Sisters in the Wind(12)
“Lucy, there are other people here who would like to talk with you and give their condolences. Let’s not take any more of this gentleman’s time.”
She led me away with a firm grip on my upper arm.
* * *
One month after the funeral, my mother donated my dad’s clothes to the local thrift store. She didn’t mention it until everything was gone. We seldomly spoke in the immediate aftermath of my dad’s passing and funeral, but discarding everything in his closet seemed like a decision that should have included me.
“What about his watch?” I asked tearfully.
The last time I’d seen it was on his wrist in the coffin. It had been removed and returned to my mother by the funeral home before his body was cremated.
She mumbled something about it being misplaced but would turn up.
The next Saturday, she let me walk to the public library for the afternoon. I always brought my school backpack, but this time it was empty except for the contents of my piggy bank. The church thrift store was a few blocks from the library. I hoped my mother had taken his clothing and shoes to this location instead of a different thrift store farther away.
I cried with relief upon recognizing the maroon-and-gold baseball jersey hanging on the rack of men’s clothing. My dad had played two seasons for Central Michigan University. I was born the summer after his sophomore year.
The thrift-store volunteer sat behind a glass display cabinet that doubled as the checkout counter. As she completed the receipt form, I gazed at the top shelf of jewelry visible beneath the glass countertop. My gasp startled the lady.
The Seiko watch was in a velvet-lined tray labeled NEW ARRIVALS. The watch my dad had worn every day was priced at ten dollars.
Whatever bond I’d felt with Bridget was pruned at the bud.
My voice quivered when I told the volunteer to add the watch.
Later that evening I moved the watch from the front pouch of the backpack to an inside zippered pocket that held two individually wrapped sanitary pads.
I moved the dresser from the wall so I could attach the jersey to the back of the large, attached mirror. After I pushed the dresser back, I stared into the mirror, imagining my dad looking at me from the other side.
I silently asked him a question.
What else will she get rid of?
* * *
I resumed my freshman year after the holiday break. A few teachers at the high school asked how I was doing. A few of my dad’s former students approached me during lunch to give their condolences. They invited me to sit at their table. I joined them, but the awkward conversations never became less stilted. Soon enough, I returned to my quiet corner of the cafeteria. They went back to regarding me as the weird girl. They called me RR behind my back, which, I learned by eavesdropping, stood for Religious Robot.
There was comfort in the routines I’d had before my dad died. I pretended his absence was due to traffic, a teacher meeting, or tutoring a student. If I did everything the same, then I might have an instant when it felt real. Like when I looked up from my schoolwork at the sound of someone entering the public library. That moment of hope when I expected to see my dad. The glimpse of our former life was a piece of cheese worth the inevitable snap of the mousetrap.
While I tried keeping everything the same, Bridget made changes. Small changes, at first. She proposed replacing Pizza Thursdays with dinner at a local restaurant. Since Pizza Thursdays no longer felt the same without my dad, I agreed.
Bridget hired someone to clean the house each week. More precisely, she hired someone to clean everything except for my bedroom and bathroom. My dad had always cleaned the house, including my bathroom. He didn’t want me around toxic cleaning products. Bridget sent her clothes to the laundromat; everything came back perfectly folded and ironed. Bridget insinuated that I had been coddled by my dad. When I poured bleach into the washer after loading my clothes instead of before, resulting in white shirts with odd yellow splotches, I wondered whether Bridget was right.
God knows I hadn’t planned on a stealth retaliation plan. It just happened. When we returned home from our first dinner out, Bridget couldn’t find her reading glasses. I didn’t reveal the tortoiseshell frames I’d felt behind an accent pillow on the sofa. My silence gave me an unexpected glimmer of joy. If she could disrupt our routines and imply that my dad had been less than great, then I could create havoc in her life.
The television was another way to annoy Bridget. She began watching television every evening instead of reading. She kept the volume too loud for me to remain in the room. In turn, I hid the remote control. When she replaced the remote-control batteries, I dug the old ones from the trash and switched them back. It was petty but oddly satisfying.
Bridget seemed to have a lot of favorite shows for someone who hadn’t watched much television while married to my dad. It made me wonder if she had camouflaged herself to get close to my dad. And if he had been too trusting because of me.
By February, I rarely left my bedroom after dinnertime except to get sick in the bathroom. My stomach had become temperamental since the funeral. Bridget and I ate dinner together every night. We existed on low-calorie entrées from the frozen-food section of the grocery store. She bought fresh fruit for the centerpiece bowl on the kitchen island and constantly rearranged the display each time I ate something, which only made me eat more fruit. She eventually replaced the real fruit with fake versions so her display could remain perfect.