Calico

by Callie Hart

  Shane rolls his eyes. “I’m a married man now. Isn’t that punishment enough in my life?”

  I nod, laughing, as I slide my t-shirt back on. “Yeah, well I guess you’re gonna have to put up with the keg you’re carrying around, then, friend. Let me know if you wanna come for a run sometimes. I’ll go slow for you.”

  Shane growls at the back of his throat, shaking his head. “Whatever, man. How about this? I’ll come for a run with you when you figure out your shit with Coralie.” He winks at me, making a gun out of his hand and pointing it at my head. “I won’t rush out and buy myself some new sneakers, I guess, huh?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  CORALIE

  Red Tape

  NOW

  Ben’s left three messages on my cell phone since I arrived in Port Royal. I keep staring at the blinking icon in the top right hand corner of my phone’s screen, feeling sick with each passing second. For the past couple of years, Ben’s been there for me. Kind of. He’s encouraged me as best he can, but he’s a real guy’s guy. He doesn’t know how to talk about emotions or how he’s feeling. I met him just after I’d recovered from my eating disorder, and my therapist had said he needed to know how delicate I was. Ben hadn’t been all that great at listening when I’d stumbled over the words, trying to explain some of what had happened to me in my father’s house. I hadn’t told him everything, not even close, but I told him enough. He was awkward, angry and quiet, and then he was just…nothing. He pretended like I’d never really said anything about it at all. At the time, I was kind of glad. If Ben pretended like it never had happened, then I could pretend it had never happened, too.

  He didn’t even bring up how going back home was affecting my mental state, though, and that seems like a question a normal person would have asked. Ever since I drove through the town limits of Port Royal I haven’t been able to think about him without feeling like there’s a pressing weight sitting on my chest, though. I didn’t feel like this back in LA. I’ve been aware of that fact since the sensation arrived, this inability to breathe properly, and I’ve been wracking my brain ever since, trying to figure out what I was feeling. It took me a while to figure out that I wasn’t feeling anything at all, and that only made my chest tighter. So I haven’t listened to Ben’s messages.

  I’m sure he’s getting a little worried by now. I said I would speak to him when I arrived at my hotel, but instead I drank the mini bar dry and fell asleep in a bathtub full of cold water. I woke up shivering and almost blue at one in the morning, and then spent the next hour trying to get warm.

  I’m pretty fucked up. I’ve always known this, of course, but being fucked up never really seemed like an option when I was at home with Ben. It seemed incredibly antisocial to be drinking excessively, watching porn, and making myself throw up at random intervals during the week. I’ve been on my best behavior the past few years, and I didn’t even realize I was trying so hard.

  Now that I’m on my own, it doesn’t seem so unreasonable to be a complete mess. It seems like my natural state, and every part of me wants to revert to it.

  I sit up straighter, tugging on the hem of my tight pencil skirt, trying to yank it down my legs, make it longer somehow, as I wait for Ezra Mendel. If it had been up to me, I would have gone to see John Bickerdale first, the funeral director dealing with my father’s burial, but there wasn’t much point. Until I’ve spoken with my father’s lawyer, how am I supposed to know if he had a financial plan in place for when he died? Stupid for me to be forking out thousands of dollars for a coffin and for the funeral director’s fees if he had some sort of policy in place. So here I am. Sweating. Hung over. Feeling like the sun is about to come crashing down into the earth, and I have no means of escaping my fate.

  Ezra finally enters the cramped office I’ve been sitting in for the last fifteen minutes, paper coffee cup in one hand and a copy of the New York Times in the other. Occasionally Ezra would come to the house to see my father—I guess, if it’s at all possible for anyone to have been friends with my father, then that’s what Ezra was—and he would bring strange baked goods his wife had made. My father would toss them in the trash the second the man had left the building. He’s aged a lot since I saw him last, though he’s still wearing the same tiny spectacles with the wire frames, and he still has far too much wiry, wild hair, though most of it has turned white now instead of the steel gray I remember.

  “Coralie. So lovely to see you. Obviously, it would have been far nicer under less sorry circumstances, but…”

  I wave off his sentimentality. “It’s okay. We don’t need to do that.” He, along with everyone else in Port Royal, must know exactly what I thought of my father. That there was no love lost between us. He can’t possibly think for a second that I’m in mourning for the old man. Ezra gives me a perfunctory nod, pouting a little.

  “Of course. Well, be that as it may, it’s still a pleasure to lay eyes on you again. You’ve grown into a beautiful young woman.”

  I say nothing. It’s not a pleasure to see him. Back when my father would lay a belt buckle against my back, breaking the skin, back when I was covered in bruises and barely able to walk, Ezra would lay eyes on my injuries and he never said a word.

  “I can see you’ve developed your father’s stoicism, Coralie,” Ezra muses. “I don’t think I’ll ever meet another person capable of hiding their feelings so well. He was a bit of a closed book, your old man.”

  “He hated everybody,” I say evenly. “He just never wanted them to know. He was constantly trying to mask his disdain.”

  Ezra gives me that look. The one that means he’s trying to figure out if I’m being rude. If I mean that my father hated him. My father never said either way, but judging from his black mood whenever the man in front of me paid a visit, I’m willing to bet he did.

  Ezra blinks, and then looks away. “All right. Well, I’m sure you have a lot on your mind at the moment, Ms. Taylor. You must have an awful lot to organize in advance for your father’s memorial. How about we make this short and sweet?”

  “That would be perfect.”

  Opening the top drawer of his desk, Ezra draws out a small stack of papers, gathering them together before placing them down on the scuffed wood in front of him. Tapping the pad of his index finger against the top sheet of paper, he clears his throat, frowning at me. “The first thing you should know, Ms. Taylor, is that your father set aside a considerable amount of money for you in his will. Over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, in fact. Assuming you want to sell the house, which he also bequeathed to you, then you’re looking at somewhere in the vicinity of half a million dollars.”

  I think about crawling back into the bathtub at the hotel later, and how good it will feel to let the cold water numb me to my core. “I don’t care about any money. I don’t want it.”

  Ezra pauses, digesting this information. He scans through the black text printed on the paper in front of him, and by the looks of things, he’s searching for something. “Ah, yes. I knew I’d seen something to this effect. I just didn’t think it would be a problem, so I didn’t read properly. It states in your father’s will that in order to receive your late mother’s possessions, you must accept everything your father leaves you, money and property included.”

  “That makes absolutely no sense. He boxed up my mother’s things and left them to disintegrate in the attic. He wouldn’t have given a shit about me having them.” Even though I sound convinced of this fact as I speak, I know it’s not true. Dad knew Mom’s things would be the only things of interest to me once he was gone. He knew that this was one last way of trying to control me. “What happens if I refuse to accept it all? What happens to Mom’s things?”

  Ezra frowns at the paper again. “You father left very specific instructions that the contents of the attic space be burned.”

  Spiteful motherfucker. My blood feels like it’s surging around my body in an angry charge, making my hands and feet tingle. “Fine. So I take everything.
I get Mom’s stuff. The end?”

  “The end, yes. Your father also left behind a sum of ten thousand dollars for his burial service and funeral costs. He made requests that his service be held at St. Regis of Martyr’s Catholic Church on Glendale and Cranforth, and that a midnight mass be held.”

  “He can’t just do that. He can’t just demand that a midnight mass be held in his honor. Can he?”

  “The priest in situ at St. Regis signed off on it when your father created his will. You’ll need attend St. Regis and discuss the matter with him if you have any questions. I’m afraid I’m not particularly well versed in the cans and can’ts of the Catholic Church. In the Jewish faith, we sit Shiva for seven days for a loved one, so one midnight mass service doesn’t seem like too excessive, if you ask me.”

  “It was my mother who was catholic. My father never stepped foot inside a church when I was a kid. Not once. Mom used to take me and he would sit at home and drink himself blind.”

  It’s very obvious from the way Ezra’s shoulders inch up toward his ears that this topic—the topic of my father being a complete fucker—isn’t one he’s comfortable with. Fuck him, though. It’s not exactly comfortable for me, either. If I have to sit through this bullshit, pretending to care and to be in mourning, then Ezra has to deal with me being a little hostile along the way.

  “Your father actually became quite a prevalent member of the Catholic community here in Port Royal, Coralie. He’s been a regular churchgoer now for, what is it? Seven years? Whew. Amazing how quickly time passes you by when you’re not paying attention.”

  I find this shocking. Given that my father would always raise hell whenever Mom took me to church, I always figured he’d run in the opposite direction at a grand ol’ clip. Turns out he was a regular attendee? Perplexing. “Is there anything stopping me from simply cremating him and not holding any sort of ceremony?” I ask. I’d much rather have the old man’s body burned and stuck in a cheap plastic container, so I can then take him home and pour what remains of him down the toilet, but Ezra is already shaking his head. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Your father was pretty particular in the way he worded his will, in every respect. He donated a large amount of money to St. Regis as well, and so the administration there are well aware of his wishes. There would be some sort of legal ramifications for you if, as legal executor of his will, you did not adhere to his wishes.”

  Basically what he’s telling me is that, if I want Mom’s things back, I need to tow the line and play nice. Attend a service for Malcolm at the church, give him a proper burial, and I have to accept his money. Thinking about having to do any of those things makes the bile swell up the back of my throat, but I’ve gone so long without any connection to my mom. I’d probably do anything to get her things.

  “Okay, all right. So what happens now? Do I have to sign something, or go and register anything? I just want to get on with this thing. Wrap everything up, so to speak.”

  “Yes, yes. You must want to get back to your life, I’m sure. In answer to your question, no, you need do nothing further. Aside from arranging the service and accepting ownership of your father’s accounts, everything else will be handled by myself and by the appropriate authorities. In the interim, if you need access to the money your father left you quickly, then there are—”

  “I don’t. Thank you, Ezra. I’ll let you know about the service.” I get up, tug my pencil skirt down, and I shake Ezra’s hand, which is what’s expected of me.

  “I know your father was hard on you when you were a child,” he says softly. “But I so wish you’d come back to visit him at least once after you left, Coralie. Something happened to him. He softened, for want of a better word, as he grew older. A single father, trying to raise a young girl into a young woman? That’s no easy task. I’m sure if you’d spent some time with him as an adult—”

  “Good bye, Ezra. Thank you for your time.” I’m sure if I’d spent any time with my father as an adult, I would have murdered him myself. I collect up my purse and papers Ezra offers to me, and then I hurry out of his office as fast as possible in a tight skirt. I’m not used to wearing heels. Being a painter is hardly customer facing. I stand behind a canvas all day in my gallery and I barely speak to another soul. I wear jeans and a torn shirt at best. Often I remain in my pajamas, so this dressing up, this pretending, is almost as abhorrent to me as my close proximity to the house where I grew up.

  Outside, the midday sun is high overhead, beating down on Port Royal with a furious sense of purpose. Everything smells like ozone and burning rubber. The sidewalk feels gluey underfoot, the points of my heels biting into the softened blacktop. As soon as I’m sitting in the rental, I yank the stupid shoes from my feet and throw them over my shoulder onto the backseat, but that isn’t enough to stem my frustration. I buck up my hips and reach around, unzipping my skirt and dragging it down my legs, tearing it wildly from my body. The skirt goes onto the backseat in a wadded up ball, and I sit in the driver’s seat, panting and angry in my panties and the loose blouse I wore to see Ezra, fighting the urge to hurt someone or something.

  Ezra comes out of his office ten minutes after me; he ducks his head down, eyes to the ground, pretending not to have seen me, but I know that he has.

  Just like when I was a kid.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CORALIE

  Suicide

  NOW

  I’m much more comfortable in the loose summer dress I throw on back at the hotel. It’s sorely tempting to just climb back into the bed and put the infomercial channel on, but I can’t get out of here until all of these bullshit rules my father set into place have been adhered to. If I just power through today, feasibly the cogs that need to be set into motion could be grinding away by nightfall, and I could be out of here in a couple of days.

  Eight missed calls from Ben now. I leave my cellphone on the nightstand by the bed, hoping the battery dies soon.

  The elderly woman with the blue rinsed hair who checked me into my room yesterday waves at me as I hurry through the lobby. “Ms. Taylor? Oh, Ms. Taylor? We have a wonderful cocktail hour at sunset this evening. It would be our pleasure if you could join us.”

  I smile, shaking my head. I slow my gait, but I don’t stop walking. “That does sound wonderful, but I’m afraid I’m already promised elsewhere. Thank you for the invitation, though.”

  The woman—Ellen May, according to her name badge—gives me another toothy smile, but I can see the look in her eyes. She probably wants to ask me why I soaked all of my towels through and left them on my bed. She probably wants to know why I ordered a huge breakfast this morning, with a double serving of bacon, and then touched none of it. Not even the coffee.

  I wave cheerfully at her as I dash out of the revolving doors of the hotel. It’s nearly three now. I grew up running the maze of narrow side streets in Port Royal—spent my youth before Mom died wading through marshes and punting through reeds, dragging sticks along endless stretches of white picket fence and rolling marbles down the length of the boardwalk, watching the little spheres of colored glass tumble over the edge and into the murky water below. I know this town. I know the sight, sound, smell, feel of it, and I still know every single building that stands here.

  St. Regis of Martyr’s Catholic Church is perhaps the most well known local landmark. Its slate-clad spire isn’t the tallest or grandest of church spires by any means, but it’s the highest point on the Port Royal skyline, and its bells still ring out at midday every Saturday and Sunday. When Mom was alive, she used to drive me down here at the weekends so we could watch the young couples fleeing the high, arched wooden doors, dressed in suits and overflowing wedding dresses, dodging a gambit of rice and handfuls of colorful tissue paper horse shoes and love hearts. They would always beeline for their decked out cars, ‘just-married’ spray painted in silly string on the back windows, laughing all the way, and I remember thinking how happiness like that made people appear, at least on the outside, to
have lost all common sense and intelligence.

  I drive over to St. Regis, grinding my teeth. I don’t remember there being a parking lot around the side of the old stone building, but when I pull into the place, there it is, and it’s clear it’s been here forever. Three other cars are parked at random intervals, at least four or five spaces separating them, and I feel compelled to maintain this spacing. I park at the very far end, as far away from everyone else as I possibly can. This strikes me as odd—for some reason, I would have thought people parking in a church lot would have all gathered together in a show of solidarity or something. Some kind of god-loving high five for vehicle owners. Turns out Catholics don’t like the idea of their paintwork getting scratched as much as the next person, though.

  I find the priest in the rectory doing push ups. He’s sweat right through his gray t-shirt, and his feet are bare, though a pair of running sneakers sit by the entrance to the rectory, and a pair of socks have been stuffed into the foot holes.

  He’s young, maybe only thirty-five, and his hands are well callused when he shakes mine.

  “Good to finally meet you, Ms. Taylor. Sorry, normally there’s a lull in my duties around this time in the afternoon. It’s the only time I get to work out.”

  “Right. Priests have to keep in shape, too.” This seems like a hilarious comment to make, since the vast majority of priests I’ve met have always been overweight and probably hadn’t bent down to collect their own newspapers in years.

  “I’m Sam. I knew your father well. I’m sorry for your loss,” he says.

  “Thank you. That’s very kind.” Being a bitch to Sam the priest isn’t high on my agenda. He smiles with his eyes, and he seems genuinely hurt on my behalf. To go full on glacial would be like kicking a puppy. “I assume you’re here to arrange your father’s memorial service. Malcolm actually outlined the passages of scripture he’d like me to read. The music he liked has already been drafted as well.”