Emily's Seams

Nobody likes hospitals. Even people that work in hospitals don’t like hospitals. They smell bad. Between the vomit, diarrhea and disinfectant, hospitals smell like the dead cleaning out their coffins.

Today was no exception. My aunt was on oxygen and sleeping peacefully. The doctor gave me a mix of words like chronic obstructed pulmonary disorder, smoking, hypoxia, dying. Jude’s lungs weren’t working anymore.

Angus and I waited there for hours in silence. Finally, she woke up.

Angus took her hand and kissed her on her forehead. She tugged her lifesaving mask away and pulled Angus close to her and kissed him. I was about to leave the room when she held her hand out to me.

“Angus. Give us a minute.”

He squeezed her hand and went out into the hallway.

“Hey, Jude. Well this sucks.” I swallowed hard and caught a sob that had been waiting just inside my throat.

She smiled. “Sure does. Look it, when your mom died, there was insurance money. I was going to save it for Julia to go to school but... well, anyway. Go grab my purse.”

I brought the rhinestone covered sac over to her.

“Keychain.” It was clear that words were getting harder and harder for her as each breath became more and more precious.

I pulled out her ring of keys quickly and held it up to her. She weakly pointed to a small, silver key.

“Westpoint Bank, Box 1983. It’s all there. Have some fun, sweetie.”

I smudged away a few rogue tears.

“Maybe you and that nice boy can go on a vacation.”

A surprised laugh escaped me but I nodded anyway. “Yeah, that sounds like a plan.”

“Okay.”

“Uh, I’ll go get Angus.”

She looked grateful. I wasn’t hurt that she wanted to spend whatever time she had left with the cowboy and not her distant niece. I know that had I been the one in the bed, I would only want one other person there, and it wouldn’t have been her.

Jude died three days later. I got a call just as I was leaving the hospital. It was my dick of a boss, trying to chew me out for taking the extra time off.

“Fuck you, I quit.”

And that was that. I had so few expenses over the years that I had actually been able to save some money. I’d be okay to mope around my crummy apartment for a little while.

Angus stayed at the hospital. I was on a bus home when something I passed caught my eye. A bank. An old bank.

Westpoint.

I pulled the line to stop the bus and luckily the next drop off wasn’t too far away. It only took me five minutes to make it back to the bank.

A small woman in a tight black suit that smelled of no-nonsense except on Fridays greeted me coldly at the door. I was clearly not the kind of clientele she was used to.

“Yeah, hi. I have a security box here.”

“Do you have your key?”

I nodded and held up the small silver key Jude had given me. It was better than a passport.

“Follow me.” She led me past the counters and into a back room, through a locked door and then another one.

“Box number?”

“1983.” I answered quickly.

We passed through another door and then into a room lined with silver drawers, each with their own special number and their own secrets.

She took me to the furthest wall and effortlessly slid a key I didn’t even realize she had been holding into the silver box marked 1983.

“Your key, miss.”

Awkwardly, I pushed my key into a keyhole that neighboured the one currently occupied. We turned at the same time and the drawer opened effortlessly. She didn’t make a move to touch the drawer’s contents.

“Miss, if you’d like to view the contents now we have private rooms for our clients.”

I pulled on the small handle of the metal box that perfectly filled the drawer called 1983.

This compact, serious woman closed the drawer, returned my key to me and led me out of the room and into a small, gently lit side room. It had one chair and a small table with a phone.

“Please, take as much time as you need. Call when you are ready to return the box to the vault.”

She closed the door before I could say thanks or fuck you.

The box opened easily and inside was a bankbook and a note. The book had Westpoint stenciled across its leather cover in gold, serious letters.

I set the book down and picked up the neatly folded note.

It was in Jude’s elegant and almost pretentious scrawl.

Hey Kiddo,

Either I’m dead or just about. If I didn’t tell you about this then Mr. Wilson would have been the one to tell you about this. But either way, you’ve got it now. This is the money from your mother’s accident. They paid out pretty good. A hundred thousand dollars. Had to pay a lawyer quite the fee, nearly ten thousand and then some money went to your mom’s burial. I’ve had to borrow a little smidge here and there but there’s plenty left over for you to take care of yourself and send Julia off to school. Knowing you, you’d hand the whole lot over to her but I hope you don’t. Your mom loved you too and would have wanted to see you both get something out of this mess.

I love you,

Jude

She’d written this before Julia had died. I was crying again. The ink on the page was now running from my tears but I didn’t really care.

I picked up the bankbook. Inside was my name and a balance of forty-eight thousand dollars.

I laughed through my tears. “Guess you borrowed a little more than a smidge.”

I must have been there for some time before calling black-suit lady to come get me. The day had darkened.

“I hope we’ll see you again soon,” she said oh so insincerely.

I didn’t have the strength for any bitchy comment at the moment. Just when I thought there was nothing left to reveal, nothing more to cry over, another layer rawer than the last came up to rear its ugly head. I didn’t know what was even holding me together anymore.

Angus was waiting at home when I got there. He was sitting at the kitchen table with Jude’s purse in front of him. He seemed startled when I started talking to him.

“Do you want some dinner?”

He just shook his head.

“Yeah. Me neither. I’m gonna go to bed.” I put my hand on his shoulder. His hand went over top of mine and he squeezed it. I just about started crying again.

“You go on then and get some sleep,” he said.

The next morning I woke up to see my phone blinking on the nightstand. My heart skipped a beat as I realized that only one person had ever left me a message on this phone. Much to my disappointment, it was not Robert.

It was my ex-boss. And not just one message, oh no. That douche had to leave me five messages. Thankfully my cell phone didn’t require me to listen to the whole message before I could delete it.

Emily! This is very unprofessional...deleted.

Emily, we can’t find the contrast stain...deleted.

We found the contrast stain, but still call...deleted.

Look, I realize I was a bit hard on you. I’m...deleted.

I would like to renegotiate your pay...deleted.

I couldn’t help but smile at the last one. Having no life since Julia passed away meant that I hadn’t spent anything close to what I had made. I could have easily lived off those savings for a while, but then Jude had made bumming around even easier.

I stumbled out into the kitchen and saw Angus sitting there with a newspaper and two to-go coffees and what I guessed were a couple of pastries or something greasing up a paper bag.

“Hey Em!” he said brightly. “I was up pretty early so I went and got us some coffees. Jude showed me this coffee place and I have to say that, even though it costs you an arm and a leg, it is something else.”

I held up my cup and saw that it was from Starbucks. Right, Angus had been dead long before this happened to North America.

I took a sip of my coffee, expecting the bitter bite of black java, but instead it was smooth and creamy.

“You got lattes? I would have never pinned you for a latte man.”

Angus chuckled and took a drink of his. “Well you’d be right. I’m surely not a latte man.” He said it just so, LAH-tay. “But your aunt gave me some pretty specific instructions before she left. First was that you like them lattes.”

I nearly choked. “What? How the hell she’d know that?”

Angus shrugged. “Said you used to put so much milk in your coffee when you still drank it at home. Guess she just put two and two together.”

I felt my throat tighten up in that all-too familiar sensation. “Didn’t realize she was paying so much attention.”

The cowboy laughed. “It’s not like she was charitable about it. Said you liked your milk and not to say otherwise no matter how fat you got because you’d already had your share of misery. She said, If that girl wants coffee and milk, then Angus you get her coffee and milk or I will come back to haunt your sorry ass.”

I started laughing. “Yep. That’s my aunt, always watching out for my ever expanding rear.”

A few lingering laughs trickled out in honour of my dead aunt before we both grew quiet again. It was a whole five minutes before either of us said a thing.

“Your aunt also left me instructions about what she wanted done with her remains.” His voice had a question in it. Do you want to hear this?

I nodded. “Alright, what’d she want? Get sprinkled across the bingo hall’s lawn?”

Angus smiled. “No. Believe it or not, your aunt was a romantic lady. She wants to be freed at the ocean, her words. But not just any ocean. She wants to be let out on the Californian coast.”

“Like, send her off to sea?”

Angus nodded.

“Burned first, right? I think the whole body thing might be illegal.” I suddenly pictured a group of small children at the beach poking my dead aunt’s body with sticks after she’d washed up for a break from her eternal sail. Guess we could tie a sign around her saying Please just give me a quick shove back into the water and I’ll be on my way.

“Oh of course, Em! Your aunt was only half crazy.”

I held up my hands. “Just asking! Okay, so when is she getting cremated?”

“This afternoon. She had all the plans in place, so she is taken care of. We just need to pick her up some time tomorrow.”

“Well, that works out well. I have no job, and we have no clue what the fuck to do with you, so...feel like going on a road trip?”

“I surely do. You’ll have to rent the car though. Your aunt left money for that too, but I ain’t got no license.”

“Fuck it, let’s go buy one.”