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I’ll find one person who might talk. More if my perception is off, and these small-town folks want their shot at the spotlight.
“Fine, I’ll go.”
Bing rubs his rounded belly and rocks on his heels. “Wasn’t asking, just so we’re clear.” He points a finger at me. “I need you on the road tonight. And Richardson,” he says to my desk mate, “that wife of yours better have that baby before Finn gets back, or you’ll never get to use that excuse again.” Richardson pales three shades while I try not to laugh. It isn’t an empty threat; I once claimed a nasty flu, then got caught red-handed by my boss at Wal-Mart. Didn’t matter to Bing that I was there buying Robitussin and lotion-infused tissues. In his estimation, if I was well enough to drive, I was well enough to work. The very next week, I had to show up at the office with a mild case of chickenpox. The boss just shut me in a back office and doused the perimeter with Lysol at the top of every hour to keep himself from catching it. To Bing, Lysol is the modern-day equivalent of Vick’s VapoRub. It cures what ails you, even if what ails you is highly contagious and itches like the center of a poison ivy meadow.
“I’ll…I’ll tell her you said so,” Richardson stammers his reply, too green to know the boss is mostly kidding. Though if a baby is born in the next two weeks, he could probably expect a bonus or, at the very least, to not get fired.
“How long should I expect to be gone?” I ask, mentally tallying off a list of available clothing in my closet at home. And by available, I mean clean. My laundry day is every other Saturday, but I skipped last week in favor of sitting at home in sweatpants and watching the playoffs. The Yankees were playing, and I wasn’t about to miss it. Figured I’d get around to laundry the next day, but the next day found myself hung over and not feeling like it. My current clothing situation involves a dirty corner pile that nearly reaches the windowsill, three clean shirts hanging forlornly in my closet, and a few expensive suits. Today is Thursday. So close yet so far away. Hopefully, I will pass a shopping mall on my drive north.
“I want a story about the memorial on my desk on the nineteenth, and then we might do a follow-up after. Don’t come back until you’ve written both articles, even if you have to write them in segments and interview every person in that town to get the story. I want the history behind that fire and the fallout after. Every first-hand account you can find.”
I want to say, “I’m not a miracle worker,” but don’t because I make it a practice not to shoot myself in the foot on a regular basis. I have a knack for turning a day’s worth of work into four when the job doesn’t interest me. Sure, a memorial is an important event and deserves a certain amount of reverence. But my parents only took me back to Silver Bell once, and that was to attend my grandfather’s funeral. If he hadn’t died, we never would have visited. The town was taboo, something I knew never to speak of. Going back now feels like opening Pandora’s Box when Pandora really ought to be left alone in slumber.
Truthfully, I’m a little uneasy about opening that box.
“I’ll get it done,” is what I say instead because what choice do I have? “That’s two stories and hundreds of interviews. Got it.” I make a show of writing those two points on the legal pad in front of me.
“That town has a population of just over three thousand, so you’ll be there awhile. Don’t forget, I want the first story on my desk on the nineteenth.” Bing walks toward his office but turns just outside his door. “And pack a suit. There’s bound to be a lot of press at the memorial, and theChronicleneeds to represent well. You got one of those?”
I smirk. “I’ve got a suit.” My father made sure of it. There are at least seven hanging in my closet at home in various shades of black, gray, and navy. I haven’t worn any since Dad’s funeral and had no plans to, but like the schedule I just got handed on zero moment’s notice, plans change. At least there’s one thing I won’t need to shop for.
Bing closes his door behind him, and I pull out a new leather-bound atlas I bought at a convenience store outside of Dallas just last week. Unfolding it across my desk, I flip the pages to Arkansas until I find Silver Bell, population 3,164 on the map. This isn’t the first time I’ve looked for the town, so the search only takes a second.
The red x I made to mark the spot just last Friday obviously helped.
I haven’t been to Silver Bell in almost two decades. Still, I remember it all. Every nuance, interaction, and image.
As I discovered when I was thirteen years old, sometimes it only takes a minute to make a lasting impression.
2
Finn
They say that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, so it stands to reason that an idle two-bedroom house could function as Satan’s getaway mansion on the New England coast. I don’t normally spend much time thinking about the devil in all his unpleasantness, but the moment I crack open my parents’ front door, thoughts of him come at me in a rush.
The scent alone could send a person into eternal despair. The house smells like skid row in its rotten, unkempt state, like someone tossed a package of open raw chicken in the garbage and left it there these past four months. And in this scenario, that someone would be me.
I open the door a little wider and step inside the house I locked up earlier this summer without a backward glance. I loved my parents more than life itself. The loss piles on me like it’s raining blazing embers on top of my still grieving head. But I despise thinking of them in the past tense. It’s the reason I’ve stayed away this long. If I never returned to the house, I could pretend they still lived there. My mother still in the kitchen pouring lemonade from my grandmother’s crystal pitcher. Still singing Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” in off-pitch falsetto as she flitted from stove to refrigerator. My father still in his recliner, smoking his pipe while loudly grumbling at the latest headlines.“Look at this newspaper claiming Carter was a great President. Back then, interest rates were twelve percent, and gas lines were a mile long! Just because the man builds houses for charity now doesn’t mean he was a good leader.”A bit of an exaggeration on my dad’s part, but there was never any sense in arguing. He clung to his mid-century politics like plastic wrap clings to leftover Thanksgiving stuffing. Stubborn. Hard to separate. Impossible to straighten once it gets jumbled up, so you give up trying and toss it aside.
But I loved them both.
Now that I’m back home, the emotions return in a flood of lonely memories. That’s the depressing side of being an only child; when your parents die, and you inevitably become an orphan, you own the title in every sense of the word. Meaning now you’ve got no one to clean up the remnants of a life you no longer share with anyone.
It’s just me in the world. Alone to combat the past without anyone to commiserate or talk through it alongside me. There’s never any “remember when Mom?” or “can you believe Dad?” to fall back on. No laughter, shared embarrassment, or mutual tears. Maybe that isn’t the case for all “onlys,” but it’s a definite fact when your parents were only children themselves, and your grandparents died before you were old enough to remember much about them.
I step all the way inside the house and close the front door behind me, plugging my nose and breathing in short gasps until I can remove the foul smell. Good God, the stench is overwhelming.
One step inside the kitchen, and the mystery scent is discovered; an open carton of milk with mold crawling up one side, so congealed it no longer even passes for yogurt. I look away, reach for a trash bag, snap it open, and throw the carton away, then grab the rest of the trash and toss everything outside on the back step. With the source of the stench now fully removed, I unlock the window over the sink and push it open. A rush of cool October air greets me like plunging face-first into a bucket of ice water. I gulp in the fresh air and lean over the sink, standing there a moment to gather myself, not moving even when the house gets a little cold. For most of America, temperatures in the mid-fifties might be a welcome reprieve. For Houston, we bring out the snow gear and make immediate plans to hibernate. But frigid is better than foul, so I take a deep breath and open four other windows to make this house endurable again. Within minutes, I’m reaching for the afghan on the back of the old sofa and sliding it around my shoulders like a favorite cardigan you forgot you loved.
The blanket smells like my father.
Now that I’m here, I’m not sure why I’ve stayed away so long. The house is paid for, along with monthly utilities and regular yard maintenance, but when I locked the front door all those months ago, intending to come back the next day…I just didn’t. Too much hassle, I told myself. Too many memories, I rationalized over coffee. Too much to do, I decided on my way to the office every morning and on my way to my own apartment every night. Even now, I’m only here for necessities sake.
The office. Work. My assignment.
I’m heading out of town tonight and can’t leave without digging into my own history. What good is interviewing all those people in Silver Bell if I don’t even know my own story? Not the one I’ve heard about my whole life, but the real story. The one that comes with photos and paperwork, hospital discharge papers, and baby memory albums. Somewhere in this house is a hidden box of mementos, and I need to find it before I leave. I discard the afghan in a corner basket and make my way to my parents’ bedroom.
My steps falter just at the open doorway and the sight of their unmade bed. The last time those sheets were touched, my father rose from them, expecting to go about another day as usual. By the time the sun set that evening, he was in a hospital bed in a slumber he only briefly woke from, occasionally muttering the words,“I’m sorry, so sorry,”in a feverish panic before slipping away for good. Maybe he was talking to me, maybe my mother. I never found out before the heart monitor quit registering completely. My father’s final words have hung over my head ever since like a riddle you’ll never solve, leaving you marked with regret that stretches endlessly. Why couldn’t he have said“I love you”like I hoped he would?
