Boxes

Lila had been sending the boxes for nearly a decade without ever escalating her attack on Shari. She began over the holidays the year everything blew up, after starting a rumor that she would be present when Sharon performed with her brother’s band on Black Friday. Lila was home for Thanksgiving with her mother, and she floated the rumor that she was going to the bar where they were playing. By the time Sharon took the stage with the Shane Veranda band, Lila was in her recliner in North Carolina, visualizing Sharon’s eyes darting to the door, imagining what she and her army of plastics said they would do “if that bitch Lila dares to show her face.” Lila sipped her bourbon, looked at her husband over the top of her glasses, and said, “My absence is a presence.”

On the drive home, through rural South Carolina, Lila had pondered the idea of negative space, remembered discussing it in undergrad, now thought of it like jazz, and the idea of the boxes came to her: to randomly send Sharon an empty box or envelope from various places. No rhyme, no reason, just random empty boxes, different sizes, no note, some public space as the return address. She had no idea if they had any effect whatsoever on Sharon, but she liked to think that they rattled her, like watching for her that one night so many years ago.

Part of the fun was choosing the box–what size, what shape? Would it be better if it got crushed during shipping? Would insuring the empty contentes add to the mind fuck, be a piece de resistance or overkill? Sometimes Lila gift wrapped the box, and sometimes she secured it with almost a whole roll of packing tape. Sometimes it was plastic, sometimes decorative, sometimes utilitarian–anything from an empty little green box from Windsor Jewelers to an empty shoe box to an empty cereal box. Every now and then, just to mix it up, a big padded envelope. Empty. Always empty. No message aside from the date and postmark.

Friends across the globe participated. Hey, can you send an empty box to this address? Put Versailles for the return address. The Opera House. The Taj Mahal. Disneyworld. Wrigley fucking Field. The goddamn Alamo. You get the picture. She presumed Sharon still lived at the same address, in the house she once shared with Sam, until, as the story goes, Lila burned it all down. So Lila and sometimes some of her friends addressed empty boxes to Sharon Veranda–always her maiden name and sent them from all over the world, just to make her tighten her grip, choke down on her grasp of reality just another inch or two–not enough to make her actaully lose control. It was way too early for that. Lila wasn’t even quite sure what she would do just yet. After all, revenge was a dish best served cold, and Lila’s blood still boiled when she thought of how Sharon had heartlessly launched a nuclear bomb, not at Lila, but at her daughter. It was still too early for Lila to begin to plan her revenge. In the meantime, she would send her boxes.

The first one was nothing special, just an empty priority mail box, purchased at the McAdenville post office on December first. The Christmastown, USA postmark was the purpose. Lila put the street address of the Augusta National Golf Club as the return address, just for extra confusion in the event that Sharon actually looked at the postmark. It had still been just an idea when Lila pulled into a parking spot on Main Street on her way home from work. No time like the present, she thought as she saw the empty parking spaces across the street from the post office, abruptly parking and hurrying through the grey afternoon into the building. It felt like she was doing something wrong, sending an empty box, that maybe the postmistress would refuse to send it if she knew there were no contents, so Lila pretended to slip something from her wallet into the box before sealing it, requesting that the address be printed, not in her handwriting. Anonymity felt necessary.

The next box was from Windsor Jewelers, an empty little green box sent from the Everglades, at Christmas. Lila though about Sharon opening her mail and knew that the first box was probably chalked up as just a weird fluke, but when the second one arrived, she would be excited by the green box, thinking someone bought jewelry for her. Lila imagined the pleased look on the face when she pulled the package out of her suburban mailbox, could picture her sitting at the kitchen table, Lila’s kitchen table, to open the package, her plump stomach pressing into the oak of the table as she removed the packaging, maybe grabbing a knife out of a drawer to slit the tape, a brief moment of joy as she noticed the color and recognized the name on the box. What came next, when she pulled that forest green top off of the box and found four empty corners with nothing between them? Certainly not more joy.

Box number three shipped from Columbia, South Carolina. Lila had a reunion weekend with her childhood best friend, and when they hit the thrift stores, Lila went straight to household goods, ignoring the clothes, jewelry, books, crystal, and china. She wanted a unique box for this one, and an antique tin seemed like a good choice. Perhaps Sharon didn’t realize that a tin was a box; she might think she had received an actual gift.

Lila found an old Colman’s Mustard tin, the main body depicting a fox hunt and a lid emblazoned with flags, a shield, and a banner reading “Manufacturers to the Queen.” It was perfect. Riverbanks Zoo would be the return address for this one. She and Jenny popped into the post office, and Jenny filled out the label for Lila. Different handwriting on return labels was part of the plan, which still had no purpose aside from being a mind fuck for Sharon.

The fourth box, sent the following spring intentionally took it up a notch. Lila sent an empty shoebox from a pair of shoes she bought for her grandson a few years back. She knew the baby shoes box would strike a different note in Sharon; this is when she figured that Sharon would realize that the empty boxes weren't mistakes, weren't flukes. No one forgot to include the contents; there simply were no contents. This was Lila's first intentional venture into cruelty: Sharon had a wanted a baby but couldn't have one, and Sharon's husband being the father of Lila's child had always been a source of contention for her. Lilla hoped Sharon sobbed tears of rage and grief when she opened the empty baby shoes box.

Never one to lay it on too thick, Lila eased up for the next box, a few weeks later, just an empty jigsaw puzzle box, of Dorothy and Toto. "And your little dog, too," Lila said to herself as she gift wrapped the box and placed it in a larger one that she nearly exhausted a roll of packing tape on. She had no idea whether the boxes were having the desired effect, but sending them, choosing them, these were things Lila could control, so she stayed her path and continued sending boxes. It's what she could do until she thought of the perfect revenge.