With Sugar, Please

Silica dust swarms my head as the day’s sweat invades my vision. Breathing through a bandana, I glare at the men spraying flint stone from a hose at all angles except on the roadway. Construction inspection was not my game plan five years ago, but if you want to have anything in your name, you go where the money is.

“Hey girlie, you’re in the way!” They know my name. We’ve been working on this same project together for over a year, but I’m still girlie.

I move to the shoulder, no doubt in my mind that I am in fact in the way. Spatial awareness has never been a strong suit of mine and probably not the best flaw to have in this industry.

I want to throw up. And I want to go home. I have no problem admitting that I am not cut out for field work; I was supposed to be an administrative assistant. If that makes me weak, I whole heartedly own it if it means I don’t have to do this anymore.

But I own two cars, my student loans are paid off, so it isn’t all that bad. I just find myself in the position of most Americans who had a dream, and then followed the money anyway.

My youngest greets me at the door as he does on most days. He just wants food, but I pretend he loves me anyway.

I open the dollar store tuna can and set it on the floor before going to talk to my boyfriend, Grim. Working from home the past two years has put a blurred line between his work life and home life.

This isn’t a bad life. But it is a stuck life. Thousands of people live this exact life every day, but maybe that’s my problem. If I’m lucky, I get a good eighty years to make something happen before I’m cold and useless.

And then a knock came to my silent door.

My first thought is to hit the deck and hide until they go away. We don’t get visitors. So it can’t be anything good. But the knocking persists, and I peek through a side window to look at my intrusion.

A middle-aged man with thinning cropped hair, wearing a navy blazer and jeans stands a few feet back from my door, admiring my potted zinnias on the porch. I don’t know what encourages me to open my door. Maybe it’s the fact that he isn’t smiling and looks like a real person instead of an act.

“Ms. Carrick? I am attorney James Mayer. Do you remember working with a Mr. Ryan Plyler?”

“Uh, yeah, he was my project manager a few years back.”

“Well, I am in charge of Mr. Plyler’s estate, and you are invited to attend the reading of his executive will tomorrow at 8 o’clock.”

“..will? As in, he’s dead.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks?”

“We will see you tomorrow. Have a great day.”

He hands me a business card with the address and time, and a handwritten note that says Please, call me James, and I stare past it as he walks back to his Lincoln.

Oh Ryan, I think. Even though we promised to stay in touch after his retirement, that never happened after the first few text exchanges. I feel a bubble in my chest of regret and sorrow. I really loved working for Ryan, despite our difference in age and opinions. Ryan was one of the few people who would consider someone else’s opinions and reevaluate his own views after. He was a thinker, as am I. We found comfort in our conversations about the tragedies of the human life, the expansiveness of space, what we wanted to be when we grow up – me, a funeral director, he, a cowboy - and the impressively grotesque amount of sugar he would put in his oatmeal and hot tea.

The next morning, I walk into an office with blinding fluorescents and vomit pastels. I see his family, and I feel sick. What am I doing here. I don’t belong here.

As James invites us to sit around a conference table tall enough to make me feel like a child, I feel the eyes of his wife and sons boring into the side of my head. My hands sweat as I offer a weak smile and receive none in return.

James sits beside me and offers a friendly nod as he holds onto a yellow envelope, sealed. He begins.

“Now, before I begin reading the last will and testament of Mr. Ryan Plyler, I would like to remind all of you that emotions may run high, but in order to get everything settled as efficiently as possible, I ask you to keep those emotions in check during the reading. Thank you.”

As James drones on through the legal terminology, I can barely pay attention. The first five items have been addressed to Ryan’s wife and sons, with a few outbursts as fairness between the brothers is debated.

I only worked with Ryan for three years, and yes, we worked well together to really get things done at work and talked of past, present, and future in the process, but I just don’t belong here. This doesn’t make any sense.

“And lastly, The Homestead, as Ryan lovingly called his cabin, and all its assets therewithin are issued to Ms. Amy Carrick.”

The family snickers. I have no idea what The Homestead is.

James is holding something in front of me and my hand reaches out without really seeing what it is. As the cool metal makes contact, goosebumps appear. It’s a key with an address on the tag.

I ask Grim to drive. My skin is crawling. The cabin is only an hour and some out of town, but it feels much longer. Grim talks, but I’m counting the apple trees as we pass. There was a late frost, and it is not a good year for the fruit flowers.

I don’t realize the car has stopped until Grim is already outside the car and lets the door slam on the incline. I scramble out and yell “Wait!”

I want to go in by myself.

The Homestead is gray. The wood is gray. The broken shingles are gray. The collapsing chicken coop is stained gray from years ago dried droppings. But the gray brings my fogged mind to focus.

I think Grim says “Be careful” as I approach the sunken steps, but I confidently stride two at a time and stand before the door. Something not gray. The new golden lock reflects my face as I jam the key in, my hands steady for the first time in months.

The only furniture standing is a round table. Obviously new, its presence an eyesore against the dust covered chairs and desk in the background.

I see the note and am suddenly afraid again. What am I doing here. This shouldn’t be mine.

A simple piece of paper, ripped from the end of another piece of paper at some point, with untidy scrawl in crooked lines.

To a bright young woman who may be the only hope for a brighter future,

Thank you for listening to an old man’s ideas for three long years. You were not happy back then working with me in a very broken industry, and I know you are not where you want to be even now, and I want to give you a gift –

James will help you. While I cannot trust you with outright money – I believe you would spend it on everyone but yourself – I have paid full tuition for the completion of a Mortuary Science Program, and you are already enrolled. In the same regard, and in addition to this homely shack, you are now the proud owner of a warehouse building. Do with it what you will, but I imagine it will have something to do with corpse care.

We only have a good eighty years on this Earth, if we’re lucky, so you better get started being useful.

I feel the warmth of sadness run down my face, and I smile as I look beyond the paper to see a canister of oats and an even bigger canister of sugar.