What We Tell Ourselves
Shoshanna sat on the stump of the big elm she would skin her knees climbing as a child. She fingered the edge of a plastic baggie containing her father’s keys, still on a key-chain she made for him in first grade, a wine cork painted aqua blue. She had two days ago that he had died. On her front stoop was a manila envelope containing three pieces of paper and the baggie with the keys. On top of the envelope was a note in her landlord’s writing, “I’m Sorry.” The back had been slit open with a box cutter.
The copied section of the will had 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, no other sentiments, which fit the person her father had become after he remarried and had his first heart attack. He became obsessed with streamlining things, making everything quick and clean. Shoshanna had told him that he shouldn’t be moving the way he did, up and down stairs to check pipes, repainting the outside of the house. She told him that she understood that he was afraid.
“I’m not afraid of anything. I’ve just found the proper way to get things done, and I want my time doing them correctly.”
This statement, though, hadn’t seemed new to Shoshanna, who had known him to be a man set in his ways. He had always been a man of conviction; he had simply physically tried harder to keep others away in her mind. Her sister Daisy had said that he was in a panic brought on by seeing his own mortality, but this was coming from someone who lived with a husband who had three affairs in seven years, so Shoshanna had disregarded it.
The house had been a different color when she had lived here, brown, but now it was blanched white, and it was unclear as to whether this is something that was done by the firm controlling his will or her father’s own will. The whiteness of the house took the breath from her as she made it to the front door and there was nothing inside, no furniture or color, and she had retreated to the side yard From where she sat the tall facing the side of the house, the pine door stuck out like a wooden eye on a pale face. Shoshanna stared at the knot, three-fourths of the way up the door that she had sprinted at from the base of the elm as a child, jumping to slap it with her palm in a game. It was probably to taller than where her heart would lay, standing, and she tried to remember the last thing her father had said to her, not messages relayed through her sister. She leapt through holidays she had shown up to, crossing out seasons and settling on Thanksgiving of last year. She was positive his last words 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.”
Shoshanna was so focused on remembering that she didn’t notice the man walk out of the neighbor’s tree line and stand near her, though he didn’t notice her either, both of them staring at the house.
“Brown,” the man said, and this got her attention, forcing her head to turn and look up. The person looked weatherworn, 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 spring weather, as 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 bowl of hair that was see-through thin at the top. His bow tie was undone.
“Brown,” he said again, “I remember more brown.”
“It was,” she said, “But that was a while ago.”
Her voice stirred something inside of him and he looked down to her. The bird-like shape of his face made her run through a catalog of relatives and neighbors, knowing that he was important in some way, but unable to figure out why.
“Oh,” he answered back, “I think I was supposed to meet somebody by this tree.”
He paused for a moment, looking at the state of his hand and wiping it against an equally dirty pant leg.
“I’m Horace, do you mind if I sit and wait?”
She watched him rub the tips of his fingers with his thumb on his free hand and a shudder of recognition ran through her. Horace was the name of her imaginary friend from twelve years ago.
Shoshanna got up after a minute, and Horace let his hand fall to his legs, she gestured for him to sit down and he brought himself down slow, hands out behind him, like he feared he might collapse onto the stump. Shoshanna didn’t turn around as she fished the keys out of the baggie and put the biggest one to lock on the side door and entered the house she owned for the first time.
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The water still ran inside the tap in the kitchen, but stayed room temperature when she fiddled with the temperature knobs. The small splash that she lapped up to her face did little. She moved back from the sink and stared at the kitchen from the farthest point back, staring at the cabinets doors all open, their black interiors reminding her of the tall flutes of a pipe organ she had watched while her father had gotten married the second time. That church was as white and cold as the house was now. She thought that maybe this is what happens to daughters who lose a father and don’t know what to blame, that they see things in its wake.
Almost all of the doors were open, not just the cabinets, as she crossed from the kitchen, the basement door was thrown open, and she could spy the bathroom, her sisters, and father’s room at the far end of the living room, all ajar. The air in the house smelled like paint and dust. She slid out of her loose sneakers and ran her black socks over the cream white of the living room carpet, swaying her foot from side to side like a metal detector looking for the copper splotches from her cut knees. She cut her knees a lot as a kid climbing the big elm, it was something that her and Horace did when her father met the woman who would become his wife after his workday. Whenever she was let back inside she would leave a trail of blood from the kitchen to the carpet, where it would pool under her as she sat Indian style. Her father always hated it. But the cleaners had done their job and she couldn’t find a spec of herself.
The bareness of the living room made her itch, so she farther into the house, towards the room she once had. The door to the room was closed, and she felt fear going for the handle, like he would be there, on the other side, to scold her for leaving blood. But the door opened like a feather thrown, lazy and slow, and inside there was still a great whiteness but at its center was a mound of brown. Horace’s slumped form was in the middle of the floor, sitting Indian style, his hands rubbing his knees. He seemed to sense her, as the door made no noise, and spun his head so that one big green eye could look her all over. From here she could count the red veins. The way he looked was so different, such a juxtaposition to the grinning boy that fell out of the big elm, right in front her. She had been reading Nancy Drew, a really good one too, the case of the Whispering Staircase. Shoshanna had loved Nancy because she solved mysteries and didn’t rely on guys for help. Horace had landed on his back; limbs splayed and seemed as surprised as Shoshanna to be at the base of the tree. He stood and his clothes were a size too large for his thirteen-year-old frame. Shoshanna had made the tree sacred then, for having delivered her friend, and had spent as much time as possible outside with the tree and with Horace. The tree is where Horace slept at night; he climbed to the top branches and disappeared in the leaves, or in the winter climbed so high that she could see him from her window. She had protected him by laying down a ring of green army men, all in powerful stances, their rifles or pistols or radios raised to attack or call for backup from anything that would threaten Horace as he was asleep.
Shoshanna thought he couldn’t look more broken then he did now, as she walked in a large arc to his side, where her bed used to be. The closet door was open and Horace still stared up at her.
“The closet,” Shoshanna spoke, ”is that how you got in?”
Horace nodded, and slouched over a bit more.
“I feel tired. Can I sleep here?” he mumbled out.
“Horace,” She wasn’t sure of how to answer. This was her house now.
“My legs hurt like I was running.” Horace spoke into his lap.
“Were you running? Horace, where have you been?” Shoshanna got within distance of his long arms and stopped herself.
“I was trying to find the house, but its hard in the whiteness. I was supposed to meet the Queen of the Trees. Please, can I sleep here and wait for her?”
And Shoshanna didn’t know what else to do, he had fallen asleep in the middle of the floor. She left the room and closed all of the open doors so that they did not slam and wake him, even the eleven cabinets and the basement. And she left out the side door.
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