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Stephen Ives​

Fake Ashes

 

    Rebecca still hasn’t found any evidence of her brother’s last wishes. She slaps his journal on his coffee table, certain that he wanted his ashes spread in the forest. She slides off his sofa and staggers through the French doors in a sudden wave of nausea. The wind chimes clang in the evening breeze, a reminder that Paul kept her gift in a prominent place years after he’d been hired by United.
     A pileated woodpecker cuk, cuk, cuks across the meadow and the vibrating chimes temporarily calm Rebecca’s queasiness. Gathering her strength, she pokes her head back inside. Paul’s urn sits on top of the woodstove.
     “Did you tell your girlfriends that your sister gave you those chimes?”
     Of course you didn’t. She imagines his snarky comeback. He wanted all his girlfriends to think he was the kind of a guy who bought wind chimes.
     “On your way to my wedding, you flew your plane into a mountain. I might never forgive you.”
    The chill air no longer helps her twisting stomach. “I know, not your plane, but somebody’s King Air you were ferrying across the country. A side gig, you said. You were taking a side gig to my wedding.”
    She raises her chin to slow her tears. She replies in a matter-of-fact tone that honors the memory of the way he laughed when she couldn’t keep her balance on his windsurf board off Mexico. She was fourteen and he was already a well-muscled sixteen.
    “I postponed my wedding. Then just yesterday, because of everything else, I broke off my engagement. Men. I’m not sure I even want one. Mom, of course, is speechless.”
    Sunlight burns through the clouds hugging the ridgeline, shooting across the valley through the windows and into Paul’s great room.      Rebecca relocates his modest urn from the top of the woodstove to the leather sofa. Normally she’d talk to Paul about why she suddenly broke it off. He’d understand her sudden doubts. Everything. Now she realizes he can only listen.
    Rebecca sits on the coffee table, facing him. “You’ve been gone a month,” she says, still crying. “Does it seem that long to you?”
    The vine maple casts its leafy shadows through the window, making her dizzy again. Her phone chirps. Sighing, she aims the screen so Paul can see it. If Paul could see.
    “I’m coming over,” her mother says, with the same tremor in her voice she developed at Paul’s funeral. “I made meatloaf and carrots. I’m getting in the car.”
    “Mom, you’re not.” She glances at Paul and rolls her eyes. “Stay where you are.”
    “Have you even talked with your fiancé? I feel so bad for John. And his family. He’s such a sweet guy.”
    Ex-fiancé, Mom. I know it’s easier to obsess about your daughter breaking her engagement than it is wondering why your son flew into a mountain. But you’re quick at changing the subject, going from a jab to an uppercut. All through high school we drilled tae kwon do in the converted garage, brother and sister, never realizing that you, an expert practitioner of words, were our primary motivator. Not our ex-marine dad.
    “A week before the wedding! How could you?”
    Sunlight warms the side of Paul’s urn. Rebecca touches the silver plaque engraved with his name. “My brother died. I changed my mind.”
    Her mother ignores this. “A wedding is healing. It can still be healing. If you at least talk to John then maybe the two of you could reschedule? Most plane tickets are good for a year. He could help you in your grief. The caterer probably still has an open date.”
    Reschedule their relationship? Her brother would have been the one she commiserated with about her marriage doubts, because while her fiancé pledged to support her through her grief and beyond, it was at best a generic declaration. Even before Paul flew into a mountain, she realized that her fiancé had made no effort beyond learning about her favorite food, her favorite music, or how she liked her neck massaged. When her brother died, he had absolutely no clue what she needed.
    “Mom, try to understand this: You can go from boyfriend to fiancé, but when you get demoted back to boyfriend it usually means it’s over.”
    She brushes away her tears, relieved her mother can’t see them and use them against her because, yes, John is a sweetheart. Fearful of what she might say next, Rebecca abruptly ends the call. She dumps her half-filled goblet of wine in the kitchen sink. Dark clouds are now blocking the sun. She turns to Paul. 
    “Wait for it.”
    The phone starts chirping.
    When she answers, her mother is still talking. “…besides, you shouldn’t be alone in that house. We’re due to get thunderstorms. That house is mostly glass.”
    That house? Rebecca gently leans Paul’s journal against his urn. “We’re fine.”
    “Who’s we?”
    “Paul and me.”
    “You took his urn?”
    “I brought him home.”
    “His interment is tomorrow!”
    Rebecca shakes her head. “I know.”
    “You need to eat,” her mother adds, as if a lack of calories might explain why Rebecca kidnapped her brother’s ashes. “You came back from that run this morning and you practically fainted. You could hardly stand.”
    That’s true. But she’s not going to admit it. Obviously, she should have booked a hotel instead of staying with her parents. But she foolishly believed she could help them in their grief. At least her mother needed her. Her father, guilty of many things, passively sat in his recliner watching how to fix things on YouTube without ever actually fixing anything.
    “That was cruel what you and Paul did, planning for Paul to walk you down the aisle instead of your father. He worked his tail off to give you a good education. And what do you do with it? You proofread fantasy books.”
    Dad gave me an education all right, plus I’m an editor now, so shut the fuck up, Mom. She doesn’t say this out loud, but she nevertheless feels the negative vibration in her entire body for thinking it. You stayed silent when we stood at attention, naked, after our baths, so we could pass inspection for our gunnery sergeant dad, a practice he continued until I was ten and Paul was twelve. The two of us dropping our towels for this faux military review.
    “Rebecca, did you hear what I said?”
    Rebecca feels an overwhelming sadness because her mother was incapable of intervening, hiding instead behind a fragile, burden-enduring façade. She chose her husband over the well-being of her children because admitting their father’s abuse would make her look bad.
    “Rebecca!”
    “Whatever you do, Mom, do not come over.” She pushes end and drops the phone on the ottoman. Distracted, she squats down and pulls open the woodstove with a loud squeak. She looks at Paul.
    “If you still want to sleep in the woods for eternity instead of being stuck in a cold mausoleum, we have options. We can trade fake ashes for you.”
    The phone rings. She clangs the stove door shut. She turns off the ringer; outside, the wind chimes clank together in a pinkish sound. She steps onto the deck and into a gust of wind. The grasses flatten in the meadow, the trees rustle and the leaves pull on their small twigs, trying to escape the echo of her mother’s shame. How can I face these people? My son is gone and now you leave them with their airfares, their hotel reservations, their brand-new clothes. I can’t even properly bury my son who chose to be cremated. Then you leave your fiancé and my only chance for grandchildren. For God’s sakes, you’re thirty-seven.
    Rebecca worries that she tossed her wine prematurely. Back in the kitchen she finds a page ripped from Paul’s journal taped to the upper cabinet door. When did she do that? Had she found evidence of his final wishes?
    She starts reading mid-sentence. “…most believe that, by maintaining certain attitudes and strategies, one can live a life without heartbreak.”
    Unless both engines on your King Air fail simultaneously! If that isn’t heartbreak, what is?
    “Living without heartbreak is the same lie that religion and brokerage houses sell, the same hype pushed before opening day for any team in any sport. A comingling of marriage vows and the Pledge of Allegiance.”
    Rebecca doubts her brother talked like this to anyone, especially in the community of fellow triple-seven pilots. After years of flying, he finally achieved first officer on that desirable route, San Franciso-Paris, with long layovers in the City of Light. Rebecca had to call two former French girlfriends with the news of her brother’s fate, which was hard, but at least they sobbed mostly in English.
    “Being alive is risking suffering in a violent, heartless, and random world.”
    Oh my. Disproportionate emotion? Or the incompetence of people storing aviation fuel in underground tanks, allowing water infiltration? The investigators know the cause of the accident. Bad fuel. A plane that fueled up at the same airport after Paul did made an emergency landing ten minutes after takeoff.
    “Misery and joy are affected by attitude,” he wrote, “but random circumstance will occasionally eclipse attitude.”
    Who does he think he is? What do plane crashes have to do with attitude? She presses her hand against her sternum. How can she be nauseated if she hasn’t eaten?
    She glances outside. The trees are trying to signal her in the wind.
    She’d taken six hours of private flying lessons with her brother. She knew the helpless feeling of falling sideways in a stall, probably the reason she stopped flying with him.
    And what was your outlook, Brother, after you exhausted every emergency restart procedure? When you saw there were no logging roads to land on and your wings were ten feet above the tops of the snow-laden firs genuflecting in the bright sun? You knew a sudden, hard-to-survive stop was coming, but everything was slowing down, elongating, like stretching a clock made of Silly Putty.
    Rebecca collapses on the sofa next to her big brother, who once teased her about her overwhelming subjective power when she became the youngest full editor at Solstice Books. 
    “I have four authors now,” she tells him, knowing he’d be proud. 
    “I am proud,” he answers. “But the fate of a hundred other writers rests solely in your hands. That should scare you.”
    Rebecca hurries to the powder room and dry heaves. The wind creates a negative air pressure on the vent pipe protruding through the roof, causing the water in the toilet bowl to bob below the permanent stain line, and the only reason she knows this is because one of her rejected writers wrote about it.
    The wind knocks on a loft window, wondering where she is. She flushes the toilet and watches her spit circle in the bowl.
    She opens the refrigerator, hoping for yogurt, but the shelves are bare. She thumps the door closed and another page, ripped from his journal, is taped crookedly to the stainless steel surface. She straightens the page and reads.
    “If you’re unhappy with your middle-class existence…”
    Was he talking about her?
    “…because your equities are tanking and your new car got a door ding at Costco, or because you can’t find a stylist who understands you, even when you give them photos of celebrity hairstyles you want to emulate, then you’ll be woefully unprepared when the big one hits.”
    Ouch. I like my hair short. I get it cut shorter each time I go.
    “Because eventually you will get cancer. You’ll push your workouts too hard and tear a muscle. Your team will lose. Your team’s plane will crash. Your partner, your future children, grandchildren, and your friends will all suffer sudden, catastrophic ends.”
    Rebecca closes her eyes and opens them. She rips the page from the refrigerator and crumples it. She tears down the pages taped to the kitchen cabinet, the stairwell, and the inside of the entry door. She tosses them in the woodstove, strikes a match, and sets them on fire.
    At least a part of you will be in your fake ashes.
    She lies on the sofa and opens his journal to a random page, reading how “dark” realities might allow her to appreciate the color of the jay at the feeder or that autumn is a beautiful journey to the winter camp of her heart.
    This has to be a joke. A trap. Maybe he suspected that one day she would edit him like she edits everyone, everywhere.
    The great room is darker now, and the wind, running ahead of the storm, flexes the large windowpanes. The screen of her phone lights up, another silent shout from Mom. Rebecca wonders if Paul’s written words are forming the concepts she’s currently imagining or if she’s dreaming they are. That’s her problem. Are ideas flowing from Paul’s journal into her mind, the way it should be, or is her mind migrating back into his journal? Stuck in this forest of random words, she tries re-forming them into new and better concepts, as if her brother’s imaginative ideas are mere stepping stones across a river of ambiguity.
    She closes her eyes. She pictures the sun on a hazy August morning, a day destined to be hot, when her brother was alive and everything was different. She stands beside her all-knowing shadow because there’s time enough to witness watermelons fatten in the heat and to hear a dog snoring on a nearby porch.
    Paul’s journal no longer bears printed words, and those tiny symbols—characters some would say—now float off the page and drift out the French doors and into the wind to circumnavigate the world, to rearrange themselves into the ingredient list for Cheerios, the theory of gravity, or a suicide note scribbled on the back of a grocery list, only to be read aloud by a jaded detective. “Look, he misspelled ‘depressed’.”
    An alphabet cloud forms in the high ceiling above the sofa. She remembers the things she hadn’t told him, her only brother, before he died. Her doubts about getting married. She understands the arrogance behind her editorial position, but she believes her standards are obviously the same high standards as her fellow editors.
    She sets the journal aside, pulls on her coat, grabs Paul’s urn, and crosses the road into the woods. The trail is significantly darker than the surrounding evening. She doesn’t fear the groaning, snapping trees rocking overhead. It’s the time of day for this to happen, the time of year, the decade, the century. Her world, a tiny speck in a universe of specks, has its own kind of time, a measurement not useful in other galactic locations, places with colossal seconds and gargantuan hours, and yet in this instant she asks the forest to pause as she hikes up the hill, at least until she finds her way to the end of her thought. Whereupon she opens the urn and spins Paul into the wind that carries the most recent moment in the history of moments, which is something he might say, and in the dark, she strains to hear him say it.
    Instead, the first heavy raindrops start nipping at the leaves.


 

Sean Ewing Crimson_Elegance.jpg

THE COURTSHIP OF WINDS

© 2015 by William Ray

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