Ellen
Also, here, have a short story I was working on this semester that I ended up liking. It still needs some editing, but it's my favorite out of all I wrote for the class. It's been such a long time since I worked on a written story, and working on this made me kick myself for not doing it more. Anyway, here it is. It's called "Ellen".
The problem with Facebook, Maggie figured, was that it makes you feel compelled to rekindle old connections that probably were better off forgotten. She knew she should have trusted that weird feeling in her gut when she saw that Ellen Anderson (nee Lennox) had friended (she noticed how the verb was now “friend,” instead of “befriend”) her after 19 years of silence. The Ellen who she used to write stories with. The Ellen whose tears she would wipe after a particularly bad fight, whose thin hands she used to admire. The Ellen who disappeared from her life without a trace. That Ellen. It took her a few days to accept the friending request. She should have known it wasn’t a good idea to reopen that connection, electronically or otherwise.
And yet, there she was on her porch that morning, facing who she believed to be Ellen’s son with what clearly looked to be two large suitcases.
“You’re Margaret Hunter, right? My mother told me all about you.”
***
Resigning herself to her fate, Maggie ushered the boy into the house.
“You can sit at the counter if you want…Henry, was it?” Noticing Henry’s face flash with confusion she added, “I know you from your mom’s Facebook pictures.”
“Mom never knew if you checked that.”
Henry was Ellen’s child. This was even more apparent to Maggie now that he sat across from her. The slim frame, the slightly curly dark brown hair, the thick eyebrows, the mouth that always seemed to hint at a smile without quite getting there-hell, get rid of the pronoun “he” and you might as well have a clone of Ellen circa twenty years ago, Maggie thought. He had to be about fifteen. It struck her that he must be either very popular in school, or that one kid you see stuffed in lockers a lot. She guessed it was the latter. He looked like he’d fit in one, at any rate. She prepared two glasses of orange juice.
“So…”
“Maggie.” She handed him his glass.
“Maggie.” He said with all the awkwardness of a boy trying hard to be a man. “So Maggie, I know this is really sudden and everything but my mom said you’d be a lifesaver if you let me stay for a few weeks or so while I was in town.”
Just as she feared. Maggie cleared her throat, frowning.
“I don’t see why she couldn’t come ask me herself.”
“She died last Thursday.”
***
Ellen had been sick for a while. According to Henry, they had moved back here six months ago when Ellen’s condition turned serious. Maggie realized that it was around this time that Ellen decided to friend her on Facebook. Not that this explained where Ellen had been the past nineteen years, and why Maggie suddenly found herself saddled with babysitting duty. She bit her lip, feeling a wave of agitation. She tried to brush it away. Sudden as this was, it wasn’t as if the house couldn’t handle someone else staying in it. Maggie had inherited it from her mom and she always thought it was two sizes too big for her anyway. And there was something about the dead that made you feel like you owed them something. She sighed, rubbing her forehead. One last favor for Ellen.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this but you can take the guest room next to the study upstairs.”
Henry’s blue eyes lit up, his shoulders relaxed. “Thanks, Maggie.”
Maggie remembered that Ellen’s eyes were brown.
***
Maggie fancied herself a writer, though for the past three years she hadn’t actually written anything. But her mother had been a writer, and her grandmother before that, and they had all made a reasonable living for themselves writing so Maggie figured she must be a writer since it was in her blood. Years back, she’d promised to name the heroine in her first bestseller after Ellen. She had never given up that promise, but she had never produced a bestseller either. That night she dug the manuscript out from the garage and flipped through it while she and Henry ate dinner.
“What kind of sickness was it?”
“What?” Henry responded, as if shaken out of a reverie.
“I mean, was it cancer? Pneumonia? I feel like I should have a little more information here.”
Henry stared at her for a moment. “It was cancer. Truth is, I don’t even know that much myself,” Henry pushed his spaghetti around with his fork. “We woke up one day and she was sick.”
“What about your Dad?”
“I wouldn’t know. He left when I was too young to remember.”
Jeez, Ellen, could your life have been even more cliché? Maggie wanted to say. But she kept silent. As she glanced at Henry and took his existence in, she almost felt betrayed by Ellen. The very least she could have done was shown her face so Maggie could have knocked some sense into her. Ellen screwed up. It wasn’t supposed to go like this, not according to the story they wrote together. The story whose pages suddenly felt heavy with nineteen years of unrealized potential.
***
While it was true that they came here to treat Ellen’s sickness, the real reason was simply that Ellen wished to be buried in her hometown. And so she was. Henry would go visit his mother’s grave every other day, at ten in the morning. Maggie would have gone as well, but each time she asked, Henry would tell her that Ellen didn’t want anyone coming until her tombstone was completed. Maggie didn’t know what she would say to Ellen’s ghost anyway. But the fact that it was Henry who always prevented her from going bothered Maggie more than she cared to admit. Sometimes she wondered if she would feel better about this situation if Henry were a girl. She always figured that if Ellen really wanted a child, it would have been a girl. There was something unnatural about how much Henry looked like Ellen. Maggie tried to remember the face of that man who Ellen introduced her to before she left, but nothing came to mind. A forgettable man with no special features to pass on except for his gender. It was as if that faceless man that left them before Henry could talk decided he would forever leave his Y shaped mark on their lives. To transform Ellen’s likeness into his form so she would always be reminded that at one point of her life, she was his. Looking at Henry was downright disturbing at times.
And yet, Maggie found herself unable to come between what she perceived to be the bond between mother and son, and each time Henry denied her, she kept quiet, letting her dismay wash over her and disperse into the darkest corners of the house.
***
Henry was a quiet boy, and Maggie couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not. He was much like a ghost, the proof of his existence manifesting itself in small, understated ways. A few footsteps upstairs, a missing apple, the sound of a door creaking open. It was like he wasn’t used to living in a house or something. She wondered whether this was just his way of dealing with his grief or if he was always like this.
“Do you have any place to go? Afterwards, I mean.” Maggie asked during dinner one day.
“Sort of.” Henry seemed reluctant to continue, so Maggie did for him.
“It’s not like you’d want to stay here much longer anyway, I’m sure. Why do you think your mother ran away?” Maggie laughed, and even surprised herself with how bitter she sounded.
“It’s not so bad.” Henry replied. “How close were you to my mom?”
He watched her steadily as she ate. He sometimes looked like he was waiting for a particular answer to come to him. Ellen had had moments like that too, where it seemed like some great worldly truth had lodged itself within her, and she was simply navigating her way through its secrets.
“Depends on when you’re talking about,” Maggie started, not bothering to meet his eyes. “But we were very close when we were young. Almost like sisters.”
Henry’s eyes didn’t move. “So what happened?”
“You should’ve asked your mother.”
“She wouldn’t have told me anyway.”
It had been two and a half weeks since Henry’s arrival, and Maggie could comfortably say that they had passed the point from being strangers to acquaintances. She wondered how long he was planning on staying.
“You’re a freshman, right? Don’t you have school or something?”
“When mom got really bad I decided to take the rest of the year off. It made things easier on her, especially when we moved back here.”
“Must have been hard for you.”
Henry shrugged. “Not really. I’m used to moving around. Mom always liked that sort of stuff. It’s like she felt like she was missing out on something if she stayed in one spot for too long.”
“I don’t get that.” Maggie said, digging into her baked potato. “Seems to me like you miss out on more if you don’t bother to slow yourself down every now and then.”
“Is that why you’re still here?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, really.”
There was a moment of heavy silence as the two of them continued their meal.
“She always talked about you.” Henry resumed his gaze. “No matter where we went.”
“That’s funny, because you’d never be able to tell from her actions.”
“I’m sure she had her reasons. You should know that.”
“Listen,” Maggie finally looked at him, trying to match his stare. “Whatever you think you might have heard about me not wanting to see Ellen, or avoiding her, whatever, you can just shove it. She’s the one who disappeared, and she’s the one who didn’t even have the decency to stay alive long enough so I could ask her why.” Maggie stopped herself, realizing she might have crossed a line she never intended to cross. Or maybe she did. She didn’t know why she was getting so angry. She could always kick him out if it really bothered her that much.
“Sorry,” She offered, not exactly sure what she was sorry about.
Henry returned to his food. Somehow this made Maggie even more irritated. He had a habit of starting conversations with her without bothering to end them. If there was anything Maggie hated, it was loose ends. She could tell that there was something he wanted to say, or maybe something he wanted her to say. Why wouldn’t he tell her what he wanted? She wasn’t a mind reader.
They finished their dinner in silence.
***
A week later Maggie was cleaning the house. She often cleaned when she wanted to think, and stopped once she was done thinking. The house was perpetually half-cleaned. She preferred it like this. This way, she didn’t have to worry about what she would do once the cleaning was done.
She thought about what Ellen would say if she could see her now. She occasionally had thoughts like these. Would Ellen be happy to see her? Relieved? Dismayed? Maybe she would feel embarrassed. Maggie tried to imagine it. Ellen, standing on the porch facing Maggie, head slightly turned down so her eyes had to look up in order to see Maggie’s face. It was her way of apologizing. Maggie had seen it countless times after their fights. They would stare at each other for a moment, a comfortable silence before finally embracing wordlessly. That’s how it would go.
The last time she’s seen Ellen. It had been a clammy summer afternoon, and the air was heavy with moisture making it difficult to breathe. Ellen was at the doorway. Papers were scattered on the ground, but she made no move to pick them up. Her expression that day was strangely hard and Maggie, for the first time in her life, found it difficult to look Ellen in the face. Instead she looked at Ellen’s hands. They were long and elegant. Noble hands. That cheap ring could never do them justice. He would never do her justice. Ellen was too young; she didn’t know what she really wanted. She couldn’t know. Ellen was so stubborn. Why didn’t she ever listen when it was important? It was better to stay here. Maggie tried to tell her, but as soon as she stepped forward Ellen turned away.
She screwed up.
***
Maggie was just starting to sweep the kitchen floor when Henry came back from the cemetery. He walked to the counter, taking a seat. He looked tired.
“So how’s the tombstone going?”
“It’s not up,” he said, looking down. “Won’t be for a while.”
Maggie stopped sweeping. “Henry. I don’t believe that crap any more than you do.”
“I don’t see why you can’t.”
“Why are you still here?”
“Because you haven’t kicked me out yet.” Henry glanced up at her, not saying anything more. It was infuriating. She put the broom down and approached him, her face stony.
“I have more important things to do than try to decipher what you mean and what you want. If you want to say something to me, say it, or you can just get out.”
“Do you want to see her?”
Maggie took a step away from Henry, “What do you mean?”
“I can take you to her.”
***
It had just rained, and the ground was soft with dampness. Maggie’s boots squelched against the mud as they walked.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re nearly there.”
They weren’t going towards to the cemetery. They weren’t even that far from Maggie’s house. Since Maggie still lived in the neighborhood she grew up in, she knew the area very well. She looked at the houses, finding their familiarity comforting. She began to catalogue each house in her head. To the left was the Johnson’s house, and next to that the Miller’s. And next to that was-
Henry halted in front of a large brown house. It must have been a grand house in its prime, but it looked like it hadn’t been lived in years, the wood was decaying and the windows were broken. The door had detached itself from the doorway; long after the papers in the room it led to had been picked up. Maggie knew this house. She knew it well. She could still see Ellen’s silhouette in the doorway.
“Why are we here?” Maggie asked quietly. “This isn’t a cemetery.”
In the front yard there was a hole, the beginnings of what appeared to be a shoddy attempt at repair, or maybe preparations for demolition. The hole wasn’t deep, but seemed like it had been worked at quite a bit to look presentable. There were flowers placed around its perimeter. Tulips, she supposed. They looked worn down. Henry walked over to its opening. He shuffled through his bag, pulling out what looked to be a rather heavy-looking clay container.
“Why are we here?” Maggie repeated, refusing to move forward.
“When Mom died we didn’t have enough money for a burial so we had her cremated. It was her idea. The hospital fees were more than we expected them to be. I could have sprinkled a bit of her everywhere we lived so everyone would have a piece of her but there was no point. No one would notice. It would just be dirt to them. I wanted to give her a proper burial, because if I didn’t she might as well have not existed at all. Not that this is proper.” Henry’s laugh was hollow as he motioned to the wooden stick he had wedged into the ground to serve as a makeshift tombstone. Maggie wondered if the only difference between a laugh and a cry was which direction your mouth tilted.
“She wanted to be buried here. For the life of me I can’t see why, but I tried.” Henry said. He looked so small in front of the hole. Maggie didn’t know what to say. Did he want her to comfort him? Is that why he came? She could feel her boots sinking into the mud.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Watching is enough.” Henry stared at her, and she could feel his eyes bore into her skull. It was a strange expression, halfway between sympathy and apathy. It was unbearable. She looked at the ground, lifting her eyes up only high enough to see the urn in his hands. He pulled the top up and shook out its contents into the cavity. It took less than a minute. Maggie didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to search for Ellen in the ashes for herself but she felt a weight, years in the making, pressing down on her feet and preventing her from taking one step towards the grave.
“What now?” Maggie said, not to anyone in particular. Henry didn’t respond, the empty bottle still in his hands.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” Henry started again, his voice wavering with restrained emotion, “You don’t get it and you never will. Now I see why my mom left this place.”
“Stop it,” Maggie said, “Stop acting like I’m the bad guy here. I’m just as lost as you are, okay? At least she’ll always be a mother to you. I don’t-I don’t even know why I’m here.” Her feet wouldn’t move. And she wasn’t sure if she wanted them to move.
“You don’t know? You’re just a coward. You know why you’re over there,” Henry said, hugging the empty urn to his chest and looking at hole once more. There was an awkward restlessness about him, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with his emotions. “But so was mom, so I guess you were perfect for each other.”
“What are you saying?” Ellen spat back, feeling embarrassed for some reason. Henry gave her a hard look, and then deflated, pulling the container closer to his chest.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”
He looked so young clutching that urn. Maggie couldn’t stand looking at him. She felt guilty, and resented him for making her feel this way. Why did he bring her here? Was this Ellen’s final act of revenge on her, to make Maggie wait nineteen years before forcing her to see what’s become of her best friend?
Ellen didn’t know anything about her. She didn’t know how hard Maggie tried to forget about her, and the humiliation she felt the day that Ellen left with that man. It took Maggie so long to get over it all by the time she realized what she could have done to reconcile their relationship it was too late. It was too late, because she knew that no matter what there would always be a Henry between the two of them, and Maggie could never be strong enough to live with that fact.
And now all she was left with was Henry. Henry, standing before Ellen’s ashes, a testament to how powerless Maggie was to change anything. It was unbearable.
“This is ridiculous. I’m going home.” Maggie said, turning her back to Henry before pausing for a moment. “I don’t know what you or Ellen wanted out of me, but I can’t give it to you.”
“All she…no. No, not just Mom, me too. I just wanted someone to realize she had lived. That she was a real, living person once. I thought,” Henry seemed to be choking on his words, “I thought that if anyone, you would understand. She talked about you so much.”
Maggie couldn’t will herself to turn around. She never could.
Her boots were caked in mud. She would have to watch out not to track it back into the house.
The problem with Facebook, Maggie figured, was that it makes you feel compelled to rekindle old connections that probably were better off forgotten. She knew she should have trusted that weird feeling in her gut when she saw that Ellen Anderson (nee Lennox) had friended (she noticed how the verb was now “friend,” instead of “befriend”) her after 19 years of silence. The Ellen who she used to write stories with. The Ellen whose tears she would wipe after a particularly bad fight, whose thin hands she used to admire. The Ellen who disappeared from her life without a trace. That Ellen. It took her a few days to accept the friending request. She should have known it wasn’t a good idea to reopen that connection, electronically or otherwise.
And yet, there she was on her porch that morning, facing who she believed to be Ellen’s son with what clearly looked to be two large suitcases.
“You’re Margaret Hunter, right? My mother told me all about you.”
***
Resigning herself to her fate, Maggie ushered the boy into the house.
“You can sit at the counter if you want…Henry, was it?” Noticing Henry’s face flash with confusion she added, “I know you from your mom’s Facebook pictures.”
“Mom never knew if you checked that.”
Henry was Ellen’s child. This was even more apparent to Maggie now that he sat across from her. The slim frame, the slightly curly dark brown hair, the thick eyebrows, the mouth that always seemed to hint at a smile without quite getting there-hell, get rid of the pronoun “he” and you might as well have a clone of Ellen circa twenty years ago, Maggie thought. He had to be about fifteen. It struck her that he must be either very popular in school, or that one kid you see stuffed in lockers a lot. She guessed it was the latter. He looked like he’d fit in one, at any rate. She prepared two glasses of orange juice.
“So…”
“Maggie.” She handed him his glass.
“Maggie.” He said with all the awkwardness of a boy trying hard to be a man. “So Maggie, I know this is really sudden and everything but my mom said you’d be a lifesaver if you let me stay for a few weeks or so while I was in town.”
Just as she feared. Maggie cleared her throat, frowning.
“I don’t see why she couldn’t come ask me herself.”
“She died last Thursday.”
***
Ellen had been sick for a while. According to Henry, they had moved back here six months ago when Ellen’s condition turned serious. Maggie realized that it was around this time that Ellen decided to friend her on Facebook. Not that this explained where Ellen had been the past nineteen years, and why Maggie suddenly found herself saddled with babysitting duty. She bit her lip, feeling a wave of agitation. She tried to brush it away. Sudden as this was, it wasn’t as if the house couldn’t handle someone else staying in it. Maggie had inherited it from her mom and she always thought it was two sizes too big for her anyway. And there was something about the dead that made you feel like you owed them something. She sighed, rubbing her forehead. One last favor for Ellen.
“I don’t know why I’m doing this but you can take the guest room next to the study upstairs.”
Henry’s blue eyes lit up, his shoulders relaxed. “Thanks, Maggie.”
Maggie remembered that Ellen’s eyes were brown.
***
Maggie fancied herself a writer, though for the past three years she hadn’t actually written anything. But her mother had been a writer, and her grandmother before that, and they had all made a reasonable living for themselves writing so Maggie figured she must be a writer since it was in her blood. Years back, she’d promised to name the heroine in her first bestseller after Ellen. She had never given up that promise, but she had never produced a bestseller either. That night she dug the manuscript out from the garage and flipped through it while she and Henry ate dinner.
“What kind of sickness was it?”
“What?” Henry responded, as if shaken out of a reverie.
“I mean, was it cancer? Pneumonia? I feel like I should have a little more information here.”
Henry stared at her for a moment. “It was cancer. Truth is, I don’t even know that much myself,” Henry pushed his spaghetti around with his fork. “We woke up one day and she was sick.”
“What about your Dad?”
“I wouldn’t know. He left when I was too young to remember.”
Jeez, Ellen, could your life have been even more cliché? Maggie wanted to say. But she kept silent. As she glanced at Henry and took his existence in, she almost felt betrayed by Ellen. The very least she could have done was shown her face so Maggie could have knocked some sense into her. Ellen screwed up. It wasn’t supposed to go like this, not according to the story they wrote together. The story whose pages suddenly felt heavy with nineteen years of unrealized potential.
***
While it was true that they came here to treat Ellen’s sickness, the real reason was simply that Ellen wished to be buried in her hometown. And so she was. Henry would go visit his mother’s grave every other day, at ten in the morning. Maggie would have gone as well, but each time she asked, Henry would tell her that Ellen didn’t want anyone coming until her tombstone was completed. Maggie didn’t know what she would say to Ellen’s ghost anyway. But the fact that it was Henry who always prevented her from going bothered Maggie more than she cared to admit. Sometimes she wondered if she would feel better about this situation if Henry were a girl. She always figured that if Ellen really wanted a child, it would have been a girl. There was something unnatural about how much Henry looked like Ellen. Maggie tried to remember the face of that man who Ellen introduced her to before she left, but nothing came to mind. A forgettable man with no special features to pass on except for his gender. It was as if that faceless man that left them before Henry could talk decided he would forever leave his Y shaped mark on their lives. To transform Ellen’s likeness into his form so she would always be reminded that at one point of her life, she was his. Looking at Henry was downright disturbing at times.
And yet, Maggie found herself unable to come between what she perceived to be the bond between mother and son, and each time Henry denied her, she kept quiet, letting her dismay wash over her and disperse into the darkest corners of the house.
***
Henry was a quiet boy, and Maggie couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not. He was much like a ghost, the proof of his existence manifesting itself in small, understated ways. A few footsteps upstairs, a missing apple, the sound of a door creaking open. It was like he wasn’t used to living in a house or something. She wondered whether this was just his way of dealing with his grief or if he was always like this.
“Do you have any place to go? Afterwards, I mean.” Maggie asked during dinner one day.
“Sort of.” Henry seemed reluctant to continue, so Maggie did for him.
“It’s not like you’d want to stay here much longer anyway, I’m sure. Why do you think your mother ran away?” Maggie laughed, and even surprised herself with how bitter she sounded.
“It’s not so bad.” Henry replied. “How close were you to my mom?”
He watched her steadily as she ate. He sometimes looked like he was waiting for a particular answer to come to him. Ellen had had moments like that too, where it seemed like some great worldly truth had lodged itself within her, and she was simply navigating her way through its secrets.
“Depends on when you’re talking about,” Maggie started, not bothering to meet his eyes. “But we were very close when we were young. Almost like sisters.”
Henry’s eyes didn’t move. “So what happened?”
“You should’ve asked your mother.”
“She wouldn’t have told me anyway.”
It had been two and a half weeks since Henry’s arrival, and Maggie could comfortably say that they had passed the point from being strangers to acquaintances. She wondered how long he was planning on staying.
“You’re a freshman, right? Don’t you have school or something?”
“When mom got really bad I decided to take the rest of the year off. It made things easier on her, especially when we moved back here.”
“Must have been hard for you.”
Henry shrugged. “Not really. I’m used to moving around. Mom always liked that sort of stuff. It’s like she felt like she was missing out on something if she stayed in one spot for too long.”
“I don’t get that.” Maggie said, digging into her baked potato. “Seems to me like you miss out on more if you don’t bother to slow yourself down every now and then.”
“Is that why you’re still here?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, really.”
There was a moment of heavy silence as the two of them continued their meal.
“She always talked about you.” Henry resumed his gaze. “No matter where we went.”
“That’s funny, because you’d never be able to tell from her actions.”
“I’m sure she had her reasons. You should know that.”
“Listen,” Maggie finally looked at him, trying to match his stare. “Whatever you think you might have heard about me not wanting to see Ellen, or avoiding her, whatever, you can just shove it. She’s the one who disappeared, and she’s the one who didn’t even have the decency to stay alive long enough so I could ask her why.” Maggie stopped herself, realizing she might have crossed a line she never intended to cross. Or maybe she did. She didn’t know why she was getting so angry. She could always kick him out if it really bothered her that much.
“Sorry,” She offered, not exactly sure what she was sorry about.
Henry returned to his food. Somehow this made Maggie even more irritated. He had a habit of starting conversations with her without bothering to end them. If there was anything Maggie hated, it was loose ends. She could tell that there was something he wanted to say, or maybe something he wanted her to say. Why wouldn’t he tell her what he wanted? She wasn’t a mind reader.
They finished their dinner in silence.
***
A week later Maggie was cleaning the house. She often cleaned when she wanted to think, and stopped once she was done thinking. The house was perpetually half-cleaned. She preferred it like this. This way, she didn’t have to worry about what she would do once the cleaning was done.
She thought about what Ellen would say if she could see her now. She occasionally had thoughts like these. Would Ellen be happy to see her? Relieved? Dismayed? Maybe she would feel embarrassed. Maggie tried to imagine it. Ellen, standing on the porch facing Maggie, head slightly turned down so her eyes had to look up in order to see Maggie’s face. It was her way of apologizing. Maggie had seen it countless times after their fights. They would stare at each other for a moment, a comfortable silence before finally embracing wordlessly. That’s how it would go.
The last time she’s seen Ellen. It had been a clammy summer afternoon, and the air was heavy with moisture making it difficult to breathe. Ellen was at the doorway. Papers were scattered on the ground, but she made no move to pick them up. Her expression that day was strangely hard and Maggie, for the first time in her life, found it difficult to look Ellen in the face. Instead she looked at Ellen’s hands. They were long and elegant. Noble hands. That cheap ring could never do them justice. He would never do her justice. Ellen was too young; she didn’t know what she really wanted. She couldn’t know. Ellen was so stubborn. Why didn’t she ever listen when it was important? It was better to stay here. Maggie tried to tell her, but as soon as she stepped forward Ellen turned away.
She screwed up.
***
Maggie was just starting to sweep the kitchen floor when Henry came back from the cemetery. He walked to the counter, taking a seat. He looked tired.
“So how’s the tombstone going?”
“It’s not up,” he said, looking down. “Won’t be for a while.”
Maggie stopped sweeping. “Henry. I don’t believe that crap any more than you do.”
“I don’t see why you can’t.”
“Why are you still here?”
“Because you haven’t kicked me out yet.” Henry glanced up at her, not saying anything more. It was infuriating. She put the broom down and approached him, her face stony.
“I have more important things to do than try to decipher what you mean and what you want. If you want to say something to me, say it, or you can just get out.”
“Do you want to see her?”
Maggie took a step away from Henry, “What do you mean?”
“I can take you to her.”
***
It had just rained, and the ground was soft with dampness. Maggie’s boots squelched against the mud as they walked.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re nearly there.”
They weren’t going towards to the cemetery. They weren’t even that far from Maggie’s house. Since Maggie still lived in the neighborhood she grew up in, she knew the area very well. She looked at the houses, finding their familiarity comforting. She began to catalogue each house in her head. To the left was the Johnson’s house, and next to that the Miller’s. And next to that was-
Henry halted in front of a large brown house. It must have been a grand house in its prime, but it looked like it hadn’t been lived in years, the wood was decaying and the windows were broken. The door had detached itself from the doorway; long after the papers in the room it led to had been picked up. Maggie knew this house. She knew it well. She could still see Ellen’s silhouette in the doorway.
“Why are we here?” Maggie asked quietly. “This isn’t a cemetery.”
In the front yard there was a hole, the beginnings of what appeared to be a shoddy attempt at repair, or maybe preparations for demolition. The hole wasn’t deep, but seemed like it had been worked at quite a bit to look presentable. There were flowers placed around its perimeter. Tulips, she supposed. They looked worn down. Henry walked over to its opening. He shuffled through his bag, pulling out what looked to be a rather heavy-looking clay container.
“Why are we here?” Maggie repeated, refusing to move forward.
“When Mom died we didn’t have enough money for a burial so we had her cremated. It was her idea. The hospital fees were more than we expected them to be. I could have sprinkled a bit of her everywhere we lived so everyone would have a piece of her but there was no point. No one would notice. It would just be dirt to them. I wanted to give her a proper burial, because if I didn’t she might as well have not existed at all. Not that this is proper.” Henry’s laugh was hollow as he motioned to the wooden stick he had wedged into the ground to serve as a makeshift tombstone. Maggie wondered if the only difference between a laugh and a cry was which direction your mouth tilted.
“She wanted to be buried here. For the life of me I can’t see why, but I tried.” Henry said. He looked so small in front of the hole. Maggie didn’t know what to say. Did he want her to comfort him? Is that why he came? She could feel her boots sinking into the mud.
“So what do you want me to do?”
“Watching is enough.” Henry stared at her, and she could feel his eyes bore into her skull. It was a strange expression, halfway between sympathy and apathy. It was unbearable. She looked at the ground, lifting her eyes up only high enough to see the urn in his hands. He pulled the top up and shook out its contents into the cavity. It took less than a minute. Maggie didn’t want to believe it. She wanted to search for Ellen in the ashes for herself but she felt a weight, years in the making, pressing down on her feet and preventing her from taking one step towards the grave.
“What now?” Maggie said, not to anyone in particular. Henry didn’t respond, the empty bottle still in his hands.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” Henry started again, his voice wavering with restrained emotion, “You don’t get it and you never will. Now I see why my mom left this place.”
“Stop it,” Maggie said, “Stop acting like I’m the bad guy here. I’m just as lost as you are, okay? At least she’ll always be a mother to you. I don’t-I don’t even know why I’m here.” Her feet wouldn’t move. And she wasn’t sure if she wanted them to move.
“You don’t know? You’re just a coward. You know why you’re over there,” Henry said, hugging the empty urn to his chest and looking at hole once more. There was an awkward restlessness about him, as if he didn’t quite know what to do with his emotions. “But so was mom, so I guess you were perfect for each other.”
“What are you saying?” Ellen spat back, feeling embarrassed for some reason. Henry gave her a hard look, and then deflated, pulling the container closer to his chest.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry. Forget I said anything.”
He looked so young clutching that urn. Maggie couldn’t stand looking at him. She felt guilty, and resented him for making her feel this way. Why did he bring her here? Was this Ellen’s final act of revenge on her, to make Maggie wait nineteen years before forcing her to see what’s become of her best friend?
Ellen didn’t know anything about her. She didn’t know how hard Maggie tried to forget about her, and the humiliation she felt the day that Ellen left with that man. It took Maggie so long to get over it all by the time she realized what she could have done to reconcile their relationship it was too late. It was too late, because she knew that no matter what there would always be a Henry between the two of them, and Maggie could never be strong enough to live with that fact.
And now all she was left with was Henry. Henry, standing before Ellen’s ashes, a testament to how powerless Maggie was to change anything. It was unbearable.
“This is ridiculous. I’m going home.” Maggie said, turning her back to Henry before pausing for a moment. “I don’t know what you or Ellen wanted out of me, but I can’t give it to you.”
“All she…no. No, not just Mom, me too. I just wanted someone to realize she had lived. That she was a real, living person once. I thought,” Henry seemed to be choking on his words, “I thought that if anyone, you would understand. She talked about you so much.”
Maggie couldn’t will herself to turn around. She never could.
Her boots were caked in mud. She would have to watch out not to track it back into the house.