Shoshanna sat on the stump of the big elm she used to climb up and scrape her knees as a child. Her father hated the elm for that reason, she always walked back inside with bloody knees that left droplets across the clean floor of the kitchen, leading to the living room where she sat Indian style in front of cartoon show. There were brown marks on the carpet from where she always sat, right in front of the circular dents of where the coffee table had stood. Now there was nothing in the living room, or the kitchen, or the attic, nothing that was hers. It was too shocking at first, to see all of the whiteness where things had been, not color, but things had been there, in the living room. Things she thought she missed as she sat on the stump and looked at the wood door that led into the garage, and how the knot she had to jump to slap with her palm, a childhood game with her sister, was no higher then where he heart was standing up.
The realtor office has mailed her the keys and she sat with them on her lap. They said it was in the will, that “He had requested the transport of keys through manila envelope to his youngest daughter, who had liked the house the most”. She found it on her doorstep to her apartment with a note that said, “I’m sorry” in her landlord’s handwriting. As she threw her things inside she saw that the envelope had been slit with a box cutter. It was something that she had put up with while living there, slight invasions to her privacy meant the rent stayed cheap. The contents of the letter were thin, only a few sheets of paper and a plastic sandwich baggie with her father’s keys, four in tarnished silver, still on the key ring she had made him in back in second grade, a wine cork that each kid got to color with a carefully drilled screw attached to a ring. She ran her finger over the spots where the acrylic paint still clung on, and tried to picture if she painted a red fish or blue one for him.
The traffic across Eyeball Bridge was as steady as ever. She had the papers they mailed in the passenger seat and she kept glancing at them whenever a car got enough distance in front of her. The letter told her that her father’s place on the south shore was hers, no obligations, the deed was enclosed as well, as well as a milky, photocopied section of the will Shoshanna hadn’t known he made with his new wife. It read:
“To my youngest daughter Shoshanna I leave the house and everything that’s inside. She has been the most dear to me, and I want to leave it to her.”
That was it, two small sentences and no other sentiments, but she thought it was fitting, lined up with how her father worked, he had become obsessed with streamlining things. He had decided that quick and clean was the best way to do things. Shoshanna had told him that after the heart attack that he shouldn’t be moving the way he did, up and down the stairs to check the pipes, all of the cleaning, repainting the outside of the house. She had said that she understood that he was afraid.
“I’m not afraid of anything. I’ve just found the proper way to do things, and I want to spend some time doing things correctly.”
No daughter can force their father off of a ladder, nor tare a bucket of paint out of his hands, even if they say they’ll leave if he doesn’t come down. Because every father will always have the upper hand and say, “Hey, don’t feed me your lip, this is my house, and you don’t fucking live here anymore.”
The house was a different color than the last time she had been here. It had been blue, well he had been painting it blue from his ladder and now it was white. As Shoshanna got out of the car she thought that maybe this was done by the company, that they do this to houses, turn everything white, blanche all the color away, so that who ever gets it, doesn’t have to remember what lived there before. She left the papers in her car and cupped the sandwich baggied keys in her jacket pocket. Through the bay window at the front steps she could see the place cleaned, no furniture, no tacky wallpaper with the design that Shoshanna had called “wood diamonds” and her father had laughed.
“They sure do,” he said.
Something told her to keep the keys fresh and she walked away from the front door to the side, and saw the missing elm. And she knew her father had done this and terrible guilt welled inside of her that she knew couldn’t really be hers. The elm was a great thing, a thing to climb and play, and she had found solace with it a lot of the times. When summers were too hot she would sit underneath it and read her sister’s Nancy Drew books and when winter came she and her father used its big trunk as a target was snowball contests. It was where she found her imaginary friend.
The top of the stump had a ragged cut that was done at an off angle by her father’s electric power saw and when she sat down she had to spring back up and ease herself down again for it to feel okay. She pulled the keys out of her pocket and laid them in her lap and tried to figure out why someone needed to keep keys fresh, and what the fuck she was supposed to be doing here. She tried to remember the last time she had even talked to her father, what were the last words she had heard him say to him and not relayed through her sister. She leapt through past holidays she had been in town and been willing to bring herself over, crossing out seasons in the past seven years and settling on Thanksgiving of last year. She was positive his last words to her were “That’s really big.” It was in reference to the amount of wine in her glass. She had smiled at him and said, “ Go figure.”(Get back to this).
The person behind the seated Shoshanna hadn’t noticed she as she hadn’t noticed him. They were both in too deep of thought about something, her about her father’s voice and him about the general state of the house.
“Brown,” the man said. And this got Shoshanna attention and forced her head to turn and look up. The person was staring, open mouthed at the house, he was missing a top tooth, she could see the gap. The boots he wore were caked with mud up to the ankle and the tweed suit he wore seemed too much for the warm fall weather, and so did the wool slacks, both of which were torn at the joints and spattered with black muck. His hook nose seemed comically red and broken at the bridge, with eyes sunken back farther than they should, hidden behind a wild hair that was see-through thin at the top. His bow tie was undone.
“Brown,” he said again, “I remember more brown.”
There was a moment where she thought he would still talk, but realized he had no idea she was there and continued to stare.
“It was,” she said, “But that was a while ago.”
Her voice seemed to stir something inside of him, and still slack jawed her wandered his eyes over Shoshanna. “Do you know the Castles?”
His tone was slow and concentrated, like he was ready to be tricked.
“Yeah,” she said. “This is my house.”
The words fell heavy out of her mouth , like her tongue had pushed out a bunch of stone marbles, and she rolled her tongue in her mouth to taste for copper.
“Oh,” he said, still staring at her, then back to the house. “I was supposed to meet somebody by this tree. Do you know what happened to the tree?”
“Yeah, it changed like the house.” Shosanna said and straightened up off the stump.
“Oh,” he said again, and now without looking he extended a dirty hand out towards her chest. “I’m Horace, do you mind if I sit and wait?”
She watched him rub the tips of his fingers with his free hand and didn’t speak for a little bit. Horace was her imaginary friend’s name. She moved away from the extended hand and gestured for him to sit and he did, crossing his legs and running a hand through stubble he seemed surprised to have as she backed her way to the garage door and watched him touch his thumbs to his finger tips in swirls. She popped the baggie and fished out the side door key.
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