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The World Without Me

Jo-Anne Rosen

1. How You End

My next-door neighbor, what’s her name, walks in without knocking.

“Yoo hoo, are you decent, Bert?”

“No,” I growl.

She stands at the door to the bedroom, a stick holding a plate. “I brought you meatballs and mashed potatoes,” she says.

I sit up with difficulty and swing my legs over and down, and that’s as far as I can go. Shit, that hurts. “You mind bringing it to me here?”

She averts her gaze from the plastic undies and bustles off to the kitchen to heat the food. I ask her to bring me some juice while she’s in there. It’s kind of her, considering I avoid her most of the time. I forget why. She seems pleasant enough.

She sits on the chair and watches while I take slow bites. The food’s soft and bland.

“It’s from the soup kitchen,” she says. “I volunteer there, you know.” She chatters on about the poor homeless. She makes sandwiches for them that she passes out when she walks along the creek near our building.

“What’s hospice doing for you?” She looks around the room.

“We’re working out the details,” I say. And now I remember. Saint Lorraine knows everything about everyone in Harmony Villa.

She blabs and blabs. I nod and nod. She clears away the dish and I manage to get back under the covers and shut my eyes before she returns. “I’ll look in on you, tomorrow, Bert,” she whispers, and she’s gone. At least she took my mind off the pain.

I don’t know what all those pills are for except to give me the runs.

Hatchet Face came yesterday and organized pills on a shelf. Morphine’s on top shelf, just in case, but call first. I told her I’m losing weight. I’m too weak to cook.

“The social worker will discuss your options,” said she.

▪

I’VE BEEN CALLING my daughter every day for a week, no answer. At last, she picks up.

“I meant to call you,” Marina says in her brisk, perfect English, only the faintest trace of an accent. “I’m busy with Ofelita’s baby.”

My little girl, an abuela. How is this possible?

“I didn’t know Ofelia got married,” I manage.

“I’m sure I told you.”

“Can you email me a photo of the baby?”

“Alright, great-grandpa, I’ll do that.”

The hint of laughter in her voice is a lifeline.

“Marina, I haven’t seen you in twelve years. When can you get here?”

“As soon as I can,” she says sharply. “Ofelia needs me. I can’t just leave.”

“I know you don’t want to.” I hear the self-pity and I hate it, but it’s too late. “I don’t blame you. I made a mess of everything.”

“That you did.”

“I can’t change any of it now. I’m truly sorry.”

“Oh Daddy,” she sighs. I know she doesn’t believe I’m sorry.

“I’m on my death bed,” I say. “Do you want a note from my doctor?”

She takes a few ragged breaths. “I told you I’m coming up to see you. I’ll come when I can. You’re not going to manipulate me.”

“Marina, please, I didn’t mean to upset you. Calm down.”

“Don’t you patronize me, Daddy.” And then she laughs dryly, and so do I.

“I’ll try not to, darling,” I say.

▪

THE SOCIAL WORKER is an angel with long blonde hair and turquoise blue eyes that look right at me and into me, trying to read me, open me, fix me, maybe. Too late for that, sweetheart.

“Last week you were walking around the apartment, Bert. Now you’re barely able to get to the bathroom. So here are your choices.”

Either aides come in around the clock or I go to a nursing home. Who pays for this? Not me, without a pot to piss in, the VA kicks in. Becky’s got my financials on her clipboard. Will I be alright for a few more days? I tell her a neighbor’s looking in on me. She asks about my daughter.

“She’s coming ‘soon,’ whatever that means. I’ve been dry and sober twenty-five years and she’s still pissed at me.”

Becky says children of alcoholics have a difficult time recovering, too.

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

She asks me to think about what I did that was so bad. It’s all a blur. I suppose I did whatever I pleased and that didn’t always please my wife and children.

“The boy stayed out of my way but the girl was always in my face. High spirited, talking back. I never hit them, I swear. Like my mother did me. Or if I did, I don’t remember. And I didn’t vanish like my father. When I was on the road, they traveled with me, they moved when I moved. They saw something of the world.”

“Your mother hit you?”

“Smacked me every day. Sometimes she was affectionate, but mostly, I got on her raw nerve. She resented me tying her down. That was after my dad abandoned us, see, but even after she remarried, I was always underfoot, she’d say. I liked my step-dad though. He’d take me fishing. When I was older, he took me to the bars. And the rest is history.”

Becky says I’m still angry at mom and I took it out on my family and I say, yeah, yeah, I know all about that, I went over and over it in AA.

“But are you really over it?” she asks.

Well, I don’t know and why does it matter now, except that it’s something to talk about with a pretty girl. I haven’t thought about it much since I left AA. What’s past is past, I figure. There’s only the present for me now, though I can still wonder about the world without me in it.

“I tell you what puts me over the moon, Becky. I’ve lived long enough to see a black man elected president. Isn’t that grand?”

She nods and smiles. “If a nation can heal its wounds,” she says, “there’s hope for Norbert Dillon.”

She looks at her watch. She’s got to go.

“Already? You just got here.”

“Two hours ago.”

But I need to tell her about the pills.

“The nurse said what the pills are for, and I can’t remember, and I can’t make out what’s on the bottles, or which is which. She’s in and out of here in a heartbeat. She didn’t come for over a week. That’s the VA for you.”

Becky frowns. “Are you sleeping better?”

I admit I am. But I’m never really hungry and I’m losing weight. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I’ve been too fat for too long and why should I feed the cancer. It’s like a hungry beast, feeding on me.

“I’ll give her a call,” she says. “Meanwhile, you keep taking what she put on the shelf for you. Take Oxycodone when you have pain.”

“Doesn’t work anymore.”

She looks worried.

“It’s so bad sometimes, I want to kill myself, if I could figure out how.”

She sits down again and takes my hand. “Bert, I want you to promise that you’ll call me if you have thoughts of suicide. Promise?”

I’d promise her the moon.

▪

ACCORDING TO MARINA, I broke her mother’s heart and destroyed her brother. Carlos was too soft hearted to stand up to me, she claims. And now I can’t tell him I’m sorry. I’m not even sure he’s alive. But I think he must be because Marina talks about him like he is. I think she knows where he is. When I google him, I get nada. He dropped below the radar thirty years ago.

Please let Carlos know, I begged her, if you can. Tell him I love him. I want to say goodbye.

You love him? She doesn’t believe that either.

I love you both, I told her. I always have. I was never good at saying these things.

I remember my babies. How I loved holding the warm bundles, their tiny fingers. I wanted to be a good father, I truly did.

But then I turned around and in a flash, they were sulky teenagers who despised me.

Too much is missing.

What I do remember is Carlos in the little sailor suit I brought back from San Diego. He wanted to steer our boat himself and I put his hands on the rudder. Tiny pudgy hands.

And I remember a whiny kid who pissed me off.

He was never around when I was home. He was disappearing little by little. And then one day he left without saying goodbye.

▪

EACH TIME I FELL IN LOVE, the world seemed shiny and fresh, and I was a new and better man.

Starting with my first love, Alice, who never got old. It’s the memory of Alice that’s old. I can’t recall her voice or anything we talked about, just bits of her face, freckles hidden under makeup, blonde pageboy swinging, red lipstick, sharp teeth.

We met in a saloon and married in one. Two kids liquored up day and night. For all I know, she died in a saloon. What saved my ass was seeing her death notice. Alice Dillon, 57, survived by a sister. No children. She wouldn’t have my babies, she got rid of them, and I wanted a family.

I left her for a new life in Mexico with the beautiful Lucia and the children we made. Carlos and Marina. And the children Marina made, nine grandchildren. Juan Carlos, Ofelia, Maria. Six more I can’t remember. She does everything to extremes, my daughter.

Like me, maybe? I was 60 when I stopped drinking. By then alcohol had destroyed everything. Carlos disappeared, Lucia divorced me, Alice died. I haven’t had a drop since.

I can’t undo the pain I caused Lucia, it’s done and she’s gone. There were other women before and after we parted, but Lucia was the real wife of my heart, her laughter like bells tinkling, her anger volcanic.

I never did figure out how to calm a woman down after I riled her up.

▪

I FEEL BETTER TODAY. The beast is snoozing. I hobble into the kitchen leaning on the cane and peer inside the fridge. Nothing looks appealing. The eggs might be a couple of months old. I take some pork tamales out of the freezer and put them in the microwave. I’m staring at the buttons, which aren’t making any sense, when the phone rings.

It’s on a table on the other side of the counter that separates kitchen and dining area. I walk as fast as I can, but the answering machine clicks on.

“Dad, hello,” a man says, an unfamiliar voice, a husky, old man’s voice. “I’m sorry you’re not well. I’ll call you again.” A pause, then faintly, “I love you.”

I get to the machine too late, he’s gone.

Carlos? Carlos called, he called. Marina, darling, muchas gracias.

I make my way into the second bedroom where the computer and filing cabinet are. It’s good to be sitting here, as if everything’s normal, checking the email. Lots of email, not all of it junk. From my cyberpals. Most are jokes or political insights, a few are personal. They haven’t heard from me, they’re worried.

Marina has written with an attachment. There are two photos, one of the new baby, very cute; the other, of Marina and Ofelia with the baby. Three generations, two beautiful women. My daughter is still slender and glamorous, after bearing nine children and, like her mother, fashionably dressed, always in high heels with impeccable makeup.

I respond:

“Gracias Marinacita, from the bottom of my heart. Carlos phoned today, but I couldn’t pick up the phone in time. Is he alright? He sounds worn out or sick. I hope he’ll call again. If you speak with him, tell him so. And thank you for the lovely photos. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. I’d call, but I know how busy you are. I’m here all the time, mostly in bed, so call when you can spare the time. With love, Dad.”

Then I begin answering the rest of my email and forwarding the best jokes.

Lorraine rings the doorbell and comes in.

“Where are you, Bert?”

“In the office.”

“Ah, this is your office, is it?” She pokes her head in.

“I’m typing emails. Have a seat.” She sits on the bed, and I type while whistling that aria from Rigoletto I can’t get out of my head. E di pensiero!

“You must’ve got some good news, Bert.”

“Sure did. Here, look at this. My first great grandkid.” I pull the photos up on the screen. “My daughter just sent them.”

“How wonderful!” She puts one hand over her heart. “Didn’t you tell me your daughter wasn’t speaking to you?”

“She is now. Says she’s going to visit me.”

“When?”

“Soonish. Abuela duties are taking precedence.”

“Of course.” Lorraine hesitates, and then asks if there is anything I need right now.

“Yeah, there is. I left frozen tamales in the microwave when the phone rang. You think you could heat them up for me?”

“Piece of cake, Bert.”

“You’re a life saver,” I tell her and she grins ear to ear.

▪

THE NEXT DAY the pain is back, though not as mean as before, and in a different place, like it’s roaming around looking for the best foothold before really digging in. I take the pain pills. They help a little. But it hurts something awful when I move.

Becky visits again. She tells me what all the pills in the box are for and gives me a typed sheet. I guess it’s okay, if she says so. They help me sleep, maintain an appetite, and so forth.

She says it may be another week before I get an aide, part-time. I tell her I’m okay so far. My neighbor is shopping for me.

I tell her about Carlos calling and she claps her hands.

“He said he loves you? After all this time and so many bad feelings?”

“Do you think he’s humoring me?”

“He may remember when he did love you. And maybe it wasn’t all totally bad.”

My eyes water up and I can’t speak right away.

She watches me and waits. “Anything else you want to talk about? Anything that worries you?”

“The stock market meltdown,” I say, finally. “Global warming. Iraq. Afghanistan. I’m not going to know. How it all ends.”

“No, you won’t,” she looks at me steadily. “And what about how you end?”

“What about it?”

“What do you expect?”

“Lights out.”

“I see. You don’t believe in an afterlife or God, then?”

“Hell no. I leave religion to my daughter. I’ve told her I don’t want any of that claptrap. It’s in my Will. When I’m gone, I’m gone. Send me up in smoke.”

Becky nods. She’s a Buddhist and I like what she has to say about it. Maybe I’d be a Buddhist too, if I had more time, I tell her. No mucking around with a deity.

“God is an excuse for not knowing the answers,” I say, and she laughs.

If I had more time, if I were forty years younger.

▪

THE BEAST GNAWS AND GNAWS, no matter how many damn pills I pop.

Worse is can’t think worth a damn. Start a sentence. Can’t finish.

Lorraine makes me scrambled eggs, I teach her a little Spanish. Helps me focus. The halt lead the blind. She’s got a language block, she says. Or I can’t teach anymore. Used to be good at it.

She tiptoes out and sleep crashes down like a tsunami, obliterating everything.

The phone wakes me. It’s Marina! I mumble and gasp.

She’ll fly up in another week, did she say?

“Please forgive me,” I say. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she says slowly. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Carlos?”

She doesn’t know, she’s tried, he doesn’t answer. She promised not to give me his number.

“But I’m dying, Marina. I’m dying now. I have to talk to him.”

“Daddy, stop it. It’s useless. He’s an alcoholic, he turned out just like you.

▪

WHEN HE CALLS AGAIN, I’m awake and in bed with the beast dozing in my gut.

Carlos’ voice is slurred, he had to drink a lot to get up the courage for this call. I bite my tongue. And tell him how sorry I am for what I did, that alcohol brought out my demons.

“Don’t let it ruin your life like it did mine,” I plead. “Por favor.”

“I was never like you,” he says. “I’m a social drinker. I don’t harm anyone.”

“But yourself, Carlos.”

“Dad, I’ll come out in a month, if I can.”

Which means he won’t.

▪

TAKE THE MORPHINE, nurse says. You can’t overdose on morphine sulphate. Take half a vial now, more if you need more. I put down the phone and pull myself up out of bed. The few feet to the vial are killing me, killing me.

The beast is everywhere. Hell on earth.

I lie still waiting, my mind the last bastion beast can’t force. Marvelous organ, the brain. I think the beast is in here with me though, gobbling up neurons invisibly, but not even a headache. Where I. Am.

Sweet morphine. Drowsy now, beast drowsing too. Midnight. Good night beast, good night Bert. Sleep tight, Bertie.

Six o’clock. I’m awake, beast’s asleep. Beautiful. I sit up and piss into the catheter. Take pills in yellow square. Think about food.

The beast attacks tooth and nail, goddamn it to fucking hell.

I drink the rest of the vial

It’s hot. I kick off blankets and lie on my back, waiting. Morpheus is my friend. The clock ticks, ticks, ticks.

Holy shit.

There’s a giant armadillo on my bed, half as large as the room, its rump sticking out the window, its claws straddled across my legs. I sit up to examine it.

A purple and green armadillo snarling like a pissed off Cheshire cat. I’m dreaming or hallucinating, but damn it’s vivid.

I remember another Carlos. Never let dreams subdue you, stare them in the face, wrestle them to the ground. I tingle all over. The colors are so bright I can touch them.

Hello, I say. You house broken? Hah hah.

The armadillo snorts and shrinks itself to the size of a pony. It’s a pinto pony.

Then I’m on its back and we’re galloping out the window, up through the sky, over the North Bay, over San Francisco, over the southwestern deserts, we’re flying over the border toward Guadalajara.

I hear little pig grunts, the scene shifts, it’s my bedroom again and me snoring in it, lying on my back in nothing but frilly plastic undies, like I’m looking at myself from the ceiling, old and ill and ghastly pale. Forget that shit.

Becky appears, luminous, my own angel, her hair in a pageboy, lips bright red. Long red fingernails, I never noticed. She’s smoking a little cigar.

Shall we dance? She’s wearing a long black gown, cut low in front, and I’m in a summer suit, forty pounds lighter and light on my feet, whirling her around and around the dance floor. I’ve got you under my skin. The floor is crowded but the other dancers move aside.

So deep in my heart you’re almost a part of me.

It’s Lucia I’m holding. Vibrant and supple, laughing up at me, her black hair spilling down her back. We’re dancing on the terrace of that grand hotel in Managua that overlooks the sea. I can put both hands around her waist. Not so tight, she whispers. You’re hurting me. But I can’t help it. I want her so badly, I squeeze and squeeze. Squeeze her into pieces, squeeze the life out of her. But it’s a mistake, I can fix it, let me fix it.

Murderer, the crowd chants. Monster.

I run away. Down to the water, the docks, looking for my boat, the little schooner, the Lucia, to escape in, but she’s missing. I can’t remember where I berthed her. There’s a small boy at my heels, grabbing my pants leg, a homeless brat begging for money. I shake him off, he won’t let go. I grab him and shake him hard.

“Daddy,” he says.

Oh Carlos, no, I didn’t mean. He’s crying, the baby, always crying. I hold him gingerly, and he shivers. The baby is shriveling in my arms, in my hands, he’s shrinking to the size of a peso. I put him in my pocket and run and run. A doctor, I need a doctor, help.

Hatchet Face blocks me. What d’you need now, she says, and I reach in my pocket but it’s empty.

I’ve killed them both, I moan.

Can’t fix it, she says.

Someone’s calling my name.

Bert, are you alright?

Marina? No, Lorraine, her boiled pink face leaning over me for a flickering moment, and I turn away and sink down, down.

The sun is sparkling on the bay. My boat glides through the water, its sails billowing.

2. After You End

My children come to me and light candles for my father’s soul. They tell me there is nothing else I could have done.

I don’t sleep much that night. The next morning I’m on a plane to San Francisco.

Daddy’s neighbor Lorraine meets me at the airport. I see a short and bony woman with a reddish complexion holding a sign with my name on it in large letters. A woman walking beside me waves at someone just as we get to the security checkpoint, so Lorraine shakes hands with this heavy-set lady in jeans and sneakers, instead of me.

“No, no,” I cry. “I’m Marina, not her.”

Lorraine blushes and apologizes.

“Did you really think that was me?” I tease.

“I had no idea what you’d look like, except for that photo of you as a bride. People change. Look at me. I used to look like Marilyn Monroe.” She guffaws at her own joke.

▪

I WALK THROUGH HIS ROOMS in a daze. It is a stranger’s home, aside from my wedding portrait and framed photos of my children when they were younger arranged on a shelf.

Lorraine suggests I sleep in the second bedroom where the computer is, rather than on the bed where my father died. She found him there yesterday morning and at first, thought he’d fallen into a deeper sleep. His head was turned to the side and there was a trail of vomit at the corner of his mouth. After she cleaned it up, she realized he wasn’t breathing. She waited for the ambulance and the undertakers. She notified the social worker who called me.

“You’re an angel,” I tell her, and she ducks her head shyly and leaves.

I phone the social worker.

“How are you doing?” Becky asks.

“My head is pounding. I don’t know what to do first.”

“Go to sleep, start fresh in the morning.”

“But what do I do with all his stuff?” I wail.

She recommends I make piles. “Start with what you might like to keep or your children might want someday. Then make piles of what to throw out, stuff nobody will want. The rest of it can be sold or given away to Goodwill or people in the building.”

I glance out through sliding glass doors into a large inner courtyard. The building is three stories high and there’s not a soul in sight.

“I’m a wreck. Do you think it’s okay to smoke here?”

She hesitates. “Do whatever you need to do.”

▪

I SMOKE ONE CIGARETTE AFTER ANOTHER and drink a Diet Coke I find in the back of the fridge. Where do I start? Magazines, newspapers, books, and clothing are scattered everywhere. In almost every closet and drawer I find bottles of medication, duplicates of many that are in the bathroom. I start to make piles.

Important documents are well organized. That was Daddy. I’m the same way. So, it’s not hard to find the letter from the bank with his ATM password. And copies of the Will and anything else of practical value.

At the bottom of a book shelf I discover a photo album that’s a keeper. It’s bound in leather and held together with string, the pages yellowing. I sit on the floor to thumb through it. The sepia snapshots of my grandparents must have been taken during their courtship or on their honeymoon. I’ve seen her picture before but not his. So that’s where Dad got his thick hair and deep-set eyes. Most of the photos are of my grandmother, from devil-may-care flapper to Madonna-like mother. Then baby Norbert, infant and toddler with chubby cheeks and intense eyes. My great grandmother, too, I think, a stout woman holding the baby. Everyone smiles or hams it up for the camera. Except the furious little boy in his cowboy suit. I know the whole story. I know she was a bad mother. At least my bad father never hit me.

▪

THE NEXT MORNING Lorraine pops in. She’s astonished at the progress I’ve made.

“How can I help?” she asks and covers her mouth to cough. I open the sliding door to the balcony to air out the apartment.

“Maybe you know what these keys are for?”

She nods and points at the balcony where large metal objects are piled, partially blocking a latticed door. Lorraine steps outside and unlocks the door. Inside a large storage closet, we find an immaculate miniature workshop, tools hung neatly, a wood planer fastened to a small bench. It’s like opening a door to his soul—workmanlike, methodical yet passionate, for no one would go to such trouble who was not.

“Bert could fix anything,” she tells me. “He put up shelving in my storage closet. He could be ornery sometimes, but he sure was a good neighbor.”

“Lorraine, you can speak frankly. I know what kind of man he was.”

“I won’t speak ill of the dead,” she says, looking at the floor. “He can’t defend himself.”

“That’s not going to stop me, sweetie. Daddy was a charmer, but he could be really mean. He bullied and manipulated. That was my father. Down to the end.”

Lorraine admits Bert didn’t have many friends in Harmony Villa. “That scooter outside the door? The mobility chair? He rode it like a racecar driver. Little old ladies with canes had to jump out of the way, I’m not kidding. By the way, I know someone who can use a scooter. That’s one of the keys, I betcha.”

“He can take it. Or she.”

“He. Larry and Bert played chess together, and Bert made fun of him sometimes, but Larry put up with him. I did too, I suppose. You know, your dad was very smart and always interesting to talk with. He was teaching me Spanish.” Her eyes fill suddenly with tears.

“Is there anything you’d like for yourself?” I ask gently.

She blinks, looks around. “I could use the microwave. Mine’s busted.”

“It’s yours.”

“If you need a ride anywhere, Marina, say the word.”

▪

WHY DO THEY CALL IT a funeral home? It is tastefully decorated, but not a home

Home is where my mother lay after she passed on, surrounded by family and friends, my home, where I brought her to live, though she didn’t want to come, but after her stroke, had no choice.

There are other clients in the reception area next to a nondenominational chapel. Lorraine sits opposite a quiet middle-aged couple and nods at them. She’ll know their life story before we leave.

The interment counselor Matt is surprisingly young, a tall robust fellow with buzz-cut blonde hair and ruddy cheeks. He assures me my father has been washed and dressed, and he looks peaceful, as I’ll soon see.

First, I have to sign a stack of papers and answer questions for the death certificate application. Thank God, I found his passport and brought it with me, because I can’t remember when he was born..

“And his occupation?”

“Some kind of engineer.”

“In which industry?”

I have to think about it. We traveled all over the Americas, north and south. What was Daddy doing?

“He worked for United Fruit for a long time.”

“Ah, fruit production, then.”

So now there’s an official summary of his life: Fruit production engineer.

His ashes won’t be ready for a week and death certificates take even longer. My flight home is in four days. Mañana I’ll think about it. I sign all the papers.

Matt says the “cremains” will be in a plain cardboard box.

“Do you have any plans for them?”

“Plans?” I stare at him blankly.

“What will you do with his cremains?”

“I will find a tree and bury the ashes there. He should go back to the earth he came from.” And I look at him expectantly. It seems like a good plan to me, considering I just made it up.

“The problem is it’s not legal. You’ll have to find a very private tree.”

“Then I’ll scatter them at sea,” I say. “He loved boats and sailing.”

Matt advises me to find an isolated beach, as this too is illegal.

“You have another option,” he says. “The box can be stored indefinitely at no cost in a county facility. You don’t have to decide right now.”

He escorts me to the viewing room where my father reposes. A placard outside the door bears his name, Norbert Charles Dillon. I step into a thickly draped and carpeted room. The temporary coffin is at the far end. I see a pale unfamiliar head.

But this can’t be him in the green box, arms folded over his chest. This ghost white man doesn’t look like my father. He was thinner and hairier. He had hair all over his arms, his head was not shaved. He did not have jowls. I come closer. Yes, those are his sunken eye sockets, the same as mine. And the aquiline nose. I touch him, so cold.

“Goodbye, Daddy,” I whisper, and my voice echoes and trembles in the quiet room. Oh Daddy, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for your sad unfinished life.

Lorraine is alone in the waiting room now. She looks at me expectantly.

“How did it go?”

I shrug. “I said goodbye as best I could. Do you want to say goodbye to him, too?”

She hesitates. “I think I already have,” she says. She takes a deep breath and tells me she believes Bert was still alive when she checked on him the last time and that he must have died when she left the room to fetch a damp cloth to wipe his face. She said goodbye while his skin was still warm, which is how she prefers to remember him.

We drive in silence back to Harmony Villa. I can’t stop thinking about the ghost-white jowly face in the green coffin, but not until we are back in his apartment do I mention this to Lorraine.

“I wish I’d come sooner,” I confess. “I wish I could have been with him when he was alive. I just said goodbye to an empty shell. I never had a chance to forgive him.”

As soon as I say it, I know that isn’t true. I had plenty of chances, only not face-to-face.

Lorraine is watching me intently. She clears her throat.

“Marina, I know one thing for sure. Bert was happy as a clam when you told him you’d be here soon. He was so happy he was whistling a song. It made me very happy, too.”

She goes on to explain she has a few more friends, right here in Harmony Villa, who have been estranged from their children for years. They are the nicest people, and she can’t understand why or how such heartbreak happens. She hasn’t got children herself, so it’s difficult for her to imagine.

“You shouldn’t be too hard on yourself,” she concludes. “It’s wonderful that you reached out to each other.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” I murmur. I don’t know if the damage could have been repaired.

“He loved you. You know that don’t you?”

I look out the window at the trees in the courtyard, for once unable to speak. As a child, I knew my father loved nature and beauty. I did know he loved me.

There was a time when I adored him.

I tell Lorraine about the balmy sunlit day when we climbed as high as we could on the road overlooking the sea, so we could have the best view, he’d promised. Daddy and Mama, Carlos and me. I was riding on Daddy’s shoulders. He turned so I faced the wide sparkling sea, and he said in his booming voice, “Marina, sweetie, you have the best possible view of all of us because you’re the tallest now.”

I was so happy. But then my brother tugged at his pants and cried, “Me too, daddy, me too!” And Daddy muttered something I couldn’t hear. Carlos kept at it.

“Shut up,” Daddy said. “Stop your whining. You’re always whining.”

So it was wonderful and awful at the same time, because Carlos sobbed and ran back down the hill and Mama ran after him in her spike heels, and she fell and twisted her ankle, and then Carlos was in big trouble.

“All the little cruelties added up and up,” I say, “Until finally when I was sixteen the whole thing cracked apart and I was gone. As soon as I could, I left the house. I went to university, I was going to be an architect, but I got married instead. All I really wanted was a peaceful home. And that’s what I got. That’s what I have.”

“What happened when you were sixteen?”

I hesitate. Finally, I tell her that I don’t want to get into it now. “What I really want is a cigarette if you don’t mind.”

“I’ll leave you to it,” she says. At the door she pauses. “I forgot to ask, what are you going to do with his ashes?”

“I may be gone before they’re ready.”

“And that’s alright with you?”

I think about a cardboard box on a shelf somewhere among hundreds of identical boxes, each numbered or named, row after row of shelving piled high with boxes.

“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right to walk away from what remains of him. It’s not the same as his stuff. Or is it? Maybe it’s just more stuff.”

▪

WHAT CRACKED APART when I was sixteen was Mama’s collection of Hummel figurines.

Daddy never understood why she spent so much money on them. “It’s kitsch, it’s bloody tasteless,” he’d say. But she loved them. She also collected Day of the Dead figures, which he thought was fine. “There’s a cultural reason for those,” he’d say.

I don’t remember what the quarrel was about exactly. I think I wanted to do something, go somewhere, and he was dead set against it, so I got angry and he got angry. We were all at the dinner table. He picked up a big knife and brandished it and shouted at me. We stared at him, shocked. No one moved. His face got beet red. He put the knife down and walked away from the table, and then he smashed every single one of the Hummels that were displayed in the dining room, and some of the Day of the Dead ones, too.

I saw the pain in Mama’s eyes. He wasn’t finished. He yelled at her for good measure, told her she was an ignorant peasant and worse. It was not long after that he left us.

Anger is a heavy burden on my soul. I pray for both our souls. I pray for peace, his and mine. I pray I can forgive him.

▪

THE DAY BEFORE MY RETURN FLIGHT, Lorraine invites me out for a walk.

 “Fresh air will do you good,” she says.

I agree and dig a sweater out of my suitcase.

“You got any walking shoes?” She’s looking at my high heels. She is wearing sneakers and sweat pants.

“I walk everywhere in these, sweetie. I’m used to them”

There’s a trail alongside a creek near this building. It goes under the freeway through a culvert covered with graffiti and out through huge unpopulated fields of wild grass, right in the middle of the town. The creek is narrow at first, muddy and full of trash. Then it widens and joins a larger stream, wide enough to be a river.

“It’s the Petaluma River,” Lorraine informs me. “Actually, it’s an estuary of the bay. So it’s tidal, sometimes low, sometimes high. Bert went out on it when he had a little boat a few years back. You can sail all the way to San Francisco, though I don’t think he ever did.”

Is this the solution to my dilemma? Drop Daddy in the river that isn’t a river, so what’s left of him sails out through the Golden Gate to sea?

I call the funeral home and am told the cremains won’t be ready before my flight. I’m relieved. I don’t think I could open a box of ashes. I don’t even want to see the box. I imagine it will be so heavy I might drop it and spill its contents in the parking lot of the funeral home and Daddy’s ashes would blow all over Petaluma and get in people’s lungs.

Lorraine volunteers to pick up the cremains and store the box in her apartment, until I decide what to do.

“You won’t want to deal with the government,” she says. “Who knows what really happens to unclaimed ashes. I wouldn’t be surprised if they wind up in the county dump.”

We are drinking coffee in her apartment. It’s a one-bedroom, crammed with furniture and bookcases.

“Are you sure you want to do this? You don’t have much free space.”

She smiles wryly. “He won’t take up much space now.”

“I’ll tell you the truth, Lorraine. I just want to go home and find some peace.”

“How about I slip him into the river at high tide?” She looks at me, questioning.

“That’s fine,” I say, and I feel a weight lifting off me.

Lorraine’s face turns a deeper hue of pink. “It’s not easy being old and alone,” she says. “At least he had one friend at the end.”

▪ ▪ ▪

Jo-Anne Rosen’s fiction has appeared in fifty journals and anthologies, including The Florida Review, The Summerset Review, Valparaiso Fiction Review and Big City Lit, and has received a Pushcart nomination. She is a semi-retired, freelance book and web designer living in Petaluma, California, who since 2010 has published Wordrunner eChapbooks, an online hybrid chapbook/journal, and co-edited the Sonoma County Literary Update. What They Don’t Know is her first short story collection. She earned an MA in English Lit from the University of Miami (a very long time ago). Read the author’s commentary on her story.

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