Fiction by Alison Sanders
A week later he was still numb with shock, and as he stood staring at the kitchen floor Anthony searched for signs of her there – a crumb from a bagel she’d toasted, maybe a strand of long, brown hair. He found nothing, and the fridge hummed loudly, and he wondered how long he could go on in this empty house.
He’d stopped crying. He’d turned off his phone, ignored the knocks at the door. He wasn’t hiding, exactly. He’d simply gone silent – bewildered and hurt, like a child slapped by his mother for the first time.
There was movement outside the kitchen window and Anthony saw it was the mail carrier. The young man wore sunglasses and pleated shorts, and he strolled up to the mailbox at the end of the driveway, inserted a tidy handful of envelopes, then continued on to the next house, eyes on the stack of mail in his arms. A car drove past, and the mailman glanced up, gave a small wave. It all seemed so casual, so efficient. So indifferent. Anthony had to look away, back to the kitchen floor. How dare he, he thought. How dare that man deliver mail like it’s any other day? And how dare the person in that car just drive and wave and live their life? How dare the sun shine, how dare the earth spin.
He realized he hadn’t checked the mail since the accident. This was a Thing Which Must Be Done. There were things like that – tasks which took all of his energy, all of his strength, every ounce of willpower he had, but he knew he had to do them. The hardest was walking out of the hospital and leaving her there, knowing that as soon as he left they’d pull a sheet over her face and roll her to the basement. The thought of her alone in the dark made him howl inside. How could he leave her? But he knew he had no choice. He’d stared at his feet, willing them to move, left – right – left – right, down the hall, through the sliding doors, out into the terrifying cruel sunlight. Then there was getting out of bed a few days later. It took hours to convince himself. Hours of staring at the ceiling and willing himself to move. But he did it, eventually. He got up. He rubbed his face, which felt puffy and soft in his hands, and he drank a glass of water. There were just some things, he knew, which still needed to be done.
He stepped out into the soft evening light. In the mailbox he found a small stack of envelopes. He carried them inside and placed them on the kitchen counter, then took a step back for a moment and watched the small pile. What stirred in him was not just exhaustion from having just completed one Thing Which Must Be Done, but also a growing dread. It was the realization that her name might be on some of that mail, and the fear of what would happen in his heart if he had to see that. He couldn’t do it. He stared at the stack and for a moment all he could hear was his own breath, shallow in his throat.
But the envelope on top was addressed only to him. In slanted block letters. After a pause he eased it open. It was a thick card with a watercolor painting of a tree on the front. Inside were handwritten words, in a shaky scrawl which leaned to the right as if blown by a strong wind: “Dear Anthony, We’re so sorry for your loss. May God wrap His loving arms around you. Love, Bill and Connie Matsumoto.” Matsumoto? For a moment his mind was blank. The old folks in the little grey house down the street? He barely knew them, other than casually waving as he drove to and from work. He tried but couldn’t recall the last time he’d said a word to either of the Matsumotos.
But now he pictured them together, wearing their matching sneakers with Velcro tabs, driving to the store, for him. He imagined them shuffling down the card aisle to the SYMPATHY section, choosing a card, for him. He pictured Connie sitting at her kitchen table, with a ballpoint pen gripped in her tiny hand, writing those words. And he pictured Bill – his bald head like a speckled egg – placing the envelope inside their mailbox, raising their little metal flag. For him.
He reread the note, and held that card for a long time, staring at the tree on the front. After a while, emboldened maybe, he flipped through the rest of the envelopes. They were all addressed just to him. And so he opened the next, and the one after that, and in between each he paused, and at some point he found his face wet with tears. He stacked the cards neatly on the counter and placed one hand on top, and in that moment he was overwhelmed with such gratitude he could hardly breathe. This world. It could be so cruel, so vicious, so unfair. And then, suddenly, so kind. So beautiful it could break your heart.
Alison Sanders‘ work has been published in Stanford Magazine and is forthcoming in Seaside Gothic. She lives in Santa Cruz, California and is working on her first novel.
