I didn’t have an easy rapport with Violet, or at least I haven’t had one in a long time. Our relationship was a chasm, basically. I sent a holiday card every year, because holiday cards were easy. Thinking of you! Short and sweet, with the thinnest slices of personal information. Apartment-hunting again. Saw a sweater with jingle bells on it and thought of you. We sure are having a rainy month. She replied with checks for twenty dollars and a few odds and ends: a bookmark with kittens on it; a newspaper feature on My May Belle, the historical Knoxville riverboat I was named after.
For birthdays and Christmases and Thanksgivings, I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the phone. Too much time had passed, which led to awkwardness and putting it off even longer—and you see where I’m going with this.
What would I say? What if she didn’t care about me anymore? Didn’t remember me? Didn’t want to hear from me? The possibility I might be accused of being a negligent niece—or worse, that she’d confess what a disappointment I’d turned out to be . . . my guilt grew steadily, but I couldn’t face it, so I locked it in a drawer. Now I’ll never get the chance to make things right with Violet.
Wesley doesn’t carry any such guilt. Maybe he feels the inheritance was owed to him, after taking care of Violet. He must’ve had his hands full as a caretaker, because he certainly wasn’t doing any groundskeeping. The landscape looks like a child’s drawing of a tornado.
Maybe neither of us deserves the estate. But this is where I can make it up to Aunt Violet. I can honor her list. I owe her that much, at the very least.
It goes like this:
Wesley carries a crapload of stuff out of the house, and I make him put it in the Inspection Station (it’s the spot near a shrub that’s shaped kind of like a flamingo). I sort out anything salvageable into Keep and Donate piles. A sticker book I saved from the hoard has found new use designating what to do with it all.
Wesley delivers three more boxes to the Inspection Station and braces himself for interaction with a sharp inhale. “Does the yellow sticker mean ‘donate’?”
“It means ‘keep.’”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Be reasonable. You can’t possibly expect me to part with everything.”
“Me be reasonable?” He points to himself. “Me?” Wesley leans across me suddenly, causing me to jerk back, and extracts a sweatshirt from the pile. It’s older than I am, a paisley crime against fashion in brown, orange, and mustard yellow. “What are you going to do with this?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to wear it.” I’m still recovering from almost being touched by him, even though it was accidental and meant nothing. And also didn’t happen.
“Really,” he deadpans.
“It’s vintage.”
“There are, no exaggeration, hundreds of vintage clothes in the house. You’ve got to narrow it down. Be a little more discerning.”
“Says who?” He isn’t my boss. I’ve never seen this much stuff in my life, and I can’t believe it’s all mine. Most of my shirts have the Around the Mountain Resort & Spa logo on them, since I got a discount at the gift shop and gift shop clothes were a trendier, management-approved alternative to the staff uniform (blue pin-striped hat and overalls, which management stressed the importance of wearing while dodging the dress code themselves).
I grab a velour skirt from the box he just put down. It has a few holes, but I could patch them up easily with one of Violet’s (twelve and counting) sewing machines. “Oooh, I want this, too.” I swipe a Sonny & Cher shirt with a (broken) zipper that goes up and down the turtleneck and Wesley pinches the bridge of his nose.
What a Grinch. If anybody’s going about this the wrong way, it is him, ignorer of Wish #1. Violet held on to her belongings for a long time, so I can’t picture her being thrilled with our tossing out too much. If I can find a use for something, then I will. Wesley walks away shaking his head, and even though we don’t know each other and his opinion shouldn’t affect me, I can’t help but feel like I’m failing a test of adulthood.
I was fifteen years old when my mother was thirty, so that number used to feel a lot older to me, practically middle-aged. Watching Julie’s decision-making was a lesson in what not to do. I thought I’d surely be married to my soul mate by thirty, not necessarily with a teenage daughter in tow but definitely a slew of pets, living happily ever after in a cute cul-de-sac Cape Cod. I’d have a walk-in closet with sophisticated pencil skirts and chiffon scarves. A dependable best friend who was always there for me, thick or thin—a fiery, independent businesslady who brought out my sassy side (I hoped to develop such a side one day). We’d drink wine and laugh. Commiserate. She and her husband would double-date with me and mine, a perfect quartet. Perhaps she deserved it, perhaps she didn’t, but I judged my mom back in the day because I compared our lives to these arbitrary markers of success and wondered how she could be so careless. Like she could have had it all, if only she’d wanted it enough.
I’m now at the age my mom was when I thought she was a letdown and it’s terrifying to still be in this stage, bewildered, guessing my way through life on shaky baby-deer legs. No soul mate husband, no down-for-a-good-time best friend. Too many failures to speak of. So much of living is struggling instead of enjoying. And where’s the utopia I thought society would have leveled up to by now? Somebody sold me a bridge.
To prove that I’m capable of parting with material possessions if I want to, I make sure Wesley watches me throw away two whole bags. The bags are actually filled with other bags, but he doesn’t have to know that. When I catch his eye, I get that pang again. That oof right to the chest, when, for a split second, before the scowls and the curt responses, Jack McBride could be real. I miss knowing somebody out there cared if I didn’t text for a couple days. My daydream world floats nearby like a lifeboat, ready and waiting for me to drift away, but I’m a masochist today. I want that pang again. I want to hold his gaze for just a little bit longer and pretend he’s someone who cares. I am a sad, pitiful lady.
“When did she paint the house gray?” I ask.
Wesley frowns (it’s his default expression, but he has the standard I hate everything frown and the deliberate I hate you personally frown that he goes back and forth between). “What do you mean?” Glances at the house. “It’s always been gray.”
He turns around, already moving beyond the conversation. How can he not be as lonely as I am? How can he not be starved for human attention?
“It was pink when I was a kid,” I insist, unwilling to let him go.
The permanent frown doesn’t abate but there’s a subtle shift, agitation crossing into confusion. “How’s that possible? I’ve seen pictures from ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago—it’s gray in all of them.”