Orange Suitcase by Joseph Riippi

“Something About The Rest”
    1
    I lean back from the roof and wipe rain from my face—fingers smell like wet pine and cigarettes. My grandfather used to say he built this house with his bare hands. He laid these shingles and hung this gutter. Beyond the wooden peak and weathervane the sky is a dripping scrim. Are you watching me? I pull the green string of Christmas lights and hook the final length around a bent nail and wipe my face again. He pounded this nail decades ago. He carried railroad ties on his shoulders. He crushed rocks between his fingers and threw logs for fun. Now I stand at the top of the ladder and peel white paint from the gutter. Dry flakes fall away like fake snow, revealing more original layers beneath.
    I climb down and wipe my hands on the sides of a borrowed jacket. Sniff my fingers and breathe on my palms. You look exactly like your grandfather’s older brother, my grandmother said when I put on the coat. I watch her hurry to the bookcase, watch her come back with a photograph of a great uncle. He left the farm in Finland to go and fight the Russians, she said. That was the last time your grandfather saw him, you know, when your grandfather was still a little boy. She took the photograph away, left me to walk into the rain alone, not knowing how the story ended.
    I flip a switch in the metal box on the side of the house and look up. Less than half the lights work; the last reflects off a knot of electrical tape, one of the ancient splices holding the long strand together.
    2
    I walk into the kitchen where my grandmother sits with a cigarette and a yellow romance novel. She smiles when I open the door and looks back to her book. These books get dirtier and dirtier, she says, pretending surprise. I wipe my face with the sleeve of the coat that makes me look like a dead soldier. I kick my feet on the mat. The lights only work halfway again, I say. Should I drive into town for some new ones? She pretends not to hear me and flicks ash on a dinner plate. How often does she pretend? Maybe the aids are just for show. Maybe she smoked even when my grandfather was alive and this isn’t so new. Maybe she’s nothing at all like the grandmother I remember. I stand in the doorway and kick my feet some more, watch her not watching me.
    3
    She pretended not to see me take her car keys. She pretended not to notice when I took a cigarette from the pack hidden in the junk drawer. An hour later she pretended not to hear me ripping lights from the roof, replacing them with a brand new set.
    The rain fell fat and slow, like very wet snow.
    I wrap the clean white wire around the rusty nail and pretend I am setting a bomb to kill Russians; the sky is growing dark and no one sees me peel off the price tag and crumple it in my jacket pocket. No one sees me pick a scab on my thumb. No one sees me if no one is watching. No one will notice, I tell myself, not until January when my father comes to take them down, and I’ll be gone by then. I walk back inside. My shoes are soaking wet and squirt on the linoleum floor. Merry Christmas! I yell, to be sure she hears. Lights are up! She brings me a towel and a bowl of meatballs on mashed potatoes. I take off the coat; it is heavy and I feel more like myself without it. She smiles and sits next to me and pats my head, pretends not to notice the empty coat and puddle forming around it. She kisses my hair and sniffs it like a dog would a stranger.

Grandparents. Tacoma, Wa., 1942.

“Something About L—”
    I woke early; still black beyond the bedroom curtains. Rain dripped from the roof gutters and ricocheted across the restaurant courtyard. I rose and dressed; I listened to the rain and her breathing and tried not to wake her. In the kitchen I filled a dirty wine glass with tap water. I gathered my folders and the laptop from the table, checked the clock above the stove. I hurried back to the bedroom for my sweater and tie, watched her roll to my