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Servants to the Dead
by Steven Piziks
Even the dead have to pay their way.
"Dad, look out!” Jen caught her father by the shoulders and yanked him
away from the rake in the grass. Charlie Liles teetered, then recovered
his balance.
"What do you think you’re doing, young woman?" he snapped. "Take your hands off me!"
"Dad,
you almost—oh, never mind." Jen stooped to snatch up the rake and lean
it safely against the yellow garden shed. Overhead, the sun shone like
a cold golden eye, and the spring air still carried a hint of chill.
The lawn was turning green, but matted clumps of dead brown grass still
clogged it—Nick hadn’t finished clearing it out. He must have
accidentally left the rake.
Charlie, meanwhile, was muttering to
himself. Jen had made sure he was dressed warmly in a clean sweatshirt
and thick slacks, though it had been a struggle. He had demanded she
bring him his blue and white striped sweater. Jen vaguely remembered a
sweater like it from her childhood, which meant it certainly wasn’t in
the dresser now. She’d told him it was in the laundry.
"Where’s Molly?" Charlie demanded, tugging at his sweatshirt. "Dammit, the woman’s never around when you need her."
"Mom
died eight years ago, Dad," Jen said patiently. "She’s buried in Forest
Hill Cemetery. We went to visit her yesterday, remember?"
Charlie
looked blankly at his daughter. His eyes, once a flashing blue, had
gone pale and blank in his wrinkled face. His chest was a shrunken
hollow, his hands were thick and gnarled, his hair wispy and gray. Jen
had inherited his blue eyes and sturdy build, though her thick brown
hair had come from her mother.
"Who’re you?" Charlie growled.
"I’m Jen. Your daughter."
Charlie
continued to look blankly at her. A robin chirped from a nearby tree
which had already put out a healthy crop of pale green leaves, and the
buds on the magnolia tree next door were already threatening to burst
with a popcorn shower of purple and white petals.
"Tomatoes,
Dad," Jen finally sighed, pointing to the rows of plastic flats. Each
one contained half a dozen tomato plants, ready for transplanting.
"You’re doing the tomatoes today, remember?"
Charlie turned and
looked for a long time at the dark green vines. Then his face lit up.
"Tomatoes! We have to get the tomatoes in!"
He strode
purposefully toward the flats. Nick had already run the tiller over the
garden, leaving the earth soft and dark. Charlie knelt near the plot,
picked up a trowel, and began digging with the quick, precise movements
of an experienced gardener. Jen let out a long breath. Looking at him
right now, she could remember what he was like before the Alzheimer’s.
These times, however, were coming less and less often. A wave of
tiredness swept over her. It was so hard. Sometimes she wished Dad
would just—
No, she told herself firmly. No point in that. Like
Dad used to say, you can wish in one hand and spit in the other. See
which one gets filled first.
After putting the rake inside the
shed and inspecting the area to make sure there were no other tools
Charlie might hurt himself on, Jen carefully locked the backyard gate
and went into the house. A pile of dishes teetered high in the sink,
and the floor desperately needed mopping. Ignoring this, Jen cleared a
space under the faucet to rinse her hands and strode briskly toward the
corner of the kitchen that doubled as her workshop. A small electric
potter’s wheel sat amid giant lumps of brown and gray clay. Nick had
installed a series of shelves on the wall for her, and they were lined
with neat brown rows of drying bowls and vases. The corner also had a
window that looked out over the backyard, meaning she could keep one
eye on her father while she grabbed some personal time. And she was
going to grab it. Nick was still asleep—he had worked an extra shift
at the hospital last night—and Dad was occupied, so Jen had a few
precious minutes to herself. Dirty kitchen or not, she wasn’t going to
miss a moment.
Naturally, the doorbell chose that moment to ring.
Cursing,
Jen glanced out the window. Dad was still digging. He should be all
right for the moment. Jen dashed to the front door. A man in a brown
uniform was waiting for her with a shoebox-sized package tucked under
one arm.
"Delivery for Dr. Bitterman," he said.
"I’m Dr. Bitterman," Jen told him.
"You need to sign for it." The man thrust a clipboard at her. "First line."
Jen unclipped the pen from the board. "I thought I told the museum not to send anything to my home address."
"I just deliver the packages, ma’am," he said. "I don’t address them. First line."
Jen
was about to sign when she noticed something odd. The top of the
acceptance sheet wasn’t printed in English. Arabic script flowed across
the page instead. Frowning, she read.
"I accept this package of my own free will and with it, all responsibilities contained therein," she said. "What on earth?"
The
man touched his cap, and Jen noticed for the first time that he had
dark, olive skin. Curly black hair peeked out from under his brown cap.
The vehicle parked at the curb wasn’t UPS or FedEx, either. It was a
plain, white truck with "Horus Delivery Service" written on it,
accompanied by a picture of a falcon carrying a package in its talons.
There were no other signatures on the acceptance sheet.
"I just deliver the packages, ma’am," the man repeated. He had no trace of a foreign accent.
A
thought flashed through Jen’s mind—was the package a bomb? There were
some people who felt that ancient Egyptological artifacts should remain
in Egypt, and a few of these people were known to be extremists. Had
one of them decided to get revenge?
"I’ll tell you what," Jen said. "I’ll sign if you stand here while I open the package."
She had half expected the man to run away, but instead he glanced once at his watch. "Sure, ma’am. If you want."
Jen
looked at him, still suspicious. Then she remembered Dad was still in
the backyard with no one to watch him. Quickly, she scribbled her
signature on the sheet and accepted the package. It wasn’t very heavy,
only a pound or so. There was no return address.
"If you could hurry, ma’am?" the delivery man said. "I have a route to finish."
The
package was only taped shut. Between the man’s willingness to wait and
her fear that Dad might be getting into something he shouldn’t, most of
Jen’s trepidation disappeared. With experience born of long practice,
she tore off the brown paper and opened the box inside. It was filled
with shredded Arabic newspaper. She looked blankly at it.
"All set, ma’am?" the man asked.
"What? Oh, yes. Hold on a second." She fumbled one-handed through her pockets for a tip.
"Don’t worry about it, ma’am. Gotta go." The man trotted back to his truck and drove away.
Jen
carried the package into the kitchen and heard cursing from the open
window. She glanced outside. Charlie was cracking a tomato plant like a
whip, and dirt and leaves were flying in all directions. He dropped it
and reached for another.
"Damn!" Jen abandoned the box on the table and rushed outside.
It
was quite some time later before she was able to come back in and flop
into a scarred kitchen chair. She rubbed a tired hand over her face.
Dad was calm again and planting the rest of the tomatoes, though clouds
now hid the sun. In a few minutes it’d be too chilly for him to work
outside and she’d have to bring him in. Then she’d have to start
dinner, and then Dad would need a bath, and then—
Jen’s eye fell
on the package, which still sat on the table. With a sigh, she pulled
it toward herself and rummaged carefully through the shredded
newspaper. It felt gritty, and it stained her fingertips black. Strange
packages arrived at her office down at the museum all the time, though
usually via mail or UPS. Most often they contained Egyptian artifacts
someone wanted Jen to identify or verify, but occasionally they turned
out to be contributions to the museum’s growing collection. As the head
of the Egyptology department—which consisted of three whole people—it
was part of Dr. Jennifer Bitterman’s job to figure out what the
artifacts were and/or what to do with them.
Jen’s fingers encountered a hard, smooth surface. Gingerly, she grasped the object and fished it out.Surprise
A
gold light flashed like a miniature sun. It blinded Jen, and she cried
out. The object clattered to the table. For a long moment Jen saw
nothing but a bright red dot. She blinked furiously until the kitchen
came back into focus. A small statue lay on the table. It was a man,
about eight inches tall, with the smooth contours Jen had come to
associate with Egyptian statuary. The object resembled a miniature
mummy case complete with heiroglyphs parading across the back. Jen
blinked some more. What on earth had caused the flash? Had the statue
caught the light just right?
"What’ve you got, Jen? A gold statue?"
Jen
turned at the familiar voice. Nick, clad in his white bathrobe, had
padded into the kitchen. His hair, still as thick and red as the day
she’d married him fifteen years ago, was tousled as a haystack, and his
green eyes were heavy with sleep. He yawned, then leaned down to give
her cheek a scratchy kiss.
"It’s an ushepti," Jen told him. "And it isn’t heavy enough to be solid gold. It’s more likely guilded wood or plaster."
"Ah."
Nick shuffled toward the coffe maker. He had set the timer before going
to bed and the machine was just now flooding the kitchen with the smell
of fresh coffee. "Caffeine. Need caffeine. Where’s Charlie?"
Jen automatically glanced out the window. "Planting tomatoes. I’ll have to bring him in soon."
"So what’s an usha . . . usheb . . ."
"Ushepti," Jen repeated. "It’s a funerary object. I’ve shown them to you before."
Nick sat down at the table with a steaming cup. "Aren’t they those servant statue things they put in tombs?"
"Yeah.
It’s got heiroglyphs along here. Let’s see." She traced the symbols
with one finger and translated. "If there is work to do in the
afterlife, if there is grain to thresh or cloth to weave, if there is a
field to irrigate or sand to carry to the east or west, I will do it
for you."
"Handy." Nick sipped his coffee. "Why would the dead have to thresh grain?"
"No
such thing as a free lunch," Jen said. "Not even in the afterlife. You
have to pay Osiris for your keep by working in his fields or in his
house. But if you have enough usheptis in your tomb, they’ll do it for
you. People collected them for years before they died."
"So who sent it?"
Jen
was already digging through the box. "I don’t know. There’s no letter
or card, and there wasn’t a return address on the package. No big deal,
really. A lot of people send the letter under separate cover. I’ll
probably get it tomorrow. The owner wants to know which period it came
from or something, I’m sure."
"Ah. Well it’s me for a shower." Nick got up and glanced at Jen’s work space. "Didn’t get a chance to throw anything new, huh?"
Jen mutely shook her head. "Dad was difficult today, and tonight he needs a bath."
"Tell
you what." Nick leaned over to kiss her again. He smelled like coffee.
"I’ll give him his bath tonight if you’re reeeeeaaal nice to me later.
You haven’t been nice to me for a long time, woman."
"Sounds like a deal," Jen laughed. "I better go bring him in."
The phone rang. Nick reached for it while Jen headed for the door.
The
temperature outside had dropped considerably. Guiltily Jen hurried over
to her father, who had managed to plant about a third of the tomato
plants. She knelt down and touched his hands. They were ice-cold. More
guilt. Charlie was more like a child than anything else. He didn’t know
enough to go get a jacket or put on gardening gloves, so Jen had to do
it for him.
"Come on, Dad," she said gently. "It’s time to go in."
"I’m busy," he replied in the deceptively mild voice Jen had come to dread. It meant he was going to be difficult.
"Dad," she tried again. "It’s getting cold. We need to go in."
"I said I’m busy," he snapped.
In
the end, Jen had to snatch the trowel away from him and use it to lure
him back inside. Nick, meanwhile, had already showered and dressed and
was in the kitchen making a sandwich.
"That was fast," she said. "Dad, no. You have to wash your hands first."
"That
was the hospital on the phone," Nick told her quietly. "One of the
other med-techs called in sick and they asked me to work another double
shift. We need the money, so I told them I’d do it. I have to leave as
soon as I grab something to eat."
Without a word, Jen guided
Charlie’s hands away from the dishes and under the warm water.
Disappointment dragged at her. Her hopes for some private time seemed
to wash down the drain with the crumbly dirt. She wanted to tell Nick
to call the hospital and say he had to stay home tonight, spend time
with her tonight. But she pursed her lips and remained silent. Nick was
right—they did need the money. Her salary at the museum barely
approached thirty thousand, and the hospital had recently been forced
to lay off a hundred workers and cut pay rates for all those who
remained. Between a sick father, two car payments, and a house they
had bought in better times, it seemed like they fell further and
further behind every month. Jen tried to supplement household income by
selling her pottery to a local dealer, but she just didn’t have much
time to spend at her wheel.
"I’d better give Dad his bath now,
then," Jen said, shutting off the water and drying Charlie’s hands.
"It’ll calm him down for supper."
Nick picked up his sandwich.
"I’ll see you in the morning." He kissed her again, though this time
his face was smooth and freshly shaven. "I’m sorry, honey."
"We need the money," Jen repeated.
Nick nodded once and left.
"Come on, Dad," Jen said. "It’s bath time."
It
took over an hour to get through bath time, at the end of which Jen was
soaking wet and completely exhausted. Charlie resisted every move she
made. Twice he almost slipped and hurt himself. Finally she managed to
get him into his robe and pajamas and park him in front of the
television set to watch an I Love Lucy re-run. And she still had to
start supper.
Jen leaned against the smooth living room wall
beside Charlie’s easy chair, feeling suddenly frightened and
overwhelmed. It had been like this almost every day since Dad had moved
in a year ago. They couldn’t afford—and their insurance wouldn’t
cover—in-home care, and the nearest affordable nursing home with an
opening for an Alzheimer’s patient was over an hour away. It had
smelled of stale air and urine when Jen had gone to visit, and she just
couldn’t bring herself to leave Dad there.
After Charlie had
moved in, Nick had transferred to the three-to-eleven shift and Jen had
rearranged her schedule so she could work six-thirty to two. That way,
there’d always be someone at home for Charlie. Jen rarely saw Nick
during the week, and lately she hadn’t even seen much of him on the
weekends. They hadn’t gone out as a couple in months and months, and
Jen had given up two chances to visit Egypt.
Jen blinked hard,
refusing to let the tear run down her cheek. She wanted her life back.
She wanted time with her husband. She wanted her dad to be the strong,
gentle man she remembered from her childhood instead of the childish
tyrant he had become. Sometimes she wished Dad would just—
No. No, she didn’t. Never that.
Charlie’s
gaze remained fixed on the TV. Jen pushed herself away from the wall
and moved toward the kitchen. With Nick at work, maybe she’d just throw
together some sandwiches or something. It would also give her time to
make a dent in the mess.
She paused in the kitchen doorway and
sniffed. The rich scent of beef stew mingled with the delicious smell
of baking biscuits. What in the world . . . ?
Jen peered into
the kitchen and caught her breath. It was sparkling clean. The dirty
dishes had vanished. The floor was mopped. Even the windows gleamed. A
pot bubbled slowly on the stove, and the table was neatly set for two.
Jen stared in utter astonishment.
"Hello?" she called
hesitantly. She supposed she should be afraid someone had broken into
the house, but what kind of burglar made beef stew and baked biscuits
in broad daylight? She lifted the pot lid, then checked the oven.
Biscuits and stew looked nearly done. Had Nick somehow arranged all
this to surprise her? But how?
A golden glitter caught her eye. The ushepti sat on the table, exactly where Jen had left it. She looked at it for a long time.
Don’t be ridiculous, she told herself. There’s a perfectly good explanation for all this.
But nothing came to mind.
The
biscuits were light, buttery, and flaky, the stew was thick, meaty, and
absolutely delicious. Charlie ate with gusto and allowed Jen to lead
him back to the living room for more television. Jen felt slightly
guilty about parking him there, but reminded herself that he rarely
remained quiet for long and there was no harm in enjoying it when he
did.
When she got back to the kitchen, intending to sneak some
time at her potter’s wheel, the table had been cleared and the
dishes—washed—were stacked in the rack next to the sink. Jen remembered
the flash of golden light and narrowed her eyes at the ushepti, which
still sat on the table.
If there is work to do in the afterlife, Jen thought, I will do it for you.
"You’re doing this, aren’t you?" she said aloud.
The
ushepti didn’t answer and Jen felt rather silly talking to a statue.
Still, when she searched the kitchen for the ushepti’s box to
re-examine it for clues, it was nowhere to be found. " few minutes
later, Jen was unsurprised to learn that the phone book contained no
listing for the Horus Delivery Service.
oOo
"This is a
shattered curse tablet," Jen said, gesturing at a glass display case.
"It was found in an Egyptian tomb, though the name on the tablet
doesn’t belong to the man who was buried there. We think the pieces
were deliberately hidden in the burial chamber by a workman who wanted
to give the tablet’s curse greater power."
One of the third-graders raised a hand. "What kind of curse?"
"The Egyptians believed if you wrote someone’s name on a clay tablet and smashed it, the person would die," Jen explained.
"Can we see the mummy?" asked another student.
Jen smiled. "It’s right around the corner. Let’s go look."
The
class scurried away, towing their teacher and two chaperones with them.
Jen followed and gave the students a short lecture on mummification
while they crowded around what looked like a tall glass coffin. A
wooden sarcophagus, painted gold, stood upright inside. The front of
the coffin stood open to display a vaguely human-shaped figure wrapped
in mud-brown bandages.
"Is it true the priests sucked the dead man’s brain out through his nose?" asked one boy.
"Absolutely," Jen said, and the children made appreciative "ewwwww" noises.
The same boy asked, "Did the priests eat it?"
After
the tour ended, Jen wound her way back toward her tiny office. In some
ways, the children reminded her of Dad on his good days, and she
wondered for the hundredth time if he was giving Nick any trouble at
home. As his dementia progressed, the doctor said, Charlie would
probably grow more and more irritible and difficult. Jen tried to
imagine Dad being harder to deal with than he already was. The thought
made her shake.
Jen shook her head. Stop it, she told herself. Whimpering and wishing won’t help matters. Get your work done.
She
sat down and reached for her daily stack of mail. The top letter was a
reminder that the deadline for the Eagle Grant for Egyptological Study
was only four weeks away. Jen let her eyes go out of focus. For a
moment, she could feel the delicious heat of the hot, golden sun of
Egypt and hear the boistrous sounds of Cairo—braying donkeys, rushing
cars, cries of merchant and beggar. A fascinating place, one she never
tired of visiting. And then there were the tombs. So much to seek and
study, so much to uncover and learn!
Jen set the letter firmly aside. No point in dwelling on the fact that she was unlikely to see Egypt in the foreseeable future.
The phone rang. It was Nick.
"The hospital called again," he said. "They want me in ASAP. Can you come home early?"
"You’d think," Jen complained, "that they’d hire back some of the layoffs."
"Cheaper to pay overtime than benefits," Nick said. "When can you get here?"
Jen glanced at the mound of paperwork that awaited her. Maybe she could take it home and do it after Dad went to bed.
"Give me half an hour," she said. "That’ll give me time to—"
The crash of breaking glass came over the line. "Gotta go," Nick said, and hung up.
When
Jen arrived home, she found Charlie sitting in front of the TV. His
clothes were spattered with something yellow. Nick was mopping the
kitchen floor. Yellow goo dripped down the walls. Some of it was also
in Nick’s hair.
"What happened?" she asked.
"Charlie got
into the eggs," Nick said shortly. "I don’t know what it was about. He
smashed them on himself and the walls while I was talking to you on the
phone. Then he started on the glasses in the drainer. Don’t let him
walk across the floor in bare feet—I’m not sure I got all the pieces."
"Here," Jen said, taking the mop. "I’ll take over. You’d better get to the hospital."
Nick
obeyed. After Jen finished the floor, she dashed into her room to
change out of her work clothes. Charlie continued to stare at the TV,
egg still staining his own clothing. Jen would have to change them for
him, and he’d probably be difficult. Then she could finish the walls
and go over the floor again to make sure all the glass was cleaned up.
A
too-familiar wave of tiredness suddenly swept over her. Her life
stretched ahead of her like an empty, lifeless desert. The room seemed
echoing and empty with Nick gone, and she knew tonight their bed would
feel the same. Anger welled up. She had given up everything—her
pottery, her archaeology, her husband, everything. Sometimes she wished
Dad would just—
No. Never that. A tear splashed down her cheek.
Dammit, it wasn’t fair. She loved her dad. She did. It was just that he
didn’t seem like her father anymore. They had traded roles. She was
taking care of a six-foot two-year-old who couldn’t even remember who
she was. And now she was beginning to wonder if Nick accepted all the
extra shifts so he could get out of the house. Her husband was slipping
away from her while her father hung on with a death grip.
Enough, she scolded herself. Dad’s out there with raw egg on his clothes while you sit here and whine to yourself.
Jen marched out into the living room. "Come on, Dad. Let’s get those clothes—"
She
faltered. His clothes were completely clean. There was no sign they had
ever been dirty. Jen stared at him. After a moment, he looked up at
her. His eyes didn’t have the same blankness they usually held.
"Dots?" he said.
A
lump formed in Jen’s throat. "Jennyanydots" was Dad’s childhood
nickname for her, after a cat in a T.S. Eliot poem. "It’s me, Dad."
"I’m tired," he said.
"You can take a nap, if you want," Jen said around the lump. "Or do you want to eat first?"
"I’ve been forgetting things, haven’t I? So many things. I’ve caused you so much trouble."
"You’re no trouble, Dad," Jen said softly.
Charlie
reached up as if to pat her arm. Jen reached out to meet him. Swiftly
he snatched her hand instead and gripped with surprising strength.
Startled, Jen gasped and tried to pull away. He held her fast.
"You
always take care of everything, Dots," Charlie said in a hoarse voice.
His pale eyes met hers. "Take care of this, too. My body’s a wreck, my
mind is going, and I miss your mother so much my bones ache. Take care
of me, Dots. I know you can."
"I do take care of you," Jen said faintly. "Don’t you know that? Dad?"
No
response. Charlie’s hand slid off Jen’s like a dying snake and his eyes
went blank again. Jen headed shakily toward the kitchen again, trying
to sort out the emotions that warred inside her. She did take care of
Dad, every minute of every day.
A small voice insisted that Jen
was deliberately misinterpreting Charlie’s words, that she knew damn
well what he meant. Jen shook her head. Impossible. Dad couldn’t want
her to... he couldn’t mean that. It was part of his delirium. She set
the thought aside and entered the kitchen.
It was completely
clean. Again. On the table was her briefcase, which Jen clearly
remembered leaving by the front door. Jen opened it and found her
paperwork neatly stacked inside. Every bit was finished, completed and
signed in her handwriting exactly as she would have done it. On the
bottom of the pile, however, was an unsealed manilla envelope she
didn’t recall bringing home. With chilly fingers, she opened it and
pulled out a pile of papers and typewritten forms. It was a completed
application for the Eagle Grant, signed with her name and ready to
mail. The writer had requested enough money to bring along an
assistant—Nick—at excellent compensatory wages.
Jen set the application down. The ushepti sat next to the stove, gold gleaming in the failing afternoon sunlight.
"Not that I’m ungrateful," she said, "but there’s no way I can mail this in. Why are doing all this, anyway?"
The
ushepti neither answered nor moved. Jen picked it up, surprised at how
calmly she was accepting the situation. It had to be the statue doing
the work. What other explanation was there? She noticed the figurine’s
guilding was a little thin in places, especially around the hands, and
she felt a sudden kinship with the little statue. They were both worn
around the edges from laboring so—
Jen almost dropped the
ushepti. That was it, wasn’t it? An ushepti was a servant to the dead,
and Dad, in many ways, had died long ago. Now the statue labored for
him, paying room and board in the house of Osiris.
Or in the house of Jen and Nick, she thought. Well, if the ushepti wants to do the work, who am I to complain?
A
quick check on Charlie revealed he had fallen asleep in front of the
television. Humming happily to herself, Jen tiptoed to her corner
workshop and started up her potter’s wheel.
Three bowls and two
vases later—all thrown in the style of the ancient Egyptian Middle
Kingdom—Jen felt enormously better. Her cares and worries always seemed
to melt into the soft clay as it bent and shaped itself to her will.
Her growling stomach finally reminded her it was time to make supper.
She set the pottery on a shelf to dry—she’d fire it later in the
backyard kiln—and headed for the sink to wash her hands.
Sandwich
fixings waited buffet-style on the cupboard, and the table was set. The
ushepti sat among the plates like a serene centerpiece.
Jen laughed aloud. "You do a fine job," she said. "Thank you."
The ushepti gleamed.
Maybe, Jen thought as she headed into the living room to wake her father, things are finally getting better.
oOo
Things
weren’t getting better. As if to make up for his moment of tenderness,
Charlie refused to go to bed that evening. He sat stubbornly in the
chair.
"You go to bed," he growled. "I’m staying up. Who are you, anyway?"
Jen
pleaded, cajoled, and threatened. She was considering telling him Mom
was waiting in the bedroom when he suddenly got up and wandered into
the bathroom to use the toilet. Thanking God Charlie didn’t yet require
diapers, Jen took advantage of the situation and got him to brush his
teeth, but he resisted pajamas. She only managed to undress him down to
his underwear. Then he wanted a cup of coffee, which Jen refused to
give him, and then, still in his underwear, he decided he wanted to go
for a walk. He had gotten the front door open before Jen could talk him
out of it. All in all, it was almost midnight by the time Charlie
finally climbed muttering into bed.
Exhausted, Jen went into the
kitchen to get herself a snack before going to bed herself. It was
already over an hour past her usual bedtime, but she was suddenly
starving. She also wasn’t particularly looking forward to empty space
Nick left in their bed.
A glass of milk, a slice of cherry pie,
and a fork were waiting for her on the table. The ushepti gleamed
serenely nearby. Too tired even to smile at it, Jen picked up the fork,
then glanced automatically at the vases and bowls drying on the shelf.
The bowls were cracking as they dried. Jen sighed. A perfect ending to
a perfect day.
Tomorrow, she told herself. Tomorrow things’ll get better.
Once
again, they didn’t. Nick arrived home late from his double-shift,
red-eyed and exhausted, but unable to go to bed because someone had to
watch Charlie while Jen was at work. She persuaded Nick to call in sick
so he wouldn’t have to work that evening on no sleep, but he accepted
the idea with poor grace. The moment Jen got home from the museum that
afternoon, Nick vanished into the bedroom. Jen tried to interest
Charlie in planting the rest of the tomatoes, but he refused. Instead,
he wandered vacantly around the house, opening doors and cupboards,
dialing random numbers on the phone, trying to rearrange the living
room furniture, and generally driving Jen to distraction. The ushepti
made supper again, but when Jen set Charlie’s plate before him, he
threw it to the floor. Then he swept the juice pitcher off the table,
sending sticky red liquid everywhere. The noise woke Nick, who rushed
into the kitchen without thinking and sliced the bottom of his bare
foot on a piece of broken plate.
At long last Jen got everything
under control and cleaned up. Charlie was staring vacantly at the TV,
and Nick had limped into the bedroom "to do some reading." His face was
tight and rigid, though whether from pain, resentment, or both, Jen
couldn’t tell. Jen sat in the kitchen and tried not to cry from her own
frustration. How long could she keep this up? How long was Dad going to
keep sucking her life away? Didn’t he know she had a life too?
Anger
overcame the frustration. How could Dad do this to her? Hadn’t she been
a loving daughter? Hadn’t she worked hard for him? And for what? An
estranged husband and a truncated career.
The anger raged,
bubbled, and grew within her. She hated what her life had become. She
had no life at all. Every time she thought things were getting better,
they got worse. Sometimes she wished Dad would just . . . would just—
"Die!" she snarled aloud. "I wish he would die! There—I said it!"
The
words spun wildly through the room and Jen’s rage welled up in a
fireball. Rage at herself for speaking the forbidden words. Rage at Dad
for making her say them. Rage at Nick for not being there to hear them.
Her eye fell on the cracked bowls in her work area. With a silent
snarl, she snatched the first one from the shelf and flung it to the
floor.
A split second before she let go, she saw the writing.
Jen
tried to abort, tried to snatch the bowl back, but it was too late.
Everything slowed, and it seemed to Jen that the bowl slid gently away
from her grasping fingers, tumbled end-over-end to the floor, smashed
slowly into a dozen brown pieces.
Nick found her sitting on the linoleum trying to piece the shards back together. Desperate tears ran down her face.
"I didn’t mean it," she cried. "I didn’t mean it."
Minding his foot, Nick knelt down and put his arms around her. "It’s only a bowl, honey. It’s all right."
"It isn’t all right," she whimpered. "Look."
She held two pieces together. Spelled across the break in neat, block letters were the words "Charles Edward Liles."
"Dad’s going to die," she said.
"He’s
not going to die." Nick stroked her hair with a warm hand, something he
hadn’t done in long, long time. "Your dad’s going to be fine.
Everything’s going to be fine."
But in the morning Charlie was dead.
The
next several hours passed in a fog. The ambulance came and went, and
the medical examiner declined to autopsy an Alzheimer’s patient found
peaceful in his bed. Jen vaguely remembered sitting at the mortuary
holding Nick’s hand and nodding at the arrangements he made. Then she
let him lead her back home where he spent considerable time on the
phone. Jen was an only child, but there were aunts, uncles, and cousins
to notify, hotel and transportation arrangements to make. The doorbell
rang and rang, and Nick admitted people carrying casserole dishes and
fruit platters. Many of them were from the church she and Nick had
attended before Charlie fell ill. It occured to her that they could
start attending again. The thought brought fresh tears to Jen’s eyes.
That evening just before sunset, Nick tried to interest her in going for a walk, but Jen refused.
"Maybe I’ll try some pottery," she said.
Nick
nodded, his brilliant red hair shining in the fading yellow light that
shone into the kitchen. "All right. Call me if you need me."
"Thank you for arranging everything," she said, suddenly taking his hand. "I don’t know how I would’ve managed it."
Nick
stroked her hair for a long moment, gave her a hug, and left her at her
wheel. Jen started it up, but didn’t put any clay on it. Instead, she
swiveled on her stool and found herself staring across the kitchen at
the ushepti, which sat serenely on the cupboard. A pile of papers sat
next to it. Puzzled, she got up and crossed the room.
It was the Eagle Grant application.
Take care of me, Dots.
"Damn you!" she hissed at the statue. "Why can’t you leave me alone?"
The
ushepti seemed to stare straight through her from its place on the
counter. Rage swept over Jen in a black wave, and a snarl of anger
escaped her throat. She snatched up the statue and brought it down hard
against the formica counter. With a hollow crack and a billow of pale
plaster, the ushepti disintigrated. Only a few fragments remained in
her hands.
Bastard! she howled silently. Go back where you came from!
"
gold glint caught Jen’s eye and she looked down. Heiroglyphs on one of
the fragments in her hand were catching the last bits of sunlight.
"utomatically she translated:
I will do it for you.
Those
words echoed through her head, reverberated through her body. The tiny
gold gleam in her hand seemed to amplify itself, grow in power and
brightness until it was as blinding as day itself. Then it vanished,
leaving Jen alone in the kitchen. For a long moment she stood frozen.
Truth stood in front of her, and she could no longer ignore it.
I will do it for you.
Jen
shifted her gaze back to the grant application, neatly typed and ready
to mail. It would be wrong. Her father had just died—and she had helped
kill him. She should be in mourning, or even in jail, not callously
thinking that she was free to study Egypt again.
AYou should mail that in," said a voice.
Jen
jumped and spun around with a squeak. The fragments fell to the floor.
Nick was standing behind her, ignoring the ushepti’s shattered remains.
He put his arms around her.
"I know what you’re thinking," he
said softly into her ear, "and you have no reason to feel guilty. Your
dad died a long time ago. You just didn’t have the chance to move on.
Now you do. You were a good daughter, Jen, and Charlie knew that."
Jen
buried her face in Nick’s shoulder, drinking in his warm, living
presence. When the tears came, she let them flow freely. With them came
a new peace. The sun set, and the last beams of light faded from the
kitchen.
"I read the application," Nick said when she finally
quieted. "You’ve got nerve, asking for enough money to pay an
assistant. Do you have someone in mind?"
Jen looked up and
smiled as her blue eyes met his green ones. She could barely see them
in the dim illumination that spilled into the kitchen from the living
room lamps. Nick had always wanted to go to Egypt with her, but they’d
never been able to afford it. The grant, however, would more than make
up for the wages he’d lose by taking an extended leave of absence from
the hospital. Jen had no doubt the grant would go through—it was the
finest proposal she had ever read. And why shouldn’t it be? It had been
written by the ultimate expert in Egyptology. Jen wasn’t ready to visit
Cairo again, not yet. But it would take two or three months for the
grant application to go through committee, and by then things would
probably be different.
Jen pushed a red lock from Nick’s forehead. "Let’s go for a walk," she said. "I want to talk about Egypt."
Nick’s answering smile was broad and bright as the sun. They joined hands and walked out the door into the fresh evening air.
Copyright © 2006 by Steven Piziks
First published in Jim Baen's Universe, 2006
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