Kitchen Light

During the weeks after I moved into Cindy’s house, I got into the habit of sneaking a cigarette on the back porch at about 11:45 every night. At first I did this because my eight-year-old liked to fuss and spout cancer and emphysema statistics at me, so I snuck out to smoke when I thought she was asleep. But I kept doing it even when Marigold was with her dad. This was because of Ms. Emmaline’s kitchen light, which remained lit late into the evening and often through the early dawn.

The back of Cindy’s—my—house faced the back of Emmaline’s, the big rear ends of Cindy’s afterthought back porch and Emmaline’s nineteen-fifties addition kitchen jutting out at each other, both skirting the property line in a way that was unsettlingly ungirdled and rude. So the light was close enough to be easily noticeable from my vantage point, and it didn’t seem like it was left illuminated for security reasons, because Ms. Emmaline, from what I could tell, didn’t give a crap about security, her windows and doors unsecured at all hours, the screen blowing open and slamming shut a thousand times a day because she never latched it. No, the light was on because Emmaline was doing something. There were flutters of motion through the curtains. These could have been caused by moths or stinkbugs circling the light, but the shadows were large, and the motion, though sporadic and agitated, was somehow too intelligent to be created by a bug.

I had such a bothered curiosity about Emmaline’s wakeful activity that I could barely tear myself away as long as the light’s hazy beacon shone through the thin curtains. I added extra cigarettes—one at 12:15, one at 1:00, another at 1:30, and it got so I was running out after a day or two, when before Cindy’s house, I could go a whole week on a pack. Often I found myself unable to sleep even after I finally resolved to remain inside, my mind restless and my body carbonated by nicotine.

That was the kind of night I was recovering from one morning in March, about a month after we’d moved into Cindy’s house. I was dragging myself and Marigold to the car to get her to school and me to a temp job I’d taken with a very old, very sleepy lawyer who mostly did wills. I was supposed to answer the phone, which had a rotary dial and never rang, and type up documents. I rarely had to type much of anything. Instead, I played solitaire on an old desktop PC and wrote letters I would never send.

As I struggled to balance my coffee cup on top of the car while I opened the door, I heard a little giggle inches behind my left shoulder blade. Spooked, I turned quickly. “Tired, aren’t you honey?” Emmaline asked cheerfully, adding a pert little wink. She was marching efficiently in place in a powder blue jogging ensemble as she waited for a response. She had the habit of power walking around the block and past my house at least fifteen times every morning while her screen door banged merrily and all the dogs on the street barked incessantly in protest.

I gave her a noncommittal nod as I got in the car and she giggled again and trotted away. I knew then she was teasing me. Baiting me, even. But that didn’t stop me from continuing to linger on the porch that night and the ones that followed. I took to adding beers to chase the cigarettes as I stared at those two lit kitchen windows, the thin eyelids of the curtains not managing to hide the frenetic activity within. Occasionally the light would go off early—around midnight or one—and I’d slink to bed, relieved. Other times it would outlast me and I’d skulk inside after startling awake with a lit cigarette hanging from my fingers, shamed. The game went longer each night until one morning in April when I was still sitting on the porch, my eyes tearing with exhaustion as they gazed past the orange cherry of the cigarette into the Edison yellow of Emmaline’s windows, while the anemic light of dawn leaked into the stars. At that moment I felt a genuine, a pure sense of surprise. Surprised to find myself in this moment, at this age (I never thought I could get so old!), on this afterthought of a porch, at this house, in this town, drinking a beer at dawn when I knew my daughter would be awake in a couple of hours, watching a disappointing show of a sunrise and staring intently into the windows of some old lady. The light shut off then, as if signaling that its goal had been reached, and I blinked, surprised too at this anticlimax, then went inside and lay in bed fully clothed without bothering to brush my teeth.

Marigold shook me awake. “Mom, what are you doing? It’s time to go!’ she yelled. She always had a way of treating me as if I were the child. My ex and her dad, Forrest, hated that. “You’ve got to make her respect you,” was his refrain every time she gave us trouble. “Quit letting her be the boss.”

But I didn’t really mind letting her be the boss. To be honest, she was better at it. She tugged me out of bed and I brushed my teeth, pulled my hair back, and changed into a wrinkled dress while she served herself a Pop Tart and a glass of milk for breakfast. We both stumbled out the front door, Marigold chiding me for not locking it fast enough as I fumbled groggily with my keychain, trying to remember which key only worked on the front door and which only on the back.

“Not sleeping well, are you?” The voice was high, the interrogatory swell climbing too fast. My keys slipped from my grasp and clattered to the pavement. Emmaline was bouncing like a lavender-clad boxer behind me, pumping her arms energetically. I could sleep, but not when her windows were lit.

“I sleep fine,” I said, as I crouched to pick up the keychain.

“She snores,” added Marigold. “And she sleeps in her clothes sometimes, too.” I widened my eyes at her in annoyance as I stood up, but Emmaline just smiled indulgently and walked briskly away.

At work, I made coffee and brought some to my boss before taking my own to my station at the front of the office. The boss sat in a green leather chair at a heavy mahogany desk and stared at what looked like the same document for two hours, holding a fountain pen that I suspected was for show only. He sipped the coffee, but so slowly that the level barely changed over the course of the morning. By 9:30 it was one-quarter gone, by 10:15 almost half. I couldn’t tell if he was ingesting it or if it was evaporating. I played a round of classic and a round of spider solitaire, then wrote a letter to Forrest in a Word document.

Dear Forrest,

You’re a piece of crap.

That’s all I had energy for. I closed the document, choosing, “Do not save,” and poured myself the last cup of coffee. It was only 10:45. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked loudly, its frequency aligning relentlessly with the ache that was spreading from my upper neck into my left temple. It blasted twelve lengthy and high-pitched chimes at noon, and I took two Tylenol with the rest of the coffee, now cold.

Forrest and I split after he got another woman pregnant. At first I was mad when he told me, and then I realized he was telling me not as a confession, but as a notification that he was choosing her over me and I felt sad. Then I just got pissed again and, despite my mother’s protests, inquired about moving into Cindy’s house. Or rather, the house Cindy had lived in. It had never been hers. But of course, I only lived there, too. Neither of us could claim it as our own.

I had a habit of living in spaces I couldn’t claim. I’d moved into Forrest’s apartment shortly after we started seeing each other. It was the sort of building twenty-eight-year-old single dudes with cubicle jobs lived in, a new construction on the outskirts of the city, the kind that has a sauna shower in each unit and a twenty-four-hour gym on site but whose walls are made of drywall so thin you can kick through it. I knew you could kick through it because I’d done it the day Forrest told me about the other woman and the other baby. Obviously we should have moved out many times—when I moved in, when we got married, when Marigold was born. But only I moved out—and Marigold, five days a week—and then the new chick—the new family—moved in. That woman would find out that dude apartment complexes don’t like babies. That those thin walls are a pain in the ass when your kid cries all night, every night, for the first six months of their life.

I played three more games of solitaire and typed one short letter for the boss before lunch. I never had it together enough to pack a lunch but had no money to go somewhere and buy one, so I sat in the car and ate an old pack of peanut butter crackers. My mother called me while I was trying to dig out a cracker I’d dropped in the crack between the seat and the center console. I didn’t answer. She left a voicemail. “Hi honey! Just wondering if the things I sent for Marigold’s room arrived. Just a few things to—you know—brighten up the place. I hate to think of the two of you wallowing around all depressed out there—you know Cindy and how she—well, never mind. Just make sure you open those blinds once in a while. I know you like sitting in the dark and all, but Vitamin D is important—.”

I tapped delete. I did not like sitting in the dark, had never liked sitting in the dark, but had, just out of college, worked the night shift at the desk of a chain hotel and had put blackout curtains in my bedroom so I could sleep during the day. From that point on, my mother assumed I liked to sit in the dark. She had sent Marigold a bean-bag chair and a bunch of big puffy stuffed animals. Marigold liked that kind of stuff fine but probably would have liked a PlayStation better since she was used to playing on her dad’s.

At 12:30 exactly I went back into the office. My boss was snoring gently in his chair, chin to chest. I could probably leave and he’d never remark upon it, but I again sat at my desk and stared at the PC screen. The phone rang. It wasn’t a familiar sound. I’d only had to answer the phone twice in a month on the job. It took three rings for me to remember that picking it up would stop the noise, which jarred my still aching head. I lifted the receiver. It felt oddly heavy and curved. I let it cradle my face.

“Hello, Law Offices of Brighton Philipps the Third, Esquire.” My voice felt out of practice and I tripped over “Phillipps” so it sounded more like “Billiths.”

“Hello, this is Emmaline Wright calling for Mr. Phillips.” She didn’t need to identify herself; the voice was unmistakable—high pitched with a well-controlled quaver, as if it were manufactured in an old-lady factory. But she didn’t seem to recognize me, and I hoped it would stay that way. I glanced over at my boss. He was still slouched in the green chair, his mouth slightly open.

“Um, hold for just one moment,” I said.

“Oh, no matter, Cybil.” I spooked when she said my name. “Just let him know I called regarding the changes to my will. Thank you, honey. And you sound a little beat down, you should get some rest.” She hung up.

I was bothered that she had been so sure it was me, and also that she had known it was me before I knew she knew it was me. I gingerly placed the receiver back in the cradle, then leaned back and looked at the clock. Ten minutes until three. I jotted Emmaline’s name down on a memo form and placed it on the boss’s desk in front him. He breathed out heavily, hitting my hand with a blast of warm, wet air. Then I went to the car to pick Marigold up from school.

I had forgotten that it was Friday, though. On Fridays, Forrest picked her up and took her to the dude apartment, where she spent the weekend being a bother to his very pregnant girlfriend, who was on bed rest now, for some reason. I liked this fact because she was a personal trainer and she probably thought she was above pregnancy complications. Apparently she had been Forrest’s personal trainer in every sense, even though, until he knocked her up, I hadn’t known he’d had one in any sense. It wasn’t evident.

So when I pulled up to the school, there he was turning into the pickup line in the stupid brand new truck he’d bought after we split. I ducked low, turned my signal off, and continued past the school entrance. He was on the phone and didn’t seem to notice me, despite the fact that I was driving the Camry we had shared for ten years. I returned home alone.

I could not decide if it was a relief to be home by myself or not. I had never minded solitude, but there was something about this house that made me uneasy. Maybe it was that, though the mattress and soft upholstery from the bed had been removed, all the rest of Cindy’s stuff was still there. Cindy was my second cousin. This had been her residence, though the house was technically owned by my mother’s great aunt Malvine. Malvine lived in a retirement community in Key West and didn’t want to mess with the house, so after Cindy OD’d and Forrest made his decisions, it was decided that I could move in if I cleaned out Cindy’s stuff and kept the place looking okay.

I hadn’t cleaned much. Cindy had actually been a really tidy addict so it didn’t seem necessary. The fridge had been the only thing I’d cleared out. It was predictably sad: a box of white wine, three quarters empty, a packet of expired American cheese squares, three wrinkled limes, and a bottle of ketchup. Like everything else in the house, it had been fairly clean, though it had smelled off, still smelled off, despite the box of baking soda dutifully open on the top shelf. The freezer had been a bit more interesting—frozen pizzas, half a pint of cheap chocolate ice cream, and what looked like a goldfish in a zippered sandwich bag. I had flushed the goldfish, not knowing why Cindy had not. Waiting for the right time to say goodbye, I guess. The time was never right.

Now I looked in the freezer for something I could eat and wished I hadn’t thrown away Cindy’s pizzas. They probably hadn’t even been expired; at the time it had just seemed in poor taste to eat them. There was one of those instant cups of macaroni and cheese in the cupboard—Marigold’s; I hated that stuff, but it was the only thing that didn’t require cooking, so I made it anyway. I turned on the TV and was watching an old sitcom when the doorbell rang with a very classic, very loud ding-dong sound. Looking through the peephole, I saw Emmaline, holding a glass casserole dish. Damn it. Her eyes goggled right at me. I knew she knew I was there. Damn it. I opened the door.

“Hi, Ms. Emmaline!” I tried to sound glad. “Nice to see you . . . again.”

“Hello, darling,” she replied, brushing past me and walking toward my kitchen with the dish. “You sounded so exhausted on the phone earlier—I thought I’d make you girls some dinner.” She looked around. “Where’s the little one?” It was good Marigold wasn’t home. She would likely bite the old bitch if she heard herself being called “the little one.”

“She’s with her dad for the weekend.”

Emmaline distorted her face into a grotesque pity mask, her mouth pressing downwards and her eyebrows furrowed. “Oh yes, of course. Poor thing being shuttled back and forth—and poor you, all alone! Still, you need to eat! It’s even a little warm from my oven, but I’ll just pop it in the microwave to make sure you get a good, hot meal. You’ll have leftovers for a few days, and I’ll take a serving home for my own dinner. I’m a single lady, too, you know!”

I made to take the casserole from her, but she put it in the microwave herself and set the timer before sitting at the kitchen table. There was a scattering of crumbs left from Marigold’s breakfast Pop Tart, and Emmaline pointedly pushed them into a neat pile with her index finger. “I sat here with Cindy many a night,” she said. “She was a lonely gal, too. Divorced, kids grown and not speaking to her, but you know all that—such a shame. I tried to help her, I really did. Why, I’d call your mama every day with an update. She was beside herself—she cared so much for Cindy.”

I didn’t think my mother and Cindy had been all that close.

Emmaline prattled on. “What can you do when someone is just so miserable they just don’t want to take care of themselves? She wasted away in this house, no one to talk to, no one to care for . . .”

The smell of tuna and something earthy started to waft through the kitchen. “Uh, should I take that out?” I asked, gesturing towards the microwave.

“Oh no, honey, let it get good and bubbly. Now Cindy, that one wasn’t independent like you—she needed people. She was just so needy. And as I said, I tried to help, but she started in on those pills and then that man with the drugs started coming around.” She shuddered with what appeared to be more distaste than fear. “Well, what can you do when someone is just so low?” The microwave beeped desperately. “Let’s get that puppy out now.” She grabbed a potholder and opened the microwave, which belched scorched-smelling steam.

The damn dish had to have weighed five pounds and was at a full bubbling boil when she fumbled it and dropped it on my bare right foot. I was too shocked to speak, and also too shocked to pull my foot out of the sticky wreckage of shattered glass and boiling cheese, which only made the burns worse. Still shocked, I drove, mostly left footed, to an urgent-care clinic where the nurse practitioner sent me to the ER, saying that the combination of burns, glass, and the broken big toe was beyond the scope of the practice. At the ER, they picked glass out of the top of my foot, splinted the toe, wrapped my foot in gauze, stuck the whole thing in a boot, and asked if anyone could drive me home.

“No,” I said. “I drove myself here.”

“Well,” replied the nurse, “We can’t let you drive yourself home. It’s a liability. I suggest you take this for the pain, call someone, and relax.”

I took the pill and ordered an Uber. The driver of the beat-up green Accord that arrived to pick me up was blessedly silent. He didn’t speak, didn’t have music playing, didn’t have the radio on. I tipped him fifty percent, which meant I’d just spent two days’ pay on my ride home on top of whatever they were going to bill me when they found out my insurance was total crap, but in the buoyant cloud of the pain pill it seemed like it was worth it—more than worth it, destined. This, I thought, was the best car ride I’d ever been on, and as I slouched in the backseat and watched streetlights gently flash by, I wished it could last forever.

It didn’t. As I hobbled woozily to my front door, Emmaline appeared from somewhere within the bushes. “Crap.” The word came out slowly and I watched it float past the top of her head.

“Oh honey!” she simpered. “Let me open the door for you.” She wrested my keys from my hand and fumbled with the lock. “You poor thing. Those thin, thin potholders—I guess you know now to buy some new ones.”

“It’s fine, Emmaline, really,” I said. “You go on home.”

“You girls these days . . . got to take care of yourself—no cutting corners. Now, I cleaned that mess up for you, just watch your feet—foot—in case there’s more broken glass. Going around barefoot like you do—a grown woman! And I made you a sandwich—all that casserole gone to waste because of that threadbare thing—I took the liberty of throwing it away.”

“Really, it’s fine, Ms. Emmaline,” I said. “And . . . if you don’t mind, I’m very tired, so . . . thank you,” I added for good measure.

“Oh yes, honey, of course. Now, did they give you a prescription to fill? Of course I’ll take you to fill it tomorrow.”

“Uh, that’s okay. Maybe I won’t even need it. But I can get an Uber.” I was out of money but would much prefer the silent paradise of John B.’s Accord to riding with Ms. Emmaline.

“I insist. I’ll pick you up tomorrow at eight.”

I did not want to be awake at eight, but I also wanted Emmaline to leave, so I said okay. Once she was finally out the door, I watched out my back window for her kitchen light to cut on. Then I opened a bottle of wine, poured some, drank it in front of the TV, and fell asleep with the glass cradled gently in my hands.

*

My mother’s phone call woke me sharply at 7:42 a.m. “Honey! Why didn’t you call! How are you? Don’t worry, Emmaline called this morning and told me everything. I thought I taught you about kitchen safety! Now, don’t worry, I called Forrest, and he and Callie are going to keep Marigold all week while you recover. You always take a long time to heal—when you were two you skinned your knee and I thought you were dying because it took six months to even scab up.” I knew that story. “So Marigold is taken care of, and I’ll come check on you tonight, and Emmaline said she could help you with your prescription and some groceries.”

“Okay, Mom.” I did not want to get a prescription or groceries with Emmaline. But fighting the combined forces of Emmaline and my mother to not get groceries and a prescription seemed worse than just submitting to the inevitability of the prescription and the groceries.

Emmaline knocked smartly at my door at 7:57. “Good morning! You look a little rough, honey. Did your mother call you? I’m going to take you to get supplies.” Behind her, I could see her car—a boat of an old Mercedes—idling in the middle of the road.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me get my shoes—shoe—on.” I hobbled toward the couch, where I had thrown my sneaker the night before.

“Don’t forget to get dressed, honey!” she giggled. I looked down at my T-shirt and workout pants.

“This is fine,” I said. She shrugged.

She drove me slowly to Walmart, where she parked not in a handicapped spot (though I could see she had a permit on her rearview mirror), but almost at the end of a row, near the gas kiosk. I grabbed a cart and leaned on it for support as she walked smartly towards the entrance.

“You do have your script, honey, don’t you?” I thought she was talking about a play for a moment—then I realized she meant my prescription.

“Uh, I think they called it in,” I said.

The walk to the store was interminably long. I counted steps—seventy-two to the automatic doors. Seventy-two steps leaning heavily on the cart. My foot, which had not bothered me much, was now warm and pulsing with a radiating ache. “Come on now,” Emmaline said. “Don’t dawdle, honey.” I dutifully walked behind her, limping now. At the pharmacy window, I stated my name and showed my ID. They quickly passed me the pain meds, and Emmaline surveyed me carefully while I put them in my purse. “Let’s get you some food now,” she said.

I let her do the shopping. Emmaline put things I never bought in the cart—canned tomato and chicken soup concentrates, saltines, tapioca pudding cups, a bag of apples. I did not want to eat any of it, but more than I didn’t want to eat it, I didn’t want to be there. The quickest way out was to buy the groceries, so I dutifully got out my debit card at the checkout and overdrew my account by approximately eleven dollars, then traveled the same excruciating seventy-two steps back to the car. My foot was burning now, and I took one of the pain pills, dry. Emmaline looked at me derisively while I did it.

When we finally got back to the house, Emmaline parked in the middle of the road, got out, and followed close behind me as I hobbled to the front door. “Thanks Emmaline, I’m going to take a nap now,” I said. The pill was kicking in, and I was feeling pleasantly warm, a full-body warmth, not the focused burning of my foot.

I grabbed the grocery bags from her and tried to shut the door, but she pushed her way in. “Let me put these away.”

I sat on the couch and fell asleep.

*

I woke up to my mom’s call. “Now, don’t take those pain pills as often as they say—you’ll be dependent—and you know—in that house, I just wouldn’t want . . . ”

“Yeah mom, I know,” I took a pain pill. There weren’t very many in the bottle. It didn’t look like fourteen, like it was supposed to be. When I opened the fridge to get something to eat, half of the apples were gone and three tapioca puddings forlornly stared at me with all their little eyes.

That evening, my mother visited. “Oh, you poor thing!” The door banged into the doorstop as she burst in, having unlocked the door with a key I didn’t know she had. “Now, don’t you worry, I went by Forrest’s and Marigold is being very well cared for—I have to say that that Callie is lovely . . . sorry honey, but she is . . . and so fit, even eight months along or whatever she is . . . you would never know . . .” I felt a little better because I was sure Forrest hated that she’d stopped by his place. Even more than I hated having her here. “Now, I know you’re depressed,” my mother was saying, “and that you tend to self-medicate . . .” I tried to tune her out. She did bring me some oven mitts, which I threw on top of the fridge, and a burger, which I threw in the trash.

An hour after my mother left, Emmaline showed up. She was carrying another casserole dish. I instinctively hopped back, tripping over my boot and almost losing my balance. “I brought you some chicken casserole!” she crowed. It smelled like fish. “Don’t worry, it’s good at room temperature,” she cackled. I took it. She tried to press her way in. Balancing the dish very carefully on my left hip, I used my right hand to shut the door in her face.

*

Late that night I got so hungry I ate the casserole, cold, directly out of the dish. It was awful, and I smoked a cigarette and drank a glass of wine just to get rid of the taste. Then I went out on the back porch. Emmaline’s light was on when I opened the door, but immediately flicked off again when I stepped outside, leading with my left foot and dragging my right over the threshold. I lit another cigarette. It was nice, for a while. The pill hadn’t quite worn off, and combined with the wine it made me feel cocooned, safe, careless. Even about Forrest and Callie—who wanted to have another baby at our age, anyway? Marigold was enough—Marigold. When I remembered she wasn’t with me I felt a momentary panic. But she was having fun with Forrest. And Callie. She was, as my mother said, well taken care of. So it was all fine. I was fine. I was euphoric, really. The cool air on my face, all those cigarettes buzzing through my brain, creating a pleasant vibration in the aura of the wine and pills. It didn’t even matter that Emmaline’s light was on again. The only thing wrong was my stomach felt off. My stomach, and now my throat, mouth, and whole spasming body.

I vomited off and on for four hours. First on the porch, then in the kitchen sink, then finally in the toilet. At first it was pink and chunky, full of wine and whatever was in that casserole, then it was clear, fueled only by the water I made the mistake of trying to drink, and then I just heaved nothing. Exhausted, I rested my head on Cindy’s matted lavender bathmat. I imagined her going to Walmart on a good day and picking it out of all the mats—a gentle, soft color, a pretty color. And now it was pilling and graying and ugly, and that she chose it on a good day mattered not at all. Tears stung my eyes at the tragedy of it, and I fell asleep staring at a grayish lint ball that blurred in front of my nose.

*

I was awakened by my phone. Forrest’s number. Shit. But when I answered, groggily, it was Marigold. Double shit. “Mom, when can I leave here?”

“Hi honey, I’m sorry I sound crappy, I got sick last night and didn’t sleep.”

“You sound okay, Mom. When are you coming to get me? I think Callie is going to have the baby soon and I don’t want to be here for that, okay? Like, that’s just gross. But Dad says that Grandma said I might be here for a long time.”

I shook my head as sleepiness gave way to irritation. “I’m going to get you this week, okay hon? You know what? I’m going to come get you tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

I took a Tylenol and made coffee. After I’d sat at the kitchen table and had a cup, which stayed down, I dumped the rest of the pain prescription in what remained of Emmaline’s casserole. I took the whole thing over to her kitchen door, opened the screen, which was unsecured, as usual, and, with some effort, lifted the dish over my head and dashed it to the floor, where it shattered, tiny pieces of glass skittering across the yellowed linoleum. I let the screen door slam behind me and all the dogs in the neighborhood set off barking. Then I limped back to my own kitchen and used a credit card to order more Tylenol, Gatorade, and a new orange bathmat, and when my phone rang, I silenced it.

Emmaline’s light wasn’t on nearly as much after that. I quit smoking, at least after five p.m., and mostly during the day, too, once Marigold was home from school for the summer. It seemed that without the energy of my presence on the porch, Emmaline could not stay awake into the night. Every once in a while I’d step out the back door to watch the lightning bugs in the trees and see her kitchen light flicker on, hesitantly, a half-hearted bait launch. But it would flick off again as soon as I stepped inside.

In September, Emmaline tripped on a piece of uneven sidewalk during a power walk and broke her hip in the fall. She declined in the hospital environment and ended up in a nursing home. My mother visited her there and called to tell me that she looked terrible, but I never went myself. The younger lawyer next door to my boss had hired me to work for her much busier practice, which dealt in divorce and family law, and Marigold suddenly showed unusual promise at the French horn and I had to take her to youth orchestra twice a week. So I really didn’t have time for a visit. Emmaline died of complications from pneumonia the following March. My mother attended her funeral, but I did not.

Emmaline’s family put her house on the market, but it has yet to sell. My mother says it’s because the neighborhood is declining—too many renters, too much crime—but I think it’s because that fat ass of a kitchen is just too ugly to attract a buyer. On a few occasions I’ve had a hard time falling asleep and have found myself drawn to the back porch to peer into the eyes of Emmaline’s windows. Each time they are dark, dead, and empty. And each time I’ve gone back inside and found that I can sleep very well.

*

This story originally appeared in Swing, Volume 3, Issue 1.