Us

by Michael Kimball

  It was because of this that my mother hired a woman to help my grandfather out at home. The woman was supposed to come to his house for a few hours of each day. She was supposed to clean the house up, do the laundry, do the dishes, and do any other household chores that she could. She was supposed to make lunch and then make a dinner that my grandfather could warm up to eat later that night.

  But my grandfather said that the woman didn’t clean right, that the food that she cooked tasted wrong, and that he wouldn’t let her come back to his house. He didn’t say that she didn’t do any of these things the way that my grandmother would have done them, but that was probably what he meant.

  I think that it made my grandfather’s heart hurt more, that other woman doing those daily things in the house that he had shared with my grandmother for all those days and for all those years. My mother tried to hire another woman to help out, but my grandfather wouldn’t even let her come into the house. The woman said that he wouldn’t get up to come to the front door. She said that at first she thought that he was hurt, but that when she cupped her hands around the sides of her eyes and looked hard through the window that he was just sitting there in his chair looking at what looked like an old picture album. My grandfather was hurt, but none of us could get inside of him—not the doctor, not the pictures, not his sister or daughter or any of his grandchildren—to make it stop.

  My grandfather couldn’t keep himself enough alive then. He needed the oxygen tanks filled up and changed. He needed the food that other people made. My mother tried to help him when he would let her. She worked fulltime and also had her own house to keep up, but she would go over to his house every night after work after my grandmother had died. She would pick up a few things, make sure that my grandfather had something to eat, make more food for him to warm up, and make sure that there was enough oxygen for him inside his oxygen tank. My grandfather didn’t want my mother doing these things for him either, but she had keys to his house and could let herself in.

  This wasn’t just that my grandfather didn’t want other people doing these things for him. I think that he knew that he was going to die soon too. He didn’t think that he needed to keep the house clean anymore. He didn’t think that he was going to be alive long enough for it to get too dirty. He didn’t think that he needed to do the dishes anymore either. My grandmother and he had accumulated so many glasses and bowls and plates and so much silverware over the years that they had been married that he thought that it would be weeks before he didn’t have something clean to eat with or on.

  My grandfather also wouldn’t buy any new clothes for himself. He put cardboard inside his shoes to cover up the holes in the soles of them and he wore two pairs of socks so that the holes in his socks didn’t show through either. There were places in the shoulders and the elbows of his dress shirts that had worn so thin that you could see his skin through the weave of the cloth. The shirt cuffs and the shirt collars were frayed. The cuffs of his suit jackets were frayed too and some of the pockets were missing or torn.

  He sewed patches on the elbows on his suit jackets and on the knees of his suit pants. There were holes in them from when he had blacked out and fallen down. But my grandfather wouldn’t wear any of the new clothes that we bought for him. He left them inside their shopping bags with the price tags on them. Somebody returned them to the store after he died.

  How He Tried to Communicate with Spirits

  My Grandfather Oliver believed that living people can communicate with the spirits of people who are dead. He believed that he had witnessed this when he was a child and lived with his Uncle L.P. who was a spiritualist medium.

  He said that his Uncle L.P. could do what was called a corner séance. His Uncle L.P. would sit in the corner of a room that had all its curtains pulled closed so that no outside light could get into it. An oil lamp would be placed on the floor in the middle of the room, though the light from it had to be kept low and shaded so that Uncle L.P. didn’t go blind or die.

  Uncle L.P. would play a trumpet until his eyes rolled back inside his head. He would stop playing and start to shake. The voices of other people would start to come out of his mouth or the spirits would start to form out of the light from the oil lamp and speak through their own mouths.

  The spirits and the voices would say how and when and where they died. They would answer any of these questions about any other dead people and they would take messages or questions back to the spirits of other dead people.

  My grandfather said that when his Uncle L.P. would begin to get tired, the voices of the spirits would start to get quiet or their forms would start to dissolve into a weak fog that seemed to slip away down into the floorboards. Uncle L.P. would collapse down into his chair in the corner of the room and his eyes would roll back out of his head. Somebody would put the oil lamp out and Uncle L.P. would stand up. They would open the curtains back up and somebody would bring a glass of buttermilk and a plate of warm biscuits with honey on them into the room so that Uncle L.P. could eat and drink to get his strength and his voice back.

  It doesn’t matter to me if this were truth or fiction. It only matters to me that it seemed true to my grandfather. He believed it and it was a comfort to him. It helped him to make sense of the death of his mother and of his father, the death of his daughter, and then the death of his wife. He believed that he could talk to all of them after they had died.

  This is part of the reason that my grandfather learned how to communicate with the dead too. He would write questions down on little slips of paper and the spirits would answer him in the form of knocks on the walls or on the wood furniture. One knock meant no. Two knocks meant they didn’t know. Three knocks meant yes.

  My grandfather told my grandmother about the code of knocks and asked her to come back to him to talk to him if she died before he did. My grandfather said that there was a lot of knocking on their bedroom furniture after my grandmother died, but that he never could understand all of it. He believed that the knocking was her, that her presence was meant to be reassuring, and that she was telling him that there was another world after the one that he was living in then.

  But the house that my grandmother and grandfather lived in was old too. It made lots of sounds at night—the foundation settling down, the wind in the chimney, maybe footsteps on the floorboards, maybe a knocking sound in the walls.

  How I Hear Voices

  I tried to communicate with my Grandfather Oliver after he died. I wrote questions down on little slips of paper and kept them in my pockets waiting for answers for them. Sometimes, I still find the little slips of paper in the pockets of jackets that I haven’t worn since it was last cold.

  I lay awake at night and thought of questions to ask my grandfather. I listened for the knocks on the bedroom furniture or for the footsteps on the old wood floors of the house that I live in with my wife, but I never heard anything that might be an answer from him. Still, sometimes I think that what I may be doing is channeling voices. I hear people who aren’t here saying things to me and I write them down.

  PART SEVEN

  How I Couldn’t Take Any of My Funeral Clothes Off

  I went back inside through the back door and walked back to what used to be our bedroom. I was going to take my funeral clothes off, but it felt too difficult to untie my tie or my shoes. It felt too difficult to unbutton my shirt or my pants. I couldn’t take my suit jacket off. It fit a little tight around my shoulders and it felt as if my wife had her arms around me.

  My funeral clothes were all that were holding me together then. I was afraid that I would start to forget my wife if I took any of them off. But I didn’t know what else to do after her funeral was over and my wife was buried inside a casket under the ground and I was back inside our house. I kept waiting for her to come back home to me or back to life.

  I walked back down the hallway, into the living room, and sat down in a chair. I got up out of the chair and then I sat back down in it. I looked out the win
dow, out into the backyard, and then looked back inside myself.

  I didn’t want to look inside me or be inside myself anymore, but I kept thinking of things that I wanted to tell her—that I liked the dress that she was wearing, that I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, that I was going to bring her some flowers and her hairbrush and a change of her clothes when I came to see her soon.

  I kept thinking of her grave and her inside her casket and all the dirt on top of her and between us. I wanted to dig her casket up and stand it up and open it up. I wanted her to be standing up and for her to step out of her casket and step back into our living room with me.

  I always liked the way that she stood in a doorway and the way that she walked into any room. I always liked the way that she chewed her food and the way that she drank from a glass and I wondered if she could feel hungry or thirsty.

  I didn’t think that there could be any insects inside her casket yet and I wondered if she itched and I thought of the way that her nose wrinkled up when she didn’t like something. I wondered if the insects would mess her hair up or get under her clothes and bite her skin like they always did.

  I always liked the way that she took her clothes off and put her clothes on. I always liked the way that she said my name and touched my hair. I kept waiting for her to come back home and touch my hair and say my name.

  How I Danced with the Floor Lamp

  I pulled one of my wife’s dresses off a hanger in her closet and pulled it down over the length of a floor lamp. I pulled a hat of hers down over the lampshade. I glued a pair of her shoes down onto the base of the floor lamp and waited for the glue to dry. I plugged the floor lamp into an outlet in the living room, turned the floor lamp on, and her head lit up.

  The dress was full length and it had long sleeves. I held onto the cuff one long sleeve of her dress with my palm and fingers and tucked the cuff of the other long sleeve into my waistband at the small of my back. I placed my other hand behind the long stand of the floor lamp just above where the base of her spine would have been if the floor lamp were my wife.

  I waited for the music to start playing inside my head. I pulled the floor lamp up against my body and felt the heat from the light on my face. I tipped the floor lamp back with my one arm and leaned over with her. I stood back up and spun the floor lamp away from me along the edge of its round base and along the length of my arm and the long sleeve of her dress. The base of the floor lamp made a scraping noise against the hardwood floor and so did my shoes.

  I could see myself dancing with her on the living room walls. I could see the shadows of us dancing on the walls all the way around the living room.

  How I Lay Down in the Cemetery Grass with Her

  I stood in the bathroom over the bathroom sink and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. I leaned my face in close to the bathroom mirror so that I could only see parts of my face—one eye and then the other eye, each side of my nose, parts of both ears, the wrinkles around my eyes and my mouth. I was trying to see my wife inside my eyes, but I couldn’t see her anywhere on my face anymore, so I needed to go see her.

  I was going to take her some of her things. I pulled some of her other dresses off their hangers in her closet and laid them out on our bed. I took some of her blouses and skirts off their hangers and laid them out in matching outfits. I picked out matching shoes and matching boots.

  I pulled a few days of clean underwear out of one of her dresser drawers—matching sets of her underwear, pairs of nylons and pantyhose and tights and socks. I picked a few of her nightgowns out of another one of her dresser drawers and a housecoat out of her closet. I got a spring jacket and a winter coat out of the coat closet and a hat and gloves that matched them both.

  I folded her clothes up and stacked them up in little piles on our bed. I got her suitcase out, laid it out on top of our bed, and packed up all those clothes inside it. I opened her jewelry box up and untangled some of her necklaces and paired up some of her earrings. I went back into the bathroom for her hairbrush, her box of curlers, her make-up kit, and some of her other things from the bathroom. I put all those things inside the suitcase and closed the suitcase up and snapped its locks closed.

  I carried her suitcase out of our bedroom, down the hallway, out the back door, and out to our car in the driveway. I set her suitcase down, opened the trunk up, and laid her suitcase down flat in the bottom of the trunk. I went back into the backyard to the tool shed and got a shovel and a rake out too. I dug up some of the flowers from the backyard and then filled the flower hole in the backyard back in. I carried the flowers and the shovel and the rake back out to our car and put them in the trunk too.

  I got into our car and turned the engine on. I looked into my sideview mirror and watched the exhaust come out of the tailpipe. It was gray and soft and seemed to slip away up into the air before I expected it to be gone.

  I backed our car out of the driveway, put our car in drive, and drove the way to the cemetery where my wife’s grave was and where my wife was too. I parked next to the little hill, got out of our car, and opened the trunk up. I got the shovel and the rake out and carried them up the little hill to my wife’s grave. I walked back down to our car to get her suitcase and to carry it back up the little hill to my wife’s grave too.

  There wasn’t any grass covering her grave up yet, but there was that thick blanket of dirt. I picked the shovel up and dug enough of the dirt up to bury her suitcase in her grave with her casket and her. I dug some more dirt up next to the headstone and planted the flowers there. I filled those holes back in with the shovel and the dirt and then raked the dirt smooth again.

  I lay down in the cemetery grass next to my wife’s grave and thought of us lying next to each other in our bed again. I rolled over onto my side and laid my arm out over the dirt and tried to hold onto my wife again.

  How I Was Afraid to Wash the Smell of Her Off Her Clothes

  I pulled some dirty clothes out of the laundry basket and found some of her dirty clothes buried down at the bottom of it. They were some of the last clothes that she had worn when she was still alive. I pulled them up out of the laundry basket and separated her clothes from my clothes. I was going to wash her clothes in a separate load.

  But I held the ball of her clothes up to my face and smelled them and that made me afraid to wash the smell of her off them. I folded her clothes up and stacked them up into a little pile. I got a plastic bag out and set that little pile of her clothes down inside it. I tied the ties up on the plastic bag tight. I wanted to keep as much of the smell of my wife on those clothes and with me for as long as I could.

  Thank You for the Suitcase of Clothes

  Thank you for coming to see me and lie down with me. Thank you for putting your arm around me. I could feel the weight of your body next to me. I could feel the warmth of your body next to me.

  Thank you for bringing me the flowers. Thank you for bringing me the suitcase with the changes of clothes and the make-up and the jewelry inside it. I had wanted to get that funeral make-up off my face and my neck and my hands for days. I had wanted to change out of my funeral clothes and I want you to change out of yours soon too. Most of mine were cut open down the back and I could just pull them off, but I had to scrape the funeral make-up off with my fingers and my fingernails.

  I didn’t want to wear those clothes or look like that or stay there forever. I wanted to travel with that suitcase back home to you so that I could be with you again. I wanted to come back home to get you so that we could go away to somewhere else together. I wanted to go back to sleep with you again. I wanted you to stay and sleep with me.

  The Little Pieces of Her that Were Still Her

  I kept walking through the rooms of what used to be our house and kept looking for her there. Her absence was everywhere, but there were also little pieces of her everywhere that I looked. There were pictures of her up in frames on the walls and there were pictures of her laid out in albums. There was an armchair t
hat she used to sit in that had a depressed seat cushion and that made me see her sitting there in that armchair.

  She left the shape of her sleeping body in the sheets on her side of our bed. The mattress was old and soft too and there were deep places where her shoulders and her back and the backs of her legs had rested. There was a deep hollow where the back of her head had been and there was also the smell of her hair on the pillowcase.

  I found her toenail clippings at the foot of our bed. I found an unwashed glass in the kitchen sink that had her lip print around the rim.

  I thought that I saw her thick gray hair in the dark of the broom closet, but it was just a mop that was standing up inside there. I found strands of her hair in the drain catch of the bathroom sink and I wished that I had kept her hairbrush with me for the hair of hers that must have been caught up in its bristles.

  I looked out the living room window and saw her out in the backyard. I went to the back door and opened it up, but I couldn’t see her out there anymore.

  How I Got Ready to Go Away with Her to Sleep

  I woke up and my wife was back at home with me. She was standing at the end of our bed and she sat down on the edge of it after I woke up and sat up. She was wearing one of the nightgowns that I had packed up for her inside the suitcase that I had buried with her.