{"id":3649,"date":"2024-12-28T04:51:21","date_gmt":"2024-12-28T04:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/?page_id=3649"},"modified":"2024-12-28T04:51:21","modified_gmt":"2024-12-28T04:51:21","slug":"black-trash-bags-at-shady-rest-by-dm-anderson","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/black-trash-bags-at-shady-rest-by-dm-anderson\/","title":{"rendered":"“Black Trash Bags at Shady Rest” by DM Anderson\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My father would have been better off marrying a Russian porn star forty years younger. When my mother passed away, I half-expected him to fly to Moscow, court one of his XXX DVD actresses, and marry her under the California sun. But no, he surprised me by tying the knot with you<\/em>. A Russian porn star would have at least screwed him in the traditional sense, not with his pocketbook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much to my surprise, you and he were the same age when you married fifteen years ago, in your mid-seventies. You were both relics of World War II. Seemingly cut from the same cloth, you shared the same compulsion for an old-fashioned church wedding. After all, you believed it was a sin not to be married before (ugh) having sex. You were his second wife; he was your fourth husband. Your past troubled me, but I shrugged it off because you and he had those common interests that appeared to unite you in holy matrimony\u2014 dancing endlessly on expensive cruises he paid for, dining at exquisite restaurants on his American Express card, and acquiring that luxury Palm Desert condo with his cashed-out stock portfolio. A Russian porn star wouldn\u2019t have demanded as much; maybe a warm dacha to come home to, fresh borsh, and endless vodka. You, on the other hand, wanted it all\u2014you and your conniving fifty-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It had been a year since my father called me. A lot had happened in that one year.  For starters, you and he had secretly moved into an upscale assisted living residence, one of those gated communities with a par-3 golf course and world-class chef. For simplicity\u2019s sake, let\u2019s call this new residence of yours \u2018Shady Rest.\u2019 The problem was that you and he were supposed to keep me informed about these things. After all, I was the family\u2019s trust manager. Yet, to afford your new digs without my knowing, you secretly walked away from your luxury condo because you were upside-down on a highly refinanced mortgage, having cashed out the equity years before to afford endless vacations. When the economy crashed, so did the value of your condo. You knew the mortgage company wouldn\u2019t pursue a distinguished war veteran in court. They wouldn\u2019t want to be accused of lending money to a sickly old man. So, you and he fled like thieves in the night, coached by your sleazy daughter on how to stiff the bank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You also knew you\u2019d outlive my father. And you wanted all of his assets unencumbered by little things like an unpaid mortgage or a son watching over your shoulder. With your daughter’s guidance, you devised a plan to escape these burdens. She was a coach\u2019s dream, a stepson\u2019s nightmare. Sleazy, troubled daughter (a.k.a., STD<\/em>) talked you through how to do this and get away with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When my father finally called me after a year-long silence, he revealed the extent of the schemes you and your daughter had orchestrated. My heart sank, and panic set in. Without hesitation, I booked a flight to California unannounced. The Uber ride from the airport to Shady Rest felt like a descent into hell. Meanwhile, STD had returned to her third husband in faraway Manhattan, which left the three of us alone; you were without your coach. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marge Johnson, one of my father\u2019s close friends, secretly greeted me at the front foyer and escorted me to your apartment. Marge, a striking figure even at eighty, had kept her independence after losing her husband years earlier. Her sharp eyes and confident demeanor suggested she could have easily found another partner, but she chose a life surrounded by family and friends at Shady Rest. Her disdain for you was clear in the way she pursed her lips whenever your name was mentioned. I asked Marge why she felt that way, and she told me that you never accompanied my father when the ambulance carted him away to the hospital. You never inquired about how he was doing or bothered to telephone him on his multi-night stays. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAmbulance? I had no idea. How many times are we talking about?\u201d I pursued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlmost every month. He dislocates his hip, falls, or can\u2019t swallow food. But that woman never visits him in the hospital,\u201d she said, shaking her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe she\u2019s got her own health issues,\u201d I suggested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHardly. She\u2019s out walking three miles a day in the garden, and she\u2019s at the bar every night. And did you know she was a Follies Review Rockette? That should\u2019ve been a red flag right there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause she\u2019s got great legs and big boobs. I think that\u2019s what attracted your father to her. She quit the stage when she married him.\u201d Marge paused to calm her emotions and thrust a \u2018shush\u2019 finger over her mouth, contemplating a thought. I could tell that at any second, she was ready to spill more gruesome details but deliberately held back, her head shaking, her mouth puckering. Then, as predictably as Mount St. Helens, she exploded. \u201cNone of us will have anything to do with that bitch. I\u2019m telling you, she\u2019s a pariah\u2014the worst kind of wife any of us could ever imagine for your sweet father.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we walked down the hallway with Marge telling me even more horrible tidbits, I couldn\u2019t help but notice three or four large black trash bags stacked up by one of the residence\u2019s front doors. Marge slid to the opposite wall and scooted by; her eyes widened and shifted downward, ignoring the bags. Her expression turned morose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLooks like someone is cleaning house,\u201d I casually remarked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Preoccupied, Marge ignored my comment, only to stop in front of my father\u2019s and your suite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHere we are. I\u2019ll leave you alone with the two of them,\u201d Marge said, turning to make a beeline getaway to disappear around the corner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI leaned in and listened before I knocked on the door. The TV was blaring what sounded like an old tennis match rerun between Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe. I could hear McEnroe screaming, \u201cAre you blind? Are you kidding me?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perfect timing, I thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You opened the door, your eyes empty and unblinking. You glanced at me for a brief second before your mouth tightened into a thin line. Without saying a word, you turned sharply and hurried to your bedroom, the door slamming shut behind you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I entered the apartment by myself. Inside, the family room was littered with your daughter\u2019s framed photos and your old furniture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As expected, my father sprawled half-comatose in his favorite Lazy-Boy chair I purchased a year before. It was one of those electric lift chairs that could catapult an old timer from a sitting position to a full stand in two seconds. My father heard the door slam and turned away from his 75-inch TV, astonished to see me. He pushed the catapult button to stand, wobbly, arms stretched wide, smiling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat a pleasant surprise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first reaction was joy that he recognized me and appeared happy, wearing an unforgettable ear-to-ear grin. My second reaction was dismay. At one time, my father towered over everyone, six feet two inches of commanding presence, his broad shoulders filling doorways. Now, as he stretched his arms to embrace me, he looked like a frail scarecrow, his frame hunched and diminished, his once robust build reduced to skin and bones. His button-down white shirt looked as though he had worn it for days on end, un-ironed and stained. The odor of stale sneakers or an unwashed body permeated the room. Good Lord, I thought. What\u2019s happened to my once-proud father over the past year? I didn\u2019t wait for a response. I hugged him, his bony torso crushed in my arms. \u201cDad, I\u2019ve missed you,\u201d I said. \u201cPlease, please sit back down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t expecting you, Beanie,\u201d he whispered, tears streaming down his cheeks. \u201cLook at you, all grown up. My, how you\u2019ve changed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beanie<\/em>? Beanie was the nickname he gave me as a kid forty years earlier because I constantly wore a red-striped cap with a tiny plastic propeller on top. The name stuck with me for years until I ventured to college. It was a term of endearment, recalling how much he loved me as a child. When I graduated, things changed, and he saw me for the first time as an adult, and he began calling me by my real name of Robert (never Bob or Bobby), always Robert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYes, Dad. It\u2019s me. . . Beanie<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, why are you here? Is everything all right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, Dad. Everything is not all right,\u201d I said, gathering his hands in mine. \u201cI\u2019m here because I really don\u2019t understand why you moved into this palace and abandoned your beautiful condo. Why didn\u2019t we discuss this move beforehand? After all, I am the Trustee of your trust and the executor of your Will. I should know these things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unable to stand any longer and with his legs shaking, he collapsed into the Lazy Boy and pushed the retract button. Confused, he looked out the window and then glanced up at me in a rare moment of clarity. \u201cMoving here gave us the ability to keep over $500,000 in savings. Your stepmother will need that money to stay in Shady Rest once I\u2019m gone. Isn\u2019t that right, Gretchen?\u201d He hollered over his shoulder, aiming those words at you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As his voice echoed through the apartment, you emerged from around the corner, your footsteps almost silent on the carpet. Your face appeared from the shadows, lips pressed together in a habitual scowl, eyes glinting with a mix of irritation and wariness. When you spoke, your voice wavered with a gravelly falsetto, an intonation as course as fingers on a blackboard. The Wicked Witch of the East\u2019s voice comes to mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRobert, you\u2019re out. My daughter\u2019s in charge now. We changed all the paperwork last month,\u201d you said with a smirk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I expected you to follow those words with \u201cmy pretty,\u201d but you didn\u2019t. You savored the \u2018gotcha\u2019 moment and smiled, pleased with yourself for outfoxing me. I asked my father if what you said was true. At first, he didn\u2019t say a word, but the look on his face said everything. He glanced out the window again to avoid eye contact, grimacing. \u201cYou weren\u2019t here,\u201d he mumbled. \u201cYour stepsister was.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I remember thinking, why does he keep calling this person my \u201cstepsister\u201d? I get that, technically, she is, but I didn\u2019t know her and didn\u2019t care to. I had no life experiences with the woman. She wasn\u2019t some preppy teen who grew up with me. She was a faceless fifty-something-year-old. Those qualifiers don\u2019t seem profound enough to be called \u201csister\u201d with or without the \u201cstep.\u201d It was as though my father was living two lives with two families in parallel realities. His was a nonexistent world where his children and your children held hands and sang Kumbaya. I never liked that reality. From my perspective, a second marriage doesn\u2019t qualify a person as being either a stepsister or family or even a worthy human being.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt seems to me, Dad, that she took advantage of you. She played on your loneliness,\u201d I stated. \u201cI can tell you unequivocally that you need me on your side, in charge. You know why?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause I\u2019m your true family\u2014the original one that lasted sixty years. I won\u2019t cheat you or abuse you because we have a history\u2014a real history. I\u2019m your Beanie<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the next two weeks, I worked nonstop with the State Attorney\u2019s office. My goal was to wrestle back the power of attorney and all the necessary documents to manage my father\u2019s trust and, ultimately, his will. The State of California was eager to file an elder abuse case against your daughter. But early on in the process, she capitulated. She ceded everything back to me uncontested, fearing a lawsuit and possible jail time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, in the end, you got what you wanted all along\u2014his money<\/em>. The only difference is that I\u2019d dole it painfully slow once a month. Your daughter, on the other hand, would have let you grab everything in one lump while taking a commission off the top. With your daughter running things, there\u2019d be nothing left for my family after your demise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A few months later, I received that fateful phone call a child never wants to hear regarding their parents: You need to hurry. He\u2019s not going to live much longer<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I arrived at 5:30 in the morning, it was too late. My father had expired only a few minutes earlier. A hospice nurse was still standing next to him, filling out time-of-death forms on a clipboard. My father was curled up in a fetal position, his mouth open, his skin waxy and shrunken. He had lost another forty pounds since my previous visit. The nurse told me that he refused to eat, so they made him comfortable with morphine until he took his last breath. You were nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere was his wife when this was going on?\u201d I asked the nurse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had to make her leave the room,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy?\u201d I inquired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nurse sighed, her eyes weary and tired. \u201cHis wife was relentless. She hovered over us, demanding we increase his morphine. At one point, she even hissed that if we didn’t \u2018put him down\u2019 right away, she’d do it herself with a pillow. It was unnerving.\u201d She paused to collect her composure. \u201cI wanted to call the police, but my supervisor wouldn\u2019t let me, so we had security escort her out of his bedroom.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nurse must have understood the look of rage on my face and backed off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m so sorry, Robert. Maybe I spoke out of turn about what happened. The shock of everything today has to be a lot to digest. As far as her behavior, people handle grief in many different ways. I\u2019m sure your stepmother had a justification for the way she behaved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe certainly did,\u201d I said as calmly as I could. I asked the nurse never to refer to you as my stepmother<\/em>. Never.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI understand,\u201d she replied, nodding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou know, he\u2019d have been better off marrying a Russian porn star,\u201d I added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d the nurse asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNothing. Just an inside joke,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later, after my father\u2019s body was carted away and the Shady Rest staff and hospice people cleared out, you finally came into my father\u2019s bedroom to confront me. You had four black trash bags in your hands and tossed them at me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverything your father owns is in that closet,\u201d you said, pointing to the small double-door enclosure. \u201cFill these bags up and stack them up by the front door. I want this room cleared out by 8:00 AM. A cleaning crew is coming in to get rid of the stink. Got it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh, yes. Loud and clear. Oh, as a reminder, don\u2019t expect your first monthly stipend until thirty days after I receive a death certificate. Got it<\/em>?\u201d I tossed back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLoud and clear,\u201d you bellowed, hints of insanity glaring in your eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While I knew that I could never call you family, I clearly recognized those eyes were not the same eyes I had glimpsed fifteen years earlier. Similar to my father in his old age, you seemed lonely and frightened, as if your world was collapsing. You were in pain. I suppose that\u2019s when I realized my anger toward you accomplished nothing good for either of us. My father was dead. I couldn\u2019t bring him back. I knew that years earlier, you had once loved him. And for those many reasons and the heartache we were sharing, I hugged you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first, you were startled by my embrace, but slowly, I felt your arms lightly wrap around me. We stayed that way for nearly a minute, neither one of us uttering a word. Then, feeling an inevitable tug, I knew it was time to move on, and I quietly set about collecting the last vestiges of my father\u2019s worldly possessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less than twenty minutes later, I had everything stashed in four black plastic trash bags. I managed to find a few keepsakes to pocket and take home\u2014small things that once belonged to my father and his father, things only a son could appreciate, that stirred memories of my childhood and reminders of him. There was a locket necklace once belonging to my mother with my father\u2019s photo inside; he was wearing his Army Air Corps aviator hat, slightly titled to appear suave, and he looked to be all of twenty years old. There was an old pocket watch belonging to his father with father and son\u2019s names etched on the back. There was a child\u2019s hand impression cast in plaster and painted gold; the name Beanie was carved in it, scrawled by a five-year-old me. He had kept all these things to stir memories of what once was. These were the keepsakes I would cherish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I placed the bags outside, I noticed Marge Johnson strolling down the hallway in my direction, oblivious to my father\u2019s early morning demise. Surprised to see me, she smiled and waved but then saw the trash bags and slid to the far wall, her shoulder hugging it, her eyes wide in disbelief, head down, wearing an expression turned glum. As she passed by, she never spoke a word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is said that time heals all wounds. Perhaps so. Fourteen months later, I received a late-night call from your daughter to inform me that you had passed away from cognitive impairment complications and that I no longer needed to mail out monthly checks. She was on her way to California, where you were to be cremated. She told me that she never wanted my father\u2019s power of attorney, but he insisted and that you wanted it even more, badgering her. She said my father cried in her presence, begging, feeling his family had abandoned him. So, under pressure and in a moment of weakness, she capitulated to you both. She regretted that decision and apologized. Likewise, I apologized for my behavior and expressed my condolences on how losing a parent is always difficult. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A week later, I received a small box in the mail. Inside were some of your remains and a letter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the letter, your daughter asked me if I could sprinkle your ashes at my father and mother\u2019s gravesite, expressing, of course, the awkwardness of it all. I thought about it for a few seconds and decided to honor the request. It seemed only fitting. My mother and you had shared the love of a good man. Later, I drove to the cemetery and fulfilled your last wish. I remember thinking how the only real sting in death is a life full of regrets, consumed by anger. As the ashes scattered in the wind, so did any anger I harbored toward you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

DM Anderson<\/strong> is an emerging Texas-based writer via the University of Iowa. Since 2023, his short stories have been published in Sierra Nevada Review<\/em>, Welter<\/em> at the University of Baltimore, New Plains Review<\/em>, The Write Launch<\/em>, The Raven Review<\/em>, Camus Magazine<\/em>, and numerous other literary journals. He is also the gold medal recipient of the 2021 Faulkner-Wisdom for his novella “Hugger.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My father would have been better off marrying a Russian porn star forty years younger. When my mother passed away, I half-expected him to fly to Moscow, court one of his XXX DVD actresses, and marry her under the California sun. But no, he surprised me by tying the knot with you. A Russian porn … <\/p>\n

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