Seventeen

Seventeen.

That's how many days it took for you to be rid of his things: the business man's clothes, photos from his time in the service, his brick-red, winged armchair, the wineglasses he bought that one year for your birthday, the old draftsman's table, the small monochromatic television with the broken antenna. The books that you purchased together were left on the shelf to fall from their bindings and molder unread.

You weren't sure you could do it. You aren't sure you wanted to. It's been sixteen years, and you still don't forget. His chair that went to the basement the day he was gone, his little antique table, where he leave a glass of unfinished scotch on Friday nights, his razor and his toothbrush and shaving cream, and the messes he'd leave in the bathroom. The smell of tobacco smoke and cedar shavings that lingered so long in your bedroom: it all faded years ago. Though you took his things from the house, you still find him.

That time you were in the basement, looking for the fan on that hot summer day, and found the photo of his graduating class- fourteen young men and women, in black gowns and square hats. It was yellowed, hold no life, no warm memories. You lift it where it was, and hoped the rats would find it next. The time the ceiling started to drop, and you called a repairman, and shut the door in his face. His grizzled face looked so like your missing man's, that though he stood there and knocked, you couldn't be moved to answer. He left, like everything else.

And now, now you're alone. Your house is silent, the old televsion that disappeared from the basement the only one that ever was. Your withered hands can't turn the finicky radio to a station, and the grey static is too loud to let the voices shine through; you leave it off, always. The teal, lead-lined refrigerator used to hum, occasionally making a loud whistle, but it stopped a day or two ago. Or maybe last week.

You're sitting in his chair now. You bought it, back from the antique shop you gave it to. They charged you ludicrous amounts for the armchair, the cloth cover eaten away in places, the dark wood of the arms and legs worn, the now-dull veneer rubbed off or scratched, and the entire thing reeking of mothballs. You wanted to feel him with you, to smell him, to sit in his place and feel him close. Nothing fits right, so you suppose it fits that the chair is wrong. Arranged on his chair, your limbs look stiff, but are relaxed. Floating free of sensation and the worries that plagued you since he left, your body feels as though it belongs to another, and your heart smiles.

The leak in the roof left your yellow walls mouldy, and the smell from the refrigerator is noxious. Your kitchen is in disarray; your previous dinner's dishes are left strewn across the counter. The stove is unclean, and your sink has rust underneath the dripping tap. Your bed is made up where he'd lie, but the side on which you sleep is messy, and the sheets have long since faded to cloudy grey.

Your daughter finds you, a week after the landlord calls to tell her you've forgotten your rent once again, but won't answer your door.

"Oh mum..." she says softly, as she sees you sitting in his chair. You don't reply, for what reply is there to be made? She kneels next to you, and her slender fingers lift your grey curls from where they sit, resting on your glasses.

Twenty three.

The days she will spend making your home livable, clean and bright once more. The days she will spend, pondering why you let yourself live in such squalor. The days she will spend saying goodbye to your things. And the days your body spent alone before she found you.