I PICK UP THE ASHES OF MY MOTHER AND MY SISTER on a day so dark it feels like the sun forgot to rise. The clouds are thick and heavy, charcoal-colored. I walk to the bus stop and wait with my hands pressed between my knees, the balls of my feet bobbing, ebbing out my nerves. In a few hours I will carry two urns filled with body—hearts and lungs and funny bones—all burned to a fine dust.
Today we are here, and tomorrow we are gone, amounted to a handful of memories. It’s freaking depressing. I don’t feel my grief anymore, not really. It was sopped up the night Judah pulled me into his arms and told me I was worth loving. I am only numb now, doing what I ought: walk, talk, eat, pick up ashes. Check! Check! Check! Check!
On my way home from the funeral home, I stare at the urns—one small, like a bottle of perfume, and one large, like a bottle of milk—both sitting in an unmarked paper bag on the seat beside me. I consider putting them on the floor, but then think it disrespectful. I wonder if when I die someone will put my ashes into a jar or bury me in the dirt.
The rain doesn’t come; it seems the sky will be all threats today. I carry my sister’s urn to the garden. I can hear music pounding through the open windows of the crack house—something angry and fast paced. Looking around, I see that the trees are mostly bare—nowhere pretty to put my sister. I am wearing short sleeves, and I shiver as I search the yard for somewhere nice. There is a bush near the back of the garden, close enough to the woods to be considered wild. There are some blackberries and bright, bell-shaped leaves still clinging to the branches. I lean closer to examine it. Is that…? Judah calls to me from the sidewalk. I look back over my shoulder, and he waves. He’s wearing a red shirt; it’s bright against the gray of the day.
“Let me be with you when you do this,” he says when I walk over to him. I press my lips tight and nod. Sure. Yeah. Who wants to say goodbye alone?
I wheel him over the rough patches in the yard; we hit a ditch that almost rocks him out of his chair. He is quiet when I crouch down and empty the smaller of the urns around a tree whose leaves bloom red in the summer.
There is still a body in my oven. I want to bury that one, but before I do, I want some answers. I want to search the house to see if there are more. Maybe it was the first of us—my mother’s unwanted babies—but why had she put in in the oven? Why not bury it, or ask the father to bury it? The baby in the urn would have grown into a sister. We could have been friends. I do not empty my mother’s urn near the baby’s. She does not deserve to be put to rest.
“What are you going to do with her?” Judah asks.
“What would you do with her?”
He frowns scratching the back of his head, and then looking up at the rain clouds. A raindrop has landed on his mouth and he licks it away.
“I like my mom,” he says. “I’d want her to be somewhere nice.”
“And if you didn’t like your mom?”
He thinks for a minute. “Leave her somewhere in the house. Seems like punishment enough, right?”
I laugh. “Yeah...”
“Hey, Margo,” says Judah. “You’re pretty tough you know that?”
“Tough?” I repeat. “No. If I were tough I’d be a normal girl. I turned out all crazy and shit.”
“And shit,” he smiles. “Well, whatever. I like you anyway.”
“Go home,” I say, standing up and dusting off the back of my pants. “It’s starting to rain.”
He blows me a kiss and wheels himself back on home.
I like that kid.
I bathe, and eat a little of what Judah’s mother brought me. I am still thinking about the berries I saw when I climb into bed. I have dreams filled with corpses and hollow-eyed humans stuffing blackberries into their mouths ‘til they choke. When I wake up … I know.
I am in the kitchen when I find my mother’s last correspondence. On the last Tuesday of every month, she’d leave four envelopes on the kitchen counter; three of them were for me to take to the post box: the power bill, the water bill, her cellphone bill. The last envelope was blank. Inside was always a list, written in her near-perfect handwriting, of the things she wanted for the month. Sometimes the list would have things like: shampoo, Advil (large bottle), crackers, bananas. Other times it would say: New Stephen King novel, tweezers, mascara (brown/black). She’d tuck a fifty in the envelope, and that would be that. I finger the envelope. What had she wanted this month? Did I even care? I rip a thin strip off of the top of the envelope and pull out the notebook paper inside.
There are only three things on her list this month. I look at the first: laxatives. Not an unusual request, but there were girls in my school who used laxatives early in pregnancy. The rush of wet bowels flushed out the barely fertilized egg, or that’s what they believed anyway. You could often see a bottle of MiraLAX being passed from hands, shoved in a backpack. A home remedy that never worked. Also on her list is a request for a birthday card—(something masculine) she writes next to it. I wonder if it’s my father’s birthday, or one of the others. Who would she feel is special enough to receive a paper acknowledgment? My bitterness causes me to temporarily fold the paper. No birthday card for me. No acknowledgment. When my bad feelings subside, I unfold it to see what her last wish was. Written in different color ink than the first two items is something that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Tell Margo. That’s it.
Why would my mother write this on her shopping list she’d know I’d see? What does it mean? Had she meant to write more and forgotten? Tell Margo about…the baby? Maybe she thought I didn’t know about the money underneath the floorboards. I bury my face in the crook of my arm.
Howard Delafonte had his offices on Main Street. And when I say offices, I mean both the law firm and the wine bar five doors down that he’d opened a year earlier. Someone else ran the wine bar for him, and he had partners at the firm, but the ex-mayor was keeping himself busy. “Busy, busy like a bee,” I say under my breath as I watch him walk into the bar, a paper latte cup in his hand.
It is amazing what you can find out on the internet. A little trip to the Harbor Bone Public Library, and bam, more information than you know what to do with. There is no such thing as not airing your dirty laundry anymore. Anyone’s shit-stained knickers are just a web search away nowadays. Howard Delafonte’s knickers had a divorce smeared across them. I guess the Missus finally left him. And, according to the internet, his oldest son is addicted to heroin, while his youngest has an arrest record for battery. Between my mother and Howard, I was part of a pretty nasty genetic cesspool.
He’s in the wine bar for a good thirty minutes before he comes out—a paper bag in his hand. He’s whistling, though I can’t hear the tune from my bench across the busy street. I wait until he’s almost to his car before I stand up and follow him. He hits the electronic button to open his car—not the Mustang, I notice, but a shiny, white Mercedes. He puts the paper bag in the backseat, then opens the door to the driver side. That’s when I make my move. I sprint across the street and grab onto the passenger side door, sliding into the car at the same time he does.
“Hey Dad.”
His face blanches. I expect him to leap out of the car, but after giving me a long, hard look, he buckles his seat belt, and the engine purrs to life. It’s raining. The wipers whip water back and forth as he pulls out of his space and onto the road. I feel slightly uneasy. I am at his mercy, and he can do anything he wants with me buckled into his front seat. I won’t give him the upper hand. I relax into my seat and wait for him to speak first. I want him to ask me why I’m here. I had to take five buses to get to the quaint little town he calls home, and I wonder now if he’s paranoid about one of his small town people seeing us together.
“Your mother … did you bury her?”
“Cremated,” I say.
He nods.
“Did you give her the Misoprostol?”
He nods again. I clench my fists and stare at the side of his face. It’s a strange thing, looking at your father. Knowing that you’re somewhere in his face—maybe the curve of a cheek, or the dip of a nose—and searching so hard for it that you want to cry, because you’re ashamed and desperate.
“You killed my sister. Why did you let me live?”
“How do you know … how do you know it was a girl?” he asks. He glances at me briefly.
“Because I found her on the floor.”
This seems to make Howard uncomfortable. He wipes a meaty hand across his face, then slams it down on the steering wheel. His gesture reminds me of why I’m here.
“She wanted you,” he says. “I tried to get her to have an abortion, and she wouldn’t do it.”
“She told me my father left…”
“That’s what I wanted her to say,” he says quickly. “We knew each other for a long time. I gave her the job at the firm when she graduated high school. It was different in those days. You could get a job based on competency rather than a degree. She was a very competent woman. Saved my ass a bunch of times when clients went haywire. I used to send her in to talk to them, calm them down.”
“I didn’t come here to reminisce about my mother,” I say.
“So why are you here?”
“I want to know about your regrets.”
He pulls into the parking lot of a diner—Peppered Pete’s—just off the highway. There are a couple of semis parked in the lot, a trucker’s diner. Before turning off the car, he says, “Let’s get something to eat.” I nod reluctantly. This will be my first official dinner with my father. I follow him out of the car and through the parking lot. He’s making things way too easy for me. He doesn’t wait to see if I’m tagging along.
When we get to the door, he holds it open for me. A real gentleman. The air in Peppered Pete’s is loaded with grease. But I can’t even remember the last time I was in a restaurant, so I feel charmed. We sit in the back by the bathrooms where every few minutes I hear a toilet flush. I don’t comment on Howard’s choice of table, or the fact that he positioned himself with his back to the door. I leave to go to the bathroom before the waitress can come over. “Whatever you have,” I tell him.
When I get back, there are two steaming mugs of coffee on the table. I hold my cup, but don’t drink anything.
“I loved her,” he says. “I wanted to marry her. My wife got sick…”
I think about my mother. Had she loved him? Had she been using him?
“But you didn’t want your children with her?”
He picks up his knife, sets it back down. “I have children.”
“If you loved her, you should have wanted her children.”
“You think it’s that simple, but it’s not,” he says. “You’re just a kid. You don’t know how hard things can get. Complicated.”
I smile wryly.
“Excuse me,” he says. He disappears into the restroom. The timing is perfect. It’s like the universe mapped it all out for me. I see our waitress turn the corner with two plates in her hand. I get up and go to the restroom again, making sure to leave my purse on the seat so she knows we didn’t run out on her. She can’t see my face. I come out a few seconds later. Blueberry pancakes, eggs, and bacon. I dip my hand into my purse and pull out the Ziploc baggie I brought.
Then he’s back, sliding into the booth, his hands still damp from washing.
“Margo.” It’s the first time he’s ever said my name. It makes me feel empty. Sad. My eyes dart around, looking for the waitress. She will be back in a minute to check on us … bring more coffee.
He takes the first bite of his pancakes. Then the second. I watch, mesmerized as he eats what I put on his pancakes.
“She wasn’t in the right frame of mind to have a baby. I don’t know what she was saying to you, but she was depressed. She spoke about death a lot.”
“She didn’t speak to me at all.” I still haven’t touched my food. He looks up at me, his fork still cutting through pancakes. It looks like he wants to say something, but then changes his mind.
“I loved her,” he says again. “I don’t regret that.”
“You killed her … and the baby.”
He wipes his mouth with a napkin, and it leaves a purple smear. “No. That was … she wanted…”
“You gave her the drugs that killed her, ex-Mayor Delafonte. What will people think about that?”
“What do you want?”
I smile. “Nothing. Nothing at all. I have everything I need now.”
And with that, I get up and leave, keeping my head ducked.
I don’t know what happens after that. I don’t check. But I fed my father nightshades and hoped to hell he died.