Grime Read online

  Grime

  by K.H. Leigh

  Copyright © 2015 by K.H. Leigh

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  www.khleigh.com

  For Ms. G

  & the Mayhem Within

  My father is a son of a bitch.

  Was.

  Was a son of a bitch.

  It’s weird. It should come naturally. He’s always been a was, for practically as long as I can remember, but now that he’s actually dead I keep thinking of him as an is. Funny how our brains do that.

  The house stinks. I opened all the windows and doors when I arrived to try and air it out, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. The stench is deep in the paneled walls, the worn out furniture, the disgusting shag carpet that probably used to be avocado green but now just reminds me of that mildew that grows on sloths.

  Imagine that. Imagine being so immobile that tiny little plants and shit actually starts growing on you.

  I wonder when the others will get here. Gwen will be late. She always is. Was. Always was. Maybe she’s grown out of it. Jesus, how long has it been since I’ve seen her, anyway? Eight years? Ten? I didn’t even have her phone number. When she texted me last week I had no idea it was her.

  Dad’s dead.

  I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong number.

  It’s your sister, fucknugget.

  If it weren’t for the profanity I would have had to ask which one, because I didn’t have Val’s number either. But she never swears. At least in my mind she never swears. In my mind she’s still bubbly and shiny and eleven, even though sporadic emails and Christmas cards have proven otherwise. What’s her husband’s name again? Some little boy’s name, like Jimmy or Timmy or something. I wonder if he’s coming. Probably not. Probably staying home with the kids. Their names I remember. Andrew, Jeremy, Lilly. One of the boys does Little League and the other goes to art class, though I couldn’t tell you which is which. The girl plays soccer. I’ve never met any of them, but their tiny little lives fill every one of those emails and cards. Val never talks about herself.

  Then there’s Jamie. She added me on Facebook a while back, so I occasionally catch a glimpse of her life one scrolling status update at a time. She either has a steady boyfriend or a very specific type. I’ve never looked closely enough at the pictures to be certain if they’re all the same guy.

  Ben joked that I should make us all nametags and hand them the wrong ones when I see them. I told him they wouldn’t appreciate the humor. He said I should do it anyway, for my own amusement, but of course I didn’t.

  Even with all the windows and doors open and the curtains drawn back the house is still dim. It’s those damn overgrown trees in the yard. I doubt they’ve ever been pruned.

  I go back out to the rental to get the boxes. Now that I’ve seen the inside I realize I should have just got garbage bags. Maybe one of the others would have thought of that.

  I’m tossing the flatpacks of corrugated cardboard into the yard when a dented Hyundai with Oklahoma plates pulls up. Not a rental. She must have driven. Had to be at least twelve hours. I can see her through the windshield and wave, but she doesn’t wave back. She’s wearing some of those cheap oversized sunglasses, so maybe she wasn’t looking at me, or maybe she just didn’t feel like waving.

  She gets out of the car and arches her back. God, she got fat. No wonder she never put pictures of herself in those emails and Christmas cards.

  “Hey, Val.”

  “Hey.”

  Am I supposed to hug her? Shake her hand? I have no fucking idea. So I just stand here. “How’s the family?”

  “Fine. Billy’s got his mind set on doing a remodel of the downstairs bath.”

  Billy. That was his name. I’ve never been to her house - I’m not even sure what city it’s in, but I think it’s near Tulsa - so I have no opinion on the downstairs bathroom. “Sounds like quite an undertaking.”

  She nods toward the house. “How bad is it in there?”

  “Fucking disaster.”

  I half expect her to gasp in surprise and admonish me for using a bad-feeling-word, the way she used to when she was little, but she just sighs. “Figured as much. You the only one here?”

  “Yeah. I haven’t heard from them.”

  “I’m sure Gwen will be late.” She pulls a pack of Newports out of her jacket pocket and lights one without offering me any. Just as well, I gave it up when I met Ben. She doesn’t know that, though. “What’s with the boxes?” she asks. “You planning to keep any of this shit?”

  “No, just thought some of it might go to Goodwill or something.” In fact I hadn’t even thought about it that much. I just got boxes because that’s what you need to pack up a house. Boxes. Not trash bags, not dumpsters. Boxes.

  “I’m surprised you came, to be honest,” Val said between drags.

  “I’m surprised any of us did. We could have hired someone. People do that.”

  She shrugs. “We could have. But we didn’t. How’s Ben?” I must look surprised, because she smiles a bit.

  “He’s good.”

  “You two married?”

  “Next spring, maybe. Just something small. We haven’t really talked about it much.”

  My phone buzzes in my pocket.

  What time did we say?

  10 minutes ago.

  Shitturds. Leaving now.

  “Gwen’s on her way.”

  Val drops what’s left of her cigarette on the curb and smashes it with the toe of her sneaker. Like a flash of lightning I see her in pigtails, stepping on an earthworm, studying the pinkish brown streak left on the sidewalk with a look of smug satisfaction as she scrapes it off her shoe. Strangely vivid for such a meaningless memory.

  I open the Swiss army knife on my keychain and slice the plastic ties off one of the stacks of boxes. Val watches me fold up two of them before taking one for herself. Neither of us say anything.

  A pickup truck towing a U-Haul trailer comes around the corner and stops in the middle of the street in front of the house. The window rolls down and James Taylor leaks out of the stereo. How apropos.

  “Mitchell,” Jamie calls from the driver’s seat. Always Mitchell, never Mitch. She’s the only one I ever let get away with that. Or maybe just the only one who ignored my protestations. “Help me back it up the driveway.”

  I walk backwards by the driver’s side edge of the trailer and shout instructions to her as she eases up to the house. “Left a bit. More. More. Straighten out. You’re good. Keep coming.”

  Once she has it in park she kills the noisy diesel engine and climbs out. I don’t have time to wonder how I should greet her, because she pulls me in for a quick side hug, just one arm each, hip to hip. It isn’t as awkward as I would think, not like it would have been with Val. Maybe it’s residual from spending so much time snuggled up against each other in the womb.

  “I have trash bags and gloves,” Jamie says, reaching into the cargo box in the bed of the truck. She hands me a pair of blue gardening gloves with the price tag still attached and hefts an oversized box of those huge black bags people use for lawn clippings onto her shoulder. “Jesus, has anyone ever trimmed these trees?”

  She hugs Val, too, and for some reason it makes me feel guilty.

  Jamie marches up to the open doorway and we both follow her. She stands with her hands on her hips, surveying the room, then drops the box of garbage bags on a lumpy chair by the door. A cloud of dust swirls up from the impact.

  "You wanna do one room at a time? Start in here and work our way back?"

  "Wo
rks for me."

  We each gravitate toward a different corner. Mine has a bookcase with a broken shelf, covered in old magazines. National Geographic, Reader's Digest, Time. All at least twenty years old. I leaf through a couple, checking the covers for any interesting history, then start dropping them by stacks into a box.

  “Why aren’t there any lights on?” Jamie asks.

  "The power was shut off weeks ago," Val answers, shoving a bent umbrella frame into a black trash bag. "Apparently his bill hadn’t been paid in a long time."

  His. It's the first time any of us have mentioned him. Just a tiny personal pronoun that somehow makes everything in the room look different.

  Not just magazines. His magazines.

  I fill two boxes, three, then cart them outside. Jamie's on my heels with a bag in each hand.

  "Recyclables here, donations on that side?" I suggest.

  "What about garbage?"

  "In the U-Haul. We're going to have to take a couple trips to the dump before we're done."

  She swings the bags into the trailer and follows me back inside. "We've got a system going," she tells Val. "Want me to show you?"

  "I'll figure it out." She's already nearly cleared her corner.

  A few minutes later Jamie groans. "Fuck."

  "What's the matter?"

  "He had a cat." She's holding the inside of her elbow up over her mouth and nose. I walk over and see an open litter box, overflowing with feces blackened by age, under a desk against the wall.

  "Jesus Christ."

  "I'm not picking that up."

  "I think I saw a snow shovel in the garage."

  With her nose wrinkled, Jamie steps over various bits of junk strewn over the floor and heads for the garage. Once she’s gone the silence seems heavier. Thick enough to choke on.

  Three years, I think. That’s when I last saw Jamie. She’d emailed to tell me she was coming to town and wanted to see me. I’d had a brief moment of panic, unsure if she was asking in some vague, roundabout way if she could stay at my place - and if she was, would she be offended if I had to ask if that’s what she meant, and if she wasn’t, would asking make her think I wanted her to? Ben would have laughed at me and told me to calm the fuck down, but I didn’t know him yet. I was living with Paul then, and Paul just got annoyed with me. Such a pussy, he said. Terrified of my own fucking sister.

  So I cleaned out the tiny room we used as an office, just in case, and borrowed a futon from the neighbors, but when Jamie showed up at the front door she didn’t have any bags with her. I never did find out where she was staying, but I was relieved it wasn’t with me and even more relieved that she never mentioned it.

  We went out to eat at one of those trendy places just off Santa Monica, small plates and a patio. Paul came along, at our insistence, and it was fine. Not a life-altering evening, not a disaster. Just fine.

  She came back the next morning, from wherever it was she was staying, and we went hiking up Runyon Canyon, just the two of us. We didn’t talk as much, without Paul there, but that was fine too.

  “Mitch!”

  “What?”

  “I said, when’s the last time you were here?” Val has already moved on to another corner. Damn, she works fast. She looks at me with raised eyebrows.

  “Um. I dunno. 1992? ‘93, maybe?”

  “Bullshit, serious?”

  I laugh. I can’t help it.

  “What?” Val pouts. I laugh harder.

  Jamie comes back with a big aluminum shovel in her hands, the grubby barcode sticker still wrapped around the handle. “What’s so funny?”

  I have tears in my eyes. Actual goddamn fucking tears. I just manage to blurt the words out between gasps. “Val said ‘bullshit’.”

  It takes Jamie a minute to react, but when she does she starts laughing, too. Val looks back and forth at the two of us like we’re crazy. Not angry, just confused. Eventually she just rolls her eyes and starts stuffing her trash bag again.

  Jamie and I get control of ourselves after a minute or two, when we both see the shovel and remember why she went to get it in the first place. We look down at the pile of cat shit.

  “How do you want to do this?”

  “I was thinking I’d stand way over there and cheer you on.”

  I open a new bag and use some old newspapers to pin the edge of it to the floor, then lift the other side to open the mouth wide. Jamie grimaces as she tries to slide the scoop under the litterbox, and it just scoots along the floor for a few inches.

  “I don’t have any leverage.”

  I grab a stool and wedge it under the desk, pinning the litterbox between it and the wall, until she can get the shovel under, then I open the bag again. With a low moan she lifts the litterbox a few inches and swings it into the bag. I fight my gag reflex when the stench hits me.

  “If you guys don’t pick up the pace we’re gonna be here for a week,” Val says.

  “You wanna trade? What’ve you got over there, anyway? Cat shit? Is it cat shit? Because over here we have cat shit.”

  She ignores me and looks at Jamie. “Mitch says he hasn’t been here since 1992.”

  Jamie nods. “That’s probably about right. Sophomore year.”

  “You really never came back?”

  “Did you?”

  “Not much. But every now and then. Last time I was here was a few years ago, just before Billy and I moved to Muskogee.”

  “That’s more than a few, isn’t it?” Jamie asked. “More like five?”

  Val glances up at the ceiling while she does the math in her head. “Nearly seven. Jesus, you’re right. I didn’t think it’d been that long. What about you, James?”

  “I think it was our twenty-fifth birthday.”

  Our. It weirds me out a little that she said our, without hesitation. Like to her, it’s always been ours, even all those times it went by without either of us acknowledging the other’s existence with so much as a card or phone call. I don’t remember how long it’s been since I’ve thought of it as anybody’s but mine.

  “No wonder he let it get so bad,” Val said.

  There she goes again. Mentioning him. I feel a flash of anger in that cage deep inside me, the one where I lock everything down. I never can bring myself to say anything when I’m pissed. I just shove it in that cage and wish I had the courage to let it out.

  Jamie’s never had that problem. “What’s that supposed to mean, Val?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing, my ass.”

  “Jamie, stop,” I say, shooting a pointed look her way. She returns it with a glare, but keeps her mouth shut. Good lord. We’ve barely started and already there’s fighting.

  “I didn’t mean anything, I was just saying,” Val mutters as she ties off her trash bag and hefts it outside.

  Jamie picks up the shovel again and angrily scrapes at the spilled litter granules and shit from the carpet. I check the desk drawers. A few file folders filled with official looking documents. I set them aside to look through them later. “Jamie, help me get this thing out of here.”

  She steps around to the other side of the desk and together we lift it. It takes some navigating, but eventually we make it to the doorway and waddle outside with the desk between us. Val's down by her car, smoking.

  "So how's Ben?" Jamie asks.

  "Good. He's good. We're good. Are you still with that guy? What's his name, the..." I hope that if I trail off she'll take up the reigns and I can pretend it was on the tip of my tongue all along.

  "The dentist? Greg? Not at the moment," she grins, "but ask again tomorrow."

  "He can't pin you down, huh?"

  "Try as he might. Which isn't all that hard, to be honest. One, two, three."

  We heave the desk into the trailer where it lands precariously on top of some overstuffed trash bags. I look across the yard at the mess we're making. "Our charity pile is pretty small."

  "Nobody wants this shit, Mitchell. Charity shops don't even give it
to people who need it, they just sell it to fucking hipsters whose lives are so mundane they have to pretend repurposing cheap junk is some kind of meaningful hobby. No offense."

  "I'm not a hipster."

  "Oh, so the beard isn’t supposed to be ironic?"

  I grab her in a halfhearted headlock but she ducks away easily, laughing. She looks over her shoulder at me and like a flash I see her, and she's fourteen, maybe fifteen, and she's standing in this same spot in this same yard, her curly hair framed by that same window behind her, only she's not laughing. She's just staring at me with dark cold eyes. Then the memory’s gone, and we’re back in the present.

  Jesus. I think this may be the first time I’ve ever seen her smile at this house.

  I have no idea what my face must look like, but I can see what it's doing to hers. The laughter stops, her lips draw thin. For a moment I just want to put my arm around her. But I don’t. Instead I just walk past her and go back inside.

  From the amount of shit in the trailer and the yard you’d think it would look a lot better, but the living room is still a mess. The wall Val was working her way across is okay, but we’ve hardly put a dent in the rest.

  “Where the hell is Gwen?” Jamie asks from behind me.

  “She texted me -” I check my phone “- about an hour ago. Said she’s on her way.”

  I can practically hear Jamie’s eyes rolling. She steps around me and surveys the room. “I think it’ll help if we get all the big furniture out. It will at least make it easier to get around in here.”

  Another hour later and the furniture is all cleared away. I’ve managed to convince Jamie and Val to put a bookcase and a couple of chairs on the charity pile, but I have to admit they’re right about the rest. The sofa is stained and lumpy, and the frame has come loose in one arm. The coffee table is coated with a quarter inch of gummy sludge, hundreds or maybe thousands of spilled glasses of rotgut that were never wiped up. Nobody in their right mind would want this shit.

  The room does look a bit better. There’s still stuff everywhere - books and magazines and old plastic food containers, shoeboxes full of dead batteries, piles and piles of papers.