The executor

Standing in Patty’s living room I do not feel her ghost. If anything I am the spirit. I am the thing haunting. I disturb the dust as it drifts through a sunbeam. I am the specter, it seems.

I didn’t know much about my great aunt Patty, except that she was insane and wealthy. Her father had been insanely wealthy but she’d spent her life spending and never growing the family fortune, or at least that’s what my dad says. She sent me a gift once. I must have been around ten years old when a package arrived for me in the middle of march, which was strange because it wasn’t my birthday or any other holiday. I tore at the brown paper as soon as I recognized my name written on it. Staring back at me was the cover of a book. In large block letters sat the title, “My Story of Struggle and Hope in Overcoming Pediatric Stroke.” On the inside cover a note was scrawled in tall cursive “Saw this and was reminded of you, love Great Aunt Patty”. I was and still am confused by this gift. Two weeks later she scolded me on the phone. She was disappointed she did not receive a thank you card. Fortunately Great Aunt Patty was not a fortune teller and I have since outgrown her prophecy. I figured this would be her last gift to me. I didn’t mind being ungrateful.

Patty's death was ordinary. It wasn’t a stroke. It was lung cancer, or infection somewhere deep and already decaying, the inevitable stopping of the heart. She died in a hospital, like most people. I didn’t cry about it. We were practically strangers.

Patty’s house is a relic to an ancient world, dying or already dead. The wood floors are dark, and splintery. Faded Persian carpets soften the creaking under my feet. I imagine them new, the richness of their colors, blood red, swirls of navy, and petals of green, colors that centuries ago only royals could be draped in, and centuries before then were colors only mother nature could produce. I took a seat at the small round table, occupying one of two chairs. Patty lived alone, never married, she must have lived alone longer than I have lived at all. Looking at the mouth of the fireplace, and the black hole of the cellar steps, I get that feeling. At first it was deja vu, illusive familiarity. I know I have been her before. An old memory snaps to attention, shakes off its dust, it’s like the clearing of a clogged nostril, remembering what it is to breathe. I know this house. I have always known it. I thought I knew it from a dream. I must have been little, table height. It might have been Christmas, was it Christmas? I see fire, or I smell it. I see a dog running through the narrow hall, myself, in motion, chasing it. In a split second the picture is gone. I don’t replay it. Maybe If I tried I could, maybe I could even bring it into sharper focus, but I don’t. This memory is a pure one, undisturbed, to revisit is to taint, to fabricate. I know what I am, what damage my imagination will do. I am a bright light to a developing photograph, I must only glance into my memory vault, into the darkroom of my mind.

Patty's death was nothing to me when it happened. My grieving period was the length of a single phone call, the first one, the one announcing her passing, a blip in my already miserable November. I was working in a warehouse, sorting packages that came down a conveyor belt in an endless stream. I worked the graveyard shift, eight pm to three am. I was allowed one ten minute break, enough time for a cigarette, or two in a hurry. The work was miserable, demanding on your body and your brain. I felt like Sisyphus. You know Sisyphus, right? He was the guy in that ancient Greek story condemned to push a boulder up a hill, the boulder always escaping and crashing to the bottom, just before he reached the top. My boulders and hills came in the form of cardboard boxes and five digit codes, lifting and placing in perfect numerical order. There was no progress, only trying to keep up. Someone once wrote that Sisyphus must have been happy. I wasn’t happy. People who do miserable work aren’t kept happy, they’re kept busy, too busy for any feeling, too busy to die.

I was about to leave for work when I got the second call. Patty had died a few days before. I almost didn’t answer, it was an unknown number. I figured it was scammers.

“Hello?” I said

“Hello, am I speaking with Jacob Ward?” Asked a woman's voice

“yeah, that’s me.”

This conversation is a bit of a blur. I think I said “OK” a lot. I know I went inside and grabbed a piece of paper, then searched around frantically for a pen. The first one I found was a dud, inkless. I asked the woman to repeat herself a few times. It’s hard to listen to things you can’t believe.

“well, you have my number and email. I’ll be in touch soon, but feel free to contact me with any questions you might have. OK? Alright.” The woman said.

I’m the one who hung up. I didn’t want to hear another “sorry for your loss”. I wonder how many times a day she tells people that? “Sorry for your loss,” she managed to suck all the life out of an already empty expression. I looked down at the paper sitting on the table in front of me, in my own rushed handwriting it read:

734 Marsh End Rd

MA, 02667

Patricia Joan White

Thursday 23

20,000!!!

The address was Great Aunt Patty's. Her middle name was Joan, apparently. I had just been named the executor of her will and estate. An executor is the person responsible for dealing with a deceased person's possessions and financial obligations, the woman on the phone told me that. She was a lawyer. She also told me I’m a beneficiary of the will. The number I’d written at the bottom of the page would be my inheritance. Twenty-thousand. First I pictured it as something real, physical, paper bills, stacks of hundreds in a duffel bag, like Hollywood drug money. I did some quick division and realized a duffel bag wasn’t quite necessary. I pictured it in my hands. It was a modest fortune, as far as fortunes go, but it was mine, and it was more money than I’d ever been able to save. I knew I couldn’t live off it, It wasn’t even enough to buy a car, but for once I was the winner and I knew what I had to do. I called my boss and told him I wouldn’t be going into work today or ever again. When he asked me why, I told him I had Lyme disease. I walked back outside and yelled, and hollered, and screamed screams of victory without embarrassment. The neighbors heard me, but the neighbors could go to hell. Celebrations were in order. The war was over and I was just crowned king. After my breath ran out I sat on the cold ground and stared up at the sky. The bare tree branches split off in all directions, like wishbones pointing everywhere all at once. The world was plentiful and the possibilities were mine.

The shine of my $20,000 prize has dulled a bit in the last few days. Reality seeped back into my fantasy. I still don’t know what I’m going to do with the money, for now I have a job to do, an obligation. I didn’t even go to the funeral, and now I’m snooping through this woman's things, half hoping for secrets. I remember when an old friend of mine moved away to college she told me her life fit inside seventeen boxes. When it was my turn to go I found my life fit inside eleven. Aunt Patty's life doesn’t have to fit inside anything anymore. The objects of her life are to be destroyed, or distributed, scattered among antique shops and landfills. I will keep some piece of it with me, a memento, until I am gone too and then who knows, nothing survives forever. I wonder who I’ll trust to look through all my shit when I’m gone?

I decide to ride the motorized chair up to the second floor instead of walking up the stairs. It’s about as fun as you’d expect. The chair is a small break in the archaic continuity of the house, a chink in the armor revealing what century we’re really living in. The ride is short. The ceilings in this house are all low, I have to duck through the doorways. I wander into an ocean themed bathroom and look in the mirror. The mirror was also low and I have to bend down a little to see my whole head. I walk out of the bathroom and into the room at the end of the hall. This room was Patty's bedroom. I walk lightly, almost tip toeing. I sit at the foot of her bed, I can feel the springs of the mattress, even through the blankets and sheets. I stare at the portraits on the opposite wall. Most of the pictures are old, sepia, in fancy round frames. There’s a wedding portrait, and a man in a military uniform. There’s a photo of my dad as a kid, he’s standing next to his brother. It must be from the 70’s, you can tell by the tube socks. I almost expect to see a picture of me, young and flashing a gap toothed grin. There isn’t one. I stand up and scan the room. It’s so empty, it’s like a hotel. As much as I’m grateful Patty wasn’t a hoarder, I’m also disappointed. I thought maybe there was a reason for me being here, something left for me, something for me to find.

I am about to leave the room when I notice the drawer of the nightstand is cracked open. I go over to it and open it up the rest of the way. Sitting in the drawer is a small black book, nothing else, just the book, sitting perfectly in the center of the drawer, like an offering. I pick it up gently and sit back on the bed. I peel the cover back and flip quickly through the first few pages. The book is a diary, with a page for every day of the year. The year is 1946. The date is typed at the top of every page, underneath the date sits rows of Patty's tall cursive. This would be Patty's final gift to me. I keep flipping through the book. She wrote in it every day. I wonder how old she was? A little more than halfway through I hit a bookmark. The bookmark was not from 1946. It was a receipt from Shaw's, a supermarket chain. The Shaw's receipt marked an entry from May seventh. The entry said:

“Rained today.

I did not sleep well last night. The whole world is ugly.

I think I might be alone forever, or maybe that’s just the

miserable nobody-loves-me feeling of today.”