Chapter Thirty-Nine

TJ borrows an industrial-size Dumpster off a friend with a roofing business, and the next morning, I sort and dump. Mostly dump.

My father’s belongings hold no nostalgia, no feeling at all besides shudders of bad memories. Mismatched plastic place settings, holiday mugs, frayed chamois shirts, stained towels, a La-Z-Boy, a three-legged bookshelf: these are my inheritance. I chuck the contents of my dad’s refrigerator and spray the whole kitchen down with disinfectant, chasing insects out of the open windows with misty clouds of Windex.

I would throw out the whole refrigerator if I could lift it.

I’m lonelier than I’ve ever been in my life. My inbox fills up with e-mails in the days after my dad’s death—even Portland sends me a note, morbidly titled “Digging,” which I don’t bother to open—and then the communication, predictably, slows. Brent calls stubbornly, every day, always leaving a version of the same message. Hello, it’s Brent, I’m worried, please call me. An arrangement of flowers arrives, a wreath of lilies appropriate to an enormous church service. They go right in the trash.

I don’t want to see anyone. I can’t.

Ironically, Barrens has never been fuller; first the local news channels arrive to speculate about a growing corruption scandal. Protesters begin to gather outside of the Optimal gates, preaching the importance of clean water, and every day their camp swells. Then come ambulance chaser personal injury lawyers and lobbyists with their talking points and political agendas.

All of it seems distant, as if it’s happening in some other town. The few times I turn on the local news I’m surprised by Joe’s face, conferencing in from Chicago to give updates, and even by footage of the whole team hard at work looking busy and official in the Chicago office. No one on the team even mentions me.

The one exception is the county prosecutor, Dev Agerwal, suddenly the darling of Indiana news: he never fails to mention that a local woman, Abby Williams, tipped him off to long-standing corruption in the office of his predecessor and inspired his current mission to end Optimal’s influence in local and state politics. One enterprising reporter from WABC even tracks me to my father’s house. When I answer the door, carrying a trash bag rattling with junk from the bathroom cabinets, he takes a step backward and nearly tumbles off the porch. I tell him he has the wrong Abby Williams.

My days are achy and hot. Wearing my dad’s work vest, sleeping on the couch in the indent left by his body weight, sorting his belongings, making coffee that tastes like scorched grounds in the crappy drip machine: I feel as if I’m slowly slipping into my father, becoming him, bringing him back to life.

The only other company I have, besides TJ, is the mailman, who knocks on the door to tell me he can’t get anything in the mailbox because it hasn’t been emptied in two weeks. There isn’t any more to say, but still I find myself trying to delay his departure.