Wood Grave
Connor didn’t call again for two months, though she’d looked at her phone dozens of times every day, waiting. She was at home. Her husband wasn’t. She pulled the ottoman up to her shelf of wooden boxes, got wood polish and a new, white cotton rag. She rubbed the rag across the back of her hand, then sat down Indian-style, phone on shoulder. She didn’t want Connor’s voice to fill her house, didn’t want to feel like he was there with her, because then she’d never want him to leave.
His uncle finally died, and left him the tiny Manhattan hotel, but he didn’t want to talk about it. He brought up their previous epic conversation while she cleaned the insides of two navy, flower painted boxes that her mother had kept on her dresser. She almost compared it to a date. He said he’d told his parents they’d talked. She didn’t ask what his mother’s reaction was.
Ella slid each of the twelve tiny drawers out of the oak medicine chest and poured the contents in front of her, her crossed calves stopping everything from spilling onto the floor. Mostly change, receipts, pills. A silver ring she thought she’d lost. He’d started dating someone, he said, a teacher from the south. The teacher was in the Hamptons for the weekend.
Disappointed and defensive, Ella told him about Van as she circled the rag over a double card holder she’d bought in England. The four suits were carved on the outside, each stained a different color. Inside were two decks of her parents’ cards, green and white, from a resort in Palm Beach. She shook out a deck to make sure they still smelled the same. He asked if Van had been the only other man she’d been with since she’d gotten married. She said yes, too embarrassed to mention the Jamaican. Or the guy in Boston. Enzo, especially. He said he’d probably do the same if he was married to Ella’s husband.
After they hung up, she pushed a corner of the rag through the carved whorls of the last box, the size of a squared shoebox. It held ashes but there was room for more.
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