Small Things

The attic was so stereotypically dusty it shocked Violet. She always thought she'd be the kind of old lady whose attic was a secret tearoom or helicopter pad with a ceiling whose wooden planks opened up like flower blooming in triple time. If such old ladies existed and formed a category. It had not turned out that way. She was a tired old lady whose last best friend had just died and left her the onerous job of tidying her belongings. Violet sat down on the large suitcase that was to be sent to the community heritage museum. That was the first part of this job. Send them things that represent the life I've lived, Mildred's will had read. But nothing that would make my relatives mad that I didn't leave it to them. That was out of sorts - dead Mildred showed more concern over angering people than alive Mildred ever had. Violet thought briefly about climbing into the trunk herself. I am the life you've lived, she wanted to say. She imagined herself in a glass case at the museum, under a plaque that read "Mildred Gort Maville Harris: 1930 - 2010." But that wouldn't do because what would happen when Violet herself died, as was bound to happen? The two of them were like an infinity sign made of rope, except now Mildred's end of it had sagged. Violet's was still taut, still hung on the hook of the world. It was her end that had all their stories now, all the arguments, the scents of sample hand soaps from a hundred hotels, drops of green water from myriad mossy lakes. Violet's end was so heavy now.  

--

“Should I give you her diaries?” She asked the museum manager. His name was Orville and he spoke with an implacable European accent. He seemed to believe that whatever he was doing at any moment was the least important thing he could be doing. 

“Eef you vant to,” he said into the phone. 

“But would that be too personal?” 

“Ve have thaxidermied body parts, so nosing iz too personal. Ve have a payr of eyes, a coople of feengers, we even have a –” 

“Okay,” said Violet. If Mildred had been alive, she might have offered up a labeled specimen of her brain. Most scientists believe parts of the brain have names like ‘hypothalamus’ and ‘parietal lobe’, it would say. But Mildred’s brain can better be described with the phrases: ‘Ex-husband-insult-collection-lobe’, ‘outrageous-story-development-lobe’, ‘encyclopedia-of- compliments-for-strangers-because-only-strangers-are-deserving-of- compliments-area', and ‘everything-wrong-with-what-Violet-is-wearing-today-bellum'. 

But Mildred was dead and unable to consent to the presentation of her brain to the public. She was unable to consent to anything. Violet hung up the phone and put the diaries back in the tote bag where she’d found them. She couldn’t put them on display anymore than she could Mildred’s brain. There didn’t seem to be any difference between the two.  

--

That night Violet slept like a baby. She’d taken sedatives, relaxation pills, whatever they were calling those things nowadays. Mildred came to her in a technicolor dream.  

“Don’t hate me doing your shopping before you kill her,” Mildred said. 

“What?” said Violet. 

“I only eat plastic flowers now, your garden was so full. I swear I only ate one from each bush so you can hardly tell.” 

“Mildred, you’re not making any sense.” 

Mildred leaned closer and whispered, “I know, they made me say that. Otherwise I don’t get paid. They have bad screenwriters in Heaven.” 

“You’re in heaven?” Violet asked, clapping her smooth dream-hands. 

“No, this studio is called Heaven. It’s really hell.” 

“Is it heaven or hell? Are you in hell? Oh Mildred, I told you to lie less. I told you to forgive your husbands, I told you to be nicer to me. Why weren’t you nicer to me?” 

“Because tape is the only way to fix it.” 

“What?” 

“Sorry, that was in the script. Don’t worry. I’m not in hell. And if I am, it’s not that bad. They let you eat watermelon cut into little butterfly molds. But some folks used to be butterflies and they find that very offensive.” 

“What should I give the museum?” 

“Whatever.” 

“Can I give them your diaries?” 

“My diaries! You might as well give them my brain!” 

“Oh, can I?” 

“No! My brain stays buried in the ground, thank you very much.” 

“What should I give them? You have so much – so much -” 

“- Junk. I know. It’s kind of your problem now.” 

“But I can’t make a decision like that, it’s not -” 

“Modern keyboards are so unfeeling, darling. Try some nectar.” 

Then Mildred kissed her cheek quickly and disappeared in a puff of pastel smoke, and Violet sat up in bed. 

--

“Harvey,” Violet said. She hadn’t talked to Mildred’s first husband since 1980 when Mildred had shown up at her front door with a suitcase in hand and a pink-and-white bandana around her neck and told her she was through with ‘that cad.’ Six months later she was married to a different cad and Harvey was no longer part of their social circle. Now he was 85 years old and chronically forgetful. 

“Who?” He said shakily into the phone. 

“It’s Violet,” said Violet. 

“No,” he said. “Not Violet. You said a different name before.” 

“I said Harvey, that’s -” 

“That’s it. Who’s Harvey?” 

“You’re Harvey,” Violet said. She was beginning to see how little assistance he’d be able to provide. 

“Am I?” He asked. Being Harvey seemed to please him. “So I am! How can I help you, being Harvey?” 

“Do you remember Mildred?” 

“Sure.” That could have been a yes or a no, but Violet continued. 

“I’m putting together a display about her for the museum. Do you have any idea what should go in it?” 

“In what?” 

“A display about Mildred.” 

“Mildred? Tacky Bunny?” 

“I’m sorry to have bothered you, thanks anyway.” 

“No!” He said this quite loudly, so she didn’t hang up. “I remember Mildred. I used to call her Tacky Bunny because she went to children's’ egg hunts on Easter for the candy and for a grown woman, that was tacky.” 

“Huh,” said Violet. She’d known something about this, but had always been under the impression Mildred was volunteering to be the Easter bunny for the children.  

“That’s why she divorced me.” 

“Because you called her tacky?” 

There was a pause. “Maybe not,” Harvey said. “It seems like too small a reason now.”  

--

This time it was Orville calling Violet. She was going through Mildred’s clothes. They were in a box labeled ‘silverware’. Some of them looked like silverware, too. Mildred had a lovely collection of ballgowns, many of them studded with tiny gems. She’d worn them into her seventies, until they got too uncomfortable with the bulky medical devices she was ordered to carry. They made her twinkle. Twinkling was very becoming on Mildred. 

“Eeit’s bin a week,” said Orville begrudgingly. 

“I know,” Violet replied. 

“Do you have theengs for me yet?” 

“No, I’m still deciding,” said Violet. She stood and held an aquamarine off-the-shoulder dress up against herself. She’d never fit in Mildred’s clothes. They were built differently, they’d said. But the years had shaved Violet down. People weren’t really built differently, she mused. They just had to lose and lose and lose – become bare – before they found out that actually, they were all built the same. She put the dress on. It was tight. The flab of her arms pinched its way around the straps. It was not an image she wanted anyone to see, ever. But in the dim attic light, Violet took a spin in Mildred’s dress. She spun again, and again, and again. The crinkled hairs on her legs unfurled and undulated. She hadn’t worn a dress or spun in years. Even when Mildred was alive and they were both abler, she’d been reluctant. There was some addiction to perfection. She’d had the waxed legs, the lasered completion, the toned arms. They were too precious to flaunt, lest someone uncover a blip, a stripe, a stray hair. There had been too much to lose, whereas now there was nothing. Flabby, untoned Violet twirled and chortled and caused Orville to mutter, “Violet, are you zere?” And because she realized she didn’t have respect or sophistication or any other spurious proprieties to lose either, she said, “Yes, Orville. I’m just wearing the clothes of my dead friend and frolicking in a way that is inappropriate for my age.” 

--

Violet and Harvey visited together the first day the exhibit opened. This was mostly because Harvey was unable to support himself and needed another body to lean on. 

“Mildred would be furious if she saw us together,” Violet remarked as they walked up the museum steps. 

“Who’s Mildred?” said Harvey. It was unclear whether he was joking. 

The room was mostly occupied by an assortment of hanging model airplanes. They’d belonged to a man whose family decided they had no room to house them. Mildred’s area was in a corner near the back. You could very easily miss it. A memory flashed through Violet of the first time she met Mildred. She’d been selling handmade jewelry under a small tent at the farmers’ market. She’d been twenty-one, a year younger than Violet.  

“Overpriced plastic junk for sale,” she’d been hollering. “But made with love. Sooo much love! Get yours today, folks.” 

“I’ll take this,” Violet had gone to the table holding a moon-themed bracelet with light blue glass rondelles on either side of the crescent.  

Mildred had pursed her lips. “That’s going to break twenty seconds after you put it on,” she predicted. “So put it on after you’ve gotten into your car and made it to at least the second stop light. That way you can’t return.” 

“Why would you tell me that?” Violet asked, after she got her change. 

“I guess I believe in radical truth-telling or something like that,” she’d said, winking. “You’ll be surprised to know it actually doesn’t stop anyone from buying my junk. Maybe they’re attracted to the copious amounts of looove I’m clearly pouring into it.” 

Now at the museum, Harvey squinted around. “Is this an airport?” He said. “Are we going somewhere? What time is our fli – did we miss our flight?!” He’d taken Violet by the shoulders and begun shaking her violently. 

“No, no,” she said. She led him to Mildred’s display. “This is what we’re here for.” 

Mildred’s display sat upon her suitcase. The same suitcase they’d taken on their travels. The suitcase she’d packed when she left Harvey. The suitcase Violet had wanted to climb into. On it were plastic eggs of many colours, provided by Harvey. The aquamarine off-the-shoulder dress hung off a slim mannequin gazing stupidly into space. The main attraction was a dissertation in Violet’s handwriting. It read: My friend Mildred loved life. She loved little things like candy eggs and cheap bracelets and those tiny soap bars they have in hotels. When she died, I could not imagine what objects could possibly narrate her life accurately. I have come to the conclusion that none can. I tried to tell Mildred’s story perfectly, but it was not possible. My friend was not perfect. She quarreled over trifles, she could be nasty, she could be jealous. But these are small things. She had a love inside of her that was like balm. It could heal anything. She broke things and she mended them. She apologized and she meant it. Mildred was messy and mysterious and wonderful. She knew that there were things that weren’t important and things that were, and that it took practice to know which was which. Most objects of monetary value were shipped off to various members of her many families, as she requested. But small things can be of the greatest value. The haphazard objects here are things that remind me of my friend. Things that make me smile, as she did. 

Besides the eggs and the dress, there was the bracelet with the moon charm. Violet hadn’t thought she still had it, but she did, in defiant shards. There were ticket stubs from ferries and swimsuits, both Violet’s and Mildred’s - much more lived in. She’d worried that including her description and her own objects would be selfish and would take away from Mildred’s final spotlight, but had decided that they’d been good enough friends to be able to do something like that. She’d only ever seen Mildred through her own eyes, not the eyes of a historian. And Violet would carry the memory of Mildred every day until she died. There was still a piece of Mildred with her, if not the physical one. It was only fair that she be allowed to contribute a piece of herself in return.