I found them in the crawl space. A thick cardboard box inside a less thick cardboard box, buried under action figures. I didn’t know they were the ashes until I read the card.
My wife said, “That’s a strange place to keep ashes.” The best answer would have been, “Well, yes and no.” But when I replied to Amanda, I didn’t include the “yes and no.”
I explained later: My cousin Richard was hit by a car while riding his bike when he was nine years old. It was 1979. So of course no helmet but who knows if it would have done any good. And that was the last time his name was mentioned. I was never in Aunt Mary’s house again. She never hosted Christmas or Thanksgiving. No Labor Day or Fourth of July barbecues or just come on overs. She drove to us. The worst part was before she arrived, mom wouldn’t stop reminding us not to talk about Richard. And not like the first few times, either. All through high school and even when me and my sister came home from college for winter and spring breaks.
***
I told Amanda my plan to sell the action figures on eBay over dinner. She kept her head down and focused on using pieces of General Tso’s chicken to push stray grains of rice back into the main pile. “I’m not going to put a lot of his ashes. Not even a teaspoon. Less. And in the torso. They won’t notice.”
Amanda shook her head.
“You don’t understand. It will be great. Richard’s spirit will be all over now. He’ll be able to join all sorts of spirits.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Amanda picked up her plate and went to the sink. “These people just want the action figure. They didn’t ask for Richard’s ashes. And you even said sometimes they swap parts, take a leg or a head and snap it on another torso. What happens when the ashes fall out?”
I was too embarrassed to tell her that I got the idea the day I found the ashes, the day we cleaned out Aunt Mary’s house so we could put it up for sale. Maybe it had something to do with passing them so many times. After I found them, I placed them outside next to the front door. That served as the main egress for piling everything onto the driveway, then into our cars, then to the dump. Two numbing days of wondering how does someone fit so much stuff in a two-bedroom Cape. A very tidy two-bedroom Cape, no less.
After the last run, me and my mom and my sister stood in the driveway congratulating ourselves while avoiding the one item left to be figured out what to do with. I blurted I’ll take the ashes and mom said, really, while my sister looked relieved. “I’ll start looking for a plot near Aunt Margaret,” I said.
I lied.
***
I told Amanda all I remembered about Richard. Quiet. Wore glasses. Liked baseball. Cars. He had sweaty hair and grass-stained jeans in the summer. Obviously, he played with action figures, but play is a poor choice of words. He obsessed. When he let me play—if he let me play—I could only touch certain ones, like Wonder Woman or the Riddler, although I didn’t mind the Riddler because I thought he looked cool in his green jumpsuit with all the question marks.
“This is a perfect way to disperse his ashes,” I explained. “And if his spirit rebels I can’t imagine him being the kind of apparition to seek vengeance. He’ll be the type of ghost that appears in corners, like you think you saw something but weren’t really sure.”
Amanda didn’t agree.
***
I laid all twenty-three figures out on the living room floor in order of most favorite to least but only the first three and last five were accurate. The first three were Aquaman, Batman, then Superman. The last five were the Riddler, Wonder Woman, Ken, and two Star Trek figures. The rest were muddled in the middle. The most difficult ones were the three GI Joes because he was partial to them when they were new, but not when they lost their fuzzy hair in abnormal balding patterns.
I planned to start with his least favorites and work my way up.
***
On the twenty eighth Easter after Richard’s death Aunt Mary told us that last November, on Richard’s birthday, she saw two ‘78 Ford Mustangs. One on the Wantagh Highway driving to work and the other parked outside Applebee’s when she was driving home. “Richard had a poster over his bed of that exact same car,” she said.
I checked to see if there were any car shows in the area, not that these Mustangs should be in car shows, but still, there could have been something. When I didn’t find any I rationalized that really didn’t prove anything.
The next month she told my mom about a boy named Richard who knocked on her door selling magazines. He was wearing a Little League uniform. “Baseball was Richard’s favorite sport.”
In August she found a matchbook from the same year Richard was born. “How do you know it’s from the same year?” My mom asked
“I remember”
“Maybe it was made a year after.”
“It’s not.”
“Or a year before.”
“I told you I remember.”
My mom said it was because both me and my sister were now married. She’s finally processing everything.
***
The bike at the tag sale was the last sign my mom was told about. My mom told my aunt everyone’s got old shit at tag sales. They find stuff in their basement and they want to get rid of it and figure if someone takes it away and gives them five bucks it’s a bargain. But then she found out my aunt bought it for fifty and said, “Why are you spending fifty bucks on a bike that’s going to rust in your garage?” And my aunt said it’s in good condition. It works. And then my mom said, “It’s not a fucking sign.”
***
I told my wife the same thing when a cup fell off the drying rack. And when the bedroom door was half open after she was certain she closed it all the way. As for the bloody walls I explained sunsets and shadows sometimes play tricks with your eyes.
***
My friend Tom says divorces are like houses. “You know how they bull doze a lot in your neighborhood and you think they can’t possibly build a house there. Then it seems like nothing happens for months and you’re like yeah, yeah, yeah they finally realized they’re going to have to leave it as it is. The next thing you know there’s a back hoe and cinder blocks are in the ground. Then the concrete’s poured and all of sudden you have these papers which your lawyer tells you proves you’re not married anymore.”
***
I moved forward on the Richard’s ashes thing, partly out of principle, partly spite. But when I was packing Batman the ashes kept sifting out into the box. I panicked. I mean it’s one thing for the buyer to say there’s dirt inside. I could explain they were in an attic for forty years. But if the Post Office caught me they might think the ashes are chemicals and test. I kept thinking of this story I read about, this kid, a fifteen-year-old kid, who stole five bucks from this hole in the wall convenience store cash register when the clerk wasn’t looking but that hole in the wall convenience store was also the town’s hole in the wall post office and he was charged with federal robbery. He got like twenty-five years in prison. I shook Batman out and sent him as is.
Then I got an email from the Wonder Woman recipient. Then Star Trek.
I planned to tell them that the insulation in the attic had collapsed onto the cardboard box, which wasn’t in good condition as you can imagine, and I’m certain that is what the debris inside your dolls is. A mixture of dust, old cardboard, and whatever they used for insulation fifty something years ago.
But the woman who received Wonder Woman wrote that after receiving the doll she also received word from her doctor that her breast cancer was in remission. “She truly is a Wonder Woman,” she wrote.
Spock’s new owner bumped into a girl he dated in high school and always thought was the one but lost touch after graduation. They were both at a Stark Trek convention of all places.
***
I called Amanda. I left a message and explained that I have Richard’s ashes on my dresser now. They’re in this metal lunchbox with mustang cars on it. It cost me seventy-five bucks on eBay. Still, nothing’s happened. Not a thing. But soon. I’m sure Amanda will call back.
ROGER D’AGOSTIN is a writer living in Connecticut. His most recent work has appeared in Washington Square Review LCC, Third Wednesday, and Thirteen Bridges Review. He is currently working on a book of short stories.
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