Original fiction · Chapter 2 of 2
The Address on the Envelope
I read Dad’s note aloud. Daniel stopped trying to open the door.
“I changed the locks because of her,” he said.
He’d found a letter while gathering records for the estate attorney. Our mother, Ruth, had asked Dad if she could come for the funeral when the time came. He had written back saying he’d find a way to tell us first. Then he’d put the letter behind the flour tin and, as far as Daniel could tell, never told anyone.
“Did you really think she’d take something?” I asked.
“I thought she’d come into the kitchen and sit in her chair.” He looked embarrassed as soon as he said it. “I didn’t know what I’d do if she did.”
We opened the envelope at the table. Inside was a copy of an old bus ticket and a note for me. Dad explained that Mom had left after they’d spent nearly a year arguing about her drinking. She’d gone to live with her sister, then into treatment. She called after nine months and asked to talk to us. He told her he’d pass on her number when we were ready.
I kept changing what I meant by ready, he’d written.
Dad had done my hair for school with the small yellow vacuum attachment because he could never get a ponytail tight enough. He’d worked an extra shift to pay for Daniel’s first car. I wanted to put those things on one side of the table and this letter on the other, as if they belonged to different men.
The address on the envelope was forty minutes away. Daniel stayed behind. He asked me to tell her he’d kept the rolls if she wanted any, which was the closest he could get to asking her to come home.
Ruth lived over a bakery. When I knocked, she answered holding a screwdriver. The kitchen cabinet behind her hung open, one hinge loose.
“I thought you were the landlord,” she said.
I had a whole speech on the drive over. What came out was, “Why didn’t you come to my graduation?”
“I did.” She put down the screwdriver. “I sat by the doors. You had blue shoes.”
They’d been turquoise. I’d spent three days saving my tips for them and the heels had sunk into the school lawn. Nobody at home had noticed the shoes until I came back with mud on them.
She told me what she remembered, including parts that made her look bad. She’d stayed away through two birthdays when she could have called. She could have asked her sister to find us sooner. Dad’s promise to handle it had been a relief at first. By the time it felt like an excuse, she’d learned to live with it.
Before I left, she took a key off a string beside the door. I recognized the crooked notch Al had made in the original so Dad could tell it apart from the garage key.
“Does he know I kept it?” she asked, then pressed her lips together. We both looked at the key for a while.
The next Sunday, Daniel opened the front door before either of us had to knock. Ruth handed him a paper bag from the bakery. He set it on the table and pulled out a chair for her. She sat in the one beside her old spot. Nobody asked her to move.
