Becoming April

Chapter Eight

Last night we'd made a verbal list. Number one was going back over to my place and looting it, May's choice of words, and the three of us trooped back over through our backyards.

The Grants had been the "young couple" that moved in next door to my parents while I'd been moved out, and they'd been on good relations with them until the end. Mother and Mrs. Grant had liked to talk to each other across a waist-high fence while they worked on their narrow yards, even joined the yards with a garden gate so they could go back and forth to each other's back doors easily. When the Grants had decamped to Florida and the Seevers had moved in, I'd expected to replace the fence with a higher, sight-blocking wall with no gate. That hadn't happened; May had loved the fence and especially the gate. I'd paid for yard service, but after my recovery part of my health routine had been to fire the service and do it myself. This last summer May and I had talked a lot across that fence while I mowed and trimmed hedges and she did things with her flowers.

Now looking at our yards I expected a wall would replace the fence.

"Papers," May said when we got inside and stepped into my study. "All your important papers, stuff you'd take with you or store if you were really leaving for an extended stay somewhere else and planned to rent the place. Anything else you want to take, too."

That sent me out into the rest of the house with empty boxes since anything I'd take or pack up included my laptop, my family photo-albums, my watches though I couldn't imagine wearing any of them again, all my clothes and shoes, my phone charger, power and computer cords . . . and I was stumped by all the personal keepsakes I thought of as uniquely mine that my parents and I had accumulated.

In the process of packing toiletries I'd never use, I cleaned out the tub that smelled of pee and looked like Sasquatch had shed in it. Then as I dithered back downstairs, May put Steph down on a blanket in the living room and went back to return with a bunch of office boxes, the kind you'd store files in.

"All the personal stuff," she said. "That includes books you consider heirlooms. If this takes more than a day it'll take more than a day. Hand off to me and I'll pack."

We fell into a system, me handing her items and May packing them in the sturdy boxes or setting them aside to pack when we came back with packing material to protect them. We worked in silence (May and I were silent—Steph happily kicked and burbled with intermittent attention from us) for a couple of hours until May stood up and dusted her hands off.

"Break time, do you have iced tea?"

I did, pulling the pitcher out of the fridge and topping our tall glasses with ice cubes as she sat at my counter with Steph in her basket beside her. "I'm going to go back and feed her, you can continue to pile stuff up if you want. Um." She looked around the kitchen, then at me.

"I don't think I need anything in here. Well, maybe my chocolate. And we'll need to clear the perishables out." Chocolate, in all its luxury forms, was my one sugary indulgence now.

"Good idea, we can make room in the fridge and pantry. But that's not— Um."

Now I was a little worried; one thing May was never at a loss for was words. For a single, stupid second, I thought that she'd suddenly realized how much this all was and changed her mind about moving me in and didn't know how to tell me. Which was dumb, dumb, dumb, and knowing that didn't stop the sudden hitch in my chest; I couldn't think of anything else that would stump her.

"Yeah," she finally said, looking at me. "Yeah. Carl and I heard you last night."

The words didn't make sense until they did. "You—what?"