It was the July, after my father died in our front hall. He was smothered by his own heart. He died in April and I imagine it was one of those beautiful days in California’s ephemeral spring. I imagine that because he always had a gift for wasting a perfectly lovely day. I had taken a trip to Oregon and before I left he told me “you’re going to die up there”. I didn’t get an explanation for that comment, but maybe he made it because he thought of Oregon as never hot. He often complained to me when in warm or hot weather that “you can only take off so many clothes”, so he would migrate to a local bar. He never complained about cold, but his discomfort became obvious when he once again migrated to a local bar, returning only to light a fire of green wood, which provided no heat and only a bit of smoke. When I asked why he didn’t use firewood that could provide actual flames, he would say “it burns too fast”.
Someone discovered charred remains of a burrito still cooking in the oven when my sister found him two days later, his face blue and mouth agape from cor pulmonale. If you don’t know what that is, take my father’s forever advice: look it up. His doctor, I guess I should say our doctor, the family doctor, told me he (the doctor) had encouraged my father to quit smoking, quit drinking, and get more exercise. After relating that lost advice, the doctor shook his head while saying in a simple tone of wasted effort, “…your father…”, neatly trimmed of pity, contempt, and disgust. He had tried and failed to help along with many others. Afterward, I told anyone who would listen that progress toward my father’s death was a race between alcohol and cigarettes, and cigarettes won. His strange death, in its horror movie pose, was ten years after my mother’s suicide in the kitchen. That day wasn’t particularly cold even though it was winter.
Originally, my mother demanded ,and got my father and maybe a neighbor, to paint the kitchen in a kind of brick red everywhere except around the window trim; that was white. Later, perhaps she realized how unnerving that red was, and changed the color to a canary yellow ceiling, and bright wallpaper whose dominant color was canary yellow, and she hated unpainted wood, so the cabinets were painted canary yellow as well. The window trim remained resolutely glossy, brilliant, white.
My mother chose another one of the days I was away, with a friend. He and I toured a community college in Redding one day and the next morning sat discussing a vague plan about sharing an apartment when his phone rang and answering, he looked a little startled, then held out the phone to me saying, “It’s for you.” I was very startled, because I hadn’t given his number to anyone. In those days before mobile phones, and while my parents were still alive, I specifically hadn’t given out a number where I could be found. I didn’t want to be found, especially by my family. However it was done, my brother found me and said in an almost puzzled tone, “can you get here pretty quickly?” When I told him it was a three to four hour drive, then asked why, he got incredibly vague. I didn’t get much else except a sense that something bad had happened. I told my friend we might have to change our plans. I think I knew somehow what had happened, and that might be important as I continue this.
As I said, it was July, and one of those mid-July mornings when the temperature is already near one hundred degrees Fahrenheit. I had just finished some dishes and was thinking about the next chore when I felt a sudden sonic pressure release as the refrigerator stopped humming. The silence invaded my brain as well giving it a rare respite from my usual clatter of thought. I felt nerves and muscles relax as the moment wrapped itself around me. Unthinking, I stared at the spot where my mother’s body had dropped when that precious silence was invaded by a buzzing and click of a large fly landing on the outside of the kitchen window, a large double sash affair, framed in its glossy white trim, looking out on trees both wild and semi-domestic, and above them, a frame of sky blue.
The large fly kept buzzing and landing against the outside of a particular window pane, occasionally doing that gesture flies so often do, of rubbing their front legs together like they’re planning mischief. I watched it fly away from the glass a few inches and then return, clicking against the glass each time it landed. I may even have had a moment of pity, wondering if it were trying to escape the heat outside. On it’s penultimate landing, it did some mischief planning, then buzzed a little without taking off. Then it buzzed again, then once again. Once again, it took off briefly for the final time then returned to the same pane. For a second, it’s stillness complemented the universe. Then, as I watched, it’s wings began to buzz against the glass, and in what clearly was a violation of the laws of physics, the fly was on the inside of the window pane and after giving itself a moment of rest, flew through the kitchen and into the dining room.
My only thought was, if they can do that, what is the point of having windows?
