Nick died on the operating table a half hour after his last utterance. But grief pushed his words out of my mind. I chalked his ramblings up to blood loss. Drugs in his system, nothing more. In the days following the funeral I occupied myself by reading cheap mysteries from the used bookstore. My eyes ran over the words but I didn’t really comprehend them. I’d wake up in the morning and immediately make a pot of coffee. Then I’d wander back to my chair, mug in hand, and flop down with a book. Coffee and Oreos, that was my sustenance. That and an occasional Bloody Mary because I thought it created a nice balance of salt and sugar in my blood stream and it numbed whatever emotions that made their way to the surface.
Whenever I did get up, I would inevitably stumble upon some remnants of my life with Nick. A dirty coffee cup he’d left on a shelf, his belt carelessly thrown over the towel rack in the bathroom, the sneaker he’d been looking for tucked under the couch. The emotions I’d kept under control finally burst. Tears and more tears.
The thought of returning to work loomed over me; I just kept putting it off. Everyday in the weeks following the funeral, I really did think that before the day was over, I would call work and maybe just stop in for an hour or so. Not to actually see any of the walk-in appointments at the Portland mental health clinic, but to just sit at my desk, to smell the hint of disinfectant that was always in the air, to rifle through my old charts, and talk to the people who’d shared my office for over five years. I did try to adjust my frame of mind to make myself want to go, but sometime around one in the afternoon, I’d give up the pretense and shuffle back to bed. I didn’t have the energy to do therapy with the disadvantaged and downtrodden. As far as I was concerned there wasn’t anyone more disadvantaged and downtrodden than me right now.
One afternoon I passed by the mirror in the foyer and inadvertently caught a glimpse of myself. Something that I had not done in weeks. My wildly curly reddish hair jutted up every which way, seeming to defy gravity. Clumps were matted to my scalp where I had slept on it. Purplish bruise-like marks spread out beneath each eye; the rest of my skin was just about the color of Elmer’s glue. I stared, aghast
I pulled at one cork screw lock that was hopelessly tangled. “I’ll never get this out. I’m going to have to shave my head,” I whispered.
That revelation had passed through my lips when my front door flung open with such force that it whipped around and hit the wall. Light poured into my living room; I squinted and backed up. Samantha was there with the day’s mail in her hand. She looked almost superhuman with the light at her back and her form nearly filling the doorway. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a French twist. Her tweed suit was chic and form fitting. I wasn’t really prepared for company. I didn’t want any, not today, not even Samantha.
I knew she’d show up. She always did. She’d been my school yard play mate, my side-kick all through my school years, my confidant, my ally against the world and in the end, my family when I no longer really had one. She’d been by my side in first grade when Tommy Evans pulled my red curls hard calling me Ronald McDonald. She’d fought my battles with me, distracted me with chatter during study hall when I was trying to read Return of the Native, and held my hand when my mother was dying. Now here she was again when I was dying.
She’d been with me after the accident and at the funeral, but I’d discouraged contact since then. I wanted to be alone. She gazed at me for a few minutes and then took a breath, trying to choose her words carefully.
“I wanted to come by and see you. I’m going on vacation tomorrow.” She hesitated. “This can’t go on, Mackenzie. You did the same thing when your mother…”
“Don’t talk about my mother,” I snapped.
My years had never been measured by faded hatch marks against a white wall, but by the significant losses I’d suffered as a child. My grandmother died when I was nine, followed a year later by my cousin Bobby. His death was tragic, a motorcycle accident. He was only eighteen. But my mother’s diagnosis of breast cancer shortly after had nearly been my undoing. The two years that followed were a nightmare of hospitals, surgery, chemotherapy, and sickness ending with her eventual death. Cancer. The word doesn’t mean disease to me. It means grief, despair, empty aching lonely sadness. It ripped my family apart and left nothing in its wake.
My father disappeared into himself after her death and I haven’t seen him since. He shuffles about, hands in his pockets, a vacant stare in his eyes, refusing to reengage in life. In the absence of a parental figure, a bloody anarchy reigned in our home between my brother and me reminiscent of the Lord of the Flies. It continued until the day I left for college. My mother’s death was not just another hatch mark against that wall of losses in my life. It was three furrowed slashes that had taken out my whole family.
“Here. I’m going to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee.” She hugged me, handed me my bundle of mail and disappeared.
Flipping through the pile quickly, one stark white envelope stood out amongst the assorted junk mail. My address had been scrawled across the back with black magic marker. The return address was from a law office in Philadelphia. Davis, Lupinski & McBride. The words blurred across the page. A lawyer in Philadelphia was requesting my presence at the reading of Nick’s will on Tuesday. Someone will contact you after I’m gone. They will want you to go to Philadelphia. I could almost feel Nick’s breath in my ear. My hands started to shake and the envelope slipped to the floor
I must have yelled because Samantha appeared beside me. “What? What happened?” she asked.
She saw the paper on the floor and picked it up, scanning it quickly.
She was silent for a few moments. “What will, Mac?” She peered at me through darkened lashes. “Why wouldn’t he do it here, in Maine? Why Philadelphia?”
I chewed at the corner of my lip. I had told no one about Nick’s last words, his ramblings.
Samantha was now on the edge of the sofa. She handed me the phone. “Call them.”
I dialed the number to the law office and waited for a few minutes to be connected with Mr. McBride. The dead silence was interminable. When he finally picked up his extension, his voice was deep, his speech was rapid and pressured, like he wanted to speak quickly and get me off the phone. Nick did have a will, he said, but he couldn’t really tell me much more than that until I presented in person. It was sensitive. I tried to pry more out of him but he was formal, stodgy, and wouldn’t budge. He was going out of town and wanted to move the reading up to the following day.
“Two O’clock, then, Mrs. Weichmann? In my office. I’ll answer all your questions when you get here.” The line disconnected. I jumped up from the couch and ran up the steps.
Samantha followed me to Nick’s office. “What’re you doing?” she asked.
I didn’t answer. I pushed open his office door and scanned the room. Nick had been a slob. His drafting table was littered with papers and old mail. When he’d needed to use it, he’d just push all the stuff onto the floor. Discarded clothes hung from the back of his chair. Empty potato chip bags, an empty pizza box, a plastic coke bottle and dirty coffee mugs littered the desk and floor. The smell of worn clothes and mold hung in the air. I didn’t care about that right now; I wanted to find a copy of that will.
Samantha leaned against the doorway, one hand on her hip. “Are you going to tell me what you’re doing?” she asked again.
The metal of the file cabinet drawer screeched when I opened it. I glanced at her. “They want me to come to the law office in Philadelphia tomorrow at two. Where would Nick have kept a copy of that will, do you think?”
I began ripping through his files. Old tax returns from four years ago fluttered to the floor. I went to the next file and then the next. If the architectural firm had not sent me the life insurance policy Nick had through them, I never would have found it in this mess.
“I’m sure they have a copy,” she said.
“I know they have a copy but I want to see it before I go there. I don’t want to go into this blind.”
She looked at me for a minute without saying anything.
The silence made me glance up. “What?”
She shook her head. “It’s just nice to see you motivated about something, that’s all. Find the will, I’m going to your room and start to pack for you.” She looked at her watch. “If you need to be in Philadelphia tomorrow you better get a move on. It’s going to take at least half an hour to get a comb through your hair.” She turned and left.
I continued to go through every paper in that cabinet, every scrap lying around the room. When I was done, his office was a whirlwind of destruction, and I’d found nothing. My energy spent, I turned off the light and took one last look at the filth he’d left behind. Somehow this room seemed fitting with the rest of his life. And mine.
Less than two hours after ripping that white envelope open, I was stuck in traffic, headed south on I-95 to Philadelphia. My heart was beating a little faster than usual. My thoughts were rolling and spinning, doing back flips, actually. And I think it was because I knew, as well as I knew that Nick was dead, that this will was a bit of his past shining through a teeny crack in a vault that had been sealed shut for years.