Page 55 - Demo

for herself. We filed into the living room. Millie put her cup and the cookies on the coffee table next to a brown box. She sat on the sofa facing the windows. My mother and I sat on armchairs across from her.
“Anything. The garage, the neighbor’s house, tele- phone poles, anything. His teacher said he had great promise. Forty-one is a little late to have no more than promise. It was like he forgot his real job was a truck driver and not messing around with paints. He missed days of work and wouldn’t take overtime and we could have used the money. We hadn’t gone on
“Have a cookie,” she said. I took a cookie.
a vacation in years, the garage was falling down, we needed a new stove.”
She said it had been good to meet friends of Tony from work at the viewing.
My mother nodded her understanding while I re- membered my father saying no wonder he stayed in that room. We all looked at the dead TV without say- ing anything for a few moments.
“People liked him,” my mother said.
“And his painting teacher. Wasn’t it nice of him to come? He said Tony had great promise. I had no idea.”
“At first painting seemed to be a hobby. But it ate him up. I sometimes wished he had had a girlfriend in- stead.”
“What’s in the box?” I said. “That’s your uncle Tony.”
“Don’t say that,” my mother said.
I couldn’t believe Tony had burned down to what could be put in that box.
“He’d have been easier to live with. . . . You know how he died?”
“What are you going to do with him?” my mother said.
“A weak heart,” my mother said.
“I don’t know. If I think of somewhere he’d really like, I’ll scatter his ashes there.”
“Overdose. Toward the end he was into drugs and cocaine then heroine. Did I know? I was only his wife. Some kind soul added fentanyl. Wasn’t that sweet?”
Millie got up and opened the blinds. The sun had slipped behind the tall apartment building across the street. The windows over there were dark.
We went back to the TV as if we were hoping it was on and there was something, anything, we could watch.
“What are you going to do now?” my mother said.
“Towards the end, I was thinking of getting a divorce.”
Millie came back to the sofa. “I’ll get by. I’ve got my job, and with the life insurance and the income from up- stairs. Tony was the best I could do. He had a solid job, but I never thought he’d stay a truck driver all his life. Things were okay. When Claire died, things changed.”
“No!” my mother almost screamed. “You couldn’t do that.”
“Losing Claire was hard for him,” my mother said.
didn’t know what else to do.”
(continued on next page)
“Yes, yes, yes,” Millie said. “He loved her. But it was more than that. He said her death taught him some- thing. Of course, like now, you realize how fragile and important life is, but you don’t run away from it.” I thought he had been running toward it. “He built that room and started drawing and painting. He spent more and more time back there.”
“What was that about?” “I don’t know.”
“What did he paint?”
48
“I didn’t know how much longer I could take it and I