lettersfromtheeeeend

[lettersfromtheeeeend]

Letters From the End

The map

Small things were easy to steal: gum, a pen, lipstick and lipgloss, a firecracker, a glass, a hot dog, a toy truck, a thimble, another thimble, a bell, a nose, a hot glue gun, a piece of toast, a string cheese, a map. The last object I might not have stolen so much as found. It also wasn’t a map, in the traditional sense.

I’d been by the water, contemplating suicide, when I first noticed it out by the cliffside. The paper rested beneath a perfectly round stone that just barely kissed the lip of the rock face. 

The day came across as uncaring. The atmosphere mixed well with dark, self-pitying thoughts. Water whipped against black crags that leaned away from the ocean in long, sheer edges. Overcast skies carried a certain brightness that hurt my eyes after such a long winter. A pathetic wooden fence and overbearing sign suggested that I go no further than the designated area. I hardly considered it before carefully putting one leg over the barrier, the pilled thighs of my sweatpants catching warning splinters. I could see myself toppling over the edge of the cliff only to have someone then find the very same note and assign it to my mangled corpse. I shuddered to think. Bernie hadn’t left a note at all, rude of him. 

The moss along the edge had grown slick and one uneasy step convinced me to get on my belly in order to slide towards the note. I felt my asshole travel slightly further up into my body as a bit of spray lashed up and licked the very top of my brow from over the side. Another king tide and the letter might have been lost forever. A tight pinch and yank at the corner of the note rescued it from the rock. With the light steps of a woman trying to look inconspicuous I returned to relative safety, not dead. 

I opened the paper, a single piece of white limp material folded into fourths. It took delicate hands to peel it apart without tearing along the creases. As I unfolded my nose ran furiously and I wiped snot onto the back of my fleece sleeve. It read:

That was disgusting. 

This message felt very pointed. I folded the paper back into the fourths, frowning at the effort I had put into such a fruitless undertaking. After reading the short phrase I questioned its intent as a suicide note. That was disgusting could have been a simple, final remark on the total lived experience. Though if that was the case then I couldn’t totally disagree. 

I tucked the piece of paper back into the breast pocket of my coat, got back into my mother’s station wagon and began to sob violently. I scanned the radio until I found the saddest possible song and then sang along to the lyrics while driving the 15 minutes back to Eddyville. 

When you hold me, yes, the hurt’s all gone. When you kiss me, yes, the hurt’s all gone.

“You look tired,” my mother was a ball, not in the fun way. She had always been a bit round, a series of circles. Her iron white hair remained perpetually wrapped up in a tight orb that balanced effortlessly atop her small head. Ukrainian by birth, Russian by occupation, she resembled the final baby in a matryoshka doll. At five foot one, I could imagine putting her in my pocket, traveling around with her as she made constant observations. In many ways she already lived in the back of my mind. Her taut body had a strange barrel quality, as if she might roll easier than walk. It looked gymnastic, muscles coiled at all times, spring-loaded. She could not be still for more than a moment if she wasn’t smoking.

 “Is there anything more beautiful than morning?” my mother asked. This statement, in her backwards way, might have been a commendation for me finally getting out of bed and also an effort to distract from her previous comment about my tired face. I sat down in the kitchen of my childhood where my mother stood hurriedly smoking her thin cigarette and eating tiny fish from a can. It was nauseating, but in a new way. 

Nobody had told me how grief effects your stomach. You vomit when you get the news and then feel like you might yack at any given moment for weeks afterward. For days after Bernie died I had thought that I must be ill. I kept taking my temperature, mostly out of confusion. Now watching my mother lick fish I felt strange relief at the regular kind of disgust. 

“Mom stop eating fish, it isn’t even ten o’clock.” 

“Anya, what part of fish weigh the most?” She got the greasy flat line of a smile on her face that told me this was rhetorical. “The scales!”” 

I could only shake my head and close my eyes, knowing that my mild contempt would be just as satisfying to her, if not more so, than a laugh at her own joke.  

“Terrible, terrible, your terrible mother, ok?” and she clapped out her cigarette over the sink and rested the remainder on the careful edge of a potted plant in the window. Her accent came out most prominently in the morning.  She put the can of fish into her fridge that was still stuffed with other people’s casseroles and baked goods and various hot dish now cold. “You want I should give all this food to homeless?”

I casually released my hands to the sky, a shared gesture that explained at once that I did not care and that we would never really do that even if we had the right intention. 

“You know what I want?” she asked me.

“Almost never,” I replied.

“I want to make you rassolnik.” She bit the edge of her thumb and narrowed her eyes at me, a doctor of soup writing her prescription aloud. “Just need some kidney meat.”

  I wanted to remind her that I was a vegetarian, but you don’t question a witch in the middle of a spell. She stood looking at me with her little angular wedge eyes, color unimportant because they were so deep inside of her skull that they remained in perpetual shadow. The hands planted firmly on her hips told me this was an order. 

“Do you need anything else?” I grabbed a grubby pencil from the top of the fridge and I looked around for a scrap of paper to make a grocery list when I remembered the piece just saved from certain death. It had dried considerably in my pocket and I went to unfold it hoping the inside might be usable. 

Don’t you dare.

I should have noticed that the message written inside had changed. Another thing they don’t tell you about grief is that it strikes you dumb in the head. It’s the worst kind of high, every step takes you into a purposeless room, empty hands looking for something you came in for - perpetually. You’re a dummy. I simply crossed out the words, numb to the vague memory of being offended by the previous words. 

“Mom what the hell is pearl barley?” With a playful whack of a wooden spoon I was off, back outside in the gray weather. 

The Eddyville Shoprite did not have pearl barley, so I got some brown rice knowing it would earn me more abuse when I returned. If I ask you bring me bicycle would you bring me pile of dog shit and tell me to go for ride? She truly took up a lot of space in my mind. They say that suspects always return to the scene of the crime and nowhere was that more true for me than the Shoprite. My crime spree began at the age of five when I stuffed a neon green rubber ball down the front of my overalls only to have it make a superb announcement guilty guilty guilty as it shot out of my pant leg at the checkout counter. Deny deny deny is what I had learned early on, but Marvin always saw through me. 

Someone long ago had puffed up Marvin’s face just a quarter of an inch larger than the average human expression, leaving him constantly haughty and suspicious. He gave me the non-greeting of an exasperated old white man when I entered, a slight raise in the corner of his lip that acknowledged my grief and a current detente in our long running feud.

How could I not exploit this opportunity? I was about to double check my list, safely tucked again inside my front chest pocket, when I saw my second treasure of the day. Tucked between the cajun seasoning and the coriander was a tiny bottle of Ceylon Cinnamon. It was the kind of thing that made my fingers itch. So small, so daintily piled into the clear glass bottle with lovely red script advertising the foreign spice. It felt so out of place. It did not belong near the discount bleach in a tiny supermarket by the sea. Who else would be able to use it to its full potential? I could not let it end up helping some hamburger meat. More precious than gold, ripped from a tree on an island thousands of miles away. Small things were easy to steal. It was 9.99 and then it was down my pants. 

Marvin was unable to express his deep disgust through such thick skin, but it still radiated off him like so much fluorescent lighting. If anything I appreciated his lack of condolence, failing to say anything whatsoever during the extended silence that pervaded his ringing up my groceries. Everything in the bag, Marvin rested his hands on the counter and looked me in the eyes. 

“Anything else?” 

I responded by staring at him blankly, lifting my brows a millimeter. “No, thank you, Marvin.”

“Just add it to the pile, Anya.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know very well you stole something. You always steal from me.” A bloated finger punctuated his accusation as it tapped the counter.

“I’ve changed my ways Marvin.” He set his jaw. This was fun. 

“You empty your pockets,” he demanded.

“Excuse me?” Shame there was nobody else in line to observe my feigned insult. 

“If you have nothing to hide then you’ll turn out your pockets, go on now.” To my dismay he pulled my grocery bag to the other side of the counter before I could get a grasp on it. My initial delight in this familiar routine suddenly drained out of my body. Before Bernie I might have gone on for five or six minutes teasing Marvin, but now my energy had sapped down into the linoleum. 

A sigh and I raised my fingers into the air, wiggling them for effect. 

“Look, nothing up my sleeves.” I pulled down the fleece to show my bony wrists, scars no longer shocking Marvin who had seen them freshly bandaged years ago. 

“Nothing in my pockets,” I rapidly whipped out the limp lining of my sweats. I reached for my front chest pocket, casually tossing my grocery list on the counter. “Nothing to see here except the lack of diverse grain options in your store Marv-”

But his face fell, cutting me short as he picked up the paper to read it more closely. 

“You think this is funny, Anya?” Marvin tossed the paper back at me.

You’re such a bitch.

I laughed, just for a moment, as I read the new message. Then the confusion began. I flipped the paper over to the other side hoping it would reveal my list. Marvin snatched it back before I could show him my real writing. “Marvin, no I didn’t write that! You must have read the wrong side!”

“You took my cinnamon?” Marvin said as he read the paper again. My butt clenched hard for the second time that morning, the bottle in my pants suddenly alerted to its name.

I felt dumb again. My hand limply retrieved the paper that Marvin now released with no fight. 

Marvin, she stole your cinnamon. Check her pants.

Sickness returned, burning a hole into my stomach. I couldn’t make sense of it. I swallowed hard and gently folded the paper back into my chest pocket. My lips became glue, making a soft noise as my mouth hung open limply. Then I reached into my underwear and placed the bottle on the counter, to Marvin’s total lack of amazement. 

“That’s 23.50.”