Emily's Seams

I felt empty again.

I got home just after eleven. I hadn’t even thought to check my cell until then. There was a text message from Robert waiting for me.

If u have time after ure visit id like 2 C U

I don’t think anything could have counteracted the hollowness inside me better than that stupid little text message.

“Hi, I just got in.”

“Emily.” His voice sounded rough, like he’d be sleeping.

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even notice what time it was. Call me whenever you get up.” I slammed the phone shut.

Immediately it started to shake in my hand. It was Robert. Normally I wouldn’t have picked up, but then again, normally I wouldn’t have called in the first place.

“Hello?”

“Don’t hang up! I was waiting up for you, but the News was so boring. I just passed out for a few minutes,” he said quickly.

“I’m really sorry.”

“It’s alright! Besides, it’s eleven on a Friday. I think it’s kinda sad that I fell asleep watching the News anyway. Do you want to meet up?”

My stomach knotted. “Yeah, sure.”

“Great! I’ll come get you.”

“No, I’ll meet you. You don’t need to come all the way here.” I answered quickly.

The other end was quiet for a moment. “Nah, you’ll take too long to get anywhere and it’s dark out. I’ll just come get you. I’ll call you when I’m outside your place, okay?”

I thought about protesting this but what was the point? I wanted him to come pick me up so I wouldn’t be alone for long.

“Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.”

The grating screech of Mr. Puggums took my attention away from the folded cell. The bony old cat sauntered over to me and sat at my feet. I picked him up and he purred loudly.

I walked into Julia’s empty room and the cat rattled on. He had loved Julia. When Jude moved in after our mom had died, Mr. Puggums gave her up completely for Julia. Who could blame him? Julia was perfect.

My hand started shaking. It took me a second to realize that it was my phone.

“Hey, I’m downstairs. Are you ready to come down?”

“Uh, where did you want to go?”

“Maybe we could drive into Vancouver. Get a late dinner or something?”

I looked around Julia’s empty room and suddenly felt like I shouldn’t leave.

“Come up for a second. You can park anywhere on the street, no one really cares.”

“Alright,” he sounded surprised. I had not once invited him up. “Three-eleven?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

I buzzed him up a couple of minutes later with Mr. Puggums still roaring away in my arms. The cat let out a ragged greeting as Robert came in.

He smiled and scratched the cat’s head. “I didn’t know you had a cat. Or that you smoked.”

“Oh. Sorry about that. I don’t, it’s my aunt. Guess I just don’t notice it anymore. Normally she keeps the window open so it’s not that bad.”

“It’s pretty windy out, I can see why she’d close it.”

But it wasn’t that at all. The cold night air was coming in from somewhere. I put Mr. Puggums down, much to his disappointment, and ran into the living room.

A cluster of cigarettes were smouldering away in the ashtray beside my aunt’s chair. All the butts were burning up now. The television was still on and the living room window was wide open, kicking up curls of cigarette smoke with unseen wind currents.

But there was no snoring.

My hand went to her throat without thinking. I couldn’t find a pulse and her skin was cold.

“Oh my God.” I whispered.

“Em, is she dead?”

I didn’t know what to say. He stepped in front of me and checked her pulse for himself.

Just then, she sat up straight and screamed.

“Who the hell are you? What are you doing in my house?” She pushed her rickety body up and Robert jumped about three feet in the air.

“Holy shit, she’s alive!” he exclaimed.

My heart was pounding and I swear had I drank anything that day, I would have peed my pants. And then I started laughing. It was insane, off the deep end laughing.

Robert started in too until we were both on the floor in tears. Mr. Puggums was nosing around both of us, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Emily? Who is this pervert?” Jude demanded.

That made me burst into another fit of nervous laughter. Between gasps of air, I finally managed to ease her mind a little. “He’s...he’s my pervert, Jude.”

This made Robert lose it all over again.

It was one in the morning by the time Jude was able to fall asleep again. Robert and I were down the hall in my room when her snoring started up.

“Did she have duel exhausts installed or that all stock?” he asked, smiling.

“I don’t even notice it anymore.”

“How long have you two lived together?”

“Since my mom died. I was about nineteen, I guess.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

He chuckled. “I mean, it’s not like you were a minor or anything.”

“Maybe I just really like her company.”

He snorted. “I admit, that didn’t cross my mind.”

I was laying across his chest in my tiny bed. I breathed him in and realized that it was time I started spreading out this crazy. I didn’t need it to eat away at me anymore.

“My sister was a minor. It was just easier having my aunt move in than deal with all the Family Services bullshit.”

“Your sister? You have a sister?”

“Had. She died.” I felt small and scared but his arm around me wasn’t moving.

He didn’t say anything for a long time. “Em? How’d she die?”

I sighed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell him. If anything, it was a sigh of relief.

“She killed herself when she was fifteen.” I rolled out from under his arm and reached into the drawer of my nightstand. I took out the only picture I knew of where Julia looked beautiful and I looked happy.

“This was her. She was about fourteen here.”

Robert gently took the picture, holding it by the edges. His care of it was sweet.

“You both look really happy. And you look short.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I know. She was beautiful. And tall.”

He waited a moment before asking. “Em? Do you know why she did it?”

I was back on his chest as I nodded. “Yeah. She was fucking one of her teachers. I found out about it and threatened to call the cops. He got all scared and broke it off. Bastard had a wife and kid. Got my sister knocked up and then just threw her aside like she was nothing.”

After all this time my anger was just as raw and ready.

“I’m sorry, Em. I know you must really miss her.” His arm tightened around me. It helped.

I smushed my fist across my eyes to blot out the quickly forming tears. “Just wish I had done something.”

“Oh Em.” He wrapped his other arm around me and held me so close it was almost hard to breathe. “It wasn’t your fault. She loved you and wouldn’t want you to think that.”

“How do you know that?” I had tried to come out sounding accusatory, but instead my voice was small and pleading. I wanted to believe what he had said and needed to know how he could have made that kind of deduction.

“Because I know you.”

I sniffed and turned my face into his chest. I was soaking his t-shirt with tears but that didn’t matter. As long as he was making me feel better I decided to throw another innermost secret out there.

“I burned his house down.”

“What? Whose house?”

“The teacher that was fucking my sister. He and his family were away when I burned his house down.”

Suddenly Robert’s body began shaking. I sat up, worried that he was having a seizure after having been exposed to an excessive amount of my insanity. No, he was laughing.

“Why are you laughing? This is serious. I’m a horrible person! They lost everything!”

Robert sat up and sucked in air as he tried to calm himself. “No, Em. You did. They just had to stay in a hotel for a few months and get the family pictures redone.”

It wasn’t until three in the morning that the heaviness of sleep started to interrupt our thoughts and make us misuse words.

“Maybe I should go,” Robert said as he stood up to leave.

“You can crash here if you want. It’s kinda late to be driving.” I was barely able to stand.

He smiled. “I forgot my toothbrush.”

“Oh hell, get out of here!” I said as I dramatically waved him away. “Nah, I’m just shitting you. I’ve always got extras around. And I mean like new extras, not the old ones that you keep to scrub tiles and crap like that.”

I wandered out ahead of him to the bathroom, thinking he was right behind me. When I got to the bathroom, I realized I was alone. I made the short trip back to my bedroom to see Robert holding a pink envelope.

“Robert?”

“Whose this from?” he asked.

“My dad.” Robert’s face was twisted up as he continued to stare at the pink envelope. “Do you recognize the name or something?”

He shook his head. “Have you ever been to this place?” he asked, pointing to the return address written tightly in the envelope’s upper right-hand corner.

“Nope. I get one every year for my birthday. Same place.” Suddenly I felt a very unexpected wave of guilt push away my sleepiness. “I’ve never even met him.”

Robert looked at me for a second too long and then he smiled. “Come on. I need to brush my teeth and fall asleep.”

I didn’t think I’d be able to fall asleep. Robert’s unease about my dad’s card was obvious. Was it because I had never once visited him? It was honestly one part of my life that I didn’t think he’d care about. After everything I had told him, a silly birthday card from a completely absent father had made him stop and think about what he had just gotten into. It was hard to fight off these thoughts as they wormed into my mind.

I wondered if Robert could tell how unsettled I was. Every time I was about to jump out of bed and hide in Julia’s room, his arms got a little tighter around me.

I stared at him across the shiny diner table. Orange juice and coffee had been dropped off for us and the smell of frying bacon and flapjacks was almost enough to make me forget that strange look he had on his face the night before. But not quite.

“You seemed so messed up when you saw that envelope on my desk last night. Why?”

He choked on his juice. I didn’t move a muscle to help him clean any of it up.

He mopped up the mess with a handful of napkins and looked up at me a few times. After setting aside the wet, sticky mound of paper, he started working on his own hands with another one. I didn’t say a word. Let it eat at him, I thought.

“My mom used to work there,” he finally said.

“Where?”

“At the hospital. I guess I was just surprised when I saw the address, that’s all.”

“What hospital?”

He looked at me. “The return address, it’s a psychiatric hospital.”

“What?”

Robert just nodded. “Em, why have you never written him back?” There was no accusation in his tone, but it broke my heart all the same.

“My mom told me not to. That he wouldn’t have wanted it.” I sounded small and pathetic. It was the truth but sometimes that’s a poor excuse for the things we do or, in this case, don’t do.

“Why would he have put his return address on there?”

I shrugged. “I asked my mom that once and she said that it gave him peace of mind to know that if it got lost in the mail or if there wasn’t enough postage that he would get it back and could send it out right the second time.”

A busty waitress settled our plates in front of us and slipped out as if she could smell the tension and wanted no part of it.

“Well...things are a little different now. Would you want to go see him?”

I stared down at my eggs. I had ordered them sunny side up but I was seriously regretting that choice at the moment. They looked disgusting.

“Hey, Emily. I’m sorry. Look, don’t worry about it, okay? We don’t have to talk about it right now.”

I wanted to cry. I had been inches from a meltdown and he had backed off, just the way I needed him to. Every fragile seam that had held me together was torn and he was so gentle with me, as if he didn’t want the stuffing to fall out.

“Come on, eat your eggs before they get cold. Nothing worse than cold eggs. They taste like ass.”

Thankfully, they were still warm.

Hi Stanley,

It’s Emily and I am currently 26 years old. Thanks for the birthday cards you’ve been sending all these years. I thought I’d finally write you after all this time to let you know a little bit about the person you seem to think is worth remembering year after year. I work in a lab. Basically I help out the students with their projects, order stuff, keep things running. I’m thinking about going to graduate school soon too.

Mom died in 2004 in a car accident. I had a little sister named Julia but she passed away too in 2008. I live with mom’s sister Jude and her cat, Mr. Puggums.

If you’re ever up to getting together for a meal or something, I’d be happy to come down to Appletown. It’s okay if you’d rather not though. I’m not really sure what else to say except thanks. The birthday cards are really special to me.

Emily

I read the letter over and over again. I finally settled on writing out a second copy with nicer penmanship. I also changed Stanley to Dad and squeezed in a Love before signing my name.

I got a letter back three days later. I had no idea the postal services of Canada could be so efficient, or that Stanley would have had anything to say so quickly.

“Em? What’s wrong?”

“Huh?”

Robert smiled at me from across the table. “I’ve been talking for the last twenty minutes. I started saying things like blue toaster, gopher phones, red banana.”

“What? Why would you talk about that kind of stuff?”

He chuckled. “To see if you were listening.”

I shook my head. “Look, I’m sorry. I just...”

He waited.

“Stanley wants to meet me.”

“Stanley?”

“My dad. I took your advice and wrote him. He got back to me like three days later, says he wants to meet me.”

Robert sat up straighter. “Wow, that’s great!”

I nodded. “Yeah. I guess.”

“What? You don’t want to anymore?”

“No, it’s not that. I just...I’ve never met him before. What I am supposed to say?”

“I don’t know. But you should go.”

“Why?”

“Why’d you write him?”

“Because you made me feel like shit.”

He laughed. “I don’t think the jury would buy it.”

I sighed. “I just...what if he hates me? Or I hate him? Or we just have nothing to say to one another?”

Robert shrugged. “Yeah, I guess that could happen. I doubt it though. You wrote him because you wanted to and he wrote back because he wants to meet you.”

I chewed on my lower lip. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Yeah, for sure. Let’s book our time off tomorrow.”