“I’m home,” I say, panic creeping into my voice. “What are you doing in here?”
She stands upright and exhales, pushing hair off her forehead. Her face is red with heat and the blond wisps around her forehead have curled into ringlets. “The funeral home finally got that urn we ordered, so I called it a half day. Thought I’d come home and get a head start on all this.”
I drop my backpack in the hallway and take a few steps into the bedroom. “A head start on what?”
Mom plops down on the bed next to a stack of housedresses, all starched and hung on Lucy’s yarn-covered hangers. “Oh, you know, clearing Luce’s stuff out. God, she was a pack rat. You can barely open her drawers. You know, I found your grandmother’s wedding veil. I’ve been looking for that thing for ages.”
My lips twitch into a smile. “Oh yeah?”
Mom claimed ownership of my grandmother’s wedding gown while she was in hospice. It never would have fit Lucy, so there was never really any argument. Except for the veil. The veil could fit anyone. They fought over it for months until Lucy’s nerves had worn so thin that she gave up. Then a few years ago, the thing went missing.
It was my mom who was always harping on her, but this sort of feels like maybe Lucy got the last word.
It wasn’t always like that. The two of them weren’t always at odds with each other, but those moments stand out more in my memory than the Friday nights I would come home and find them both giggling on the couch over their favorite old movies.
“So what are you going to do with all this stuff?” I ask.
“Well, I guess I’ll be donating it. You know how hard it is for women of size to find clothing, so I’m sure someone will greatly appreciate it.”
“What if I want some of it? Not to wear. Just to keep.”
“Oh, Dumplin’, you don’t want these old muumuus. And all that’s in the dressers are underwear, slips, and newspaper clippings.”
I know I should be over Lucy being gone. It’s been six months now. And yet I keep expecting to see her on the couch with Riot in her lap or doing her crossword puzzles in the kitchen. But she’s not. She’s gone. And we don’t even have any pictures of her. The reality of her body wasn’t something she liked having reflected back at her in the form of a photograph.
It scares me. Like, if I can’t hear her or see her, I will somehow forget her.
At the age of thirty-six, weighing in at four hundred and ninety-eight pounds, Lucy died. She died alone of a massive heart attack, while sitting on the couch, watching one of her shows. No one saw her die. But then again, no one outside of this house really saw her live. And now there’s no one here to remember her. Not in the way she’d want to be remembered. Because when my mom thinks of Lucy, she only remembers how she died.
That’s why the idea of my mom disassembling her room like a traveling exhibit takes this echo of pain and turns it into something new and fresh.
Mom pulls open the drawer on the nightstand and begins to sort papers into different stacks. I can see her mind working. Keep, toss, maybe. Some days I wonder which pile I fall into.
“Can you just not?” I ask. “This is her room.”
My mom turns to me with this incredulous look on her face. “Dumplin’, this is an entire room that we’re allowing to collect dust. And pageant season is here. I’m going to be hard at work all summer. It’d be nice to have a room to sew costumes and create set pieces without the whole house being overrun.”
“A craft room?” The words are bitter on my tongue. “You’re wanting to turn Lucy’s room into a craft room?”
She opens her mouth, but I don’t stick around long enough for her to respond.
At Harpy’s, Bo is at work behind the grill with his earbuds in. I lift my hand to wave at him as I walk by. “Happy summer, Willowdean,” he says a little too loud. His lips are sticky and red and something I would very much like to taste.