by Devon Ashley
I sucked on my lower lip, debating. Finally, my hand reached out to push against the door, letting it swing open slowly. It was too dark to see anything, but I was immediately soothed by the sweet scent of cinnamon, and it made my smile stretch. Flicking on the light, the memories began flooding back.
Joyce.
Her potpourri bowl was still going strong, which didn’t surprise me knowing how much oil she used to dump on it – she said it kept her sinuses clear. Everything was neat and tidy, just as I had left it. Well, just as Joyce had left it. Truth was, once she passed away, I couldn’t find it in myself to come in here. Except to find a nice dress to bury her in. But even then, I was so upset I didn’t allow my eyes to wander.
I sat on the side of the bed and closed my eyes, taking in deep breaths of cinnamon, letting it sting the inside of my nose, clearing my senses. It felt like it was just yesterday, the two of us sitting at the kitchen table, sipping on coffee, watching Jake skip about the room, his language so garbled with incoherent phrases that it just made us laugh. She loved Jake, and he loved her.
“Hope you don’t mind,” Shane said, interrupting my trip down memory lane, “but I opened it up when I was cleaning earlier.”
“It’s okay.” I slowly lifted my eyelids. He was still in the doorway, leaning against the frame, arms crossed loosely in front of him. He gave me a weak smile, probably because he could tell by the thick layer of dust that I never came in here. Like ever. “I don’t think I was intentionally avoiding this room. It’s just…when she died, I was really busy, and I couldn’t bring myself to go through her things yet. As the year passed, coming in here to do it just wasn’t something I wanted to spend my free time doing, you know?”
“If you don’t mind my asking, how did she end up here with you anyway?”
I half laughed, half smiled. “Right? Who knew?” I let out a long sigh, trying to calm myself on the inside. Tears kept threatening to surface every time I focused in on something of hers. The cozy she crocheted that looked more grey than light blue from the all the dust atop it, a framed cross stitch pattern that hung on the wall and read I Used To Have A Handle On Life, But It Broke, and that fuzzy rug in shades of white, grey and pink beneath my feet that she preferred to the flat, tan carpet below it. It was amazing how many images these tiny objects could activate.
To my right was a stuffed pig Jake gave her for Christmas…just a few days before she passed away. I tossed my towel away and reached for it, the soft fur smooth against my fingertips, and held it in my lap. “I hardly knew Joyce when I dated Brad. You know as well as I do that they didn’t get along too well. It hurt her, you know? Losing her son long before his time. And Brad looked so much like him.” My eyes drifted to the dresser, to the many pictures of her family before it all fell apart.
“Anyway, she heard about my parents passing away, and when she saw me at the grocery store one day, she stopped me to share her condolences. We started talking, talking led to dinner plans, and dinner unearthed both our secrets. She admitted she had cancer, I admitted I was pregnant. From there we started talking on a regular basis, checking in to see how the other was doing. She was so disappointed in the way Brad walked out on us, shirking his responsibilities, she said. She came with me to all my appointments and I went to all of hers.
“I don’t know. I guess we were two people alone in the world, just looking for someone to care.” I sniffled and swept the tears off my face. That first half of my pregnancy was the loneliest time of my life, and it was something I never wanted to experience again. “I had no family left. All Joyce had was Brad.” I actually said his name with disgust. “Karen remained my friend through it all but the rest scattered across the continent and moved on. It was just a really lonely time, and I was scared out of my mind how I was going to get through it.”
Damn tears. I couldn’t stop them anymore. The dam had flooded over. Shane grabbed the box of tissues on the bedside table and handed them to me. I thanked him as he sat beside me, already stroking my back. I discarded the top tissue, an excessive amount of dust ripping through the air, and grabbed the next. Once I blew my nose – loudly, which I was sure Shane found super sexy by the way – I couldn’t help but laugh. Even the tissues were heavily infused with cinnamon from long term exposure.
“What” he asked good-heartedly.
“Nothing.” I dabbed at my skin, absorbing the fleeting tears.
“Anyways, after my parents died, I got the house and a little money, but I couldn’t stay there any longer. The memories were killing me. So I sold it and bought this one a few months before Jake was born. Joyce sold everything to help cover all her medical costs, chemotherapy and whatever. She didn’t have anywhere to stay and couldn’t afford a decent senior care facility, so I let her move in here. She helped as much as she could with her social security checks, but once Jake came along, I couldn’t be there to care for either one of them. I found Amy, who could take on both of them here at the house, but I had to get a second job just to pay her.”
“Can I ask you something?” Shane asked. I nodded tiredly and waited for his question. “Why did Joyce ask you to give Jake her last name?”
“Because she believed me when I said it was Brad’s, and that was enough for her. She said it would mean a lot to her, and since you’re allowed to name your child whatever you want, I did it for her. I know she wasn’t there for Brad the way she should’ve been, but she was better with Jake. She loved and played with him until her dying breath.”
I sighed, the waterworks ready to flow once more. Shane remained still at my side, just letting me blabber on as he tried to soothe me with his gentle rubs.
“The reason she left her life insurance policy to Jake,” I said, pausing to wipe my nose with a fresh tissue, “was to thank us for being there for her, and she wanted to be sure that Jake got the surgery he needed.” He turned to me silently, but curiously. “You see, when he was two, Amy spotted a bump on his back. I mean, seriously, it was like one day his back was smooth, then all of a sudden there was a pretty significant bump when he bent over. I totally freaked, sure it was a tumor and I was going to lose my baby. But when they did the MRI, they discovered he was born with half of one of his vertebras missing. It made his spine curve off to one side, which was why we were seeing a bump.”
“I saw the brace.”
“Huh?” I said, my brows furrowing with confusion before I had a chance to think it out.
“That brace in the closet. It’s blue with rescue vehicles all over it.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s his,” I replied with a nod. “He wore that to support his back until he was older, when there was more bone for them to work with for surgery.”
“That’s where the money went,” he declared. “Why you don’t have it anymore.”
I nodded, admitting, “There’s a little left, but I put it in a savings account I opened in Jake’s name.”
It was a bad joke, but I asked, “Still want to take me to court so Brad can have it?”
He let loose an exasperated sigh. “Fuck Brad. No way he deserves that money. Joyce knew what she was doing; I see that now. I’m sorry I was such an ass to you when I found out. I get why you didn’t want to unload this bombshell before.”
“You probably would’ve called me a liar.”
“It’s entirely possible. Brad had me convinced of so many things.” His fingers stroked his eyebrows a few times, then combed roughly through his hair. There was that disheveled hair I loved so much. Turning to me, he didn’t question why I was smiling. He just said, “I’m sorry I took his word without hearing yours. I should’ve been here for you.”
“You had no reason to doubt him. Up until then he was a pretty trustworthy person. Trust me. His packing up and disappearing off the face of the earth completely blindsided me. I knew the alcohol was making him more upset than he actually was, but I never thought he’d stoop that low.”
“Forget him.” He practically rolled his eyes at his own statement
, realizing how ludicrous it sounded. “At least try to forget him. We’ll both try.” His lips lightly graced mine, slowly taking them for a dance. After a few seconds, he connected our foreheads and whispered, “I’m very proud of you. You were just a kid yourself and you made it your business to help someone who wasn’t even a blood relation. And that kid of yours is pretty awesome too.”
I sniffled again. No way my face wasn’t all red and puffy at this point. “Like I had anything to do with it.” I sighed and pulled back, my head dropping so my cowardly eyes could fixate on the fluffy pink pig on my lap instead of him. “I’ve hardly been around for him. He spends more time with his babysitters than he does with me.”
His hand went back to massaging me, this time at the base of my neck. “That happens sometimes. Doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. He won’t remember that anyways.”
Shane sat in silence with me for a few minutes. Truthfully, I wasn’t even thinking about anything, just enjoying the mindless daze as his hypnotic moves against my skin soothed me inside and out.
“I really do need to pack away this room already,” I blurted out of nowhere.
“I could do it for you tomorrow, so you don’t have to,” he offered.
“Yeah?”
He kissed me on my temple. “I think you’ve cried enough about this right now. I’ll go through it.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly, surprised that I actually felt relieved that he was taking it on instead of me. “Just keep it all, okay? There’s plenty of room in the garage to store it for now.”
“Come on,” he said gently, pulling me to my feet. I left the pig and damp towel on the bed and followed him to my room, where he held me until I finally drifted off to sleep.
Shaking my head, I seriously questioned the hold Mel had on me. What in the hell made me offer to pack up the room of a woman I hardly even cared for? Forget the fact that she wasn’t there for her grandson, who was clearly hurting in ways that couldn’t even be calculated, but after being closed up for a year, all of her belongings either reeked of cinnamon or smelled like old lady. I was already gagging, sick to my stomach, and I just began ten minutes ago.
I opened the window, which I had to really jerk to loosen the seal that had formed through time. I even went so far as to pop the screen and poke my head out to cough it out, cleansing my lungs of the noxious air.
I had set up a play date for Jake at his friend Chris’ house. I didn’t really want him out of my sight, but I didn’t want to subject him to watching me clear out his Nana’s things either. Especially since I didn’t exactly pack her things with kindness. I made sure everything breakable was wrapped, but the rest of it just got tossed into the box. I may have even wadded up some of her clothing and worked on my free-throws for a bit.
But then I felt bad, because I knew one day Mel would open these boxes and go through them, and I couldn’t let her think I packed them so carelessly. So I unpacked everything and did it right.
In less than two hours I had everything packed and stored in the garage.
Where I found my next project.
By the looks of the lawn equipment (and the lawn), either Mel gave up using them or they came with the house and she never bothered to try them. It took another two hours to work on and clean them up, fill them with fresh gas and get them running again. I was still mowing the front yard when Chris’ mom dropped Jake back off. His curiosity just made me laugh. He seriously looked like he’d never seen this used on his lawn before. To be honest, I was amazed she’d kept up with the flower beds but not the lawn.
Jake skipped along behind me while I finished, then followed me in to make some dinner. Watching him slowly pick at his food, I asked him, “So what have you been told about strangers?”
“Not to talk to them.”
“That’s right. Not a single one.”
“What about a police officer?”
I grimaced. It was quite the Catch-22. Criminals had learned to dress up as the good guys because it earned them automatic trust from some people, especially naïve, little ones. Those victims never suspected the cop would do them harm until it was too late. “Unless you’re lost or in trouble, I don’t think you need to talk to someone in uniform either. You just tell him you’re not allowed to talk to him and come find someone you do know.”
“What about a superhero?” he asked excitedly, biting down on one of his carrots.
I chuckled. Him and his superheroes. Guess I knew what to get him for his belated birthday present. “I know you get excited around superheroes, but they only really come out when someone’s in real trouble, right? So I doubt you’ll ever meet one.”
“But I met you,” he countered.
“You did. Because I love your mom. And I’ll already be here to protect you, so it’s doubtful another superhero will ever come to help.” He whined at that, and I pushed him back on point. “What else do you know about strangers?” At first he was confused, then he thought it out, then he looked confused again. His expression declared defeat. “You don’t go anywhere with them either,” I said.
He nodded dramatically in an oh, yeah fashion.
“Again, if anyone tries to talk to you or wants you to go with them, you just run away. If you can’t find me or your mom, just find anyone you’re comfortable with, like Susie.”
He continued nodding. Putting his fork down, he asked, “Can I have my cookie now?”
I shook my head, but my mouth said, “Yeah,” and made my way over to the pantry to get one. Jake snatched it and hid himself away under the tent. Five seconds later the flashlight was shining through the top, wiggling all around. After cleaning up the kitchen and getting him ready for bed, we crashed on the sofa together, watching some animated movie he chose.
Next thing I knew, the garage door was squeaking and my body shot forward. The TV was frozen on the main menu page for the movie and Jake was passed out beside me. Checking my phone, I muttered, “Shit,” when I realized it was after ten. Panicking for some reason, I nudged him awake. He groaned and shoved me away, but once I said, “Psst! Hey! Your mom’s home. You better get into bed fast.”
His little blue eyes went from sleepy-hazy to wide awake. Seriously, I didn’t think the kid could move that fast. But he was also in socks so he couldn’t slow down, and I cracked up laughing as he slammed into the wall. He bounced off harmlessly, but his feet kept slipping until he crossed the hall’s threshold, where the tile ended and the carpet began, and hurried out of sight. I turned off the TV and met Mel in the garage. She was making her way around the car, but she looked curiously around the garage, like she knew something was out of place. It certainly wasn’t her old, deflated inner tube that she had hung on the wall, which made me smile every time I saw it today. Homing in on the mower and edger, she asked, “Did you fix those?”
“Surprisingly, yes. You haven’t been very kind to them,” I teased, kissing her forehead, my hand slinking across her shoulders to bring her against me.
“I haven’t been anything to those.” A little sadly, she added, “They were my dad’s.”
“Oh,” I said softly, suddenly feeling like a shit.
“I normally use a service, I just haven’t called to start them back up yet.”
“Well, no need. I already took care of it, so don’t worry about it.”
“Really?” she asked, looking to me gratefully. “Wow. Thank you.”
“God, you make it sound like I just remodeled your bathroom or something.”
With a twisted smile, she slowly asked, “Can you do that too?”
“Shit.” I pushed her toward the door and through the laundry room. “You need distracting before I get conned into doing something I really don’t want to do.”
She laughed at me, stating, “I’m not used to having a guy around the house. I think I’m going to have to come up with a honey-do list or something.”
I playfully shoved her harder. “So long as bedroom exercise tops the list.”
�
�Oh, that’ll definitely be on there.”
Closing the door behind us, I followed her through the house. “What are you doing home so early anyway? Weren’t you supposed to work until midnight?”
“Yeah, but Tracey asked if she could earn a few extra hours. And since she works the bar too, I saw no reason for me to stay. My arm was starting to ache from all the lifting and moving anyways.” Mel had been wearing long sleeves these past few days to hide her bandages from the bar clientele. Sully was trying to keep the robbery under wraps as much as possible and Mel didn’t want to lie to people about what happened to her forearm.
Softly, I whispered beside her ear, “Bet’cha I can distract you from that for a while.”
She good-humoredly shook her head, moving forward down the hall. “Always so giving,” she teased. She peeked into Jake’s room, who fidgeted the moment she did. “Why are you still awake, huh?”
He looked to me for a second, then shrugged his shoulders. Such a dead giveaway, and of course, Mel turned to me with a knowing look. “You totally kept him up late, didn’t you?”
“In my defense, he’s been asleep. Just on the sofa.”
Again with the shaking head. She stepped inside and kissed him on the forehead. “Night, baby. Try to fall asleep.”
“Night, Mommy,” he quietly replied as she flicked the switch to activate his Iron Man night light. “Night, Shane.”
I saluted him, but once Mel passed by, I pointed my finger at him with playful warning. We were really going to have to work on his tell. He just ratted me out without even trying. He was still giggling as I shut the door behind me. Mel had already made it down the hall, stopping dead in her tracks with her jaw dropped wide open with shock.
“Wow,” I muttered. The room had been completely stripped down. Even the bedding was gone. All that remained were a few picture frames on the dresser – combinations of me, Joyce and Jake. I had completely forgotten about them, tucked and buried inside her top dresser drawer. I grabbed the one with her and Jake cheek to cheek, smiling brightly, and traced my thumbs along its sides.