Kill and Tell

Chapter 2

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February 17, Columbus, Ohio

The package was lying on the small front porch when Karen Whitlaw got home from work that February night. Her headlights flashed briefly on it as she pulled into the driveway, but she was so tired she couldn't work up any curiosity over the contents. Wearily, she lifted her tote bag, crammed full with her purse and papers and the paraphernalia of her job, and endured the usual struggle of climbing out of the car with the heavy bag. It caught on the console, then on the steering wheel; swearing under her breath, Karen jerked the bag free, and it banged painfully against her hip. She slogged through the snow to the porch, gritting her teeth as the icy mush slid down inside her shoes. She should have put on her boots, she knew, but she had been too tired when her shift ended to do anything but drive home. The box was propped against the raised threshold, between the screen door and the front door. She unlocked the door and reached in to flip on the lights, then leaned down to lift the box. She hadn't ordered anything; the box had probably been delivered to the wrong address. The house was chilly and silent. She had forgotten to leave a light on again that morning. She didn't like coming home to darkness; it reminded her all over again that her mother was no longer there, that she wouldn't unlock the door and smell the delicious smells of supper cooking or hear Jeanette humming in the kitchen. The television would be on even though no one was watching it, because Jeanette liked the background noise. No matter how late Karen worked or how tired she was when she got home, she had always known her mother would have a hot meal and a quick smile waiting for her. Until three weeks ago.

It had happened fast. Jeanette had complained one morning of feeling achy and feverish and diagnosed herself as having caught a cold. She sounded a little congested, and when Karen took her temperature it was only ninety-nine degrees, so a cold seemed like a reasonable assumption. At noon, Karen called to check on her, and though Jeanette's cough was worse, she kept saying it was just a cold. When Karen got home that night, she took one look at her mother, huddled in a blanket on the sofa and shaking with chills, and knew it was influenza instead of just a cold. Her temperature was a hundred and three. The stethoscope relayed alarming sounds to Karen's trained ears: both lungs were severely congested.

Karen had always thought the best benefit of being a nurse was learning how to bully people gently and inexorably into doing what you wanted. While Jeanette argued that she had only a cold and it was silly to go to a hospital with a cold , Karen made swift, competent preparations and within fifteen minutes had Jeanette, warmly wrapped, in the car.

It had been snowing heavily. Karen had always enjoyed snow, but now the sight of it brought back that night, when she had driven, white-knuckled, through the swirling, blinding sheets of white and listened to her mother fight an increasingly desperate battle for oxygen. She made it to the hospital where she worked, driving up to the emergency entrance and blowing the horn until help came, but other than the snow, her only clear memory of that night was of Jeanette lying on the white sheets, small and somehow shrunken, rapidly fading into unresponsiveness no matter how much Karen talked to her. Acute viral pneumonia, the doctors said. It worked fast, shutting down all the internal organs one by one as they starved for oxygen. Jeanette died a mere four hours after arriving at the hospital, though the medical team had worked frantically in their efforts to defeat the virus. There were so many details to dying. There were forms to fill out, forms to sign, forms to take to other people. Calls and decisions had to be made. She had to choose a funeral home, a service, a coffin, the dress her mother was to be buried in. There were people to be entertained—God!—her mother's friends who called and came over and brought more food than Karen would ever be able to eat, her own colleagues from work, a couple of neighbors. Her throat felt permanently closed, her eyes gritty. She couldn't cry in front of all those people, but at night, when she was alone, she couldn't stop crying. She got through the funeral service, and though she had always thought them barbaric, she now understood the sense of closure ritual brought, a ceremony to mark the passing of a sweet woman who had never asked much from life, who was content with the ordinary. Prayer and song marked the end of that life and paid homage to it.

Since then, Karen had gotten through the days, but that was all. Her grief was still raw and fresh, her interest in work nonexistent. For so long, she and Jeanette had been united, the two of them against the world. First Jeanette had worked, and worked hard at any job she could get, to keep a roof over their heads and give Karen the opportunity for a good education. Then it had been Karen's turn to work and Jeanette's time to rest, to do what she enjoyed most: puttering around their small house, cooking, doing the laundry, creating the nest necessity had always denied her.

But that was gone now, and there was no getting it back. All Karen had left was this empty house, and she knew she couldn't live here much longer. Today she had taken the step of calling a real estate agent and putting the house on the market. Living in an apartment would be better than facing the empty house, and her memories, day after day after day.

The box wasn't heavy. Karen held it tucked under one arm while she closed and locked the door, then let the heavy bag slip off her shoulder onto a chair. She tilted the box toward the light to read the label. There was no return address, but her mother's name hit her. "JEANETTE WHITLAW" was printed on the box in plain block letters. Pain squeezed her chest. Jeanette had seldom ordered anything, but when she did, she had been like a child at Christmas, eagerly awaiting the mail or a delivery service, beaming when the expected package finally arrived.

Karen carried the box into the kitchen and used a knife to slit the sealing tape. She opened the flaps and looked inside. There were some papers and a small book bound together with rubber bands, and on top lay a folded sheet of paper. She took the letter out of the box and unfolded it, glancing automatically at the bottom to see who had sent it. The scrawled name, "Dex," made her drop the letter, unread, back into the box.

Dear old Dad. Jeanette hadn't heard from him in at least four years. Karen hadn't actually spoken to him since she was thirteen and he had called to wish her a happy birthday. He had been drunk, it hadn't even been close to her birthday, and Jeanette had cried softly all night long after talking to her husband. That was the day all Karen's resentment and confusion and bitterness had congealed into hatred, and if she was at home the few times he had called after that, she had refused to speak to him. Jeanette had been distressed, but Karen figured that on the scale of things holding a grudge weighed a lot less than abandoning your wife and daughter, so she hadn't relented.

Leaving the box on the table, she trudged into the bedroom and peeled off her clothes, dropping the crumpled green uniform on the floor. Her feet ached, her head ached, her heart ached. The overtime she was working, in at sixa.m. and off at sixp.m. , kept her mind occupied but added to her depression. She felt as if she hadn't seen sunlight in weeks.

She slipped her cold feet out of her wet shoes and hurriedly pulled on a pair of sweats, then some thick socks. She was cold and tired. She thought longingly of heat and sunshine. Once, when she was only two years old, they had been stationed at a base in Florida. Karen didn't really remember it, but when she closed her eyes, she still had the impression of wonderful heat, of long days under a brilliant sun. Jeanette had often talked of Florida, with longing in her voice, because those days had been relatively happy. Then Dexter had gone to Vietnam and never really came home. Jeanette had moved back to the mountains of West Virginia, where they were originally from, to be close to their families while she waited for her husband's tour of duty to be over and prayed for his safety. But one tour had turned into another, then another, and the man who finally showed up on their doorstep wasn't the same one who had left. Karen had clear memories of those days, of his sullenness, his long bouts of drinking, tiptoeing around him lest she set off his temper. He had turned mean, and not even Jeanette's unwavering love could hold him. He began disappearing, at first just for a day or two, then the days became weeks and the weeks turned into months, and then one day Jeanette realized he was gone for good. She cried into her pillow a lot of nights; Karen could remember that, too. They had moved from West Virginia to Ohio so Jeanette could get a better job. There had been those few phone calls, a couple of letters, and once Dexter had actually come to visit. Karen hadn't seen him; he was gone before she got home from her classes. But Jeanette had been glowing, softly excited, and at nineteen Karen was adult enough to realize her parents had spent the visit in Jeanette's bedroom. That was ten years ago, and Jeanette hadn't seen him since. She hadn't stopped loving him, though. Karen couldn't understand it, but she accepted her mother's constancy. Jeanette had been infinitely loving, even with the husband who had abandoned her.

After a lonely meal of cold cereal, Karen made herself pick up the letter again.

"Jeanie—Here are some old papers of mine. Put them in a safe deposit box and keep them for me. They may be worth some money someday—Dex."

That was it. No salutation, no "dear," not signed with love. He had just mailed his junk to her mother and expected her to keep it for him.

And she would have. Jeanette would have carefully followed his instructions and even kept that curt note, placing it with the pitifully small stack of letters she had saved from when he was in Vietnam. Karen's instinct was to toss the box into the trash. Out of respect for her mother, she didn't. Instead, she carried it into Jeanette's empty bedroom and placed it in one of the boxes that held her mother's things. She couldn't bring herself to get rid of anything yet; she had rented storage space and would keep it all there until that day came.

The packing was all but complete. There were only a few items left, sitting on top of the dresser. Karen added them to the box and sealed it with several strips of masking tape across the cardboard. With luck, the house would sell soon, and spring would come, and she would be able to see sunshine again.