Drop-Off

Jenn immediately regretted her decision. 

The contractor’s garbage bag was wedged three quarters of the way into the clothing drop-off bin, and there it rested awkwardly. With cartoonish effort, she crouched beneath the dangling portion and pushed feebly upward, hoping it would somehow slide forward ending the whole ordeal. Nothing. She realized that she had actually been holding her breath and it came out in a defeated puff as she shrunk down to the blacktop. 

The hazard lights of the Kia blinked and the signal ding ding dinged while Jenn sat there pathetically hoping no one else pulled into the back of the lot this late at night. She had watched too many true crime shows to know how this must look. The scene was prime for Keith Morrison’s iconic narration: 

But what, or rather, WHO was hiding in that black bag that Jenn so desperately wanted to make disappear that cold night in January?

There’s no dead body in there, Keith. Only dead clothes.

“So we’re just going to live with this now, right?” 

Earlier, Dom’s voice had had that bear-baiting edge in it. He was making a choice.

“You asked me to bag it up, and I did that,” Jenn said without taking her eyes off the phone’s screen.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it.” 

Scroll, scroll. No response. 

“As usual, everything is half-assed with you.” He kicked the bag for good measure before skulking into the hall bathroom. 

That’s all it took. Not to be outdone, Jenn leapt up and swept the bag up in one red swell of anger-induced adrenaline. But without an audience this wouldn’t land, so instead of carrying it down the stairs, she heaved it over the banister. If the thwack of the plastic hitting the foyer tile didn’t reach Dom’s ears, then her feet thundering down the steps would. But if he came out to investigate, Jenn didn't know because she was already peeling out of the driveway. 

She kept telling herself she would stop leaving the house during a fight, but this was different: she was dropping the clothes off merely to get Dom to shut up. Nothing more than an important errand… that absolutely needed to be done at 11:00 at night. 

The SUV drove along the winding, dark roads. Where was a clothing drop when you actually needed one? Any other time, they popped up like eyesore dandelions in random lots, but tonight? Nothing. The Presbyterian Church in Howard Falls had a pretty big box, but it would mean driving an extra 20 minutes in the opposite direction, likely worrying Dom. 

Fuck it. 

Dom didn’t get it because he hadn’t actually gone to therapy. He wasn’t putting in the work: sitting in Dr. Palmer’s small office that smelled a little off, the walls adorned with random photographs his wife took on their world travels. When she wanted to keep from crying, she would fixate on the framed shot of a vibrant toucan above Dr. Palmer’s head while he wrote out a refill for Ativan. 

The blogs and message boards also validated Jenn’s process. Even fucking Hamlet reinforced the message: grief is not a set amount of time for everyone. Shakespeare knew it in 1599, and nothing’s changed. 

The church and its grounds looked so different at night under the street lamps. A brand new swing set had been constructed earlier that spring. It was made of that good composite wood and surrounded by safety turf. For a moment, she thought about walking over to sit down on one of the shiny red swings. Jenn’s legs started to get tingly from sitting on the ground. She stood up, wobbling slightly, reaching up to the lopsided sack to help steady her feet. It wasn’t going to move, so the only thing to do now would be to open the bag and throw the individual articles in the bin until the bag became manageable. 

Come to think of it, the bag hadn’t even been in the hallway that long—maybe a month? Had it been since before Thanksgiving? That wasn’t the point. The point was that the clothes were in the bag–out of sight. Just taking the jackets and shirts off their hangers, emptying the chest of drawers, was progress in its own right. She knew it, she had read all the steps, it was something, a big step in the right direction. What's more, she wasn’t even given credit for how quickly she got the clothes cleared out. It wasn’t like all the other times she had been organizing her closet or purging seasonal items. Jenn would not allow herself to get distracted, because she knew that’s what everyone would expect. Open the door and you’ll see Jenn falling to pieces in the center of the room, clutching a random item of significance. No way, each piece came down and disappeared into the bag’s black hole without a second glance. There were no sentimental pauses, or recollections, no sniffing for traces of—

Suddenly, the bag was open and the number 38 looked up at her. White satin stitched onto the pale blue jersey. There was still a stubborn grass stain from when he dove in centerfield to catch the final out. Jenn attacked it with every chemical under the sink, but the streaks remained. Beneath the jersey were the camp t-shirts: obnoxious neon shades, easily spotted on field trips to the water park or planetarium. Lime green in 2014, orange for 2015, purple in 2016. So many summers, breezing through play dates and recreation sign-ups, birthday parties, and trips down the shore. Even when one faded with the last streaks of sunset during a Labor Day barbecue, there was always the promise of rebirth next Memorial Day. 

Until there wasn’t. 

They were spread out now in a semi-circle on the ground, articles of clothing from an 11-year-old boy who would never see 12. The once bulging donation bag was dwarfed now, about half the size from earlier. Jenn pushed it easily down the chute and the hatch sprung back into place with a satisfying click. She picked up each remaining piece, gave it a good look, and in turn, sent them into the box. 

The jersey was last, of course. Jenn hesitated reaching for the handle. Instead, she draped it around her shoulders like a cape. As she walked over to the swings, the car’s headlights lit the way.