14. TATTERDEMALION SOULS
ESTHER
“Esther, do you need food?” Li-Mei knocked.
But I couldn’t reply.
“Esther, hey, it’s me, Howard. I brought some lobster soup, you want some?”
I wanted my grandfather.
“Esther…I’m sorry,” Li-Mei said still knocking. I thought she meant sorry for my grandfather, what she meant was sorry for my door.
“Ah! What the bloody hell is this thing made of?” Someone who sounded like Rafi yelled as he kicked the door.
“Esther?! Esther, if you’re alright—”
Closing my eyes, I drowned them out. They all kept calling but I just laid on my grandfather’s bed, hoping, praying, and dreaming of anything but this.
MALACHI
My house was cold.
The simple reason for this was the fact that I’d left the door open and snow had gotten inside.
The more complex reason was internal: I was alone. I was unable to help her, unable to do the one thing Alfred had asked of me. And now both of them were gone. I saw her journal. It and the remote control whose batteries had popped out sat on the wooden floorboards behind the couch. Picking up the journal, I read her list. She’d only made it to thirteen. Thirteen happy memories before…before she was gone.
“A promise is a promise,” I whispered to myself as I tore out the page. I folded the note and stuck it into my back pocket. She was a Noëlle and if there was anyone in this world I was in debt to, it was the Noëlles.
One day.
I didn’t know how far that day was from now, but one day I’d grant her everything she’d asked for and more.
“If you’re listening.” I looked up to the ceiling. “Let me, at the very least, keep my promise in this life.”
ESTHER
A man I didn’t know, make that just another one of the many people I didn’t know, walked up to the podium which was covered in white and red tulips. Dressed in black like the rest of us, he cleared throat a few times before addressing the whole church, my grandfather’s church.
“Alfred Benjamin Noëlle,” the man spoke, “was the type of man who made you feel small. He didn’t mean to. I don’t even think he noticed he was doing it…but just by being authentically himself, in all his greatness, he made all those around him want to grow and keep striving. He showed us there was no limit to our…”
I didn’t want to hear him.
I didn’t want to hear any of the people who stood to talk.
“Esther, no…”
Ignoring Li-Mei, I discreetly reached up to my ear and put my earbuds in. I didn’t want to be here but there was no avoiding it. I looked up at his photo, my only contribution to this funeral. It was one of him laughing at me. One of three hundred or so people here knew that. It just looked like he was genuinely laughing at something.
I can’t.
Biting back the sob I put my head down and tucked my hands under my legs. I could feel a few hands on my back rubbing and patting me. But I didn’t want that…I wanted…I wanted them to move. To get out of my way so I could run.
I didn’t want to be here.
That casket was empty.
His body was there but he was gone so what was the point?
MALACHI
“Why?” I grumbled as I looked up at the wood paneling of my bedroom ceiling.
It had been two weeks. Two weeks since his...since he had passed and she’d left… yet…
“7:37 a.m.” I was awake at 7:37…now 7:38 a.m. according to the cellphone I no longer needed, since one of the two people in my contacts was no longer here to call me and the other had no reason to. Two weeks and yet I now woke up before 8 a.m. no matter how late I went to bed or how badly I wanted to sleep in.
“It’s all her fault…” I muttered putting my arm over my eyes. I tried not to think of her but what could I do when I awoke and knew the only reason I was up at such a godforsaken hour was because of her?
Not just her but Alfred…if he didn’t…if he hadn’t passed, none of this would have happened, so I was blaming him too.
Alfred.
Esther.
Myself.
I was blaming the world for anything and everything today.
“If I’m like this, she’s probably much worse.” I needed to get myself together. Rising from the bed I stretched out and walked into the closet to change.
However, how she was feeling wasn’t my business now.
ESTHER
“Please have a seat, Ms. Noëlle.”
“Thank you,” I whispered softly as I took a seat on the white chair that sat behind the glass conference table. Putting my bag on the ground beside my feet, I took a deep breath. “Let’s get this over with, Mr. Morell.”
I didn’t want to be in his office any longer than needed. I wasn’t a huge fan of lawyers—they were like grim reapers: they only came around when something was about to die, or dying, or already dead, whether it was you personally or your bank account.
“We’re still waiting for one more person,” he said as he looked through the glass doors and into the rest of the office. “Ah…here she comes.”
Part of me knew it was her. It could only be her.
I gritted my teeth together as she strode into the room and ignored the lawyer who held the door for her. She was dressed in white with her red coat hanging off her sounders. Her black hair was styled into a pixie cut, and the string of pearls around her neck were the same pearls I’d seen in old photographs of her and my grandmother. I couldn’t see her eyes because of the big bug-eyed sunglasses she wore, but as she walked towards us she moved as though she was striding down a runaway instead of coming to deal with the will of her own father…the same father whose funeral she didn’t even have the courtesy to attend. I tried not to glare at her as Mr. Morell stood to shake her hand, but she ignored him and set her purse on the chair before she sat down.
“You could at the very least—”
“I still have the apartment on West 18th and my usual allowance, correct?” she asked, cutting me off and looking only at him.
“West 18th?” I yelled. “You live less than ten minutes away from me?”
Again, she didn’t reply and continued to look at Mr. Morell. “Well?”
He sat down and took a deep breath as he consulted the stack of paper in his folder. “You will have the apartment for another six months and your allowance will be cut in half for the remainder of the year. After that you’ll need to provide for yourself.”
“You’re funny,” she cut him off as she took off her glasses. “But I’m not in the mood for jokes. My father and I had a deal—”
“Which expired the day he died,” Mr. Morell said as he handed her a piece of paper. “This is all you get and he said I should tell you to be grateful with even this.”
“GRATEFUL?!” She screamed and I flinched and looked away from her as she tore up the paper. “He’s worth billions and he wants me to be grateful for the remainder of the year? You’re lying. What did you do with all my father’s money huh? I know your vultures have probably been stealing—”
“Mr. Morell and Grandpa have been friends for almost four years. If you don’t want to respect me, fine. But you should at least respect him!” I hollered at her.
Her nose flared and her brown eyes finally shifted to me. Even though she was glaring, at least I wasn’t invisible now. “And why would you I respect a—”
“Mr. Morell, what else is in my grandfather’s will.” This time I cut her off, not wanting to hear whatever insult was going to come from her mouth. I didn’t have the strength…I didn’t think I ever would.
“It’s very straightforward. Anything he did not leave to his charities, foundations, and a Mr. Malachi Lord, is now entrusted to you, Ms. Noëlle.”
He tried to show me the documents but she snatched them from his hands and read through them. “You can’t be serious! She’s just a child! She knows nothing about how to handle all of this.”
“I know more than you. And what I don’t know I’m willing to learn,” I said to her as I reached down and picked up my bag. I rose from the chair and regarded her. “If you want your flat and your allowance back, mother, try acting like a decent human being first.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?!”
“Thank you, Mr. Morell. We’ll continue this later.” I shook his hand and walked to the door before she screeched at me.
“DON’T YOU DARE WALK OUT! NOT BEFORE YOU FIX THIS—!”
“GRANDPA DIED!” I yelled at her. “HE DIED! HE’S GONE! And you’re making a scene over his money? I didn’t want to believe that you could be so selfish but…whatever. You just keep being the miserable person you are; I’ll make sure you still have money. I’ll take you of you…but first, I need to take care of myself. The worse you make me feel the harder it will be for you to get anything for me.”
And because she couldn’t help herself. Because she was a truly miserable person, she had to get one last insult in.
“I am your mother. Watch how you speak to me. I could have dumped you in a ghetto park and you wouldn’t have been anyone with anything. You should be grateful to me. I could always sue you and get at least—”
And because I was, in fact, her daughter, I couldn’t stop myself either. “The day you tried to kill me was the day I no longer owed you anything. And please, go ahead and bring more lawyers into this, I know how to tell a story and crying is my specialty. Who do you think will win?”
I left without waiting for her reply.
Was this my life now?
If so, I’d give it all up… I can’t do that. It wasn’t mine to give up. It was my grandfather’s. Everything he’d devoted himself to. And now I’d devote myself to it as well.
What else could I do?