7,281 Words.
Florence needed a project. She’d always felt doing something was better than doing nothing. Boring people are bored; her mother had told her more than once. This built over a period of weeks until she saw a woman on TV explaining how to mat photos on a poster board. The woman called it “Your very own Wall of Fame.”
A nice idea, Florence thought. To put photos of her loved ones on a poster board. She’d put it above the kitchen table. She looked at the kitchen table. She didn’t use it much. It was usually covered in junk mail. Empty food boxes for recycling. Odds and ends. Making that poster board, it might just give her a reason to clean off the table and have a meal there once in a while.
She gobbled her morning pills, stood up, and shuffled over to the TV cabinet, where she kept most of her photos. She’d stopped trying to keep up with the volume of photographs a long time ago, she knew that. But how bad was it? When was the last time she tried to organize her photos? She flipped the door open and peered at it from above. Looked like a mess. A pile of photo books was twisted and turned like a mangled drill bit. Envelopes of photos were mashed against the books and falling down the sides. A few half-done photo books and various other aborted photo projects were mixed into the pile too. And of course there were plenty of loose photos from all different eras. Some had probably already fallen behind the others. Damn.
She wondered why she hadn’t kept up with the damn things. She bent over, trying not to bend her knees too much because her bent knees can’t take the weight. She bent a little and a little more and stretched her shaking hand into the cabinet. When she was close her middle and ring fingers lurched and just touched the top of the pile. She rocked forward, her fingers tapped the a couple times. Something was pulling her head back. She craned her neck back. Her oxygen tube was caught on her chair. Damn. She turned back to the photos and tried one more time. Damn. Damn. Defeated and a little tired, she straightened up as much as she could and walked toward the chair. Frustrated, she whipped the tube up twice, prying it free and letting it rest on the chair. Her oxygen tank in the bedroom clicked.
She turned and sized up the photos in the cabinet again. Everything becomes such a damn task. In thought she curled her fingers a little, making a fist. She shook her head and got back to the photos. She went through the same repertoire, bending and leaning and stretching, and trying not to overextend herself, and soon she was back in position. How many trips would it take to get all those photos out of there? It could take 10 or 20 trips. Maybe she should wait for one of the care workers to come. They could do it in one or two trips. Just wrap their arms around half the pile, like a pair of tongs, and lift. Then come back and repeat. It’s true what they say. The one about when you’re born you’re a baby and when you die you’re a baby again. Except the second time you don’t have a mother, she added sarcastically to the priest in her mind. Don’t get down, she in retaliation. It’s not doing anyone any good.
The hardest part was bending over and balancing her body, getting back to the task at hand. If she could just bend her knees enough so that she could almost squat. Then she could reach in there and get couple handfuls of the photographs. That’d be really handy. If she didn’t bend her knees at all and just her back then she’d be in trouble. Her back might give out like it did a few months ago when she was getting the Windex out the time a bird crashed into her sliding glass door. She’d end up lying on the floor for a few hours until someone showed up to help her. Humiliating.
Those muscles can’t be too taut. Careful! Florence took a deep breath, bent and eased her back forward, bending her knees just a little. Her outstretched hand moved toward the photographs like a crane. A shaking crane, she thought, all the people scattering for safety underneath. Her fingertips touched the edges of some. She could just make out the photograph on the top. Her niece’s 13th birthday. She winced, opened her hand wide, clutched as many of the photos as she could, and slid them toward the edge of the book. She let them teeter on the edge a little while she breathed a couple times. She let go a little and reversed her hand so she could cup them from below. Rusty came into the room and meowed. Florence wanted to tell him to keep back, don’t sniff her feet or any of that garbage, but all she could manage was a gurgle.
A few of the photos fell off to the side of the pile, onto the floor and to the side of the photo books. They were lost. It didn’t matter. There are plenty more photos. But she panicked a little anyway. She stopped for a few seconds to calm down. Think of something nice. All she could come up with was ice cream. But it was March, not summer. She got rid of that idea and tried to concentrate. Put her nose to the grindstone. That’s it. That’s it! She got a good handful. She drew them toward her body trying heard to balance her back and knees. She almost smiled as she let the upper half of her body start to straighten. She paused and checked her body. Her back felt fine. Knees were ok. Almost in disbelief she drew the photos toward her chest.
She’d managed just a few photos. Ten, maybe 20. Florence smiled a little as she walked to the chair and deposited the photos onto it. Rusty jumped in the chair to check the commotion. “Yeah, I got my photos Rusty,” her breathing had quickened, “All my photos. I’m going to put them on a board and…put them over the kitchen table so I can look at them.” Rusty sniffed at the photos. Florence looked back at the cabinet. That was enough of that. She’d enlist the care worker to deal with the rest of it. Not a bad start though, she told herself. She avoided looking at the cabinet. Confident, she pushed the photos to the side of the chair. “I’m sitting down now,” she told Rusty and waved her hand at him so he’d scoot off the chair. She braced herself with her right hand on the remote control and eased into the chair.
She caught her breath and looked out the window. She looked at the TV. Mostly news this time of day, she thought. She flipped the channels a couple times. The battery in the remote was getting low, she thought. Photos. She looked down at the photos in her lap. When you get old there are stories you like to visit and stories you don’t like to visit. But photos give you just what you bargain for. A snap shot. A quick little visit. Everybody’s got a story. She arranged the photos so that all the corners approximately lined up.
Some stories in your life you change in your mind to help you forget them. You put them off. But then they come back to you in changed form. But with photos the stories remained a little more the same. Who told her that? Her priest? Or was he talking about the bible. Maybe her mother. When did she say that? Must have been a long time ago. Her mom had been dead since the 70s. Over 30 years? She quickly put on her glasses and looked at the first photo.
She could tell what it was but she drew it closer anyway. It was her niece Athena and her old dog. What was the name of that dog? That dog barked all the time. She’d bring it over during holidays and it would sit in the corner and bark and bark until someone gave it some turkey skin. Then it’d shut up long enough for it to finish the food, lick its mouth for a while and then start yelping again. And at her house it was worse. Her daughter would want to let it in the house and then it’d start yelping and her boyfriend would put it back outside. Then it would yelp and cry and the daughter would let it back in. Then the boyfriend would get tired of it and drag it back out. Eventually they took that dog the Altamont Pass, threw a piece of meat down a hill and drove away. She hated that dog, but she didn’t approve of that. Of course she didn’t find that they’d ditched it until years later. She shook her head and went to the next photo.
Two of her grandsons. Vikki’s boys. Jarred and Jeff. Jeff was a year older but they looked the same. Both tan and a little skinny. Big smiles. Always. Were they good boys? She couldn’t say that exactly. They’d had their troubles over the years. One of them had stolen a car once before he turned 16. He was working for a mechanic now and that’s not such a bad job. What’s the other one doing? Oh, that’s right he’s not working. He’s still with that damn girl. That girl with the big chest. Is he addicted that sort of thing or what? If he’s ever going to marry he’d better think of a better option than that. There was the time she came to Christmas. Why did he bring her? She complained most of the time. She thought she was being quiet but anyone could hear her. “Come on babe, let’s go home. This is boring.” Vikki had told her that. Vikki heard that. Can you imagine? Her own son’s girlfriend acting like that. On Christmas! Those boys deserved better. Well, not that they were such a good boys. But no one deserved someone like that. And she even barely said hi to Florence that day. Can you imagine? On Christmas. And now she was living with them. She’s a freeloader. When the one told the other she was moving back in it caused problems between the two of them. No one likes that girl. She’s three years older than him. She must want to marry him. Oh God forbid that. Please don’t let that happen. Nobody wants her in the family.
Florence looked up at the TV. Nobody wants her in the family. She’d have to remember to ask Vikki about that. If she was still freeloading from the boys. She was getting angry. Better cool down, she thought. She changed the channel. A man on a surveillance camera was robbing a grocery store clerk. Crime, she thought. She shook her head. Police sirens blared. This country is going to hell. She didn’t so much think that as it popped into her head. Like a voice. It sounded a little like a priest. Or God. Maybe her own.
She turned to the next photo. It was one of her old cats. Her old cat Harvey. What a great cat. Boy he got bad at the end though, she thought. He could barely walk. First he started limping around. She took him to the vet and the vet said he was losing feeling in his leg. It looked to be spreading. A sort of degenerative spinal condition. Would she consider putting him to sleep? No. She couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
But, of course, it got worse. By the end he was dragging the lower half of his body around the house. She’d bought him a little cart with wheels on the back. He could use his front legs to move around. His back legs could just sit in the little card in back. It might even be kind of cute. But it didn’t work. Mostly he just laid there, his hind legs in the cart and the rest of his body, uneven, lying on the floor.
Finally she had to put him down. That was one of the worst days she’d had in a long time. That must have been….10 years ago? Has it been that long? Maybe 5 years? No. Florence looked up into nothing and thought about it. It must have been around 1990. She had changed apartments. Had her hip been replaced? Yes, the hip had already been replaced because she could carry him to the car. Vikki had come and picked her up and Florence had wanted to carry him to the car. Harvey was a bit heavy and before she’d had her hip replaced she could barely carry anything let alone a fat cat. She looked at the photo. He was a fat one. She chuckled a little. Rusty is thin. He’s almost too skinny. “Aren’t you?” she said to Rusty aloud. He’s getting old too though. He was about 5 when she got him. He was 15 now. Of course, and she’d had Rusty for 10 years and she’d gotten him a week after Harvey had died. So it was 10 years ago when Harvey died. The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Oh hi Vikki! How are you?”
“Oh. Uh, sure. Yeah the laundry room here is always working...as far as I know.”
“Yeah. That’s right, but it’s always worked since then.”
“You can come over anytime to use it. That one time was because—“
“Oh, ok.”
“Why are you going to the dentist?”
“I see.”
“Hey Vikki. Let me ask you one question.”
“Yeah, how many years has it been since Harvey died? You remember Harvey, my black cat?”
“Oh. Um, oh. Has it been that long? I know I had moved into this apartment and I know I had my hip operation. And that was more than 5 years ago.”
“It was more like 10...”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Oh, I’m just looking at some old photos that I pulled out of the cabinet. I’m going to—“
“Right.”
“In how long?”
“10 minutes?”
“Maybe 20. Ok. Then maybe we’ll see you in 20 minutes.”
“What are you doing right now?”
“What are you watching?”
”Ok, see you in 10 or 20 minutes.”
“Ok. Bye bye.”
Florence looked at the TV. Same show. A high speed police chase. She reached and hung up the phone, but it bounced a little and half of it fell onto the table. She reached with her hand. It reminded her of getting the damn photos. She leaned and almost slammed the phone back on the receiver. Her oxygen tank clicked in the next room. She turned to the next photo. It was her husband, Clarence.
She looked at it more closely. Over time it became easier to look at, she thought, almost chuckling. Where was that? It was here at the center. About 20 years ago she guessed, squinting. Looked like the front of his place. That was strange. After everything that happened he ended up dying just a few hundred yards from here. Her mind was speechless.
Don’t dwell in the past, she thought after a few minutes. Not like some of the others around here. Clarence was something she’d pushed inside pretty deep, she knew, to the point where she sometimes wondered if it could come out at all. She looked at the back of the photo. The date was 1980. “Clarence. 1980” it said in her handwriting. Was he alive in 1980? That didn’t seem so long ago. But she did still have Harvey when he died. She stared at the picture, waiting for something to reveal itself. Florence wanted to stand up. She was thirsty. A little hungry. She also didn’t want to sit there and dwell. She thought about the stairs. The stairs were the thing. They always popped into her mind. The stairs in the first blue apartment over on East Avenue. Had things been that bad at the time? She supposed they had been. He’d been drinking a lot then. Bill had been born by then. Three in a three bedroom apartment. The girls could sleep together in one room. They even liked it some of the time. That was natural for twins to sleep together. When Bill was too old to sleep in a crib, and he was too old by the time he stopped, the twins had to move in together. That wasn’t so bad. Husband and wife in one room, twins in the other, little boy in the other. But then Mom ran out of money and had to move in. Florence couldn’t say no. Could really never say no to mom. Some people said she was a pushover, but letting your mom move in when she doesn’t have any money? They said it then and some might say it now. But to her, letting her mom move back in; that sounded like a good Catholic. Not a pushover. Let them say what they will.
Mom moved in and things got pretty bad. The drinking became lots of drinking. Clarence, but Florence too. Even her mom. Hopefully the girls weren’t but Florence wasn’t stupid. They avoided the place most of the time, of course. But anyone who took one look at their trash, all the bottles and beer cans, could guess.
But Clarence’s drinking was the worst. And with drinking often comes hitting. She’d seen her father do it to her mother and then she saw Clarence do it to her. Heck, he’d hit everybody once in a while. Except her Mom, who, Florence had to admit, she had wished he’d hit a time or two. He’d come home from the card store and there’d be someone here or there screaming. Someone got a bad grade and someone else made fun of them. Someone got in a fight at the playground. Or, as was the case more than once or twice; a boy Sheri liked liked Vikki instead. That was when he still had the little card shop downtown. He always had plenty of apologies right at his fingertips. He’d come home one night and haul off and pop someone, but then be right there the next day at 6:30 p.m. with a card, or a teddy bear, or some new stationary.
Scotty lived just downstairs. Florence was friendly with Scotty’s Mom. Not friends, but they occasionally chatted while they smoked cigarettes outside their doors at the same time. Scotty and his Mom had been living there a few months before Florence and her family had moved in. What was her name? No idea. But she’d moved in there with Scotty because she had left her husband. A driver. Florence guessed that he beat the crap out of her. They always had something unsaid in common. But she never pressed the issue just like she didn’t want to be pressed on the issue. So they’d just sit and smoke and chat about things like the weather and what they were making for dinner.
Somehow the guy had made enough money driving trucks that she could live by herself at that apartment with Scotty. It was paid for and she wasn’t working too much. Now and again she’d get a job as a waitress. But, as she admitted to Florence, working wasn’t her thing. Especially the service industry. She didn’t like to take crap from people. Not at Denny’s and not anywhere else. Florence knew how she felt. She’d got a job at Denny’s for a while. Before Scotty’s mom had. She had to when her mom moved in. She hated the way the customers treated her. A sex object or a slave and often both. She wasn’t even pretty then.
All things said, that place on East Avenue was pretty cheap. Maybe that’s why Scotty’s mom could afford to quit all those jobs. It just seemed more expensive to Florence at the time because she had three kids and a mother; all who did very little besides eat and watch TV. Outside of her own stint at Denny’s the only income was from a fledgling card shop that always seemed on the verge of going out of business. That added to the pressure of the whole situation. The drinking and everything. Everyone was always walking on eggshells then. Especially after Clarence started smacking people around. If it weren’t for the TV someone might mistake it for a library. A library where everyone smoked a pack a night just to keep their head straight.
Clarence decided it’d be a good idea to hire some help. He announced it at the dinner table one night over some macaroni and cheese. Vikki’s hand shot up. She wanted to work there. But then Sheri wanted to work there too and they started arguing about who should get the job. Me Dad! I want to work there! I need the money! I have to go to Prom next year! I have to! The conversation, or the argument more to the point, continued through dinner and beyond. Finally, Clarence tried to smash a mostly empty beer can on the coffee table to shut the girls up but it ended up folding over to the side and leaking everywhere on the table and the floor. He said none of his girls were working at his damn card shop because he didn’t want a bunch of horny boys hanging around there. Hey, what about that boy downstairs? His Mom doesn’t work, does she? He’s almost 16, isn’t he? He’ll be wanting to save money to get a car pretty soon, right? Scotty started working at the card shop a couple days a week.
Now Florence was indulging in her memory. She played with the corners of the picture staring in the direction of the TV but not really seeing anything at all. There wasn’t anything in particular that stood out. There was the phone call from the police department. That was about it. What were the signs? This is where Florence got really stuck and had so for years. She gripped the photo harder, as if to squeeze and answer out of the photo of Clarence.
Mostly he didn’t talk to Florence. Maybe that was the sign. If he did talk to her he called her “you” or if he was drunk and was hedging for some sex he’d call her “my pet.” That was a nice as it got. When he got angry? He didn’t call her anything. Mostly he didn’t say anything. He might throw something or slam something down like that beer can. Or, she’d say something to him and he’d say something to her and her back and then he might smack her, or at least slug her hard on the arm. That got worse over time, until finally he cocked back and hit her like you’d hit someone at a bar. Knocked her out cold on the kitchen floor, right in front of Sheri who had been begging him for money to buy a new pair of bowling shoes. Florence had hardly said a thing. She didn’t want to hear it from Sheri either. Sheri was always starting some new thing because other kids were doing it and bowling was just the latest in a long line. Vikki had bowling shoes that some boy had bought her. Sheri wanted them too. Please? Why not? Vikki has them and so on until finally Florence said, after 20 minutes of begging and bickering: “Just give her the damn money Clarence she can go to the Goodwill and buy some used ones!” And then pow.
But all that didn’t really explain what would eventually happen. That wasn’t even a clue, really. A different kind of violence. Florence thought hard. It wasn’t until the phone call. The police told her to come to the station on Livermore Avenue. She’d never been there. She thought something happened at school. Maybe Bill had a scrap, or, at one point, she thought maybe Vikki had gotten pregnant. They didn’t tell her why. They just told her to come in and she did. She’d come in and they sat her down, gave her a cup of coffee, and told her that her husband had paid someone money to have her killed. They didn’t mince words. They didn’t try to soften it. They just said it and stared at her. Waited for her to tell them her side of the story. But there was no side to the story. She just started at the wall and they stared at her. They looked at her for a good five minutes. Maybe more. There was nothing but the clock ticking and occasionally the floor settling or people talking outside. They just waited. Finally they asked her if she was okay or needed some more coffee. They had no idea how hearing something like that would break your heart long before it would scare you or make you sleepy.
“He tried to kill me?” she finally said, “What do you mean he tried to kill me?”
He’d hired someone to kill her. He had paid the boy who works at his…what kind of place is it? A card shop. “That’s right, it’s a card shop,” he said in her direction. As if she didn’t know. As if she hadn’t helped pay for the damn store. Or helped take the stupid things out of boxes put them in the racks. Or held herself back from complaining a little when Clarence had decided a greeting card store was the way to the family’s financial security instead of a sandwich shop. Or helped haul the used copy machine into the place so he could try and make a profit by selling 5 cent copies even though the Safeway just down the street had a better copy machine.
“A stationary store,” the officer said to his partner.
“Like that, yeah. But the kid called it a card shop.”
“What’s the kid’s name?”
“Uh…Graham Scott Jenkins, sir.”
They explained to her he’d told Scotty to push Florence down the stairs. Make it look like an accident. To push her down the stairs when she was outside smoking, and make it look like she fell. Wait until its dark. Watch under the stairs until she comes outside to smoke. She does it 10 or 15 times a night. Run across to the other side of the apartment building and go up to the third floor. Jog back to the other side of building, but not too loud. And be really quiet when you come down the stairs to the second floor. Then you push her down to the first. She'll break her neck or back and that'll be it.
He’d told Scotty the plan and said he’d pay him $5,000. That’s a lot of money to a kid. That was the value of Florence’s life to Clarence. He could buy a new car or he could have his wife killed. Car or dead wife? Or a family trip to Disneyland. That would be $5,000. A car, no wife, or a trip to Disneyland. Did Clarence have $5,000? That was all Florence could think for a while. Where was this magic $5,000?
The plan was to increase Scotty’s pay. Give him an extra $1,000 a month so that no one would know what was going on. He’d just put it in his paycheck. He’d even pay him in advance. He could just tell everyone he was working an extra day. You know, just a few hours here and there. Just say he was going to work and then head to the library or whatever. Go fishing or something. Whatever kids do. Just get lost for a little while and don’t let anyone see. Just get lost. And after the fifth payment do the job. Do the job. He’d bought him some gloves and a mask. In case someone saw or checked finger prints. As long as it was all done at night no one would see a thing. There might be a crash. But if it was done when Scotty’s mom was gone at work, and she’d been working more at the time, then no one would know.
It was the logic that stunned Florence. She could remember a lot of things from Clarence’s trial, even though she’d been numb most of the time. It was all mostly a haze of Valium on an empty stomach. But it was concentrated sitting. She absorbed the painful details like a sponge. Absorbed them and pushed them into the pit of her stomach. She’d ride to and from the courthouse with her mother in silence. Her mother learned how to drive just so she could take Florence to court. Florence couldn’t drive. She heard it all. She heard the whole plan. Most of the time, sitting in the courtroom, it was as if she wasn’t even the intended object of violence. She couldn’t believe it was her. That she was the person being talked about when someone said “the intended victim.” The victim. “That’s me.” She had to remind herself anytime one of the lawyers said it. “The victim is me.”
He got caught because of Scotty. After the fifth payment. After he’d been paid all the money and the gloves and hat were on his bed the night he was going to do it, he got scared. He called Clarence crying and Florence was right there sitting and watching Hill Street Blues of all things. He called Clarence crying.
“What’s that Fred?”
“Hey, you ok Fred?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, I see. Well, you don’t have to worry about that.”
“What’s wrong?”
“You just have to do your job like everyone else. Don’t worry. It’ll be ok.”
“Just calm down. Take a deep breath. You’ll be ok.”
He pretended it was his brother. He hung up the phone and sat down. He didn’t say anything to Florence. He just watched Florence every time she went outside, thinking that would be the time. He sat there waiting for the crash. Ten or 15 times Florence went outside Clarence thought it would be the last time he saw Florence alive. But Scotty was sitting in his bedroom alone, his gloves and hat in his hand, crying. He couldn’t walk, he said at the trial. He couldn’t even talk when he finally called the police. He just cried into the phone and told them his address. Then he threw up. Florence was out smoking when two police cars came flying into the parking lot. The officers ran to the downstairs apartment. “What is going on down there?” Florence thought stubbing her cigarette out in an old Maxim coffee can and opening the screen door to go back inside.
What did she do that was so bad that would make him want to end her life to make his life better? Did he want to stab her in the back whenever she clung to him? Sure, they’d had their problems. She’d threatened to leave him a time or two. Especially when he started drinking all the time. But to kill her? It didn’t add up. It wasn’t as though she cheated on him. It wasn’t as though she didn’t cook him breakfast every morning before he went to the card store.
What was he thinking when the police were downstairs talking to Scotty? What do you think they’re doing down there? You think something’s wrong with Scotty? Clarence just stared at the TV. You think I should try to get a hold of his mom? Is she back at Denny’s? Or is she working at that new place over on First Street? She thought Clarence didn’t even hear her. He barely ever talked about Scotty. Florence went to get the phone book. Then there was a knock at the door and Clarence just sat there. Looking at the door. Can you get it babe? She said to him. He just sat there, staring at the door. Immobile.
It took her a few years to realize it, but what hurt her as much as anything was that this man, who could barely be depended on to open his card store at 10 a.m. every day, who could barely string two thoughts together in order to put on his shoes on the right feet every morning, who just sat and stared at the door when the police were coming to arrest him, had made a plan. He had somehow devised a plan to murder his wife and get away with it. Not a good plan mind you, but it was a plan, a plan that he had thought about and thought about to the point of where he was convinced it could work and work well.
As she sat there when they read the verdict, and everyone around her was either clapping or crying or saying a prayer or all three, Florence just sat there. She sat there and looked straight ahead, not at anyone or anything, and not really even thinking of anything in particular. She just sat there and thought about something she’d heard in church once, about how no matter how bad things get the world is going to keep turning. It doesn’t stop. No matter how much you sometimes wish it would all stop. The world keeps on turning. She understood then for the first time that life has no mercy, it keeps coming until it stops. It gets good it gets bad, but until you die it doesn’t stop.
She didn’t see Clarence for a long time. They put him in the Wasco Sate Prison in Kern County for 20 years. It was his second offense, which is something else Florence had no idea about, but by then she was numb to any further other surprises Clarence threw at her. So it was 20 instead of 10 and Clarence was to be out of her life for good. After 4 years of marriage Florence was “flying solo again” as her mother had put it on the drive home after the sentencing.
Florence walked into the apartment that day and fell into the recliner that Clarence had bought for himself just 6 months earlier. She’d never sat in it before. Her mom defrosted a frozen pizza and they ate it and watched some TV. When she was finished eating Florence took out a cigarette and lit it up right there in the apartment, something Clarence would never allow. He’d always made everyone smoke outside, but now things would be different. Florence’s mom, sensing the new order, took out one of her cigarettes and started smoking too. She didn’t know that it wasn’t that Florence was making a new rule so much as she couldn’t go and smoke out near those stairs again. In fact, she would never walk up or down those stairs again. For the next few years they lived on East Avenue, she’d walk out the door and walk to the other side of the building and take those stairs. The opposite of what Scotty was supposed to do.
A few months after he went to prison the letters started coming. First to the kids and then a year or so later, to her. She ignored them, at first. She refused to write him back and she refused to forgive him. She didn’t even like the kids going to see him sometimes, but her mother insisted that kids need to see their father once in a while and as she said she was always eager to hone her driving skills. But Florence wouldn’t go with them. Even when the kids started turning on her and her mother started with the whole “he’s sorry, and he really misses you stuff.” Even when the letters kept coming month after month and then week after week. She wouldn’t even read them. Even when Bill got angry at her and said she was “cold-hearted,” and “didn’t understand people,” she refused.
It wasn’t until her mother died 5 years later, and Clarence called her to say he was sorry, that she had an inkling of forgiveness. Somehow that of all things had meant something to her. He’d called her the day of the funeral. The kids knew he was calling. They had it all planned. No one would answer the phone. She was in the middle of putting on her makeup and when the phone rang the apartment got real quiet. She knew they were all there, but no one would answer the phone. And when she didn’t answer the phone it just kept ringing and ringing. It must have ringed 15 times. Finally Florence got up and answered the phone. She was a little angry. The connection sounded a little strange. It made a loud clicking sound when she first picked up the phone. There was a pause.
“Hello?” she said twice.
“Oh---hi Clarence.”
“Oh, I’m fine I guess.”
“Yes, yes. She did pass away. Last week. She had a heart attack.”
“I know. Well, thank you Clarence. I appreciate that.”
“I’m fine. You know, the same old. How about you?”
“They’re fine too. We’re all getting ready to go to the service.”
“Okay, well, I appreciate that.”
“Okay, you too. Thanks for calling. Bye.”
It wasn’t a big deal. After she hung up the phone the kids started giggling in the hallway. She turned around and they giggled some more and ran to their bedrooms. She never gave too much thought to her kid’s intentions where she and Clarence were concerned. She wasn’t going to forgive him. She didn’t forgive Clarence at that time. But she did start reading his letters as they continued to arrive every week. She didn’t write him back, not for another few months. But eventually she started writing him once in a while. She’d write him once for every 3 or 4 letters he’d send her. She even went back and read some of the other letters he’d sent. She hadn’t saved them all, but after a year or two of throwing them in the garbage, she had started to save a few. Then a few more. She had about 40. They were all kind of the same. Day to day kind of things. Occasionally something about missing her and the kids, sometimes asking for forgiveness, and a couple times even telling her he still loved her.
She ignored much of this. She knew she could never truly forgive him. The kids wanted her to, he obviously wanted her to, her priest had said to, but what could she really do? She had pushed away most of the bad feeling, the direct memories of smoking out on that stairway, the memories of Clarence smacking her or one of the kids when he was drunk, the memory of Clarence just sitting there cold, looking at the TV as the police cars pulled up.
Once he’d been released part of her forgave him, but part of her didn’t. She wasn’t sure if she’d forgiven him in her heart or her mind, she supposed it was part of this and part of that. She’d listened to the excuses over and over. She read the letters. He’d been drinking so much. The store was going under. The girls were teenagers and wanted cars. Bill wanted to play football and they couldn’t afford it. Her mother moved back in and she wasn’t so bad but it added pressure. There was no peace. What about all the good times? What about when we all took that trip to Tracy to go to his brother’s restaurant? What about when we all went to the state fair in Sacramento? Or the time they camped out near the redwoods and it rained all night but they had fun anyway?
But forgiveness? No. It couldn’t happen. She told him as much as he sat there in her apartment the day he’d been released from prison. No, he couldn’t stay with her. She’d help him get a motel down the street. Yes, he could come over for breakfast the next day. No, she wasn’t going to take him back no matter how much he’d changed. But she’d help him get an apartment on the other side of town. Well, yes, there were some places where she was living. She let him do that.
By that time the kids had moved on with their own lives and didn’t really push her to get back with Dad in the way they did before. He tried for a while. For about a week, but then just kind of stopped. He ended up moving into the same senior center in group D, which wasn’t far from A, where she lived. She’d help him out from time to time. He couldn’t do laundry or cook or anything like that. He needed the help. They were both getting on in age so it was hard to turn down somebody who couldn’t even take care of himself. After some time they became friendly. Nothing more, nothing less. They settled into something that was hardly love, definitely not admiration, or even respect, but it was friendship, Florence thought. After everything, they did eventually become pretty friendly. When Clarence died in his apartment just a year after he’d been released from prison Florence was the one who found him. She’d come over to bring him some extra fish sticks she’d prepared one afternoon. She hadn’t seen or heard from him the night before. By that time they usually chatted on the phone at least a couple times a day if for nothing else to see what the other was watching on TV. She wanted to drop in and say hi and she knew he’d come to really like fish sticks when he was up in Kern county.
She knocked on the door and when there was no answer she checked the knob. It was unlocked so she figured he was watching TV or doing crossword puzzles as he liked to do. She opened the door and there he was. Sitting in his chair with a non-alcohol beer at his side. He looked asleep but Florence could tell he was dead. She walked in and put the fish sticks down on the coffee table she’d helped him buy at an estate sale just a few weeks before. She stood over him and looked down. By then her hip was starting to hurt so she plopped down onto the couch and sighed.
She surprised herself. In that after everything Clarence had meant and not meant to her in her life, after all the disappointment, frustration, horror and numbness he’d created in her, when she found him dead and was sitting there looking at him; she cried a little. She just stayed there for a good 10 or 15 minutes, sitting there next to his chair, staring at him. His body had aged a lot since she knew him. It had aged even faster since he went to prison, she thought. Hers had too she supposed and this realitisation made her weep as much as Clarence’s passing did. She started at him and shook her head. She leaned over, put her forehead on his cold hand and said nothing.