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by Michael Hyde
My father doesn't want to watch, so he stays out on the screened- in porch, with his book of word- finds. Sue and I start with the big dresser bureau, top drawer. She's come in from Pittsburgh and I've taken the train down from New York for this. It's been one year since our mother's death; it's time for her things to go.
The top drawer holds nylons, lingerie, delicate items rolled into balls. My sister and I take them out unfold them, unball them, fold them again and put them into piles on my father's bed. During this drawer, my sister and I don't speak. These garments were Mom's private things she'd be embarrassed to know we are touching, even though both Sue and I are both fast approaching thirty and now have families of our own. This drawer would also be the most painful for my father, I imagine. What secrets and desires each piece of sheer clothing must have held for him, when my mother was alive and their room was sleepy and dark.
In the next drawer we find Mom's tops and blouses, all neatly arranged though the folds have made semi- permanent creases in the fabric. My sister holds blouses against her chest, to see if anything might be her size. "We should get rid of it all," I say.
"You're right," she says.
I can't picture my sister wanting to wear any of Mom's clothes anyway. My mother's things were never new, always used, bought second- hand from thrift shops and yard sales or passed on to her by our more well- to- do neighbors. With Mom, every penny went for me and Sue, for college, for us to have nice things. She'd always believed spending money on clothing, on herself, was a waste.
My mother's clothes still hold something of her smell; even through the dust and the slight scent of mothballs, there's the smell of her cocoa- butter soap. Sue and I tackle the third and fourth drawers: jeans and slacks, pressed and folded. We lay them across the mattress that's almost covered now with piles of Mom's clothes. I fold out a pair of green corduroys. For a moment, my sister and I stare, as if we're expecting the empty legs to suddenly fill and dance like they did, drunk or sober, at St. Patrick's Day parties, spinning Mom around the room, making everyone laugh.
"This isn't going to take as long as I thought," my sister says. "If we get it done quick, maybe it won't hurt as much."
"Maybe." In the closet we find Mom's dresses, the same dresses she wore to PTA, sports awards banquets, church, graduations. There are surprisingly few: a rose floral print, a canvas safari- dress, a black and- white one with polka dots (which I secretly hated), one made of sleek red- foil with a bow at the rear. We also pull out the jackets and the scarves, Mom's housecoat, her few pairs of shoes and throw all of them onto the empty corner of the bed.
There's only one thing left to do: Sue and I pick up the black garbage bags from the floor and put the clothes inside, careful not to disrupt the piles and folds we've made. I don't know why we're being so cautious. Maybe it's because Mom was always so careful; she protected and treated everything, our furniture, our lawnmower, even our cars as if they were frightened wet birds, delicate and precious things.
Mom's clothing fills two bags total that Sue and I tie and sling over our backs. We carry the bags into the kitchen and stop for lemonade; we've broken a sweat, it's so hot. "Dad, we're finished," I yell to him on the porch.
The glass door slides open. My father's face looks like a knot: lumpy and wrinkled, barely holding itself together. "No trouble?" he asks.
"None," says my sister. My father stands in front of us, staring at the two black bags of clothing, all the things that covered his wife's body, everything that came near to her skin. I feel the weight of these black bags, too. Sue and I've put them down, aren't holding them at all, but they feel heavy enough to put a hole through the floor, sending all three of us into the basement.
My sister and I drive the clothes to the Salvation Army. It's what Mom would've wanted. This Salvation Army store is the biggest I've ever seen. It's inside an old supermarket, and under aisles marked HOUSEHOLD PRODUCTS or SNACK FOODS, you find instead worn children's clothing or ripped paperbacks. At the door, a man missing a tooth tells us to leave the bags with him. "I'll take care of 'em," he says.
Sue and I look at one another. We're reluctant to let these things go, but I keep telling myself this is what Mom would've wanted. She wouldn't want us holding onto things, hoping and wishing she'd come back to fill them. She wouldn't want us to waste time being sad. I've thought about this a lot. It's why -- I think -- she wanted to be cremated, her ashes spread among pine trees rather than entombed underground: so we wouldn't visit her, bent over, crying, thinking of the enormity of her death instead of the enormity of her life.
"These are nice clothes," my sister tells the man. "You should put high prices on them."
"Yes," I say. "High prices."
"Loreen will take care of that," he tells us, as if we know Loreen and she's someone important in our lives. He's noticed my sister and I are still holding on to the bags, so he takes them from us and tosses them into an empty grocery cart. "I'll take these off your hands," he says.
My sister goes back to Pittsburgh the next day, but I decide to stay for a while with my father. He talks and acts almost like nothing has happened, but at night, lying in my childhood bed, I hear him moving about his room, opening and closing drawers. Sue and I tried to fill them out with his things -- his shirts and pants and socks -- but even with his clothes in them, the drawers felt empty. I'm sure this is what he's thinking, too, as he's trying to calm himself down for the night, so he can possibly get some sleep.
The next day I go back to the Salvation Army. I go piece by piece through the racks of used clothing and find nothing that belongs to my mother. I know every donation is washed first before being released into the store, so it takes two more days and two more visits until I find some of her things: the dresses. They seem different here among strangers -- among the strange pieces of clothing.
I wander up and down the aisles, casually keeping my eye on the rack that holds her things. Several women with small children sometimes pause at them, lingering long enough to examine a hem or finger a button, but each time, the women let the hangers fall back into place, the dresses unknown and unimportant among the other secondhand clothes.
When no one is nearby, I stand in front of my mother's things, looking at them, touching them as if the grooves and creases in the fabric are some private language, some braille my fingers will read and remember. I think of all the threads, tightly entwined.
At the end of the aisle, a woman with a ponytail is fishing through the racks. She has silver rings on all of her fingers, and the skin on her face is taut, drawn back over her severe cheeks and up into her forehead so that she looks permanently surprised. She drags two children behind her, their hair ratted and messed, almost as if it's never been brushed. One of the children, the little girl, carries a green plastic sand- pail, using it as a purse. The boy, whose eyes look too close together, holds onto his mother's leg as he picks his nose.
The woman comes down the aisle toward me, moving in stops and starts, pulling dresses between her long fingers, stroking the fabrics, sometimes holding things up to her body. When she nears my mother's dresses, I stand back and watch her. She passes over the canvas one, the red one with a bow. It's the ugly one I secretly hated that gets her attention -- the black- and-white with polka dots. The woman looks under the sleeves, making sure there are no hidden rips or tears or loose threads. She takes it from the rack, lays it out in front of her so she can get a good look at it. Her little girl tugs on her sleeve. "Wait a minute," the woman says, returning the dress to the rack, pushing it in among the others.
She continues down the row of dresses, but even though she's moved on, she keeps looking back. 1 know she's thinking about my mother's dress, assessing its worth. Both the boy and the girl are holding onto the woman's leg now, the two of them vying for the same space. "Stop it," the woman says; she has to tap the kids on their heads to get them to let go. Then she returns to my mother's dress and takes it from the rack. Again she pulls at the fabric, turns under the hem. She makes a slight noise, a note of consideration. Then I watch her fold the dress carefully over her arm.
"My mother used to have a dress like that," I say.
The woman stares at me, her face looking even more surprised and drawn. "Yeah?" she says, and I realize how weird I must seem, a man standing alone in the middle of the dress aisle at the Salvation Army.
"It looked good on her," I tell the woman and quickly walk away. I don't want her to chicken out, to put the dress back, so I leave and wait outside in my father's car.
Fifteen minutes later, the woman and her two children come carrying a small shopping bag. They climb into a corn- colored Buick; it's old and rusted and reminds me of the one my family used to have before we had nice things. I watch the woman buckle her kids in for safety. She does a loop in the parking lot, her turn signal blinks good- bye at the stoplight, and she leaves.
I go back into the store, down the racks of dresses to where the ones belonging to my mother hang. The black and white dress is gone. I've never been prone to tears, but now they would somehow feel right, complete and unshaming, but I don't cry. I'm too proud.
"Can I help you with something?" a woman's voice asks, moments later. I turn and look at her. Her hair is high and white with streaks of blonde. Her name tag says: Loreen.
"No," I tell her. "Everything's fine. But thanks for asking."
