Lost for Words

by Andrea Bramhall

  Sasha took the box from her when she finished securing the bottom so it wouldn’t fall through. She jumped when a hand pinched her bottom. She turned her head with a grin and was met by Jac’s lips. “About time you got here.”

  “Be nice.” Jac held up a couple of large paper bags and jiggled them. “Or you won’t get the breakfast I so lovingly made for you. Hey, Bobbi.”

  “Hiya, Jac.” Bobbi barely looked up from her task

  “You do do a fantastic drive-thru run, baby.” She kissed her again and put the box down by her mum’s old Welsh dresser. It was full of ornaments and knick-knacks that needed to be sorted and packed away. This had been a task Sasha had managed to avoid for the past month. Staying with Jac, bringing over Nip, her clothes, and her personal belongings a bit at a time had been easy. Coming back to her house whenever she needed something had been the hard part.

  Over time, she had got used to walking through the door in which she still expected to see her mum lounging on the sofa, smoking a joint, or eating one of her brownies, stroking Nip like she was some kind of Bond villain with her minion of darkness on her lap. But the moment was here. Not time to let go. As she’d told Bobbi, she wasn’t ready for that. But it was time for her to take the next step and fully move in with Jac.

  Renting out the house had been Jac’s suggestion if she didn’t want to sell it. And the off-the-cuff remark had sparked the idea of Bobbi taking the place on. No-brainer, really. It also meant she didn’t have to figure out what to do with most of the furniture, as Bobbi only had enough to fill her small room. She was more than grateful to have Sasha leave the dining table, chairs, sofa, and everything else. They could sort out the details in time, when Bobbi was ready to invest in her own furniture.

  Removal men were coming tomorrow morning to pick up the boxes they were packing up, boxes that would be filled with books, pictures, clothes, ornaments, and knick-knacks, boxes that would be filled with a life lived and lost.

  The front door swung open, and Mags and Sophie wandered in, Mags carting some more collapsed boxes, and Sophie waving a tape dispenser around like a gun. As she stepped into the kitchen, she struck a pose.

  “I’m totally feeling all Farrah Fawcett today.” She primped her hair, still holding the dispenser like a gun, then pointed to her feet. “I used to have such awesome bell bottoms and platform boots. Good times.” She sighed and reached for the breakfast sandwich Jac held out to her. “Thanks, Pan-pan.”

  They all ate quickly, eager to get on with the task at hand—or rather eager to be done with the task in hand.

  “Where do you want to start?” Mags asked when they’d all balled up their greaseproof paper and stuffed them back into the bag.

  “Good question.” Sasha had been trying to decide what would be the best way to set about the task since they’d committed to doing it. There were so many aspects of it all that were so personal; she wanted to be a part of it, to know what parts of her mother were being boxed up and packed to move or packed to go to the charity shop. “I’ve already taken most of my personal stuff, so my room won’t take me long to sort. The bathroom just needs boxing up for rubbish. I don’t really think half a bottle of mum’s shampoo or her old mascara is going to be much use to anyone.” She didn’t mention she’d already packed a half-used bottle of Fleur’s perfume and her old hairbrush and taken them to Jac’s a couple of weeks ago.

  “I’ll do that,” Mags said. “Do you want me to give it a scrub while I’m there?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind,” Sasha said.

  “No!” Bobbi said at the same time. “No. You don’t need to clean. I’m more than capable of doing that once everything’s packed up.”

  “I don’t mind. Really,” Mags told her.

  Bobbi sighed. “Thank you, but I’d only go and do it again. I’m the same whenever I move in somewhere new. I have to clean it from top to bottom. Even if it was sparkling when I got there. Peace-of-mind thing. OCD thing.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. But I do, so you might as well leave it for me to do tomorrow afternoon.”

  Mags clapped her on the shoulder. “Well, it’s gonna be your place, so I guess we’ll go with that then, my friend.” She grabbed a black bin liner and headed up the stairs.

  “Want me to start on the books?” Sophie suggested. “I’ll go through the house and box up any I find. Then you can decide what to do with them later.”

  “That would be great. I’ll want to keep some, but others I was going to donate to the library.”

  “I know you’re leaving the crockery and stuff, but do you want me to start on your mum’s china?” Bobbi pointed to the glass display case they could just see through the open door in the living room. It was stuffed full of crystal glasses, the fine bone-china crockery Fleur and Bert had received as a wedding gift. Sasha could only remember it being used at Christmas or special occasions, like…well, she couldn’t remember it being used except at Christmas.

  “Please.” She looked at the ceiling. “I guess I’ll start in her bedroom.” She grabbed a box and started for the stairs.

  Jac picked up a roll of tape and a handful of collapsed boxes. “I’ll come with you.”

  A wave of relief swept through Sasha. She hadn’t been relishing any of the tasks, but the idea of deciding which of her mum’s clothes she wanted to keep and which she was donating was…well, daunting didn’t even start to describe how she felt about it. Overwhelmed? Maybe. She was a writer. Words were her thing. They gave her comfort at times when she needed it. Not being able to find the ones she needed sucked. But, quite frankly, the whole experience had her lost for words. And she hated it.

  She kept one box aside for things she wanted to keep and shook open a heavy-duty black bag for items she would donate. She pulled open the wardrobe door and pointed to the hangers on the rail. “Okay, anything in tie-dye can go to charity.”

  “Surely not.” Sarcasm dripped from each word as Jac picked up the first item, a long skirt of many, many layers, and held it up for inspection.

  “I’m sorry, babe, but it’s just not your colour.”

  “Nope, it’s every colour.” Into the bag it went, as did all the others. Sasha set to work on the drawers. There were a few things she wanted. An old cardigan that had been so comfy just to lounge around in. Sasha held it to her nose and sniffed, tears coming to her eyes. It still smelled like her. That hideous eau de toilet she insisted on wearing, the slightly stale odour of old weed smoke, and the scent underneath it all that was just Mum. She folded it and put it in the box labelled keep.

  On top of the dresser was an old jar she didn’t remember noticing there, but she remembered it, nonetheless. It was an old jam jar filled with seashells. There was scrap of paper taped across the front of it. Both were yellowed with age, the writing long since faded, but it had read, Happy Mother’s Day, to the best mum in the whole wide world. The apostrophe had been the wrong way round and the comma had looked more like a full stop, but she’d written it in her best five-year-old handwriting. It was the year they’d been on holiday over Mother’s Day. She’d spent all day scouring Morecambe Beach for the prettiest shells she could find. As she turned the jar, she could see some of the shells were chipped, others still perfectly intact. Fleur had gushed over the simple gift when she’d given it to her. Alongside the obligatory burnt piece of toast, half a spilt glass of orange juice, and the cup of tea Dad had carried up to save Sasha from scalding herself. Forty years. Her mother had kept it for forty years.

  Sasha wiped her eyes and wrapped the jar in the cardigan that was already in her keep box.

  “Sasha?” Jac turned to her, staring at something in her hand.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why does your mum have a calendar of Spam in her wardrobe?” Jac frowned, then turned the wire-bound pages to show her.

  Sasha grinned, then held her hand over her mouth as she started laughing. “I can’t
believe she still has that.” She crossed the room and took it from her before sitting on the bed.

  “What is it?”

  “A calendar. From about ten years ago now.”

  “I gathered that with all those little dates on it. But why does she still have it?”

  “It was a gag Christmas gift.” She pointed to the picture of a tin of Spam on a makeshift raft—a piece of driftwood—sitting in a puddle beside a road. The caption underneath read, The Adventures of the Travelling Spam. Sasha giggled. “When I was little, Mum and Dad took me on holiday with them. Abroad, no less.”

  “Ooo. Fancy.”

  “I know.”

  “Where did you all go?”

  “Benidorm.”

  “And what does Spam have to do with that?”

  “Mum wasn’t convinced we’d be able to eat the foreign food, so she insisted on packing some staples, just in case.” She tapped the picture. “A tin of that gelatinous chunk of stuff was her idea of a saviour, if the worst came to the worst.”

  “Did you all eat it?”

  “God no, the food was lovely. But it became a bit of a family joke. And wherever we went on holiday after that, Mum or Dad would hide a tin in the other’s suitcase. For years they carried on doing that. When I got a bit older, I joined in the fun and started trying to get them to have their picture taken with it. Like it was a member of the family, enjoying the holiday with us. I’m almost convinced it was the same tin of Spam every year as well.” She flicked through the pages. Spam at Blackpool Tower. Spam outside Buckingham Palace. Spam on a train. Spam on a deck chair on a beach next to her dad, fast asleep. Her dad that was, not the Spam. Spam on a lilo with her mum. Every picture brought back a memory that she shared with Jac until they were crying with laughter.

  “So you made this up for her?”

  “Yeah. I guess you had to be there, but when you know the memories each one is a part of, it, well, it made it special. You know?”

  “Clearly she loved and treasured it.”

  Sasha closed it up and slid it into the keeps box.

  “And clearly you’re just as crazy as your mother was.”

  “Yeah,” she conceded, “probably.”

  They finished emptying out the clothes, laughing as often as they cried at some of the things Fleur had stuffed in her wardrobe. A few more things found their way into the keeps box. Fleur’s jewellery box—including the wedding ring Bert had given her almost fifty years ago. Sasha couldn’t remember her mum taking it off, but she hadn’t been wearing it in the hospice. When she’d asked about it, Fleur had simply told her it was too precious to risk it getting misplaced in a place like this. That it was safe at home.

  On the bedside table a reflection caught her eye. Fleur’s crystal. The one that had “chosen” which scone would taste the best, “chosen” to send Sasha down the “right path”, and given Fleur a focus and comfort in the final months of her life. As much as Sasha had been annoyed by the way her mother had waved the thing around, crying its power to anyone who would listen to her, Sasha couldn’t bear the thought of getting rid of it now. She picked it up and slipped it over her head.

  “Oh no, don’t tell me you’re going to start asking your ‘higher self’ what you should eat for tea, are you?” Jac asked, wrapping her arms around Sasha’s waist from behind.

  “God, no.” Sasha chuckled. “I just…it just feels like it was a part of her for a long time, and I can’t—”

  Jac kissed her cheek. “I get it. I told you before, we’ve got plenty of space in the apartment, and if there is too much, we’ll get a storage facility. Honestly, it’s no problem.”

  “No, I don’t want to keep everything. Then it would all just blend into the background.” She tapped the box. “We’ve only done one room so far. There’ll be loads more stuff to clutter up our house before I’m done.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.” Jac grinned and tipped her head towards the wardrobe. “I, erm, found something else in there.” Jac handed her an old shoe box, the lid covered in her mother’s handwriting that read, Only open this if I’m actually dead.

  “What is it?”

  “Open it,” Jac said, her voice cracking with barely supressed laughter. Sasha stared at her questioningly, but Jac held up her hands in surrender. “Oh no, I’m not making the shout on this one.” She pointed. “Open it.”

  Sasha lifted the lid. There were half a dozen VHS cassettes inside. Each one bearing a sticky label with Fleur’s distinctive cursive. She picked one out and squinted a little through tired eyes to read it, then screamed as she threw it and the box on the floor.

  Jac laughed and bent to scoop up the box and the items.

  “Burn them!” Sasha shouted as she heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

  “We heard screaming,” Mags said from the doorway.

  “What’s up?” Sophie barged past Mags and into the room.

  “It’s nothing. Just a bit of a fright,” Sasha said, trying to get the tapes back in the box and covered with the lid. “You, stop laughing,” Sasha hissed at Jac. “It’s not funny.”

  Sophie and Bobbi managed to snag escaped tapes before Sasha could get a hold on them. Sophie started laughing too. “Your mother was fucking priceless.”

  Bobbi held her stomach and dropped heavily onto the bed. “Wonder who filmed them?”

  “Wonder who the co-star is?” Sophie bantered back.

  Sasha held out the box, not wanting to touch the actual tapes if she didn’t have to. “Put the contraband back in the box for destruction.”

  “That’s not contraband, Sash. Your mother said it was on her bucket list.” Sophie sniggered but tossed the tape into the box.

  “This is so not funny.”

  “Sasha, other than, like D- to Z-list celebs, how many other people can say their mother made sex tapes?” Sophie shook her head. “At our age, I mean.”

  “There’s a reason for that, Sophie. A very good, very big reason.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I can’t think of it right now, but there is, I’m sure of it.”

  Sophie laughed louder. “That woman was fucking awesome.”

  “How would you feel if it were your mother making sex tapes?”

  “I doubt my mother ever had sex.”

  They all laughed harder. “Hate to break it to you, love, but how do you think you and your five siblings got here?” Mags asked her.

  Sophie waved her hand back and forth, then said, “Okay, she had sex a maximum of six times, all of which I blame on my father. But I’m certain she never had an orgasm. So there is no way on God’s green earth she would even know what a sex tape was, never mind make one.”

  “Exactly. No one wants to know about their parents and this stuff. It’s just…” Sasha shuddered and waved the box at Bobbi, still holding on to the tape she’d picked up.

  Bobbi dropped it in. Jac had slid off the bed, she was laughing so hard, but she managed to angle the lid so they could all read it. Gotcha was printed in huge black letters across the inside.

  Sasha closed her eyes and put a hand over her chest.

  “They’re fake?” Bobbi asked.

  “Evil.” Sophie chortled and dropped down on the bed. “That woman was so evil. I wanna be Fleur when I grow up.”

  “You’re well on your way,” Sasha quipped and stared at the box again.

  “Is this what she meant when she said she’d haunt us all?” Bobbi asked.

  “Probably,” Sophie said. “Who knows what else she planned for us?”

  “Wonder what really is on there?” Mags asked.

  Sasha shrugged. “I’ve no idea. We don’t even have a VHS player anymore.”

  “We have equipment back at the office we can use. Put it on a disc if you want? I can check if it’s nothing first, of course.”

>   “You’d do that for me?” Sasha asked.

  “Sure.” Mags beamed. “Come on, we’ll put it with the stuff in the Duster.” They carried the last few to-donate items downstairs together and put them into the boot of Mags’s large car.

  Boxes of to-keep stuff were stacked and neatly labelled in each room, and there were only the personal knick-knacks left to pack away by the time Sasha and Jac made it back into the living room. They worked their way through, laughing as Sasha and Bobbi told stories until the sun had long since set and the need for food drove them to order in pizza.

  “Guess what I found?” Bobbi asked when they’d all finished eating and were lounging around, bemoaning bloated stomachs.

  “Winning lottery ticket?” Mags asked.

  “Fleur’s vibrator?” Sophie guessed. Everyone stared at her in shock, except for Sasha who bent double, laughing.

  Bobbi pulled a box from behind her back, looking like she’d just lost a tenner and found a penny. “Erm, no. Just this.”

  “Ooo, mum’s Monopoly set.” Sasha held her hands out for it. “Right, let’s do it.” She started pushing away the empty pizza boxes and setting up the board.

  “I also found these.” Bobbi held up a set of shot glasses. Each one had on it a slogan from the famous “Keep Calm” range that had blown into fashion.

  Sasha smirked and pointed at the board. “Fleur’s house rules?”

  “Oh, yeah, gotta be done,” Bobbi said.

  “Erm,” Jac started, “what are these rules?”

  “Whenever you land on a Chance card, you have to take a shot,” Bobbi started and lifted up a bottle of vodka.

  “You pass Go and collect two hundred pounds, and take a shot,” Sasha continued. “If you land on a property that’s got a hotel on it, you get a shot too. Because Mum always said she couldn’t sleep in a hotel without a little assistance.”

  Bobbi grinned wickedly. “You up for it, ladies?” She held up the shot glasses.