The Possibilities: A Novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings Read Free Book Online

“For a movie.”
    “What movie?” I walk around the boxes and fish it out of the trash, stopping myself from looking at everything in there, like my father used to do in our kitchen trash. This tissue paper can be saved for Christmas presents! These bones can be used for soup! I learned his frugality was sourced in his love of shopping. We saved the bones and bought a pizza oven.
    “I asked you to put everything on the bed,” I say.
    “I didn’t know you meant things like that,” Suzanne says.
    “It’s exactly the kind of thing I meant.” I hold the ticket. The Other One . Cully once saw a movie called The Other One . He was at Storyteller Cinema, watching a movie. He put the ticket in his pocket. He wore his ski pants to a movie. How funny. How odd. How wonderful. “This is significant,” I say. “This is interesting to me.”
    “Sorry,” Suzanne says. She is folding clothes rapidly as if in a factory line. If they were Morgan’s clothes she’d take the time to look at each item, relating the back story.
    “I should know better,” she says. “I’ve been doing the same thing with all of Dickie’s stuff.”
    “Not the same,” I mumble.
    “But I’m realizing that a ticket stub is a ticket stub, a tie is a tie, not an embodiment of Dickie, right? If we weren’t getting a divorce, I wouldn’t give a rip about any of the crap he owns.”
    Here we go.
    “You’d think a man in his position would throw away his boxers when they got holes in them, but no—he just lets it all hang out. He may as well be wearing a skirt.”
    I’m a bad friend and I tune out. I listen to the music instead, which is oddly comforting, as if the rapper and I are in on something. That’s why we puff lye ’cause you never know when you’re going to go. What is “lye”? The street name for crack? For ice? Are those the same thing? Or is he saying, That’s why we puff live ? Why the hell can’t these kids enunciate?
    I slide the box of books with my foot to the door, where a filled bag sits like a bouncer.
    Suzanne waves a receipt. “Mi Casa,” she says.
    I nod and she tosses. I consider retrieving it when she isn’t looking, but I won’t because that would be stupid. Stupid, stupid, dumb. I suppose I wouldn’t obsess over the little things if there were more of them. His room has so few clues. One poster on the wall—Never Summer Snowboards—not too many clothes in the closet, CDs, one motocross magazine, desk debris. I didn’t notice the sparseness when he was here, but now all I see is what little is left.
    I notice the smells of detergent and Cully’s deodorant. I run my hand down his hanging clothes. I find the navy-blue jacket I can’t bring myself to get rid of.
    “I’ll keep this for my dad,” I say.
    “That’s nice,” Suzanne says. She unfolds the Hog’s Breath shirt. “Can I give this to Morgan? She’d love it. Unless you—”
    “Go ahead,” I say, looking at the shirt, regretting it. I can’t believe how quickly this is going.
    “The other night she called,” Suzanne says. “It was really late. She was walking home from some party. She was so upset.”
    “About Cully or the divorce?” I ask, feeling cold that I’m struggling to care.
    “Both,” Suzanne says. “But it’s weird because I enjoyed it. I was happy that she was sad.”
    “That’s normal,” I say. “You felt needed and happy you could be there for her.”
    “But it’s so rare,” Suzanne says. “You know Morgan—so mature, always capable. For the most part she’s coping. She’s thriving as always.”
    Or more so, I think. Sometimes I think Cully’s death has made her feel more important, but I understand what Suzanne’s problem really is because I share it. She wants company down here. Her daughter has bypassed those initial stages of grief or did a crash course in them and now she’s soaring in her stage of acceptance. She is now the daughter of divorce. She is a girl who will remember her dead friend.