05/29/82

When Patrick had first reconverted, Liliana saw it fit to buy him a mid-sized portrait of Christ as a decorative piece to hang over the fireplace. As she stared at it now, it failed to show her reflection in the way that it had when she first purchased it. The sheen had faded, and the dust had gathered - it was never cleaned, perhaps even never touched since it was hung up.

“Hey, if you wanna pray to that thing then feel free to take it home. If not then could you hurry up and put it in the damn box?” Her Brother, Orion, had less patience with this sort of thing. He had already been here since nine and the birds had begun to chirp outside. He wiped a thin layer of sweat from his forehead, setting down a heavy box labeled “Plates and shit.”

“Sorry, I was just…” She failed to finish the thought, shaking herself into focus and heaving the thing off the wall. It was heavier than she remembered.

Patrick Goever had suffered a fatal stroke in his sleep earlier that week. It was three days later when his landlord came to collect rent that his body was finally discovered. Naturally, Liliana was the sole person available for contact. She had insisted many times that her Father employ the services of a live-in nurse, each time he refused. She wondered now if he would still be alive had she been more persistent.

“I’m sorry, I’m just a little tired. Plus the air conditioner doesn’t work for shit. It’s probably what killed him” Orion sighed, “That was poor taste, I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. If he wanted it fixed he would have fixed it.” Liliana set the portrait down next to the fireplace. She didn’t know yet whether or not it was worth holding onto.

“Do you think Dad’s in hell?” She asked with a whisper, not even making eye contact.

“I don’t think he went to heaven,” Orion plucked his portable speaker from a charger and quickly connected it to his phone “Wait, I thought you didn’t believe in that shit anymore?”

“I don’t know, it’s just, whenever I’m home it just all comes back. Nevermind, it’s dumb, just forget it.”

“Fantastic. Oh, this is a good one!” He set his phone down on the table and continued to assemble storage boxes. He had scheduled a donation pick up for ten in the morning, everything was to be packed or disassembled before then. He would not be in Houston even a moment longer than he needed to be. “Hey, could you put that in the truck for me. Dan asked me to take home anything I thought him or the kids might like.”

Lili obliged him, and she carried a lightweight box to her brother’s truck as Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky” filled the silence of the room behind her.

Am I going to hell? She wondered. I cut that lady off in traffic the other day, what if she was panicking the entire rest of the day? What if she KILLED someone because of it? No, that’s stupid, that wouldn’t be on me. ‘Wouldn’t be on me’ that just wouldn’t happen at all. I need to calm down. I need to go volunteer. Dad used to volunteer, maybe that was enough? No, no for everything with Orion, or Mom, or me. Shit… No, I shouldn’t curse. Whatever.

She struggled to focus on a thought for the duration of her walk outside. It was like hours passed with each step. It felt as though she was paralyzed in her own mind, unable to move or perhaps moving too much without going anywhere at all.

When she finally got to the truck, she noticed her arms trembling. The sight frightened her and in a moment of panic she dropped the box, spilling its contents out into the parking lot. 

A collection of old coins, a couple of vintage fashion magazines, cassette tapes dated 1950 through 1978, and an old catcher’s mitt. Her father loved baseball, it was perhaps the one trait he successfully passed to his children. Orion coached for the high school he taught at. And though she had not touched the game in decades, she and her husband had never failed to get a kid to open up through a game of catch.

A tear came to her eye and she smiled. Maybe that was enough? She then glanced over to the scratched and faded pride sticker on the truck’s bumper and realized then that it was not. She picked up the box and repacked it, leaving it on the back seat of her brother’s truck.

When she returned, Orion had left the room. Instead, she was greeted by Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple’s rendition of “Father and Son” playing from his phone on the kitchen table.

She spent about three minutes or so searching through all of the downstairs rooms before she heard a soft thud from the attic. She had almost forgotten that the house had one.

Climbing the stairs, she found Orion knelt before a thick, leather bound trunk. Dust still floated in the air from its top hitting the ground when he opened it. He turned to acknowledge her and she saw his twitching eyes, his clenched jaw, and furrowed brow – an expression she’d not seem in a long time: absolute rage.

The contents of the chest, as she could gather at first glance, were mundane: a pill bottle, a few old holiday cards, one or two loose photos. But as she looked closer, her mind began to spin and with each new item a wave of memories began to resurface. An old dress from her one and only time as a pageant girl. It was still stained from when her father had taken her out to celebrate after placing third. She looked at the pill bottle, which she now recognized as containing a mix of her and her brother’s baby teeth and thought about how scared she was when Orion slammed the door on two instead of three, she screamed for so long she didn’t even notice the tooth had come out. Then finally, she looked over at Orion. His gaze transfixed on a dirty, peeling baseball he gripped tightly in his left hand. It had a date scribbled on it “05/29/1985.” It was the date of Orion’s first non-bench game that whole season and it would have been nearly two years since he and their Father had last spoken.

Lili held her hand over her mouth, “Oh my God. He kept all of it.”

Orion did not respond. Instead he snatched the pageant dress from her hand and shoved it back into the crate. He did the same with the bottle, the photos and everything else she had pulled out, until finally he returned the old baseball as well and relatched everything. She was too stunned to do anything, and instead she only watched in silence as his face and body grew more and more tense.

“What are you looking at me like that for?!” He grunted.

“I… I tho–” she muttered meekly, just under her breath.

“What?! You what? Were you getting sentimental or something? Just help me get this downstairs.” He grabbed a hold of one of the side straps and began to lift one side of the trunk. Her moment of shock faded, and her mood settled.

“Why do you have to be like that?” she asked.

“Like what?”

“Miserable. You’ve been miserable the entire time. Dad’s dead and you don’t seem to care even a little bit.”

“Shockingly enough, I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not like he cared when he kicked me out to go live with Grandma. The guy was an asshole and now he’s dead. Big whoop.”

“But clearly,” she gestured towards the chest, “He cared at least a little bit.”

“What? He has some old photos in a box and I’m supposed to forget that he was a homophobic piece of shit? How’d he feel about all those foster kids you and Merrick take in? Did you ever introduce him to any of them?”

“You know we couldn’t do that.”

“I fucking wonder why!?”

“You’re a real fucking asshole, you know that? I think you two’d have gotten along if you’d ever checked up on him.”

“Hey, my line was always open. You said it yourself right. When he wants stuff fixed he fixes it? He didn’t want to fix anything, and I don’t care. Can we just finish packing so that I can go home?”

Once again, she was left without a response, she simply scowled at him as he stood there with his arms out, waiting for her to say something. Realizing she wasn’t going to, he relaxed and returned her cold gaze. Once again he grabbed the side of the chest and began to drag it towards the stairs. It was only now that she got up to help him, if only so that the thing wouldn’t slip and inadvertently crush him.

Once they got to the bottom of the stairs, she could no longer bear to look at him. Orion however, could not could not move on from that spot and stood there taking heavy breaths until his shoulder tensed, and his eyes softened once more.

“Lili, I’m sorry. I didn’t…” He uttered, his warm, humble tone.

“I’m gonna go lie down.” She replied, setting down her end of the chest and stepping away a few paces.

“Liliana.”

“I’m going to bed Orion. Wake me up when the VA people get here. Goodnight.”

The next morning came around only a few hours after she had walked off. She had spent the remainder of her night in her old bedroom just staring at the ceiling. Despite her best efforts, she could not bring herself to fall asleep.

Orion, in turn, spent the rest of his night finishing the storing of whatever loose items still remained, though by that point he had given up on proper sorting and labeling. If it fit, it went in the box. Still, he was forced to call the VA early in the morning and reschedule for a few hours later. He passed out moments after hanging up.

By the early afternoon they were both up and about the house, cleaning up whatever they could and pausing to reminisce whenever they found something that struck a memory. The VA came and left, and the siblings hugged and apologized for the argument the night before. Orion promised to make time to come talk with Lili’s newest foster Daughter, as he had done for all of her kids prior; She offered to treat him and Dan to dinner when they came up in return.

At the end of the day, she had decided not to keep the portrait she was looking at the prior. It seemed best to try to leave it in the past. Perhaps someone at the VA would be able to make better use of it. She wasn’t a Christian outside of Houston, so she resolved that it would have been pretty pointless to hang a portrait of Jesus up in her house. All it would have done is worry the kids.

When all was settled, she and Orion parted ways in a parking lot outside of James Coney Island. A group of older men had paused to sneer at the bumper sticker on Orion’s trunk – but they left after seeing him and his sister walk out. She had often wondered why he left it on whenever he came South, to which he always responded “Anyone who wants to take it off is welcome to try.” They laughed about it, as they often did and parted ways with one final hug. As she held him, standing on her tiptoes to match his height, she peeked over his shoulder and into the window of his trunk. There she saw the box that she he had asked her to bring in: The magazines, the catcher’s mitt, the collection of old toys and now, barely visible under a collection of vintage cassette tapes – a dirty, peeling baseball labeled “‘05/29/1985’ – Orion’s first foul ball.”