and humid. She inhaled and felt the pollution pass through her nostrils, filling her lungs; it was still better than canned airplane air. She looked around and spotted her Uber, a dented silver Prius, down at the end of the line of rental car buses.

“Sylvie?” The driver asked as he reached for her bag.

She nodded, handed him the backpack and sat in the back.

She stared out the window as the city passed in the distance, glittering lights, like a party from afar.

Her mother's house was empty, the front door was locked, but she had the key. She’d tried for years to get her mom to install a keypad since her arthritis made turning the key hard. Her mom had just left her door unlocked, somehow she’d never been robbed. No reason to rob a house like this she thought as she walked through the front door. The house was clean; she remembered paying the special company to come clean the house. Apparently, that was a thing after someone died in a house. They cleaned it and got it ready for the real estate agent. The agent had told her it was best to give it a few weeks before listing it: “so the death isn’t so fresh.” As if death was ever fresh. Death was usually the welcome end to a rotting chapter of people's lives.

She thought about sleeping in her mother's bed; it was the only bed with sheets, but in the end, she decided to just curl up with a blanket on the couch. It felt wrong sleeping in her bed, even though the police said she died in the laundry room. She had dreams about the plane, dreams about eating, dreams about her brother, but none about her mom; even her subconscious avoided the thoughts. There hadn’t been a funeral; she had arranged for her body to be cremated and the ashes sent to her in Delaware. The UPS guy made her sign for them and then wished her a nice day as if he wasn’t delivering the burnt remains of the woman who brought her into the world. She smiled and signed, a scribble and a returned nicety before receiving the surprisingly heavy small box (they never ship all the ashes). She’d emailed her brother and asked his advice on the ashes, but the email returned as undeliverable. She left a voicemail on the last phone number she had, but she still didn't know if he knew Mom was dead.

Every day she had waited for the call about him, that he was in jail or overdosed, but when it came, it wasn’t for her brother, but for her mom. Deep down, she knew Mom would die eventually, but she assumed she was too stubborn to die.

Mom wasn’t the good kind of stubborn, sticking her chin out and making the world a better place; she didn’t think she was right about everything, just that everyone else was wrong, especially her kids. Mom never talked about their dad and discouraged curiosity, so by the time they were teenagers they had stopped wondering what happened to their dad. She’d left as soon as she graduated.

Her dad was a fuzzy memory. She remembered warm hugs and a beard that smelled like bourbon and stale cigarettes, but nothing else, not even his name. The only other memento she had of her dad was his belt and mom had used that belt to “teach” her and her brother. She still had the scars, horizontal ones across her back where her mom had broken the skin, some small dots where the buckle had left welts that got infected. The school PE teacher had seen them once and called the state. By the time they got around to visiting, the cuts had healed, and Mom had denied it all. They took her and her brother away for a weekend and then brought them back. The foster family had given them ice cream and meatloaf.

How appropriate that mom's death dealt her one last blow: a mess she couldn’t afford, and a house filled with memories she’d rather forget. She felt the sweat bead off her body as the heat crept into the house. The air conditioning didn’t work, and it had been too late to search for a fan to push the warm air around, she cried as she fell asleep, unsure why, but it just happened.

The doorbell woke her up; she was still wearing her clothes from the flight, her eyes were swollen from crying and sleeping on the dusty couch. She spent a few seconds disoriented as she twisted her shirt back around and tried to mentally arrive wherever her body was. The doorbell rang again, and she padded over to the door.

“Where do you want the dumpster?”

She stared at the large black man who, in the morning heat, was inexplicably wearing a dark blue coverall and a beanie as she probed her brain for the right words.

“Huh?” wrong words.

“The dumpster you ordered, if we put it in the driveway, we’ll block you in, you want to move the car, or should we just put it on the lawn?”

She closed her eyes briefly and recalled a conversation a few weeks back with the real estate agent about clearing out the house before listing it.

“Um, yeah, give me a second. Let me find the keys, and I’ll move the car.” She glanced around the house, wondering where a selfish narcissistic woman would store car keys. After a quick search through the table by the door, she proceeded to the kitchen, where she found a spare set tucked into the knife drawer. She hoped the car would start, she couldn’t afford to take taxis over the next week to all the appointments; she had spent almost half of her savings on the plane ticket.

The dumpster was almost bigger than the house, the man showed her how to open the back so she wouldn’t have to lift stuff over her head to toss it in, and then he was gone. Her mom's Honda didn't fit behind the dumpster so she left it parked by the curb and she headed back into the house. She took a shower, but the gas company had shut off service, so it was a cold shower; it felt good in the heat. She cried again in the shower. She didn't feel sad; she felt angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, relieved, pretty much everything but sad.

The refrigerator was empty, but she found some Bisquik in the pantry and made herself some pancakes for breakfast. Dry pancakes in the wet sticky air. After eating, she headed into the bedroom; it smelled like her mom's perfume, the caustic floral stuff her mom had worn her whole life. She found the bottle, and it was the first thing she threw into the dumpster; unsatisfyingly, the glass bottle hadn't shattered; it had left a dent in the sheet metal of the dumpster wall. She went through her mom's clothes and set aside a few T-shirts to wear. The rest had gone into the dumpster. The mattress, the sheets, everything but furniture was tossed into the dumpster. She found the belt hanging in the back of the closet, the leather was cracking, the buckle had grown some oxidation. She dropped it unceremoniously into the dumpster.

While hauling out a bag of old quilts, she met the neighbors and told them they could help themselves to anything they wanted in the house except the couch. They took the dining room table and chairs and some of the pictures and then returned with a pitcher of lemonade and a sandwich. They were pleasant enough, their smiles and drawl got on her nerves, but they blessed her heart several times before confessing that they didn’t much like her mother. Said she was rude and threw beer bottles on their lawn. She smiled and apologized, said she hoped the next neighbor was better, and they assured her they couldn’t be worse, smiled, and left her alone with yet another memory of her mom being a terrible human being.

By the end of the day, the house was almost empty, she’d kept the silverware and a few other necessities she’d need for the week, but everything else was piled in the dumpster. She’d found a fan and turned it on, enjoying the breeze as she drank the brownish water from the tap. It wasn’t refreshing. Nothing about the day had been refreshing, it was exhausting, and she kept crying.

She went to take a shower and noticed an access port to the attic crawlspace in the hallway. Her mom had been short and couldn’t have reached the ceiling, even with a chair, but she wanted to be thorough. She opened the hatch with a broomstick and shone a light up; she could see the rafters and spider webs but nothing else. The dining room chairs were gone, so she dragged the entranceway table back out of the dumpster and stood on the rickety table as she peered into the crawlspace. There was an old box filled with lightbulbs and a few boxes filled with papers. She lowered the boxes to the hallway floor with some difficulty and cursing. The lightbulbs were just old incandescent bulbs; she tossed them in the dumpster. The first box of papers was filled with old newspapers from Chicago from before she was born, some utility letters addressed to someone else, and several letters from the IRS about overdue taxes also addressed to someone else. The box had probably been there since before her mom had moved in.

The third box was filled with letters addressed to their old home in Philadelphia. There wasn’t a return address.

Ellen, please send Sylvie and Robert to me. I know you hate me, but please don’t take it out on them. I’ve enclosed bus money…

Ruslan

Dozens of letters, the postmarks put them months apart over a decade, each one, her dad (Ruslan?) had enclosed money, the money was long gone, but the letters remained. Eventually, the letters were addressed to just her and her brother, and they had never even been opened, simply tossed into the box to rot in the attic's heat.

They told a story of her dad stuck in Iowa, unable to leave because of work, but who desperately wanted to see her. The letters told her about a different past. Her mother had always replied “I'm the only one who ever really cared for your ungrateful souls,” when she asked about her grandparents or other family. She learned early on to never ask about her dad. Through the letters she learned about her grandmother, a Greek woman named Konstantina, her uncle (Ahmet), and how her dad had been forced to leave in the middle of the night or face some unnamed consequence. She imagined it must have been terrible to tear a father away from his kids.

The letters repeated the regret.

She learned how he fought the courts for custody, sent money, taken the bus to the house in Philadelphia, only to find they had moved to Texas. Letter after letter addressed to her to join him in Iowa, how he’d called the local school to see if there was space for her and her brother, how he’d bought Christmas presents every year in the hopes they would be there, but they never came. He told them about his job (dispatcher for a trucking company) and how he’d kept his beard in case they ever showed up so they would recognize him. They told the story of a life of longing and regret.

The last letter was dated the year before, the envelope hadn’t yellowed, and the letter was printed instead of handwritten. It had been forwarded from the Philadelphia home to San Antonio and was just addressed to her.

Sylvie, I wanted to let you know that Robert died of cancer last month. I’m unsure how the hospital found me, but I wanted to let you know. I never got a chance to find him, and I’m sending this letter in the hopes that after all these years, you can forgive me for leaving and maybe have one last chance to see you. I'm living in an assisted living facility in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I can see the river from my window and watch the parking lot every day, hoping one of the visitors is you. I don't know if you still have blonde hair or freckles, but every time I see a flash of blonde in the parking lot, my heart races, thinking it’s you. I hope this letter finds you and that it finds you well enough to make a trip to see me.

Dad.

She stroked her hair; it had long ago turned brown as a young girl’s blonde hair is wont to do. She still had the freckles.

She stared at the letter as the tears blurred her vision and she sank to the floor. She woke up hours later, curled up on the hallway floor, the letter still clutched in her hand.

It was almost midnight, but she looked up the name of the assisted living facilities in La Crosse and called each one, kindly asking if they had a resident named Ruslan. The receptionist at the third one (The Willows) asked her if the call was urgent since most residents had gone to sleep. She hesitated for a second and then said it was urgent, there was a pause as she was transferred. She heard the phone ring four times, and then it stopped. There was heavy breathing on the other end as the man caught his breath.

She couldn’t help herself and started crying again.

“Sylvie?” The man asked.