“I’m fine,” Minna says.
“Have a glass,” Caroline says. “You look like you need it.”
“I’ll have a glass,” Trenton says.
Caroline turns her large, watery blue eyes toward him. “Don’t be silly, Trenton. Go and get my bags from the car, will you? They’re in the trunk.”
“Why do I have to do it?” he says, but he’s already standing and moving toward the door. His motions are erratic, like a scarecrow that has just come to life and has to compensate for a spine full of stuffing. He plunges headlong several steps, then overcompensates by slumping backward; then lopes, then shuffles.
Trenton. My beautiful, graceful, perfect Trenton.
As soon as Trenton is gone, Minna stands, approaches the kitchen island, and pours herself a glass of wine. She’s at least four inches taller than her mother, and much thinner, but the fact that Minna has lightened her hair increases the resemblance between them. Minna is the angular, modern version of Caroline’s watercolor.
“Where’s Amy?” Caroline says.
“Upstairs,” Minna says. She pauses, then adds, “She wanted to know why Grandpa isn’t here.”
“That’s normal.” Caroline drinks again, this time forgetting to be so careful. Her glass is now more than half empty, and she sets it on the counter. “My glass must have sprung a leak,” she says, with a high, nervous trill, before refilling.
For a second, there’s silence. Then Minna says: “It’s strange being back here. It looks so . . .”
“Different?”
Minna shakes her head. “No. The same. That’s what’s weird about it.” She reaches for a small porcelain pig saltshaker, one of a dozen saltshakers Richard Walker accumulated. “Why did he keep all this junk?”
“Oh, you know.” Caroline takes another sip of wine. “Your father was never very good at parting with things.” The words sound unexpectedly bitter.
Richard Walker was a collector. He brought back hand-painted ashtrays from Mexico and beads from Guatemala as well as Buddha statues from India and cheap posters from Paris, which he hung, without shame or irony, next to original Warhols in his study. He collected foreign coins and clocks, cheap Venetian masks and original Eskimo art, mugs and key chains and magnets.
Minna walks a small circle around the kitchen, like a caged animal. “Junk, junk, junk, junk,” she says. “Junk everywhere. It’ll take forever to sort. I say we just trash it all.”
“It’s not all junk, sweetpea,” Caroline says, and then sighs. “Some of it must be worth something. And money is money, after all.”
“Did you schedule the auction?” Minna asks.
The kitchen door bangs. Both Minna and Caroline jump; neither had noticed Trenton push his way back into the kitchen, dragging his mother’s luggage. The suitcases remind me of Ed’s shoes, after they’d been worn for too long and polished often and painstakingly. The luggage has no visible spots or imperfections, just a kind of sad, sagging look.
“What are you talking about?” Trenton says. “What auction?”
Minna and Caroline go momentarily still. Caroline is the first to unfreeze. “An auction to sell off your father’s things,” she says brightly. “Whatever we don’t want, of course.”
“When?” Trenton stands with his back pressed against the door, as far away from his mother and sister as possible.
“At the end of the month,” Caroline says, reordering the saltshaker Minna displaced.
Trenton looks from his mother to his sister. Minna avoids his eyes. “Sick,” Trenton says. “Truly sick. We’ve been here less than an hour—”
“It isn’t like he can hear us,” Minna says, rolling her eyes.
He stares at her. “And I’m morbid.” Then he jerks forward and bursts out of the kitchen. His feet are hard on the stairs. Each time he stomps, deliberately loud, I feel a distant explosion of pain and sensation—like the bursts of color I used to see behind my closed eyes after accidentally staring at the sun.
“I don’t understand that boy,” Caroline says.
“He’s sensitive.” Minna waves a hand. “Besides, he hardly remembers Dad. He can’t be expected to know what an ass**le he was.”
“Don’t talk about your father that way,” Caroline says mildly.
“He was an ass**le,” Minna insists.
“I’m hungry,” Caroline says. “Are you hungry?”
“Not really,” Minna says.
“Amy must be hungry.” Caroline begins opening cabinets: these, too, are overflowing, although Richard Walker hardly ever cooked. There are boxes of pancake mix and half-eaten bags of chips; a half-dozen cereals, cans of beans and tuna, two jars of honey, cemented to the shelf by a sticky, golden ring of overspill; sardines and pasta and bags of rice in which mites have started to nest.
“What are you doing?” Minna asks.
“I’m looking for something to have for dinner,” Caroline says. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
Minna leans over the kitchen island and slams the cupboard shut. “We can’t eat his food,” she says, as though Caroline has just suggested she eat an insect.
Caroline tries to open the cupboard again; Minna keeps her hand on it firmly. “Minna, please. You’re as bad as Trenton. He won’t miss it, will he?”
“No, I mean—” For a second, Minna looks ashamed. “I mean it’s disgusting. I mean, it’s been sitting here just—just absorbing his germs.”
Caroline widens her pale blue eyes. “For heaven’s sake, Minna. The last time I checked, death isn’t contagious. It isn’t an infection, you know.”
Minna wrenches her hand away from the cupboard. “I won’t eat it. And I won’t let Amy eat it, either.”
“Oh, Minna.” Caroline sighs dramatically, but she removes her hand from the cupboard and instead picks up her wineglass and drains it.
SANDRA
I’m not afraid to say that what you’ve heard so far is a big honking load of bullshit. And no, I won’t mind my language. Jesus Christ, it’s practically the only thing I have left.
I bet she didn’t even tell you this: my death was no accident.
I’m not saying Alice lies, per se. Her problem is she’s a prude, straight out of the wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap generation, and secretive as anything.