There’d been other incidents too: a parade of animals decked out in lingerie and posed in front of boudoir mirrors, alligator skulls with panties stuffed in their open mouths and dangling from their teeth. I knew my father would mind someone dripping lube on his prized mountain lion. He’d definitely mind the ripped fur. But he wasn’t there to say anything about it and my mother was my mother. I had only so much control over what she did. I couldn’t help but feel I was letting him down, again. His letter, sitting beside my bed, stayed in my head.
I trust you to handle things. I need you to do this now.
“Do better,” I muttered, shaking my head. “You gotta do better than this.”
Our tiny kitchenette was at the rear of the store, close to the entrance to the workshop, but still in sight line of the register and the assorted candy bars that kids liked to pocket. I searched through the cupboard for coffee filters and found none, remembering too late that we’d been out for a week. I settled on a wadded paper towel.
My mother used to clean the store, but aside from her new window-dressing duties, she’d stopped coming in completely. Dust coated the sale items, coasting along the backs of baby alligators and the lacquered fish until they looked like they’d grown fur. The neon-hued rabbits’ feet were grimy, as if the rabbits had run through mud puddles before losing their paws.
Outside, my mother was still yapping about her pornography. Aside from the runner, she’d managed to snag Travis, who stood looking at the scene like a kid in front of a mall Santa Claus. My mother’s pink nightgown turned luminous in the sunlight, silhouetting her legs and torso. I wasn’t totally sure she was wearing underwear.
I rinsed out a dirty mug and scrubbed the stains with a rag I found next to the sink. Then I poured coffee and took a scalding sip, settling back behind the register. My mother gestured to Travis and to the runner, who’d pulled out a cell phone and was taking pictures.
The beginning of a tension headache boiled behind my forehead.
Travis was still standing outside when my mother came back into the shop. The bell chimed fretfully as she pushed open the door, the metal folding chair jammed under her armpit. She was in the fuzzy slippers my father got her for Christmas a couple of years earlier. Leaves and mud slopped onto the sides and back of the little bunny faces. It had rained the night before, which meant she’d walked over from the house at God only knew what hour of the night.
“Thanks,” she said, taking my coffee and handing me the mug full of cigarette ash. She took a sip and grimaced. “That’s awful.”
“We’re out of coffee filters.”
“Somebody should buy some more. Tastes like dirt.”
“Sorry about that,” I replied, deciding not to bring up the fact that she usually bought the coffee, the filters, and the garbage bags. My father would’ve taped the grocery list to the steering wheel of her car. He would’ve said her name in that exasperated way that showed he loved her even though she drove him crazy.
“God, I’m tired.”
She leaned back against the counter and her ribs moved visibly beneath the ruffled bodice of her nightgown. She was smoking again, which she hadn’t done since we were little. The bags under her eyes were deep-set and very dark, like someone had pressed their thumbs into her flesh. I wanted to shake her and ask why she had to make things harder than they already were, why she couldn’t just act normal so we could move forward the way Dad would want us to, but instead I went to the back and called my brother.
He picked up on the fourth ring, voice still thick with sleep. I wondered if there was anyone there with him, but my gut told me he was alone. He hadn’t seen anyone seriously since Brynn had left him and the kids. Both of us forever in mourning of her, even though she’d been gone for years. Still, it was late. I’d anticipated he’d be at work or at least on the road. Milo, the guy who could never figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He called in sick every other Monday. His daughter was about to go into high school and she was the one who had to do the grocery shopping because he always forgot things like milk and bread. You have no work ethic, our father told him once, and Milo smiled as if it were a compliment.
“Come get your mother, she’s done it again,” I said, watching her in the pale light that filtered through the window. She’d turned to face the scene at the front of the shop, rubbing a dusty pink rabbit’s foot between her fingers.
“Christ. Lemme get some pants on.”
“Don’t worry about it, she’s not wearing any.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t let her leave.”
I hung up and wondered how I’d get through the rest of the day, much less the rest of the week. Our father had been dead for a year and I was expected to take over everything; manning the store alone, figuring out what to do with my mother’s burgeoning creative talents. It was exhausting.
“One thing at a time,” I said, pulling out a pad of old scratch paper. “That’s all there is to it.”
It was easier to work that way: moving forward piecemeal, performing each small task with the entirety of my focus. One done, then another. Letting them all pile up until there was no room to think about anything else.
Bunch of deer mounts. Bud Killson’s bass needed fresh shellac and a couple of new eyes. There was endless fleshing, piles of stuff backed up in the freezer. Pelts to scrape and tan. Flushing out the acid baths and refilling them. Scrubbing down all the countertops in the back, bleaching the floors. There was always something to do.
I’d seen my father work that way all my life. Lists, routines. No time for stress when you’ve got a schedule to keep. Remembering that made my limbs loosen and my jaw unclench.
I could do it. I just needed to be Dad.
“Your brother’s here,” my mother called, setting down her coffee cup. “Maybe he can give me a ride home.”
Milo climbed out of the truck and left the motor running. He looked like he’d slept in his clothes, and he was sporting a couple of days’ worth of patchy beard. Waving off my offer of coffee from the doorway, he took my mother’s arm and put her into the truck. She didn’t argue, just yawned and shuffled her nightgown so it covered her bare legs. They looked too thin; the veins ran blue along her ankles.
“Come for dinner tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll make enough for everyone.”
Dinner at my mother’s meant feeling everything. It wasn’t like the shop, with its tools and disinfectants and work. There was so much of Dad alive in the house: his recliner with the saggy, loose stuffing in the armrests, paperback crime novels parked facedown on the floor, his buttonless shirts piled haphazardly beside my mother’s sewing machine. The green bottle of the aftershave he always wore still sat next to the bathroom sink, its top placed upside down beside the faucet.
“I’ve gotta get stuff done around here,” I said. “Got a customer coming by.”
“I’ll see you at six.”
I didn’t argue, just waved as they pulled out of the lot. When I turned around, Travis Pritchard was standing in front of the window again. He had his cap in one hand and was rubbing the other very gently along his buzzed salt-and-pepper scalp. His shirtsleeves were too short, revealing slips of his skin nearly up to the elbow every time he raised his arm.