Michael Kimball - Us

It doesn’t matter to me if this were truth or fiction. It only matters to me that it seemed true to my grandfather. He believed it and it was a comfort to him. It helped him to make sense of the death of his mother and of his father, the death of his daughter, and then the death of his wife. He believed that he could talk to all of them after they had died.

This is part of the reason that my grandfather learned how to communicate with the dead too. He would write questions down on little slips of paper and the spirits would answer him in the form of knocks on the walls or on the wood furniture. One knock meant no. Two knocks meant they didn’t know. Three knocks meant yes.

My grandfather told my grandmother about the code of knocks and asked her to come back to him to talk to him if she died before he did. My grandfather said that there was a lot of knocking on their bedroom furniture after my grandmother died, but that he never could understand all of it. He believed that the knocking was her, that her presence was meant to be reassuring, and that she was telling him that there was another world after the one that he was living in then.

But the house that my grandmother and grandfather lived in was old too. It made lots of sounds at night — the foundation settling down, the wind in the chimney, maybe footsteps on the floorboards, maybe a knocking sound in the walls.

I tried to communicate with my Grandfather Oliver after he died. I wrote questions down on little slips of paper and kept them in my pockets waiting for answers for them. Sometimes, I still find the little slips of paper in the pockets of jackets that I haven’t worn since it was last cold.

I lay awake at night and thought of questions to ask my grandfather. I listened for the knocks on the bedroom furniture or for the footsteps on the old wood floors of the house that I live in with my wife, but I never heard anything that might be an answer from him. Still, sometimes I think that what I may be doing is channeling voices. I hear people who aren’t here saying things to me and I write them down.

I went back inside through the back door and walked back to what used to be our bedroom. I was going to take my funeral clothes off, but it felt too difficult to untie my tie or my shoes. It felt too difficult to unbutton my shirt or my pants. I couldn’t take my suit jacket off. It fit a little tight around my shoulders and it felt as if my wife had her arms around me.

My funeral clothes were all that were holding me together then. I was afraid that I would start to forget my wife if I took any of them off. But I didn’t know what else to do after her funeral was over and my wife was buried inside a casket under the ground and I was back inside our house. I kept waiting for her to come back home to me or back to life.

I walked back down the hallway, into the living room, and sat down in a chair. I got up out of the chair and then I sat back down in it. I looked out the window, out into the backyard, and then looked back inside myself.

I didn’t want to look inside me or be inside myself anymore, but I kept thinking of things that I wanted to tell her — that I liked the dress that she was wearing, that I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing, that I was going to bring her some flowers and her hairbrush and a change of her clothes when I came to see her soon.

I kept thinking of her grave and her inside her casket and all the dirt on top of her and between us. I wanted to dig her casket up and stand it up and open it up. I wanted her to be standing up and for her to step out of her casket and step back into our living room with me.

I always liked the way that she stood in a doorway and the way that she walked into any room. I always liked the way that she chewed her food and the way that she drank from a glass and I wondered if she could feel hungry or thirsty.

I didn’t think that there could be any insects inside her casket yet and I wondered if she itched and I thought of the way that her nose wrinkled up when she didn’t like something. I wondered if the insects would mess her hair up or get under her clothes and bite her skin like they always did.

I always liked the way that she took her clothes off and put her clothes on. I always liked the way that she said my name and touched my hair. I kept waiting for her to come back home and touch my hair and say my name.

I pulled one of my wife’s dresses off a hanger in her closet and pulled it down over the length of a floor lamp. I pulled a hat of hers down over the lampshade. I glued a pair of her shoes down onto the base of the floor lamp and waited for the glue to dry. I plugged the floor lamp into an outlet in the living room, turned the floor lamp on, and her head lit up.

The dress was full length and it had long sleeves. I held onto the cuff one long sleeve of her dress with my palm and fingers and tucked the cuff of the other long sleeve into my waistband at the small of my back. I placed my other hand behind the long stand of the floor lamp just above where the base of her spine would have been if the floor lamp were my wife.

I waited for the music to start playing inside my head. I pulled the floor lamp up against my body and felt the heat from the light on my face. I tipped the floor lamp back with my one arm and leaned over with her. I stood back up and spun the floor lamp away from me along the edge of its round base and along the length of my arm and the long sleeve of her dress. The base of the floor lamp made a scraping noise against the hardwood floor and so did my shoes.

I could see myself dancing with her on the living room walls. I could see the shadows of us dancing on the walls all the way around the living room.

I stood in the bathroom over the bathroom sink and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. I leaned my face in close to the bathroom mirror so that I could only see parts of my face — one eye and then the other eye, each side of my nose, parts of both ears, the wrinkles around my eyes and my mouth. I was trying to see my wife inside my eyes, but I couldn’t see her anywhere on my face anymore, so I needed to go see her.

I was going to take her some of her things. I pulled some of her other dresses off their hangers in her closet and laid them out on our bed. I took some of her blouses and skirts off their hangers and laid them out in matching outfits. I picked out matching shoes and matching boots.

I pulled a few days of clean underwear out of one of her dresser drawers — matching sets of her underwear, pairs of nylons and pantyhose and tights and socks. I picked a few of her nightgowns out of another one of her dresser drawers and a housecoat out of her closet. I got a spring jacket and a winter coat out of the coat closet and a hat and gloves that matched them both.

I folded her clothes up and stacked them up in little piles on our bed. I got her suitcase out, laid it out on top of our bed, and packed up all those clothes inside it. I opened her jewelry box up and untangled some of her necklaces and paired up some of her earrings. I went back into the bathroom for her hairbrush, her box of curlers, her make-up kit, and some of her other things from the bathroom. I put all those things inside the suitcase and closed the suitcase up and snapped its locks closed.

I carried her suitcase out of our bedroom, down the hallway, out the back door, and out to our car in the driveway. I set her suitcase down, opened the trunk up, and laid her suitcase down flat in the bottom of the trunk. I went back into the backyard to the tool shed and got a shovel and a rake out too. I dug up some of the flowers from the backyard and then filled the flower hole in the backyard back in. I carried the flowers and the shovel and the rake back out to our car and put them in the trunk too.