Final Reading

3/28/17

The finches stopped calling. I sit and count empty minutes. My coffee gets cold. The pen leaks ink onto my pants. Sixth pair this month.

Her room stays at fifty-two degrees. I check the thermometer six times a day. Write down the numbers in columns. Time. Temperature. Humidity. The paper’s getting thick with data that means nothing.

Found her retainer under the bathroom sink. Blue plastic, crack down the middle. Cost eight hundred dollars three years ago. The orthodontist said it would last five years if she was careful. She wasn’t.

The calendar on her wall shows last August. A doctor’s appointment circled in red. She never made it. I call the office sometimes, let them put me on hold. Listen to their muzak version of songs she used to play.

I catalog what she left: Three textbooks. Five socks without matches. A hairbrush with exactly thirty-seven strands still caught in it. Half a candy bar hardened in its wrapper. Two college applications, partially filled out. A Chevron receipt from the day she left.

4/11/17

Found her first tooth in my desk drawer. Small and yellow, wrapped in tissue paper from twelve years ago. Blood spot on the wrapper. The tooth fairy gave her five dollars. More than the going rate. She saved the bill until it fell apart.

The piano tuner came. Three strings snapped inside. Four hundred to fix them. I sent him away. Counted the dead keys — six. They make a sound like something breaking when pressed.

Started sleeping in her room. The ceiling has fourteen cracks. Her bed still smells like that vanilla lotion she used. The bottle’s empty in her trash, label picked clean around the edges.

Cleaned out her desk. Found notes passed in class. Movie tickets. Failed math test she never showed me. Report card from junior year — straight As except for PE. She forged my signature. Did a bad job of it.

Her computer password was my birthday. Backwards. Inbox still open to college acceptance letters. Scholarships she never told me about. Drafts folder full of unsent emails to her mother.

6/4/17

Dialed her number again. One ring. Dropped the phone. Screen cracked like a spiderweb. Seven missed calls from last week, all after midnight.

The electricity bill came. Forty dollars less than with her here. Water bill down thirty. Gas barely registers. I track the numbers in a spreadsheet. Watch the graphs trend down.

Her friends stopped checking in. Last one called three weeks ago. Asked if I’d heard anything. I hadn’t. Haven’t.

Found sheet music under her bed. Notes scribbled in margins. Questions about timing. Tempo. Things she never asked me. Piano books with dog-eared pages. Songs I didn’t know she was learning.

Started collecting things in boxes. Label them by year. Age seven — birthday cards, school photos, baby teeth. Age twelve — dance recital programs, merit certificates, detention slips. Age fifteen — love notes from boys I never met, cigarettes hidden in stuffed animals, college brochures.

The boxes stack up. Fill her closet. Spill into the hallway. Each one indexed. Dated. Everything she was. Everything she left.

Some nights I open them. Lay out the pieces in order. Try to see where it went wrong. When the silence started. When my daughter became data.

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Sadie found the journal in his sock drawer two days after the wake. Third row back. Under black socks he wore to work every Tuesday. The coroner took his tie.

Police report listed: One leather belt. One overturned chair. Temperature log from her room. Final reading was fifty-two degrees at 11:47 PM.

That night she sat in her apartment. Started her own columns of numbers. Times. Dates. Temperature readings.

The next morning she started counting too. Different things than him.

Twenty-eight steps from her bed to her kitchen. Six spoonfuls of coffee, black like his. Four pills the doctor prescribed after the funeral. Three hours staring at case files at work, reading the same line over and over.

Her apartment stayed at sixty-eight degrees. She kept lowering the thermostat. Sixty-five. Sixty. Fifty-five. The super came up, said the unit couldn’t go lower. She bought a thermometer anyway. Checked it six times a day.

She found his things in labeled boxes. Even his death was organized — bills sorted. Accounts closed. Letters to the bank sealed and stamped. Insurance forms filled out. Last phone bill showed forty-seven calls to her number. All one ring.

The funeral home sent his personal effects in a plastic bag. Watch stopped at 12:04. Wallet with thirty-two dollars. Photo of her at graduation, creased down the middle. She put them in a box marked “Dad — Final.”

Her browser history filled with searches:

"how long after death can you hear voicemails"

"average temperature human body after death"

"does depression run in families"

"how to delete phone records"

"do dead phones still ring"

She kept his number in her contacts. Sometimes typed messages she wouldn't send:

"The finches are back"

"I found my old retainer"

"The piano tuner called"

"Why fifty-two degrees"

Her own boxes started stacking up. One for each year with him:

Age six — him teaching her piano. Her fingers too small for chords.

Age nine — tooth fairy money hidden in his desk.

Age thirteen — notes he wrote in her sheet music.

Age sixteen — college brochures he left on her bed.

Age eighteen — the fight. The silence. The leaving.

She measured the spaces he used to fill. His chair at her graduation. His seat at her recitals. The spot where he stood every morning, checking the thermometer in her room.

Some nights she sat at her own piano. Pressed the keys that still worked. Counted seconds between notes like he did. Wrote down the numbers. Temperature. Time. Decibels of silence.

Her therapist said to try journaling. She filled pages with numbers instead.

Calculations of loss. Measurements of absence. Data points plotting the distance between leaving and too late.

At midnight she called his number.

Let it ring once.