Mail for Bobby, 2017
“Ms. Auften! Ms. Auften! Ma’am, please, stop! Ma’am…” His voice trailed off as the last erratic wave of breath escaped his lungs. He could feel his right knee sock as it rapelled south along the crag of muscle exposed below his knee. The sensation drove him crazy. Had this envelope not been labeled “Next Day” and posted from America, he’d have tossed it at her door, hoped she’d have found it, and yanked the green knit tube back into place. Nothing arrived in Cape Town from the States the next day, and the irony mocked him perilously.
“Hey, hey, relax Bobby. It’s ok.” She knew he preferred to be called Robert, but the American in her demanded a sense of familiarity, an unspoken display of friendship toward a man with whom she had passed on the street almost every day since her arrival. His nametag had betrayed him. “Who died?”
“Ma’am, please, it’s Robert,” he pleaded, once again, through spurts of breath. “And how would I know, Ms. Auften? This says your name, not mine.”
She reached her hand toward his impatiently unfolded arm, tears of sweat rolling elbow to wrist. A large, flat white envelope clinched between his thumb and middle finger jutted at her with the same anxiety as his manner. Her eyes locked on “Next Day” stamped in patriotic red, a message from the homeland. She looked up at him, smiled at the efforts he’d made, and felt the urge to hug the one person who’d managed to learn her name in the few months she had been in South Africa. It was her intention to be an anonymous transplant, a forgettable face. It moved her.
“Hey, Bobby?” she said as she removed the envelope from his hand.
“Yes, Ms. Auften?”
“You’ve got to get some new socks.”
An hour later, she sat, envelope creeping out of her “I Heart NY” canvas bag. She had only been to New York City once, but here in Cape Town it served as a touchstone to the country from which she came. Lifting her eyes up towards the heavens, she remembered the prickly, humid grass of Central Park making damp spots on her dress, the aroma of wet cement and musty tar after a sudden summer storm. New York was never too far from memory. If there had been more in her savings, she would have moved there. But the truth was she preferred to teach English to get by over working the restaurant circuit in the States. Still, New York felt nothing like Cape Town. Here in her rented single room, an abrupt appendage to a full-sized family home she was bound to by architecture rather than antiquity, she could only marvel at the view. Table Mountain was in the distance. Its rolls of fog reminded her of home on the Pacific Coast of Oregon, and the largish people from whom she was cuddled as a child.
Unlike Bobby, whom she privately regarded as her only acquaintance in town, the anticipation to receive a letter of any sort from home was lost on her. The lone author, she knew, could only have been a brother, Gabriel, three years her senior and troubled beyond the sparse assortment of sunny moments from their childhood. Now as adults, having crossed the threshold of forty, they’ve surpassed the living age of both their parents, never known relatives outside of one wicked papa on their mother’s side, and haven’t shared kind words with one another in over a decade. The lightness of the flat, white envelope she held as she pulled the tab open could not possibly know the weight of dread its contents most ardently contained.
“If you are reading these words…” was as far as she got. Auften’s hands failed to hold the single, typewritten page any further, her eyes falling as she watched it slink to the floor, a kind of slow-motion accident where the plane’s engine ceases but the pilot must wait for impact.
Even she could not understand her body’s response. Perhaps it was the astonishment at how a single phrase propelled her into the kind of isolation she sought in Cape Town yet feared in America. Or maybe it was that this letter was no surprise. She knew that one day she would be left behind long before Gabriel ever had the chance to. Or maybe it was the image in her mind of her colossally built, albeit morbidly unstable, brother at a typewriter playing a saturnine game where he occupied the roles of victim and aggressor with delight. In truth, it did not matter much to her.
Days later she finished the entire letter. It was as she imagined: relentless blaming of her not having been there for him (yet she was), anger at her for having left him homeless (yet he wasn’t), and the disparate musings of a man who released the reins of life each time he self-terminated his medication. As a result, the only line, other than the first, that affected her was when he signed off, “Love, Gabriel”. He wouldn’t allow anyone to call him that, except their mom, who would hold him and tell him about the angel he was named after. “God’s little messenger”, she would say and he would giggle, a brief glimpse of normalcy in his uncharacteristically worked life. He preferred his middle name, John. He used to say that he’d rather be a unique man with a common name than a common man with a unique name. Whatever that meant to him, she knew not.
As she sat by her window, she studied the fog. Its movement was as carefully orchestrated as a ballet, yet cagey in its grandeur. To her, it seemed like waves from the ocean had supplanted themselves in the sky, writhing and winding their way back toward the sea, a mantle of mist tumbling itself dry.
Her phone rang. She reached for it as she would’ve back home, foolishly instinctive.
“Hello,” she said with an imperceptible tremble in her tone.
“Am I speaking with Ms. Auften?” he asked with the same trepidation with which she listened. “Gabriel’s sister?”
“Yes, I am both. How may I help?”
“My name is DeAckerly, ma’am, an officer from Florence, Oregon, where your brother lived.” The past tense was not lost on her. His hefty voice sounded to her the way she imagined fog would sound: deep and breathy, like an older person in need of some vigor.
“Is he dead?”
Maybe it was her imagination, but there was a quick inhale on the other end of the phone. He intended on calling a relative, not a monster, she thought.
“Yes. He is.”
“Has a body been recovered?” Another question that sounded more mandatory than grief stricken. She quietly chastised the blunder.
“One has, yes. Ma’am, are you alone?”
“Yes, why?”
“Well, this news must be very distressing to you, and I’d hate to think there was no one there to comfort you.” His voice quivered as it trailed off, like a bow against violin strings. She could hear the genuine care in his voice. It reminded her of her mother.
“I’m fine. A letter arrived from him a few days ago. It implied death.” She knew she must have sounded peculiar, both in tone and context.
“Well, ma’am, according to his medical records, you are listed as his only living relative. There is paperwork to be done, assets to transfer.” Against her will, she began to laugh. An awkward, guffaw heard mostly in films where a crazy person was being revealed to the hopeful audience.
“Ma’am, are you really ok?”
“I’m sorry. It was the word ‘asset,’ I hadn’t ever thought of him as having any, or being one.”
“Should I call back another time?”
“No, no, please, forgive me. Yes, of course I will do whatever you wish.”
“We need you to come back, to handle his affairs.”
“No.”
“You can think about it.”
“No. The answer is no.”
“But, Ms. Auften…”
“No, I said no. I am not handling his affairs. I have handled his affairs from the time our parents died, over a decade ago. No. I’m sorry.” She hung up the phone, as instinctively as she answered it. She looked out of the window and scanned for fog, only to find it had gone back home to the sea. What was left was a great, flat-topped mountain, suspiciously exposed without its hazy cover. They appeared to her precisely how she felt.
Barely a day had passed before the phone rang again. This time she paused before deciding it couldn’t be much worse than the last time it had rung. Poor DeAckerly, she thought, just trying to do the right thing, not realizing he was too late for the sympathy he attempted to express.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Auften?” It was the same voice that had received her greeting the last time. “It’s DeAckerly, ma’am. I need to ask you again to come home.”
She reminded herself to carefully respond, unlike the last time.
“For what, exactly?”
“The paperwork, Ms. Auften. And the removal of assets. You must. We cannot, it’s the law.”
“Where was the body found? He told me he was homeless before I left.”
“He wasn’t, he had a home. He rented a condominium on the water. A real nice place. Great views of the ocean.” His upbeat spin on the matter unsettled her.
“A home? He had belongings?”
“He did. His place was full of personal effects, photos and the like.” Her mind raced. As far as she knew, he was out on the street. She held her response to handle this fresh information.
“There is nothing I need from that place, sir.”
“I understand, but what can we do with it? Legally, it all belongs to you.”
“Bin it.”
“Ma’am, the photos. I assumed you’d at least want those.”
“Assumptions only work in science and religion, sir.” She sounded insane. He probably assumed she was, just like her brother.
“How did he do it?”
“Do what, ma’am?”
“Kill himself.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“He was a sick man. I’m aware of that. How did he kill himself?”
“Ms. Auften, I’m sorry if I misled you. Gabriel was on a walk, it would seem, and with the thick fog, the vehicle didn’t stop, they must not have seen him. He was found a few hours later, by another driver.”
Auften’s hand, now cold and pale, reached up toward her mouth, attempting to stifle a cry, or perhaps a gasp. Her eyes shut so tightly the skin crumbled into the tightly bound slits where her eyes were. “But the letter, he sent me a letter.”
“I don’t know the contents of the letter, but Ms. Auften, your brother did not commit suicide. He was killed.”
She opened her eyes and looked again out the window. The sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon, a cool mist being birthed from the sea. Within the hour it would spin like cotton candy and wrap itself around the crown of Table Mountain. A flat crown, but a crown nonetheless. The receiver hung limply in her hand, barely grazing her cheek.
“Sir, I must go.”
She hung the receiver up with the gentleness of a potter, aware that her movements could alter the shape of things. This was no time for an episode. Her inclination to rip the phone from the desk and launch it toward her mirror had to be squelched. Her natural instincts to scream and cry and break everything around her, stifled. Her hand dipped into her tote, felt around for the small, cylindrical bottle. The one she hoped would live untouched thanks to her new home, her clean start. With the slightest of pressure, the top came off and she sprinkled not one but two small, round, pale green pills into her palm. A cold gulp of black coffee whooshed them down her throat. A mild, false calm enveloped her.
Twelve hours later, after a bit of rest and time to gather her wits, Auften descended the stairs of her room and out onto the pavement, warmed by the sun. In her tote she carried with her the letter and a passport. A small rectangular suitcase made of faux alligator leather dyed a deep brown hung by her side, thumping sideways against her thigh as she walked. The case itself was nearly empty. Her mother had always advised her to travel light, not realizing the gravity of the counsel she offered considering the baggage she was born to carry. On its return, it would be filled with the last pieces of her natural home. She imagined photos and books, and not much else. It didn’t make her sad to envisage this final journey. She welcomed it, in fact, a chance to secure shut a door she never again wished to open. This was more about her than Gabriel. He was an incessant reminder of the sickness inside of her. And now with him gone she could, like the fog, conceal and move through the world with the slow, crawling peace of the mist.
A moment later Bobby appeared from around the corner wearing jeans and a Yankees cap, plainly dressed for his off day. He caught her watching him, his eyes landing on the luggage she held so protectively close to her body. She looked conspicuously guarded, like a child reaching for a flame after being warned against it.
“Ms. Auften, are you going somewhere?” he asked as they stood now facing one another.
“I must go back home. There’s been a death.”
“Can I help you, ma’am? I will get a cab.”
“I will need a cab, Bobby, but first I need to make a stop.” Her tone sounded sinister to him, but under the circumstances not too surprising he reconciled.
“I will help you. What do you need?”
“A dress, Bobby. I need a black dress.”
She lowered her eyes, but not in sorrow. She slowly raised her stare up towards his face, a quizzical look settled across his brow. “Bobby, will you come with me?”
“Yes, of course, there is a store around the corner.” He reached out for her suitcase, the weightlessness in conflict to the moment. “We will find you a dress.”
“Bobby?”
“Yes, Ms. Auften?”
“Will you let me buy you some socks?”
He stared at her, at the question. Her head flew back and she let out a laugh so guttural it made his skin quiver. He wondered how she could laugh like that at a time like this. Bobby nodded his head, said nothing, and led her back around the corner.
As they walked, Auften turned her head and looked past Bobby toward the great mountain in the distance. She observed the relentless movement of the fog. The opaque, white vapor formed clouds across the dark, calloused terrain. Back and forth, and back again. Heaven on earth, she thought. She followed Bobby as he gently guided her through a shop doorway. Just past the threshold, her feet froze and she wondered to herself if the fog would wait for her return. She closed her eyes and pictured her brother. The loss of life. The last of her immediate family.
A kind looking woman approached them from the opposite end of the store. Bobby nodded toward a solitary black dress hanging on the rack. Intuitively the woman bowed her head. She had noticed the luggage he was carrying and saw the empty look across Auften’s narrow face. Auften walked over to the single black dress and removed it. She held it up and away before placing the hanger below her neck, the way a bride would to imagine herself dressed like a princess on her wedding day.
“I’m going to a funeral,” she announced. From somewhere deep inside of her, within the layers of confusion and madness, she stifled the urge to laugh again.
Mail for Bobby, 2017. Fiction, 10 pages.