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sechan19We'd finally made it through the day - the memorial and reception were behind us. We'd sat stoically through the service, smiled beatifically at reception guests we'd never before seen in our lives, nodded sympathetically with the so-called bereaved. After the reception clean-up we went to the house for one last time (or so we thought) and proceeded to collect a few big-ticket items that had been left to us: a couch, a chair, a little drop-leaf table, etc. We had purchased a storage space earlier in the day.
My uncle had requested, for some strange reason, that my mother leave her set of house keys in the house, a fact that severely limited our ability to lock the door, but whatever. With the single handle lock engaged we left the house with our items and drove, in the pouring rain, to the storage facility and began unloading our things. When we were done, we closed shop, locked up, and got back in the car.
It was at this point that my mother said, "Where's my purse?"
This was a frightening statement. My mother had booked a return flight for the following morning. The loss of her purse was a huge problem. We searched the car - which was itself filled with a variety of items not yet ready to be interred in storage. We did not find it.
Then my mother said, "I know where it is; it's back at the house on top of a box in the hall."
Now this was a complicating statement. We'd locked the house with the keys inside. Aunt L. had been barred from having keys; Uncle B. had left the memorial and gone straight to San Francisco. But my mother had to have her purse.
A tense discussion ensued, in which a plan of action was established that ran along these lines: I was elected to commit breaking and entering, upon my grandmother's house, in my fancy funeral duds, in the dead of night, in the driving rain. (Take that Ernest Hemingway!)
And off we went. Arriving there we surveyed the property. In the front of the house were two balconies that led to bedrooms, and I was contemplating the logistics of climbing up onto them in an attempt to reach the sliding glass doors when my mother vetoed that on Uncle B.'s authority. She was conferring with him via cellphone, and he'd told her that he'd wedged the doors shut.
New plan.
I walked around the back, becoming more and more drenched by the rains - which were raining [sigh] - to take a look at the backyard fence. The walk was wet and squishy, and my funeral pumps were not exactly pleased about that fact. I reached the fence gate, which was six feet high and constructed of solid, stable wood. A quick rattle confirmed my suspicions that the latch was tightly drawn, and at five-feet-two-inches there was no way my punk ass was gonna reach the latch from my present position.
With my mother following behind me, now off the phone, I squinted at the fence connecting to my grandmother's backyard gate. It had been constructed for the benefit of the neighbors living behind the property, and as a result the brace joints faced me (no doubt for cosmetic purposes) and offered decent hand and foot grips should I decide to scale the fence.
In a decision that made my funeral pumps even more unhappy, I stepped forward, grabbed hold of the fence joints, and began my perilous, slippery climb. At the top, I swung one leg over the edge (wetting the seat of my pants in the process and - I was later to discover - making them inexplicably muddy), turned my body slightly, and dropped to the ground below. Then I opened the latch to let my mother in and headed for the sliding glass doors that opened into the kitchen, praying that they were not wedged shut and that only lock jimmying would be necessary.
Then, suddenly, as manna from heaven, the evening's first miracle:
No one locked the kitchen doors.
After all that and everything, the doors were bloody unlocked. Thank god for small favors. We entered, found the purse on the box in the hall, and exited through the front.
And this time Mom took the keys with her.
My uncle had requested, for some strange reason, that my mother leave her set of house keys in the house, a fact that severely limited our ability to lock the door, but whatever. With the single handle lock engaged we left the house with our items and drove, in the pouring rain, to the storage facility and began unloading our things. When we were done, we closed shop, locked up, and got back in the car.
It was at this point that my mother said, "Where's my purse?"
This was a frightening statement. My mother had booked a return flight for the following morning. The loss of her purse was a huge problem. We searched the car - which was itself filled with a variety of items not yet ready to be interred in storage. We did not find it.
Then my mother said, "I know where it is; it's back at the house on top of a box in the hall."
Now this was a complicating statement. We'd locked the house with the keys inside. Aunt L. had been barred from having keys; Uncle B. had left the memorial and gone straight to San Francisco. But my mother had to have her purse.
A tense discussion ensued, in which a plan of action was established that ran along these lines: I was elected to commit breaking and entering, upon my grandmother's house, in my fancy funeral duds, in the dead of night, in the driving rain. (Take that Ernest Hemingway!)
And off we went. Arriving there we surveyed the property. In the front of the house were two balconies that led to bedrooms, and I was contemplating the logistics of climbing up onto them in an attempt to reach the sliding glass doors when my mother vetoed that on Uncle B.'s authority. She was conferring with him via cellphone, and he'd told her that he'd wedged the doors shut.
New plan.
I walked around the back, becoming more and more drenched by the rains - which were raining [sigh] - to take a look at the backyard fence. The walk was wet and squishy, and my funeral pumps were not exactly pleased about that fact. I reached the fence gate, which was six feet high and constructed of solid, stable wood. A quick rattle confirmed my suspicions that the latch was tightly drawn, and at five-feet-two-inches there was no way my punk ass was gonna reach the latch from my present position.
With my mother following behind me, now off the phone, I squinted at the fence connecting to my grandmother's backyard gate. It had been constructed for the benefit of the neighbors living behind the property, and as a result the brace joints faced me (no doubt for cosmetic purposes) and offered decent hand and foot grips should I decide to scale the fence.
In a decision that made my funeral pumps even more unhappy, I stepped forward, grabbed hold of the fence joints, and began my perilous, slippery climb. At the top, I swung one leg over the edge (wetting the seat of my pants in the process and - I was later to discover - making them inexplicably muddy), turned my body slightly, and dropped to the ground below. Then I opened the latch to let my mother in and headed for the sliding glass doors that opened into the kitchen, praying that they were not wedged shut and that only lock jimmying would be necessary.
Then, suddenly, as manna from heaven, the evening's first miracle:
No one locked the kitchen doors.
After all that and everything, the doors were bloody unlocked. Thank god for small favors. We entered, found the purse on the box in the hall, and exited through the front.
And this time Mom took the keys with her.
