Personal Effects

by E. M. Kokie

  “I miss you, too. But that’s no secret. And, I should say that everyone misses you.

  “I think yesterday was the last gasp of summer. It’s supposed to get steadily colder this week. I dread the first really cold night. I just know I’ll be huddled under the covers, probably even wearing socks, but wishing for your perpetual warmth. I miss waking up with you in the morning, and going to bed with you at night, and it will only be worse when it’s cold.

  “I promised myself I’d wait to write until I snapped out of this mood, but apparently it’s back. So, let’s try for some levity, shall we?

  “Missy and Will are having a little dinner tomorrow night. (Can’t really call it a party, can we?) Zoe’s excited. She keeps babbling about it, about how Missy said she could help. Not sure what she thinks she’ll be helping with, but tonight she was packing her little backpack with crayons and stuffies. And she’s insisting on wearing her pink camo overalls. Missy and I both tried to talk her into something else. No luck.

  “I know I should go, but I just got the special edition DVD set of West Side Story in the mail. So, I’m thinking instead I’ll make a pot of cocoa (or a pitcher of sangria) and watch it all. I might even turn it off before Tony dies and pretend that Maria and Tony ride off into the sunset together (or at least across town — the neighborhood be damned). And just think, if I watch it enough times (over and over and over again) before you come home, maybe you’ll only have to watch it once or twice with me. (Stop making that face. You’ll love it. And if not, I’ll make it up to you. The way you like.)

  “And a little more good news: the house — our house — is back on the market. Maybe I’ll just have to have a look inside one of these days. (I know, I know, but I can dream.)

  “Well, I guess I should finish this up and get it in the mail. I know saying ‘Be safe’ annoys you, because you are always Mister As-Safe-As-Possible-Given-the-Fight, but saying it, for me, is like a prayer, or a wish. So — be safe! (Please, for me.)

  Love you, C.”

  I can see Shauna feeling it, that buzz, under her skin or in the air. She reads it again, more slowly. To herself. At the first mention of “Zoe” she stops.

  I hand her the picture again. The little girl waving her small pudgy hand. Her eyes and skin lighter than Celia’s, but with Celia’s hair, Celia’s nose. Celia and Zoe.

  Shauna takes a gulp of air. Squints. Her mouth moves, but she doesn’t say anything. She tilts her head, reads a bit of the letter again, then looks at me.

  “You think?”

  And there it is.

  “I don’t know,” I say, my voice cracking.

  “Zoe. You think . . . Shit. Not just a girlfriend. You think Zoe is T.J.’s kid?”

  I turn it all over again in my head. “Maybe.” She stares, making me commit. “Yes, I think Zoe could be his kid. But I’m not sure.”

  Shauna flails on the bench, gargling, sputtering, practically vibrating. “Matt! What else could it mean? I mean, the picture, and Zoe asks about him, and . . .”

  I rub at my neck, trying to chase away the doubt. “Yeah, and I thought, maybe, but read it again. It’s like . . . she doesn’t come right out and say it, and wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she say something, like, I don’t know, she misses her daddy or something?”

  “No, not if . . . I mean, he knows who she is, right? What about the other letters? Do any of them say for sure?”

  I shake my head. “I’ve read them all, more than once. She talks about Zoe a lot, but never actually says daughter or daddy or anything.”

  She looks at the picture again. Runs her finger along the edge. It’s not perfect, like the other sides, and there’s a little sliver of blue along Celia’s arm, like someone else’s shirt. I stared at it for like an hour last night. Someone cut it.

  Shauna’s finger traces the blue line. “Celia cut out herself and Zoe from a bigger picture and sent them to T.J. Why? Why would she do that unless it was so he could have this picture with just them?” Her smile keeps growing.

  I take the picture and look at it again.

  Shauna grabs my arm until I look at her. “I mean, if this wasn’t . . . if she was just Celia’s kid, why would Celia bother? And if she wasn’t Celia’s kid at all . . . I mean, Celia talks about Zoe a lot, and about day care, and . . . Why wouldn’t she just send him the whole picture, unless she wanted him to have one of just them, just the two of them?”

  “Maybe whoever else was in it, maybe T.J. didn’t like them or something. Or maybe there were a lot of other people in it. Maybe —”

  “No,” Shauna says. “No way. She sent T.J. this picture of just the two of them. Her and Zoe. Alone. She had to have done that on purpose. She was sending him a picture of his family, like she said, for T.J. to ‘hold on to.’”

  I stare at the picture. Zoe’s skin is a lot lighter than Celia’s, and she does sort of look like she could be T.J.’s kid, maybe. And this picture, you can tell just by looking at it, Celia’s definitely her mom. They way they are, and how much Zoe looks like Celia. And if Zoe is Celia’s, then Shauna’s right, she has to be T.J.’s. There’s nothing else that makes sense. But the rock in my stomach won’t let me totally believe.

  “Who’s Missy?” Shauna asks. Shauna points to the letter. “Celia talks about Missy coming over. Missy not needing to pick Zoe up from day care. So, who is she? Do the other letters say?”

  “A friend, I think. Maybe a neighbor. She babysits Zoe sometimes. Some of the other letters talk about Missy stopping by or picking Zoe up.”

  I try to order the bits from the letters jumping around my head.

  “Celia talks about Missy and Will in some of the other letters, about having dinner with them, and about them getting her out of the house. And both Missy and Will sent T.J. letters, too. Not a lot, but some. They mention Zoe, too. But —”

  “Oooh,” Shauna yelps. “Do they say anything about Zoe? About, like, ‘your daughter’ or . . .”

  “No. Nothing like that. They don’t call her T.J.’s daughter or anything. But they both say things about Zoe missing T.J., and talking about him. And there’s one letter from Missy where she wrote about putting Zoe to bed, and that Will fell asleep, but she waited up. So, I think they were watching Zoe, and she waited up for Celia to come home.”

  Talking about it, thinking about all the bits and pieces, it starts to sink in. I start letting myself believe. “Celia talks about Zoe, about Zoe and T.J. . . . like . . . she’s his.” . . . los and los of prinkles . . . “Celia talks about Zoe missing T.J., asking about him, about things he taught Zoe.” . . . her little fingers, pointing to your picture on the fridge . . . making you a picture . . . “She talks about T.J. tucking her in, cuddling Zoe. She talks about Zoe missing T.J. almost as much as Celia does. It just doesn’t sound like stuff you’d say about someone else’s kid. And Celia’s letter says ‘Mom’ picked Zoe up, not someone else’s mom. I think she’s Celia’s. I just do.” She has to be.

  “And if she’s Celia’s,” Shauna says, “then she’s T.J.’s, right?” She grins at me.

  She has to be. “Yeah.”

  “Yeah,” Shauna says, nodding, like she won.

  I hand Shauna another picture, the one of T.J. picking Celia up, both of them laughing. She studies the picture, then looks at the letter again. Her cheeks climb with her smile. Her eyes shine.

  “Makes total sense.” Shauna laughs.

  My muscles relax. Yeah. It does make sense. I know she’s Celia’s. I know it. And if she’s Celia’s, then she’s T.J.’s. T.J. has a kid.

  “And he never . . .”

  I shake my head. “Not a word.” The picture in her hand, their smiles. Does Celia know he’s gone? “Got to hand it to him. He sure knew how to keep a secret.” I point to the letters she hasn’t read yet. “Keep reading. Tell me what you think after. Maybe there’s something I missed.”

  I go back to sorting through the pictures. He only had a few of Celia and Zoe. Too few. He took a lot of pictures of other peop
le’s kids, but he only had a couple of his own.

  Watching Shauna read the letters is almost more intense, or emotional, than when I read them myself. Or maybe it just feels that way because I’ve read them so many times. But Shauna, whose face has always shown everything she feels, shows me now what I should feel. Especially now that she knows about Zoe. The more she smiles, cries, frowns, the more I trust it. When she bites her lip, blushes, my face gets hot. She blushes a lot. She looks at me, now and then, sometimes even stopping for a few seconds, looking off somewhere, and then continuing again. I gave her the best of the bunch to read, but maybe I’ll let her read the rest of Celia’s letters sometime.

  When she reaches the last letter in this stack, she tucks it back into its envelope, then lays it gently on the table in front of her, facedown with the rest. Then she looks at me. She nods.

  “There’s one more thing,” I tell her.

  “More?” She seems to have trouble wrapping her brain around that. I know the feeling.

  “Just one,” I say. “One more letter.”

  “From Celia?”

  I pull it out of my backpack, still segregated in its plastic bag. I hand it to her.

  She turns it over, and then right-side up, and her eyes water as she reads the address.

  “To Celia,” I say. “T.J. never got to send it.”

  “Oh. My. God.” She gasps. Tears pool in her eyes. She seems to ask a million questions without saying a word.

  “I know.” I barely get the words out past the rock in my throat. I have to clear it twice to go on. “It was in its own bag, with that label sealing it shut, just like that. I almost missed it because it was kind of stuck to one of the other bags. Obviously he meant to send it to her. It had to have been in the envelope and ready to go, because they slit the envelope open at the top, then sealed it in its own bag.”

  She runs her finger over the label that seals the plastic bag shut where the opening folds over at an angle. Maybe an accident, because none of the other bags were like that. But no way to open it without breaking the seal. Then she runs her finger over the C. CARSON and the address, already on the envelope, ready to go. Then she touches the seal again. Testing it, like I did. A bunch of times.

  “You didn’t?”

  I shake my head. “I couldn’t. It . . . didn’t seem right.”

  She glances down at the letters around us. There’s that flutter of nerves in my stomach again.

  “I didn’t really think about it when I started reading them,” I say, “that it could be wrong to read his letters or that there would be anything, you know, personal in them. I just wanted to know what people said. And then I found Celia’s, and pretty much didn’t care about the others. But by the time I found that one, I had already read a lot of hers. And . . .”

  “You kind of knew her?”

  “No, but . . . well, it seemed . . .” Wrong. “Not really like it even belonged to T.J. anymore. It was already her letter, you know? If he had dropped it in the mail slot before the patrol . . . and with the seal . . .”

  Shauna nods and strokes the seal again. “I’d feel the same way,” she says, like she’s proud of me. “This one is different.”

  “Soooo,” I say, drawing it out until she looks up. “I’ve been thinking about it.” I take the letter from her hands. “Can I borrow your car?”

  THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS ARE NUTS. BESIDES CRAMMING for finals, I have the stupid English paper and three Spanish conversationals to make up. Oh, and less than a week to plan my great escape.

  Mrs. D. gets me out of all my nonfinal classes on Wednesday and Thursday so I can go to the library and try to throw together enough of a term paper to pass English. Yesterday I actually did some research for the paper, but today I’m spending most of the day researching the trip. I’ve got to figure it all out before next Thursday. As soon as my last final is done, I’ll take off.

  Plus I’ve been trying to be home whenever Dad is, hanging around in the kitchen, like I’m studying really hard. I don’t think he’ll go into T.J.’s room if I’m around. If he does, I want to know it, as soon as it happens, so I can get the hell out of town. I keep Celia’s letters, T.J.’s letter, and the photos in my backpack, along with all the money I have. Just in case. It’s not enough money, not yet. But it’s all I have.

  Today I had a makeup lab, meaning Dad could be home any minute, and I’m still at school, waiting for Shauna to pick me up, with no way to know if I’ll be walking into an ambush.

  I leave her another voice mail.

  I sit down on the steps and pull out my notebook. I’ve got a running list of what I’ll need. Top of that list, I need to figure out how much the trip to Wisconsin will cost. Mr. Anders’ll pay me part of what he owes me tomorrow, but he’s not paying me the rest until next Friday. With what I’ve got saved up, it might be enough to get me to Wisconsin, maybe. But not enough, not yet, for someplace to stay while I’m there, or the gas back. I’ll have to come up with some way to get the rest.

  Dad made a big deal about how I’d turn in the first half of the display case money next Friday. Apparently Pendergrast didn’t bow down low enough in gratitude when Dad called him. Now Dad wants to be there when I deliver it. He probably has a whole speech planned, or just some serious glaring. If I take off Thursday right after my exams, I can be long gone before Dad has a clue, and before he can take the money or march me down to the school to hand it over. But he’s gonna be supernova pissed — like I’m doing it on purpose just to shame him. He’s gonna —

  Car horn. Shauna’s harried face stares at me through the car window. She starts talking before I’ve even got the seat belt fastened. I wave my hand to get her to drive, pointing at the clock. She keeps talking but puts the car in drive.

  The drive across town is a nightmare: we hit every red light; Shauna jabbers non-stop about a fight with one of her sisters. I have no idea which one. I stare at the clock on the dash.

  I’m still trying to figure out what I’m gonna do if it’s an ambush when she screeches to a stop in front of my house and throws the car into park.

  Dad’s truck is in the driveway.

  I’ve already got my seat belt off and the door open.

  “Call me,” she yells after me.

  Through the window in the back door, I can see Dad sitting at the kitchen table sifting through the mail. Shit. He glances back when I open the door.

  Playing it cool is a fierce act of will.

  Dad looks at the clock and back at me.

  “Where you been?”

  He’s sneering. Not good, but I can’t tell how bad yet. I regrip the strap of my backpack. Ready to run. “Makeup lab. Then Shauna was late.”

  “Your legs broken?”

  “She was on her way, so I thought . . . it was . . .” He loses interest, so I stop talking, which is good because I’m still scrambling for a foothold and flying blind.

  “Bullshit.” He flicks two envelopes into the trash bin next to him, then slaps a couple on the table, bills by the looks of them. “What a waste on all this bullshit.” Three more in the trash.

  He pauses over the next letter before placing it on the kitchen table away from the piles of bills and magazines. Even from across the room, I see the loopy handwritten address and the preprinted red-white-and-blue return label, the kind with an eagle — a condolence letter. We haven’t received one in a while, at least not that I’ve seen.

  He works through the last of the pile. I wait for some hint of whether I’m standing in quicksand or on dry land. Well, and for permission to leave the kitchen.

  “Whoa-ho,” he shouts. “Mail for the pretty boy.”

  The sharp edge of an envelope catches me in the chest. It lands faceup on the floor in front of me. Great, another recruiting letter. Don’t even have to open it to know what it says. He has to have signed me up with every branch, in hopes that one will send me a shiny-enough brochure to convince me. Or maybe he just likes getting them himself.

  Dad
cuffs my shoulder on his way to put the trash can back under the sink. “Nine months.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from correcting him. It’s only been a little over six months since T.J. died: 195 days to be exact. The look on his face is hopeful, happy, confusing. Then I realize he means the months until my eighteenth birthday, in March. My mouth goes dry.

  I stand there, shaking under my skin, waiting to be dismissed.

  Dad shuffles the bills and the magazines, and then hesitates before picking up the condolence letter. He walks over to the hall closet, just beyond the kitchen. He pauses again, just looking at the letter, runs his finger along the edge, and then lets it fall into the box of similar letters he’s been collecting since November. He never opens them, and he never throws them away. He closes the closet door with the faintest click.

  “Anyway, I’m heading to your uncle Mac’s. He needs some help with the truck.” Really? Or does Dad have another date? “You need money for dinner? For a pizza?”

  “I’ll make something.” Just leave. Now.

  “OK, well, just in case.” Dad tosses a twenty on the table. “And while we’re talking ‘just in case’ . . .”

  For the second time in ten minutes he flips something at my head. This time, the small box connects with my chin and lands on the floor. And just like before, I don’t have to pick it up to know what it is. The brand name screams up in big block letters. Side view of a warrior with his mohawk helmet. Lubricated. Oh, fuck me.

  “I meant what I said.”

  His grin is disgusting.

  “I’m not telling you not to have a good time.”