Waiting for the Last Gasp – Adam Overland

Mother’s replacement arrived on a crisp morning in early fall. We were nearly first on the postman’s route, father and I, and as the postman struggled with the package he complained that he might have pulled a muscle in his back.

But we got the box inside and father made quick work of the tape. We peeled back the flaps, and there she lay. Her skin, I remember, was a golden bronze, and her hair a deep crimson with a sheen I would have thought impossible to maintain, even in the haste of airmail.

My father smiled, and then he wept. It was a beautiful morning, and for the first time I noticed that the leaves on the trees had begun to turn.

Rijen was her name. She pronounced it for us thickly and smiled, revealing teeth so perfectly white and shiny that I thought I saw my own reflection there. Father must have seen his too, but as he went for a closer look she turned her head. “Clean,” she said.

She showered then, and when she emerged I was presented with a sight I’d never seen — a woman, beautiful as a dream. She stood in the doorway, her body glistening with no need of a towel. But father must have thought otherwise and quickly brushed past me to encourage her to conceal her nakedness.

When father showed her to her room and the bed he thought they might share, she turned on her heels and laboriously began to drag the living room couch toward the porch. Father began to help, and I ran ahead to clear a space, pushing aside the old wicker furniture, which had grown brittle from disuse. Once they had it situated, Rijen pointed to father and then to the couch. She then dragged the TV into her bedroom and closed the door. 

After that, she paid us very little attention. She came out of her room only for dinner, and even then would only peck at her food. Within a week she had lost considerable weight. Moreover, her hair was now blonde, but without the luster, and it seemed to be shorter, though when she might have gone out for a haircut, I do not know.

It wasn’t long before Rijen stopped coming to dinner altogether, and father seemed resigned to this. He and I would eat our meals and afterwards spend evenings on the porch, since he was always fond of the couch that was now there. As the nights grew cooler, we wrapped ourselves in quilts mother had made, quilts warm and bright — the way she was, said father. He rarely talked about mother, but after Rijen locked herself away, he began to tell stories, remembering. As I listened I would watch as fall took greater hold of the trees and leaves of all colors began to let go.

Soon, I started to notice little flakes of white around the house, mostly between Rijen’s room and the bathroom. Father would sweep the flakes into small piles, and following him I would gather the piles into the dustpan and take them outside, casting them into the breeze, watching as they scattered.

One night, after we had not seen Rijen for some time, she came to dinner again, and father and I were startled. Her hair was now half its former length and thinning, as though every other strand had fallen out. And where it was most recently deep blonde, it was now a sickly yellow. Her skin, too, had lost its color so completely as to be translucent, and was so dry that it flaked and gathered about her on the floor. As she made her place at dinner, she half smiled, almost apologetically, and then slipped from her chair onto the floor, so light she barely made a sound.

The next day, father waited with a small box in hand for the postman. And as the postman tucked the package into his bag I thought I saw a few white flakes trail from it, but it was hard to say, as it had begun to snow for the first time that year.

-written circa 2011