Page 54 - WTP Vol. XI #6

Everything was too normal. The spider plant grew
and leaned toward the window. Its pot held the dirt, none spilled, no water leaked. The hole in the ceiling of Caroline’s sewing alcove did not grow bigger and the cloth hanging under it, held in place with spray adhesive, did not fall away or droop further. Above the hole, the roof had been fixed and the plaster had dried out. In the downstairs bathroom, on the wall next to the shower, the paint was not flaking more than before, though enough had flaked already to make a shape like Illinois. The dog slept in his armchair and the clock ticked and it made
an actual Tick, being analog. Doors through the house were partly open, as they always were. Seven tulips on the table gaped at the sun in the south windows, their red mouths in a chorus.
But out on the stoop was the box. The box was not normal. The box said in red magic marker on three sides Baby Things, 0-3 months, Sleepers, Snowsuit, T-shirts. Caroline didn’t find an address on it, except the sender’s, which
in this case was not the sender, since it was Grolier’s Encyclopedia, not a vender of baby clothes. Caroline noticed that an original address label had gone missing. The box did not weigh very much; she had picked it up when she came home from teaching, had pulled briefly at the tape and then had decided not to open it saying No Babies live here, and then mumbling, some joke.
It was because the box was still out on the stoop that everything was too normal. The box was like a stranger on the doorstep saying, So this is how you live? This is how we live, she thought, and no she hadn’t made the bed, though it was already late afternoon.
The box was like that because it wasn’t a stranger on the doorstep; a stranger on the doorstep would have said Hi, my name is and I’m here to ask you. And it wasn’t like
a robber at the window because a robber at the window would have taken something or wanted to. The box wasn’t asking or taking. There were things inside of it and because of The UniBomber, she hadn’t opened it, though he’d
been tried and sentenced and incarcerated ages ago. Still she remembered reading some part of a letter of his in
a newspaper about what fool would open a package not addressed to him, or her.
Because of the question of how they lived, although the box was light, it seemed to be very heavy.
~
Neither the neighbors to the right nor to the left
had Babies for wearing a snowsuit 0-3 months. No neighbors were home. To the left they were in Puerto Rico, where the dad had grown up, since his mother
was ill, and to the right, she was in Miami with grown daughters, a mom and her daughters, but the daughters had no children. Daughters like that were like doors shut to generations marching along.
There were many books here and there and many piles
of papers here and there, some needing to be graded, and dirty coffee cups in the sink. There were sheets in piles in the basement; she should at least bring them up because of the damp. There were holes in the east basement wall that during rainstorms sent out sprays like three little boys peeing in a row.
It was impossible to personify the box, to enter into a conversation with it, and since she was vaguely anxious vaguely she noticed things around the house. The dustjacket on The Old Man and the Sea was frayed, as
if chewed; since the book was a first edition, she didn’t know whether to tape it. Several buttons sat on the bookcase needing to be sewed back on something. Water dripped from under the sink in the upstairs bathroom; a small patch of paint on the floor crinkled; she put a cup underneath the drip, over the crinkling on the floor. She thought, This is how we live. Maintenance.
But the box on the stoop had become an observer. Why had she made the box into this observer? Maybe there was a bomb inside to raise the question of how they lived.
All surfaces on the screened porch were thick with dust. The summer furniture sat under old sheets. She should set up the porch, clean it with Murphy’s Oil Soap, wash and dry and arrange. She could hang the bamboo shades.
Suppose inside the box there were no bomb, but only Baby Things, 0-3 months, Sleepers, Snowsuit, T-shirts? Then the box would be an accusation: This is how you live? This is how we live that there is no one here to wear Baby Things 0-3 months; there is no one here to wear children’s things 0-18 years. She had no desire to look on the Baby Things, to see them folded in the box, weighing very little, empty clothes.
But hadn’t she put all of this kid-lessness to rest the year before?
47
The Package
Excerpt From Under Canine, a Novel
rebeCCa Clouse