Son for Hire: Chapter 46

The next three days are busy ones.  With the way clear, the money to make it happen, and no jobs or other obligations hold us down right now Kiki and I set straight to work.  It is a funny thing, moving.  It is like an archaeological dig through your own life.  After the top soil of everyday clutter is removed you start to make finds, artifacts and mementos of another time left there by the ghost of someone who once was.  In our packing and our cleaning we come across all sorts of old stuff that trigger memories of a lifetime in the neighborhood.

We find old report cards and tease each other for subjects the other did worse on, which in turn gets us talking about some of the more colorful characters from our school days.

“How in the hell did you ever that A in Mr. Brown’s Physics class?”  I say.  “That old bastard was a tyrant.”

With a little smirk Kiki brings her hand to her mouth to make the gesture for blow job.

“NO!”

“Went from a C to an A in under seven minutes.”

“Stop.”

She laughs.  “You asked.”

“Oh my God.”  I face palm.

“He had a really nice dick actually.  It was…”

“Stop!”  I hold my hands up.  “I retract the question.  Ewww.”

A laugh is shared.  Our relationship was evolving right under our feet.  It was not long ago that Kiki would not have shared that secret with me but since the hospital and this whole moving business her respect for me had risen.  We now spoke more as equals and as friends.  She was still my big Sis but her role as my caretaker had come to an end, something I now realized I should have sought much earlier.  I think that having Evelyn in my life to take over from her helped to put her at ease about this transition.  With that weight off of her shoulders Kiki had at last been able to relax, open up, and embrace her youthful spirit.

We find a stash of DVD’s that we never had the heart to throw out and in the blink of an eye we are children again, laughing and reminiscing with nostalgic glee.

“Oh my God…Babe!”

“No!”  Kiki snatches the scratched and cracked case from my hands to ogle over it just as I had been doing.  “We saw this so many times.”

“I know!”

“That’ll do pig…”  She says, then we both say together.  “…that’ll do.”  We smile as the warm feelings flow.  The invaluable escapism that this movie provided for us when we most needed it could not be understated.  “We’re watching it!  Now.”  Kiki states emphatically with no argument from me, but as she opens it we find the case empty.  “Oh yeah.”

“Gone.”  I say.

“It was in the player when it was pawned.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll find it online.”

And we do and have damn good time watching it just like we were kids again.

The more we go the older the finds become.  On fading flimsy notebook paper we find a painting that I made with watercolors from  back when I was no more than five or six.  It shows a crude representation of Kiki and I standing on the street holding hands with big smiles on our faces, Kiki’s curly brown brown hair nearly the size of the rest of her body combined.  Beside us was a green car, our mother’s old hatchback, and apartment buildings behind us with a bright yellow sun and blue skies above.

“You still have this!?”

“Yeah.”  She grins.  “My favorite birthday present ever.”

“That’s right.  I made it for your birthday.”  I say.  I couldn’t help but think about the scared little boy that made this as I look over the art.  Other kids my age painted pictures of superheroes or animals or their parents, but for me it was always Kiki and me.

“Hey.”  She says softly as she places a hand on my shoulder.  “Don’t cry.”

I blink my moist eyes.  “Sorry…I just…”  I let out a bittersweet sigh.  “I remember this day.”

“Me too.”

“We had fun…until…”

“We did have fun.”  She gives me a little shake.  “Don’t worry about the rest kid, it wasn’t your fault.”

I look up from the painting.  “You took the blame, for everything.  You always protected me.”

She pats my cheek and plants a smooch on the other one.  “And I always will.”  Taking the picture and tucking it into a big hardcover book to protect she says.  “I always meant to get this framed someday.”

We were nearing the end.  Most of the furnishings had been hauled to the dump and place was looking empty.  We were doing what we could to clean it but the grime on the old paint and fixtures seemed completely impervious to any of the cleaners we had on hand.

“Fuck it.”  I say at last, dropping the scrub brush I’d been running over the window sill to no effect.  “He can keep the deposit.”

“Thank God!”  Kiki huffs and thumps back onto her butt.  She wipes her sweaty forehead then narrows her eyes.  “What’s that?”

“What’s what?”  I follow her eyes to see she was staring at the narrow space between my dresser and the floor.  Barely visible was the spine of a book, usually better hidden but I’d shift the dresser over as I was cleaning.

“Nothing.”  I say.

“Oooo!”  She squeals.  “Is that a porn stash!”  She scrambles forward.  “Ha ha ha!”

“Kiki!”  I cry, but it was too late.

Sliding the old photo album out into the open Kiki freezes.  She looks up to me and then back down to the album.  “You said you threw this out.”

I crawl to kneel beside her.  “I couldn’t do it.”

My sister turns the album to face and slides her fingers over the letters that spelled ‘Memories’.

“I couldn’t do it.”  I say again.  “There’s too much of us in there.”

She nods, seeming to understand.  Hesitantly she opens the cover to reveal the first page of photographs, echoes of a time before we were even alive.  They show our mother with a lean handsome man with a mustache.  In each of the photos he had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  It was Kiki’s biological father, a man she’d never met.  Our mother was barely twenty in the pictures, her long curly hair a near exact match to Kiki’s now.  The photos showed the very happy pair in various situations with their arms around each other, usually with a beer in their hand.  She turns the page to reveal more pictures of them, mother pregnant now, and then a few baby pictures of Kiki.

“Look at you.”  I nudge her.

She stares her infant self.  “Hard to believe that’s me.”

“I dunno.  She looks like a pain in the ass too.”

She laughs  and elbows me back.  “Asshole.”

After another page of our mother and Kiki as an adorable curly haired toddler, the mustached man notably absent, there are then pictures of the pair of them with another man.  He was a big man and wasn’t smiling for the camera, if anything he looked annoyed he was having his picture taken.  We only knew this guy as Frank, I never met him and Kiki had no memory.  Then there are photos with them and some friends of my mother’s.  My mother is pregnant again, not from Frank but one of the other men she’d let between her legs after him.  We didn’t even have a photo of my father.  There are only two baby pictures of me, one of just Kiki and I, Kiki looking very crabby at having to sit still, and one of mother with her two children on her lap.  The woman holding the children was smiling but there was no joy in her eyes.  There are a few more pages of pictures, mostly of Kiki and I playing or opening Christmas presents or running around at the park.  The few glimpses we get of mother shows a losing weight, the healthy fullness of the earlier pictures now gone to leave a dead-eyed sunken cheeked ghoul.  This was closer to the mother I remembered, the one with those hard hands and razor tongue.  And then, right around Kiki’s first day of school, the pictures just end.  The rest of the album is blank white pages.

Kiki closes the book and slides it toward me.  “I’m glad you kept it in the end.”

“Yeah.”  I whisper.  Taking the book I slip it into the bottom drawer.  No need to keep it hidden anymore.

Kiki and I hug and say no more about it.

A few hours after looking through the album I sit in my dark room, sitting much lower than usual as the box spring and mattress now sat directly on the floor as I had already taken my bed frame apart.  At my ear I hear ring, ring, ring.

“Hello?  Donald?”

I knew instantly by her cool cordial tone that Alan was there with her.  I let out long breath before saying softly.  “Hi Mom.”

“Is everything okay?”  In just two words Evelyn had read me like a book and knew something was off.

“I just needed to hear your voice.”

There is the rustle of movement.  “A problem with the rental truck you say.”  I could hear the concern but she couldn’t say what she wanted to thanks to Alan’s prying ears.

“I miss you.”

“Oh….”  I hear her gasp.  “Um…me too.”

“Christ, what’s the kid’s problem?  Calling at this time, we’re trying to watch a show here.”  Alan gripes in the background.  “Let me talk to him.”

“No, I have this dear.”  Evelyn says.  “Listen, Donald, whatever the problem is I am sure it’s going to work out.”

“Yeah.”

“Everything is going to be just fine Donald.  Okay?  You’ll see.”  She pours every ounce of emotion she could into each word, conveying through her warm voice what she really wanted to say.  “It’s going to be okay.”

“What are you, his counselor?”

“Alan!”  She cuts herself off before she says something she couldn’t take back again.

“It’s okay.”  I say.  “I didn’t mean to be trouble.”

“No trouble at all.”  She insists, wanting so badly to talk to me.  “Thank you for letting me know.”

“Sorry Mom, I’ll let you go.”  I say.  “Thanks for picking up.”

“Of course.  Is everything still a go for the day after tomorrow?”

“Everything is fine.”  I say.  “I just needed to hear your voice.”  I take a breath.  “I love you.”

“Mmm hmm.”  She says in a wavering tone.  “I’m glad.  Talk to you again soon.”

“See you soon.”

I hang up and place the phone on my chest, as if I holding the source of her voice made her closer.  I felt bad for bothering her when she was with Alan, but just hearing her voice had done a world of good.  Taking a deep breath I slowly let it out and feel myself at last relax.  Just two more nights here.  So close.  So close.

Chapter 47