Grime by K.H. Leigh

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