What Was Left Unsaid
“What the hell is all this?” I ask, knowing he’s not going to answer since we held his funeral last week. I should’ve got over here sooner, like the real estate agent wanted, but it’s been a lot. I’m talking about dealing with the estate, bills, and endless paperwork and calls not the death itself. We hadn’t been on the best of terms since I heard him argue with Mom and say, “I wish to God we never had him.” I was “him,” and I was five.
I’d call him up on his birthday, and occasionally on Christmas, and talk for a few minutes before making an excuse to get off the phone. I wouldn’t have even done that if Mom didn’t insist. I’d do anything for Mom, but once the cancer finally caught up with her, I didn’t have any incentive to keep calling. I wish I could now just so I could tell him off for leaving me with this mess.
I’ve never been in this house. After the divorce, Dad got to keep all the junk Mom always made him throw away. He must’ve thought it was a silent protest against her because I can’t imagine any other reason he’d want to keep stacks of the local paper, the one that publishes weekly. “You must have thirty years of this shit, you bastard,” I say to his ghost, thumbing through the faded rags until I see the time Clinton rolled into town. I remember Mom setting up chairs on 15, so we could welcome his motorcade into town with smiles and waves that he likely ignored behind his tinted glass.
Dad would’ve been living in one of his apartments by then. I reluctantly visited the first a couple of times and stayed on the single bed in the empty room that I was told was mine. I don’t think I ever spent a whole night there. I wouldn’t cry in front of him. Instead, I’d wait until he went to sleep, sneak out to the living room, and call Mom. She’d put me in the car before she’d go back in to tell Dad that I was homesick. It was harder for him to refuse when he could see me pretending to be fast asleep in Mom’s backseat. I don’t remember how many times we repeated this charade before he got the message and left me alone, but I know I never saw his second apartment or his third.
I hope he bought the La-Z-Boy Mom never would let him have before he moved into this house. I’m about the same age now as he was when he moved out, and I’d like to think he struggled getting this monstrosity down three flights of stairs, like I am with these three steps. I have no doubt that someone will pick it up off the curb before I finish clearing this place out. Bad taste never goes out of style, and Dad was a connoisseur of it.
“See you never grew up, Peter Pan,” I say, as I throw away shelves of movie memorabilia, action figures, and comic boxes. I half-ass flip trough the long boxes to make sure he didn’t leave anything worth a damn behind, knowing he would’ve sold off anything that would’ve bought at least a pint of just-right whisky, the stuff that’s okay enough to drink alone but not something you’d leave sitting out for people to see. Not that Dad was a social butterfly.
The folding table in the living room still had his and his buddies’ cards, cigarette buds, and empty beer cans on it before I carried it out, not bothering to push the legs in. But other than those idiots he played poker with every week or so, I don’t think anyone else has been in here since Lucy left him. No use in me trying to guess how long ago that must’ve been because I refused to meet my stepmom. “Must’ve pissed her off something good because she didn’t even come to your funeral,” I say with a smirk, as I dump the bedside drawer full of underwear she must’ve left behind in the rush to get away from him.
“What pisses me off the most is that Mom would’ve been front and center at the damn thing, even after you left her. You had woman after woman, and she never dated a soul. Said all she needed was me. I remember at least a dozen times that we had to rush out of a restaurant because you came in with one of them on your arm and that shit-eating grin on your face, like you were anything more than a free meal.
You even had the nerve to bring one to my pool party at the Pavilion. Probably didn’t even notice Mom stayed in the restroom until you left, which thankfully didn’t take long. You were always good at that. Even now, you went and died before I could tell you what a right piece of shit you were. See all these pictures of your mom and dad and sister? They’re going straight in the trash with everything else that could remind this world that you ever existed,” I say, as I slide frame after frame off the bedroom dresser into a thick garbage bag until I stop on the one closest to Dad’s side of the bed that holds the photograph of the day he taught me how to swim. It’s the happiest my father and I have ever looked. I was six.
Deron Eckert is a writer and attorney who lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His writing has been published in Sky Island Journal. He is currently seeking publication for his Southern Gothic, coming-of-age novel, which explores how personal experiences change our preconceived notions of right and wrong.