Michael Kimball: Us

I got into our car and turned the engine on. I looked into my sideview mirror and watched the exhaust come out of the tailpipe. It was gray and soft and seemed to slip away up into the air before I expected it to be gone.

I backed our car out of the driveway, put our car in drive, and drove the way to the cemetery where my wife’s grave was and where my wife was too. I parked next to the little hill, got out of our car, and opened the trunk up. I got the shovel and the rake out and carried them up the little hill to my wife’s grave. I walked back down to our car to get her suitcase and to carry it back up the little hill to my wife’s grave too.

There wasn’t any grass covering her grave up yet, but there was that thick blanket of dirt. I picked the shovel up and dug enough of the dirt up to bury her suitcase in her grave with her casket and her. I dug some more dirt up next to the headstone and planted the flowers there. I filled those holes back in with the shovel and the dirt and then raked the dirt smooth again.

I lay down in the cemetery grass next to my wife’s grave and thought of us lying next to each other in our bed again. I rolled over onto my side and laid my arm out over the dirt and tried to hold onto my wife again.

I pulled some dirty clothes out of the laundry basket and found some of her dirty clothes buried down at the bottom of it. They were some of the last clothes that she had worn when she was still alive. I pulled them up out of the laundry basket and separated her clothes from my clothes. I was going to wash her clothes in a separate load.

But I held the ball of her clothes up to my face and smelled them and that made me afraid to wash the smell of her off them. I folded her clothes up and stacked them up into a little pile. I got a plastic bag out and set that little pile of her clothes down inside it. I tied the ties up on the plastic bag tight. I wanted to keep as much of the smell of my wife on those clothes and with me for as long as I could.

Thank you for coming to see me and lie down with me. Thank you for putting your arm around me. I could feel the weight of your body next to me. I could feel the warmth of your body next to me.

Thank you for bringing me the flowers. Thank you for bringing me the suitcase with the changes of clothes and the make-up and the jewelry inside it. I had wanted to get that funeral make-up off my face and my neck and my hands for days. I had wanted to change out of my funeral clothes and I want you to change out of yours soon too. Most of mine were cut open down the back and I could just pull them off, but I had to scrape the funeral make-up off with my fingers and my fingernails.

I didn’t want to wear those clothes or look like that or stay there forever. I wanted to travel with that suitcase back home to you so that I could be with you again. I wanted to come back home to get you so that we could go away to somewhere else together. I wanted to go back to sleep with you again. I wanted you to stay and sleep with me.

I kept walking through the rooms of what used to be our house and kept looking for her there. Her absence was everywhere, but there were also little pieces of her everywhere that I looked. There were pictures of her up in frames on the walls and there were pictures of her laid out in albums. There was an armchair that she used to sit in that had a depressed seat cushion and that made me see her sitting there in that armchair.

She left the shape of her sleeping body in the sheets on her side of our bed. The mattress was old and soft too and there were deep places where her shoulders and her back and the backs of her legs had rested. There was a deep hollow where the back of her head had been and there was also the smell of her hair on the pillowcase.

I found her toenail clippings at the foot of our bed. I found an unwashed glass in the kitchen sink that had her lip print around the rim.

I thought that I saw her thick gray hair in the dark of the broom closet, but it was just a mop that was standing up inside there. I found strands of her hair in the drain catch of the bathroom sink and I wished that I had kept her hairbrush with me for the hair of hers that must have been caught up in its bristles.

I looked out the living room window and saw her out in the backyard. I went to the back door and opened it up, but I couldn’t see her out there anymore.

I woke up and my wife was back at home with me. She was standing at the end of our bed and she sat down on the edge of it after I woke up and sat up. She was wearing one of the nightgowns that I had packed up for her inside the suitcase that I had buried with her.

She looked thinner and cold. I told her that I would bring her more food in the morning and I tried to get her to get under the bedcovers with me, but she disappeared when I tried to put my arms around her to keep her warm.

There was dirt on her nightgown and in her hair. There was dirt under her fingernails and covering her arms. I tried to brush the dirt off her arms, but it stuck to her skin.

I got up and got another nightgown out of her dresser drawers for her, but she had brought her suitcase back home with her. She opened it up and got another change of clothes out of it — a clean dress and a warm sweater, some clean underwear and pantyhose and a pair of shoes that matched. She got her winter coat out and her winter gloves and her winter hat too.

She got dressed back up and she looked warm again. She said that she wanted to come back home so that she could go back to sleep with me. She told me that I should go back to sleep too.

I changed out of my nightclothes and put some warmer clothes on too. I put clean underwear and a clean undershirt on. I put a dress shirt, a nice tie, and a clean suit on. I tied the tie up in its knot. I pulled dress socks on and put dress shoes on too.

I got a suitcase out and packed one up for me too. I packed up socks and underwear. I packed up undershirts and dress shirts and shirts for every day. I packed up another suit inside the suitcase and another pair of shoes. I packed up my slippers and my other nightclothes.

I packed up so many changes of clothes and set my suitcase down next to her suitcase. I put my over coat on over my clothes and put a hat on to keep my head warm. I was ready to go away with her to sleep.

Michael Kimball is the author of three critically-acclaimed novels, including Dear Everybody and The Way the Family Got Away. Each of his novels has been translated (or is being translated) into many languages. His work has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered and in Vice, as well as The Guardian, Prairie Schooner, Post Road, Open City, Unsaid, and New York Tyrant. He is also responsible for Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard), the documentary films I Will Smash You and 60 Writers/60 Places, and the conceptual pseudonym, Andy Devine.