Catherine Street

Oh, it’s such a nice house.

It’s been a nice house ever since we moved in. I fought it at first, you know. I was going to be a city girl. I wasn’t going to wind up on some island never leaving unless I had to. Raising kids who turned out to be surfers or fisherman or anything else I thought an island created. I moved here, because Lee wanted to move here. He got a job at the hotel, and he thought we’d like a life by the water. Where I saw isolation, he saw liberation. Freedom from the rest of the world. Water on all sides. If there was crime on the mainland, it wouldn’t touch us. If the whole world went mad, it wouldn’t mean anything to us.

We got our house on Catherine Street. His father gave us the down payment. The job paid the bills. Paid the mortgage. We had our kids. Three of them. I didn’t work. Why would I? My husband worked. I took care of the house. The kids. That was its own kind of work. On Friday nights, we went out to eat downtown. If it was nice, we would even walk there and back. The neighbor, Mrs. O’Brien, she’d watch the kids. She didn’t have any of her own. The nights when I’d be walking back, holding Lee’s hand, full on lobster and oysters--those were the best nights of my life. We’d go home, and I’d go room to room. Kiss each kid on the forehead. Lee would thank Mrs. O’Brien and give her a little something for her time. We’d go to our room and remind each other what it was to need somebody.

That’s how it was for forty-something years.

When Lee died, it was a Monday. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was to die on a Monday. Dying should be a weekend thing. It’s out of life. It’s out of step with life. Lee died on a Monday and I had all week to live with it. By the weekend, I didn’t know what life was anymore. Just a house on Catherine Street. All paid off. Electric bill was covered. Plenty of oil in the tank. I had nothing to worry about other than living alone for the rest of my life. Visits from kids every now and again. I was wrong about them, by the way. They got off the island the first chance they got. No surfers. An engineer and two real estate agents. All three of them loved their dad more than me. Not that they treated me badly, but--I know when I’m loved and I know by how much. I know how I measure up. Lee died in July. That meant it was going to be a few months until Thanksgiving. I’d be on my own until then. If I wanted to walk down the hill on a Friday night to go out to eat, then I’d be doing it alone. To be honest, it felt a little liberating. Didn’t mean I wasn’t sad, because I was. I was more than sad. I had all my breath turned over on me. Every new moment felt secondhand.

I’d walk to the bookstore and swear I’d read every book in the place. I felt like a crazy person. Maybe I was a little crazy. How would I know, right?

One day, sometime in late August, I’m watching a television show about prison ghost hunters. There’s a knock at the door. Who knocks? I don’t know my neighbors. Mrs. O’Brien had been gone for years. These two women moved into her house. They painted it this disgusting purple color. It looks like a rotten plum. I made my way to the door in my fleece bathrobe. For all I knew, there was a serial killer at the door, but if that was the case, it would be the most exciting thing to happen on Catherine Street since they filmed a scene from Reversal of Fortune at the end of the block.

When I opened the door, there was a delivery man holding a decent-sized box. I signed for it, apologized for not having cash for a tip, and then shut the door. I wasn’t expecting any package, let alone one that would need my signature. I took the box and put it on the kitchen table so I could grab a steak knife and cut away the tape. I never ate steak, but a steak knife is always good for tough mail. As soon as I pulled open one of the flaps, I saw the first tape. It had been years since I’d seen a cassette. I wore down the Eagles Greatest Hits, and after that, I just stuck to the radio.

There were around thirty cassette tapes in the box. At the bottom was a tape deck, which was convenient, since I didn’t have any way of playing the tapes. I still might not have played them, but the episode of Jail Ghosts was one I’d seen before, so I figured--

Why not?

The first tape started with silence. Just the low hum of a machine recording. Then, a note. Played by a piano. A few more notes. It went on like this for a few minutes. I couldn’t place the song if it even was a song. I was ready to turn off the recorder when I heard Lee’s voice.

“I’m sorry.”

The music went on, but I was stuck there. Stuck on the apology. An apology for what. It didn’t repeat. The song finished. The tape ended. I pulled out a second one, and placed it in the recorder.

A different song. Different notes. All of it still unplaceable. It was about ten minutes until I heard it.

“I’m sorry.”

Nothing else but the music from a song I didn’t know. Another tape. This one shorter, and the apology within the first couple of seconds. Another tape. This one had the apology at the end. What was he apologizing for? What had he done?

I went through every tape, and each one was the same. Why had he done this and why had he arranged to have it sent to me after his death? What was I meant to do with all this?

By now, I was wide awake. I didn’t know what time it was. It could have been the middle of the night. The house suddenly felt consumed by spirits. I had to get out. Out into the night, I began to walk. Down the hill, but not to eat. To breathe. To try and find my equilibrium.

If you go far enough down, you reach the wharf. The boats are stabled like prized horses. The bigger ones off in the distance where they have room for them. On one of the boats, I saw a man enjoying a drink with a woman much younger than him. His wife? Or someone else? I felt suspicion wrapping itself around me like the snake from The Jungle Book. I was being hypnotized by paranoia.

What was there to be sorry for, Lee?

I walked down a bit to the cluster of shops and restaurants. The place we always had dinner at was closed, but I stood in front of it and tried to teleport myself back into the past. Back when I had doubts and could have listened to them. Back when I was going to be a young woman of the city. Back to yesterday when I grieved my husband, but still thought I knew everything there was to know about him.

What threw me the most wasn’t that this drop of mystery made me question my love for him. It was that I could feel myself begin to love him more. If not love, maybe desire. I wanted him now. I wanted him in a way I never had while he was alive. And what good would that do me now that he was gone?

You’re sorry, Lee?

Well.

You should be.