Andrew got to the house first. He pulled his Prius into the driveway and put the car in park. He didn’t get out. He didn’t want to get near the old house until he absolutely had to, until Jessica got there. She had the keys anyway. The administrator had mailed them to her a week after their father’s death. The manila envelope had been too large for the single key inside, so large that at first she had thought it was empty.
Jessica’s car pulled up next to Andrew’s at the same moment he began to exhale vape smoke out the open window. He immediately felt a twang in his chest, anticipating a chastising that should no longer matter at their ages. Andrew turned 27 in April, his sister was 34, or at least he was pretty sure she was. Jessica knocked on the window even though it was open.
“Are you coming inside?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t know you vaped.”
Andrew slid out of the driver’s seat, careful not to open the door too wide and risk scraping Jessica’s Audi.
“Do you have the key?”
“Yes.”
The two walked to the door slowly, procrastinating opening Pandora’s box, but not wanting to prolong existing in the awkwardness of each other’s company either. Eventually, Jessica slid the key into the lock, and pushed her body against the door to unstick the friction from too many layers of paint.
“Holy shit.” Andrew took a step back as the door swung open. There was stuff everywhere. Not just everywhere, the things that were everywhere were covering the other things and the things under that. A Pelaton was pushed up against the couch, so neither could fulfill their respective purposes properly. On top of the peloton, reusable grocery bags hung off everywhere possible; the handlebars, the seat, the pedals. The adjoining kitchen was equally distressing. Stacks of take out boxes lined the counter like jenga, but if multiple people were playing all at once to create some kind of jenga state championship. Cans had been emptied, washed, and were filling the sink and various pots on each shelf. What used to be a tub of sour cream was now filled with used chopsticks from the third best Chinese restaurant in town.
“Dad was a fucking hoarder.”
Jessica ignored him as she stepped through the threshold. Immediately the impulse to open a window took hold of her. But a stack of newspapers, magazines, and coupons stood in her way.
“Can you check the kitchen for trash bags? We’ll need them to throw away whatever we don’t want to keep.”
“Keep?” Andrew snorted and nodded at the magazines, “You want the Sports Weekly or the Family Handyman?”
“Don’t be an asshole. There has to be stuff in here we should keep, old photos or baby toys or something.”
“Jess, I don’t need any of this crap. You’re the one with the baby.”
“Sammy is seven.” Jessica began picking things up and putting them down again, unsure exactly where to start. She stepped over a pile of VHS tapes and another pile of broken CD Players to tiptoe into the hall.
“Where are you going?” Andrew didn’t follow, but he didn’t leave either.
“There’s a closet in the hallway, Dad kept some stuff there when I used to visit.” Jessica visited their dad a few times in this house. He moved in when she was fourteen, two years after their mom died. Andrew was seven and their grandparents didn’t want him to come with her. They didn’t want her to go either but she was old enough to know when she thought rules didn’t make sense. The last time she came she was 20, and she told her Dad she wanted to drop out of college. He told her he loved her and that he would be proud of her no matter what. It wasn’t this bad then, but she could tell he had a problem.
Jessica opened the closet and pulled out a few promising looking cardboard boxes from behind a collection of Disney themed beach towels.
“Help me get these.”
Andrew took a deep breath before stepping deeper into the house. He really hated the smell. It was the smell of their dad, but more concentrated than you should ever smell a person. It was like if you buried yourself in a pile of someone’s clothes they had worn their entire life. It was the smell of someone never leaving, not until they were carried out.
Jessica handed Andrew a box and together they shuffled their way back through the various collections.
“Can we take these outside?” Andrew wanted to get out and he was pretty sure Jessica did too.
“Sure.”
Together they sat on the front steps and opened their respective boxes.
Andrew’s box was filled with toys like The Game of Life and Scrabble. There was a plastic bag full of green army men. He held it up and looked at their different poses, only a few repeats.
“Why do you think Dad kept this stuff?”
Jessica thought for a second. “Maybe he was worried he would miss it too much if he got rid of it.”
Andrew snorted. “Oh like he missed us?”
“That’s not fair and you know it.”
Andrew thought this was ironic, Jessica acting like a parent at a time when it didn’t matter. When he didn’t need parents anymore. He was proud of this, not needing anyone. It was clear to him Jessica needed people, she had a family to lean on. He thought about saying something witty and biting, I’m not your son you know. But he didn’t say anything and so they sat silently until Jessica couldn’t handle the quiet anymore.
“He loved us a lot.”
Andrew couldn’t hold back this time. “He loved you, you mean.”
“Why are you so angry with him? He was sick and he did what he thought was best for us, for you really. He didn’t want you growing up around his sickness. He told me.”
Andrew pushed the box away, he didn’t want to look at it anymore. He didn’t want to be here anymore. He hated when Jessica talked about their Dad like that, highlighting the relationship they had that he never experienced.
Jessica took more things out of the box she was cradling between her knees. She desperately wanted to find something meaningful. Something that would put the shreds of this terrible reunion back together. She imagined pulling out a photo of their family all together, smiling and alive. Instead she found an envelope full of Box Tops and a DVD Case with a lone Gone With the Wind disk inside. In truth, she didn’t know why their dad kept all these things. Maybe he just liked having things. But things aren’t enough, you need people too.
Jessica stood up and Andrew watched her disappear into the house. He waited for her to come back with another box, another armful of random items. But when she stepped back into the light, she was holding only a roll of trash bags.
“What are you doing?” Andrew asked as she started emptying the box into one bag, and when it was full she grabbed another.
“You’re right, we don’t need any of this crap, we can donate it to Good Will.”
He sat up, watching his sister hunched over on the concrete steps, grabbing handfuls of memorabilia and tossing them into the gaping white mouths of each bag. He watched, motionless, like it was a recording of something that had already happened. And then, he slowly leaned over and picked out a roll of unused film from the box and tossed it into a bag. They sat like that, turning back and forth to pick things up and deposit them in bags until the box was empty. Then, together they turned their attention towards the box in front of Andrew. Andrew reached in and picked up the bag of army men, their limbs and guns interlocked to create a single mass. His hand hovered over a bulging bag, and then he turned and extended it towards his sister.
“For Sammy?”