Little Things

The house looks bigger somehow.

That’s the first thing Simon thinks when he wakes up by the mailbox. It’s the middle of the day, but the autumn storm clouds blanch out the sun, until the cheery little house appears shadowed and foreboding. His bike is noticeably gone from the front porch, as is his pea plant that usually sits on the windowsill. The curtains are drawn on every window, but it hardly makes a difference; there’s no sun to let in.

Normally, these were Simon’s favorite days. The rain would pour so hard it would make ponds in the hills in the backyard, and he could splash and roll around in them until Dad or Charlie or Conny caught him and forced him inside to dry off. Worms and snails would come out of their hiding spots to greet him, enjoying the refreshing weather before they’d retreat into the cracks in the cobblestone or the fallen logs in the woods beyond his house.

Today, though, made him feel hollow. He wasn’t sure how he had gotten back here, to the quiet country neighborhood he’d grown up in, when he had been miles away last time he was awake. 

He dimly remembers the crash. He knows it killed him, but the thought doesn’t seem to register. Simon doesn’t feel dead, but then again, he’s not entirely sure what that would feel like.

Though, now that he thinks about it, he can’t feel the gravel below his fingers. His shoes don’t quite seem to catch on the ground, instead hovering right above the surface.

The neighborhood is silent. Conny’s truck is gone from its spot on the front lawn, so he and Dad are probably at work, and Charlie’s in class. 

Or maybe they’re home? If he was truly dead, wouldn’t they take time off for a bit? 

He gets up from his spot on the path and walks to the front door. Elly is sleeping in her bed nestled under one of the patio chairs. To his surprise, she opens her big blue eyes and meows sleepily at him. 

Simon startles, stumbling back. Maybe he’s not dead after all. But when he tries the door handle, his hand falls right through the metal. 

“Elly?” he whispers, wondering if he imagined her seeing him.

She gets up and stretches, chirping as she weaves in between his legs. He gasps, feeling her soft fur brush against his legs, tickling the skin exposed from his torn-up pants. It’s the first thing he’s felt in a long, long time.

Crouching next to her, Simon holds out a hesitant hand, amazed when her whiskers tickle his skin as she rubs her face on his fingers. When he scratches under her chin, he can see the fur part where his fingertips are. 

He gets up, watching the front door warily. Maybe he could get through now?

But he phases right through the handle again, as if he was grasping mist. 

Frustrated, he shoves his entire body through the door, and winds up in a pile on the other side. After collecting himself, he stands on shaky legs, peering around the dark living room.

His dad had never kept a tidy house, but this was the messiest he’d ever seen it. The couch is covered in a pile of binders and old schoolwork—his work, he realizes with a pang of sadness—and folded moving boxes, probably getting ready to be put in the attic. Simon guesses it would’ve happened eventually, but this feels too soon.

What day is it? He dodges a few other piles of his old things, making his way to the desk next to the kitchen. The calendar is open to October. He had died on August 16th. 

Elly walks into the kitchen through the cat door, her little claws clinking on the old tile. She perches on one of the dining chairs, watching him expectantly.

“Can you say something, Elly?” he asks, feeling a little silly.

Her ears perk up at her name, but she says nothing, not even a chirp. His shoulders sag a little. Of course. The one living thing that can see him, and she can’t even talk.

Something large drops upstairs, and Dad’s muffled voice booms after it. Oh no. Simon floats through the air towards the stairs, climbing them two at a time, like he always used to do. Elly follows close behind.

The hallway is even more cluttered than downstairs. Charlie’s keyboard is folded up against the wall, and Conny’s guitar is nowhere to be seen, the stand tucked behind the banister. There are more boxes, full this time, with things like Charlie’s room and Kids’ art projects scrawled on the outside. 

They’re moving?

They can’t be. Dad would never leave this house behind. 

But one look at the man crouched in the doorway of Simon’s old room tells him otherwise.

Dad’s pale hands are wrapped around the broken remnants of the ceramic cat Simon had glazed for him in first grade. It was an ugly thing—he had adored rainbows as a little kid, so the cat was covered in every color imaginable—but Dad had always loved it like it was a masterpiece. The head lays in two pieces a few feet away from Simon’s shoes, its purple and yellow eyes staring blankly through him.

Dad cries. First it’s silent, strained tears, then a sob escapes his lips. And then all of it comes out. He curls his knees to his chest, sandy hair falling into his puffy blue eyes. Wails like Simon’s never heard erupt from him, so pained and raw it makes his chest jittery. They rattle his head until he’s dizzy, stumbling on ghostly legs.

Elly sits right next to Simon and looks up at him, flicking his ankle with her tail, as if to say, do something. But do what? Could Dad even hear him? Feel him?

He tries anyway. Tears streaming down his face, he says, “Dad?”

Of course, nothing. He tries again. “Dad, I’m here. It’s okay. It was old anyway.” Dad doesn’t move. He doesn’t even notice Elly next to him. 

The grief in his eyes freezes Simon in place. This was the man who had picked him up every time he’d fallen. He’d bandaged every scrape, kissed him and tucked him in at night even when he was exhausted, sold belongings and worked two jobs and gone hungry some nights just to keep him and his brothers safe. He’s Dad. He’s indestructible. But here he is, broken on the floor, vulnerable. A small voice whispers in Simon’s ear. Help him.

An idea pops into his head. He sprints past Dad into his room, phasing right through the mess of old toys and towering boxes. His feet hit the board right inside his room that always squeaks, and the silence that follows him after he pushes off hurts more than he could ever imagine.

Once he gets inside, he drops to the floor, hoping Dad hadn’t moved his memory box from under the bed just yet. And sure enough, there it is; a dingy old yellow treasure chest he had stashed under there years ago, back when he thought he would make it to age eighteen and be able to open it. It had doubled as his secret storage in the months before his death.

Simon reaches for the rope handles, before he remembers that the chest won’t move no matter how hard he yanks. Defeated, he lies on the dusty floor of his childhood bedroom, staring at the red painted walls he’ll never scribble crayon on again, the books he never read, the bed he’ll never get to sneak out of when the nightmares got bad. He’ll never get to annoy Conny or force Charlie to play with him ever again.

The tears come again. Simon sniffles, then sobs, clamping a hand to his mouth. Not like anyone can hear him anyway. No one except the cat.

Elly pads into the room, chirping quietly at him. Her eyes look almost sorrowful, giant blue saucers in a sea of white fur. He reaches out to her, the pain in his chest fading a little as she rubs her face against his fingers, purring. 

Simon drops his hand and looks at the treasure chest again, so close but so infinitely far at the same time. Elly leaps over his chest, looking under the bed to see what’s distracting him.

That’s it. Frantically, Simon shimmies towards the chest, drumming his fingers on the plastic as best as he can without going straight through it. Elly’s ears perk up instantly, recognizing the game they used to play when they couldn’t afford to get her a laser pointer. She darts towards the box, batting it with her paws, towards the edge of the bed.

“Yes!” Simon whispers, tapping more and more to keep her excited. She hits the box faster and faster, meowing as the plastic scrapes on the worn wooden floors.

“Elly?” Dad calls over his shoulder. His heavy footsteps thud into the room.

“C’mon, Elly, get out of there. You need to finish your dinner anyway.”

Elly’s ears shift towards Dad but she doesn’t waver, pushing the chest closer to the edge. Instinctively, Simon gets out from under the bed and faces Dad, even though he can’t see him. Dad looks around the jungle of boxes for the cat, eyebrows scrunching as he peers down at the bed.

“Elly, get out. There’s probably spiders under there,” he grumbles, eyes still red and teary. 

She doesn’t move. The scraping continues, until Dad crouches down and snatches the chest from her. Yes! Open it! Elly finally scampers out from under the bed, chirping defiantly.

Dad holds the chest gingerly in his big hands, eyes downcast. After a few moments of quiet contemplation, he unlatches the front and opens it, sifting through the knickknacks inside. He pulls out the folded construction paper card sitting at the top, where Simon had scrawled a god-awful drawing of the four of them a couple of months prior, surrounded by a shaky red heart. He was supposed to give it to Dad when he got back from his assignment at the base. That never happened.

Lip trembling, Dad opens the card, reading Simon’s note slowly. He doesn’t really remember what he wrote, so he cranes his neck to read. 

Hi Dad!

I’m writing this a month after you got deployed. We miss you a lot. I think senior finals are gonna kill Charlie, but Conny and I keep telling him he’s the smartest out of all of us. Conny almost got fired last week for being late *again*, but I guess he talked his way out of it. Crazy. Not to worry you, ha-ha. I think we’re doing pretty good.

Mrs. Wilkins baked us cookies when she found out you were gone. She sends us stuff every week now. This week was garlic Parmesan noodles. I ate half the container already. (Don’t tell Conny.)

Don’t be mad, but I failed my science test again. I don’t get tectonic plates. They’re weird. I still have a C+ though! My teacher said I can get it up before the end of the quarter if I study this time. 

Okay I’m running out of space bye-bye I love you! 

Simon

Dad crumples to the floor, nearly dropping the chest as he goes down. He buries his face into his knees, howling incoherent words into his lap. The card shakes with him as his shoulders shudder. Look in the chest again, Simon wills silently, wiping tears from his eyes.

Elly sidles up to Dad, rubbing herself against his arms, shedding clumps of hair all over his shirt. She paws the chest again, still sitting open in his lap. He lifts his head from his knees, watching Elly curiously through the onslaught of tears. After a moment, he lifts a beaded bracelet out of the chest, along with two other cards, for his brothers’ birthdays. He squeezes his eyes shut, collapsing in on himself.

Simon doesn’t need to look at it to know he had strung lettered plastic beads together to spell out BEST DAD EVER, in alternating green and blue beads, Dad’s favorite color. His own wrists are much smaller than Dad’s, so he’d forced Conny to be his model after a long shift at the diner. He hopes it’ll fit Dad as well as it fit Conny.

Getting down on the ground, Simon rests his head on Dad’s shoulder, wishing he could feel him, smell the cheap deodorant he slathered on every morning, hear him scold him one last time. He feels robbed. He was ten years old when he died, and now he would be ten years old for the rest of his life. 

***

They sit on the floor for a long, long time. The clouds have fully consumed the sky by the time Dad rises, slipping the bracelet onto his wrist. It fits perfectly. Simon wants to cry all over again.

Conny comes home from work not long after, paler and gaunter than Simon remembers. He barely says a word to Dad when he comes stumbling in the front door, tearing off his construction worker’s vest and tossing it on the floor. Immediately, he goes to the kitchen, cracking open a beer and chugging it like it’s water. 

Conny never drank before.

His heart wrenches itself into knots. 

“How goes packing?” he mutters, collapsing into the dining chair right next to Simon.

Dad’s watery eyes turn to him, looking up from his armchair in the living room. Taking in a shaky breath, he whispers, “I found Simon’s last letters.”

Conny freezes, looking up from his phone. His usually stony expression cracks, revealing the agony underneath.“What do they say?”

To Simon’s surprise, Dad’s face breaks into a wide smile, even as the tears stream down his aging face. He laughs. “Conny, you never told me you almost got fired.”

His eyebrows scrunch into a straight line, then break apart as his eyes widen. He presses his lips together, fighting tears, but he manages a smile too. “Really? That’s what they’re about?” he says.

Dad nods. Conny bursts into tears.

Simon watches his dad and brother get up and embrace each other for the first time in a long time. They smile and cry and smile some more, reading the cards Simon had written before he’d known what short time he had left.

Elly watches on from the windowsill. Simon walks over to her, scratching her favorite spot under her chin. “Thank you,” he whispers.

If he could, he’d tell them all how much they mean to him. How he couldn’t have wished for a better family, no matter how badly they’d struggled, no matter how much they’d fought. That he loved them, and he’d love them until he fades away into nothing. He’d spend a whole day just telling them every good thing he’d ever felt, if it only meant he had one more day with them. He wants them to know he didn’t die disappointed in them. 

But tonight, it seems like the little things were all they needed to hear.