Bronson Gao

July 30 20XX

Deadra’s Aunt’s House

AUNT BETTY III

I vomited with the envelope on the sink next to me. I cried softly in the bathroom for a few minutes. I bet Betty was listening the whole time, voyeur-sympathizing. I exited, hiding the letter in my pocket, secretly praying not to crease it, not to mention anything.

“How was the letter?” Betty asked me, now tending to some task in the kitchen.

I struggled to think of any proper response. “It was…” I stop for a long five seconds. “I’m not sure what to say.”

“Oh, I understand completely, dear,” she says to me, suddenly offering her arms in a fluid motion. I take it, and we hold each other for the right time, pulled off the heat with just the right moisture left. “Now, would you like anything to drink? We got water, pop, coffee, tea—”

“A water’s fine, thank you,” I say, letting it set in that this would be an extended visitation.

The TV’s turned to the home improvement channel. Neither of us are watching it, serving mainly as audiovisual ventilation. I didn’t even know this woman.

"I never got to meet you before, when we used to hang out, me and Deadra,” I say. “I always wondered about that, what her parents were like…” I trail off.

She takes a breath, and I watch her body language, seeing her brain troubleshoot an answer to my half-a-question. “Her parents… you see, her parents were very flawed people. It was a very hard thing on her, growing up with just her father,” a subtle comment implying an absent mother, “especially because he was a hard man to deal with, we all knew. But we never knew how bad it was until he passed.”

“When’d he pass?” I ask, knowing when, but still selfishly curious, poking and prodding my friend’s body as it sags in the sun. I’ll call her that for now.

“This April,” she says, nodding solemnly. “Yes, this April. He had suffered heart failure. He smoked and drank his whole life, and he could never eat a vegetable.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” wincing as I remember Deadra’s voice in my head: stop.

Another sigh, “No, don’t be, really,” and a reflexive chuckle follow, a replacement for physical sorrow. “He was a crass, cheap, low man. He is not the kind of man you’d want to be sorry for.”

The conversation went, and I held on to the things I knew I couldn’t ask her, about food, about angst, sex, human degradation, “auto-cannibalism.” I knew we both knew, and I saw some of the parts of the conversation where she withheld her knowing, or maybe I’m just deluding myself. It’s like if you look into the abyss long enough, you see it wherever you go.

This was a good human being: warm, kind, forthcoming, talkative, potentially overbearing, but dependable. I don’t know why the hell I stayed there for almost three hours. I did though. Her husband was Carl’s—Deadra’s dad’s—brother. I guess in that way, we’re both outsiders looking in: having little more than professional affiliation with the power structure, no authority within the clan.

And then the center of the situation falls apart. Deadra’s parents become nonexistent, she comes here, and doesn’t live more than a couple months. And I’ve tried sorrow, but keep resolving just half-awake and with questions in this house, not as sad as uninformed. So as Betty talks to me about her dog and other extraneous things I can’t bother to remember, I keep sneaking looks at the circumstances with all terrifying clarity, all the fractured appendages and a twisted neck.

“Y’know, I like you,” Betty says to me, subtly pointing from her chair. “I mean, you oughta know by now, since you’ve been here so long!”

“The sentiment’s mutual,” I say, easy. I have to wonder if the whole reason I came over was just because she was lonely.

“There is one thing I’ve been meanin’ to tell you, Bronson,” she says. “It hurts me to do this, but I think you’ve convinced me you’re the best person to have them. I’ve put together a box of Deadra’s belongings, that I think would be of interest to you. I know how close you too were.”