The Remains of Life

Gretchen was pulling up the dead stuff from her garden, when something caught her attention. Hands filled with dried mums, she looked up to see the source of an unusual buzzing above. Assuming the drone to be a class project from the nearby school, she tossed her bunch into a pile nearby, then bent further across the bed to dig out the bulb she intended to save. The ping of her watch stopped her.

Kneeling back on her heels, she brushed soil from her hands, then tapped the screen.

“I see you got it,” her brother had texted. Jack sent another one: a picture of her own porch with a white box sitting in front of the steps. Hearing the buzzing once again, she watched the drone fly away.

“No!” she said aloud, “It can’t be.” She stood. She tapped her watch again, then shouted, “Why?” She hit the send button and ran out front.

As expected, the drone had attracted attention. Gretchen waved to her neighbor, Jan, who had stopped on the sidewalk, doing their best to restrain their dog, Midnight. An elderly man was making his way from across the street.

"Hey,” Charles called out, even before he reached the curb, “that was something! You got a package delivered by a drone. The first in the neighborhood!” Walking towards Jan, he responded to Midnight’s lunge.

“Yeah, that was cool,” Jan added, struggling to regain control. “It looks like a shoebox! You ordered some?”

“No, I didn’t,” Gretchen answered. She approached the package, which was shaped just as Jan described it. Seeing Charles moving towards her, she snatched it up, its weight confirming her fears.

“You know what it is?” Charles asked, as he drew closer. She stepped back, thankful for the six feet distance everyone knew they should respect.


“No,” she lied.

“Well,” Charles pointed at it. “Must be important to be delivered by drone!”

“Maybe,” she answered. Her watch pinged. She held out her wrist. “I gotta get this, okay?” She waved at Jan.

“Technology!” Charles laughed. “A drone delivery and a watch communicator. Who knew?” Seeing that Gretchen was already backing her way toward the porch steps, he paused before turning. “Okay - you’re busy, but you will tell us what it is, right?”

“Sure.” Gretchen responded. “See you.”

At the top step, she turned towards the door, but stopped. She did not want to bring it inside. The other two having left, she placed the box on the floor behind the brick post. Pulling her phone from her back pocket, she sat down, the coldness of the concrete cutting through her jeans. She swiped the screen as it responded to her face. The text explained everything:


“It’s your turn to keep him.”

Again, she sent the same message: “Why?” Immediately one of his usual replies flashed back: “Sorry, but driving. Will get back ASAP.”

Gretchen leaned forward, clasping her hands as she rested her elbows on her knees. She glanced at the box, as white and pristine as it was when the funeral home director handed it over to her and Jack six months earlier. It was hard to believe that it had traveled so far. It was also hard to believe that Jack would have spent so much money - she assumed - for the drone delivery, even if it had to have been only for the last miles in its trip from California to her home in Louisville. He always said he loved the finer things in life, but he was also practical.

Surely, she thought, it would have been cheaper for him to send it by mail or even UPS. Or, if he had been wanting her to take him, he could have brought the box of cremains with him when they and their families met at Moab just two weeks earlier for Thanksgiving. But he hadn’t said a word.

She looked at the box again - there he was, their father, on her front porch.

“Why now?” she wanted to know. A memory stirred.

***

That last night in Moab, she, Jack, and their spouses sat outside the open doors of their rented condo, seeing who got the best shot of the incoming storm they barely missed in the Canyonlands, as their teens played their games on various screens inside. Being identified as having taken the best shot, Gretchen’s husband, Tim, turned their attention to Jack’s family recently moving into his and Gretchen’s childhood home in Redondo Beach.

“So,” Tim said, “Begun working on the house yet, Jack?”

“Got my plans on paper,” he answered. “First thing when we get back is to take out the bar, the tap, too.” He looked at Gretchen, waiting for her response.

She had to admit that she was surprised, given that their father, Frank, had built it. Jack explained that they intended to use that space to reformat both the bathroom and kitchen to update the house. Because it all made sense, Gretchen agreed that his plans were good, but then Jack’s wife, Charlotte, spoke up.

“But that’s not the only reason you want to get rid of it.” Charlotte placed her empty wine glass on the table around which they were seated. “You haven’t told anyone about your being haunted, have you?” She reached for the bottle in the bucket of ice a few feet away, between her and Gretchen.

“You’re being haunted? Not Charlotte or Trevor?” Tim laughed.

Jack looked as if he was going to speak, but Charlotte gave them the details.

She explained that one day while she, Jack and their son, Trevor, were watching a baseball game in their back room, Jack suddenly sprang up from the couch on which he had been sprawled. Instead of completing the story, Charlotte then insisted that Jack tell them what he had heard.

“I heard a grunt,” Jack said. He crossed his arms, then his legs, as he leaned back in the chair, as if to make distance from the group.

“A grunt?” Tim asked. “You don’t mean like Frank’s grunts when he wanted something?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “I swear - when I heard it, I sat up, ready to go get that beer for him.” The three laughed, not Jack.

“You heard it more than once?” Gretchen asked, aware of his uneasiness.

“Yeah,” Jack admitted. He explained how he seemed to hear it whenever he went in that room, especially by himself, but attributed the sound to the probability that the wood in the paneling or the open beam ceiling was to blame, given the poor condition of the house. Dismissing it as meaningless, he tried to change the topic by pointing to the orange and pink tinged clouds in the distance, but Charlotte had more to say on the subject.

“Well,” she drew their attention, leaning in as if she had something significant to say, “That may not have been a big deal, but I know what was…”

“Enough!” Jack snapped, his voice so loud that one of the kids inside called out if all was okay.

Gretchen watched Charlotte back off, then stared at Jack, overwhelmed by how much he sounded like their father. Upon realizing what he’d done, Jack began to stammer. Fortunately, Tim reacted swiftly, standing, and then calling through the open sliding glass door to the teens inside.

“Anyone ready for a game of charades?”

Jack bounced up, and followed Tim, leaving the two women. As Charlotte lifted up the wine bucket to carry inside, Gretchen picked up their glasses and was about to ask for more information when Jack called out for her.

“Hey sister! We need you. Where’s that charades-style game you brought? No one here can find it!”

She never did find out what else had happened.

***

On the porch, Gretchen looked again at the box. Cremains - ashes. That’s all they were.

She picked her phone up. “Hey, Siri,” she began. “text Charlotte, ‘Can you talk now?’ Send.”

Gretchen felt awkward. Even though the two were relatively close as in-laws, this request was an unusual one. Within minutes, her cell vibrated. It was Charlotte, on FaceTime even. Gretchen accepted the call.

“Hey Charlotte. Thanks for doing this.” Seeing her own image in the corner, Gretchen regretted not taking a minute to redo her pony tail. Wisps of grey hair shot from all angles.

“No problem. Just sipping coffee before I log in for work” Charlotte raised her mug. “Look it’s the one I got in Moab.” Gretchen nodded in recognition.

“I really hate to bother you, but remember when you were going to tell us another story about Jack being haunted, but then you stopped,” Charlotte cut in.

“Because Jack silenced me? Of course, I remember. You want to know what happened?”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind. Jack sent me Dad’s cremains….”

“I told him not to do that!” Charlotte asserted, then paused. Gretchen watched her take a deep breath and exhale. “It must have been too much for him.”

“What” Gretchen wondered if she really wanted to know.

“A week ago, it happened, and then again two nights ago. He probably sent the box that very morning,” she paused for a second. “And you already have it? How’d it arrive?”

“By drone.” Gretchen watched Charlotte react, her eyes opening wide in surprise.

“By drone? Wow. I knew he wanted to get rid of them, but…. How do you deliver by drone?”

“I don’t know.” Gretchen asked the question again. “What happened?”

“Well,” she hesitated. “Promise you won’t tell Jack I told you?” Gretchen nodded.

Charlotte then described the event. That first time, in the middle of the night, Jack screamed out, “No! No!” waking her up. As she came to, she saw that Jack was crouched towards the end of the bed, as if he had seen something walking towards him. She tried to comfort him, but he brushed her away, then got out of the bed, saying that he felt sick. When he returned from the bathroom, he told her only that he thought he had seen their father, Frank, at the door. He tried to laugh it off, but he wound up going downstairs for a while. She wrapped up the story by saying that it took him a day or two to sleep well again. And then, she noted, that it all happened again.

“Weird, huh?” Charlotte asked her before taking a sip of coffee.

Bile rose in Gretchen’s own throat. She swallowed, then took a deep breath.

“You okay?” Charlotte asked her. “I hate to say this, but it looks as if you saw a ghost. Pun not intended, of course.”

“Um,” Gretchen breathed deep again. Fortunately - Gretchen could see - something had caught Charlotte’s attention. “You gotta go?”

Admitting that her boss had just emailed her, Charlotte asked if anything else was needed, then quickly ended the call.

Gretchen put the phone down beside her and looked again at the box. When she and Tim later talked about the incident at Moab, they concluded that “the haunting” was just a matter of Jack adjusting to his new ownership of their childhood home, especially since he didn’t really want to live there. It was Charlotte who insisted that if they took possession and completely redid it, they could either sell it for serious profit or enjoy the benefits of living within a few miles to the beach. Gretchen encouraged that decision, even knowing that Jack may wind up with greater wealth than she from their inheritance, for one simple reason: she, too, had seen Frank at that door.

Only, it wasn’t a ghost, at least not in her dreams.

***

Before Jack had that room, it had been Gretchen’s. For years, regardless of where she lived, every few months or so, Gretchen would wake up, disturbed, unable to explain why that one moment kept recurring.

So simple, that door of that bedroom would open, allowing a shaft of light to cast upon her bed, and then her father, Frank, would peer in, his hand on the knob, his face just inside the frame.

“Skipper,” he’d whisper, using her childhood nickname. “You awake?” and then he’d step in, dressed only in his white underwear.

And she’d wake up.

It was only a dream, she’d tell herself, before trying to go back to sleep.

***

A nightmare, she admitted, while sitting on that porch. But Jack saw him too.

“Why?” she wondered, then froze. For almost her whole life, it seemed, she hated it whenever he tried to hug her. In fact, his very touch made her sick. Her heart rate quickening, she took a deep breath. An image of Jack refusing to stand next to his father, the manager, for their team pictures came to mind.

“No,” she insisted. “Nothing could have happened. He was just mean.”

She looked again at the box. Years earlier, their father made Jack and Gretchen promise that they’d bury him next to his own father, even though his grave was thousands of miles away from their home in California. They intended to do it the following summer, when Jack could take enough time off to visit Gretchen. At that point, he was going to bring the cremains. But, with the box there on her front porch, she realized that would mean that the box - Frank - would be in her house for months.

“I need to do something!” she said aloud. Then it dawned on her. The cemetery was in Richmond, where he had grown up, only three hours away.But she knew that she just couldn’t walk into the office there and demand them to bury that box.

She pictured the place, having gone once when she was in her early teens. She recalled how far they had to walk to the grave, and how lonely it had seemed out there. Because her grandfather’s grave was so old - he having died when Frank was a small child - it was in a place void of daily visitors, rarely maintained even. She realized that it could be months before anyone would even notice a pile of white ashes - and by then the weather may disturb them so much that they would be all but invisible.

She glanced at her watch. It was only 10:00. She had time to drive up and even return by 5:00, in time to make dinner. Not even Tim and her kids need know she even got the package.

She tapped her watch and spoke.

“I’m doing it.” she hit send.

“What?” Jack responded immediately.

“Fulfilling his wish.”

“Now? Why?” he asked.

She decided to tell the truth.

“I can’t live with him again,” she hit send, then added a laughing emoji to a second text.

A minute passed, then a few more. Was he not going to respond? She picked up her phone. It flashed on, revealing the time. If she was going to do it, she knew, she needed to start moving. A message flashed across the numbers. Jack responded.

“Same here. Thanks.” Before she could respond with a heart emoji, a second text followed.

“We need to talk.”

Talk. The word punched hard. He didn’t know that Charlotte told her. Surely, Gretchen wanted to believe, he wasn’t addressing that. “About what?” she began to type, but Jack sent another one.

“I want to be free.”

She paused. Gretchen looked up at the sky, so blue, white puffy clouds floating above bare tree limbs reaching high, empty nests barely anchored within them. Tarnished gold leaves covered her yard. She had planned to spend the day cleaning up her garden and raking up the last of the trees’ debris, ridding her yard of the remains of the season. She glanced at the box, so white and pristine.

Looking at her phone, she saw that she hadn’t sent the heart emoji. She deleted it, then tapped the mic icon.

“Me too,” she said. “I want to be free too.” She hit send. Then tapped the mic again.

“I want to talk too.”

The message sent, Gretchen stood, ready to rid their lives of the ashes of their childhood, a season long past.