Barn Cat by Kyoko Mori

Author:Kyoko Mori
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GemmaMedia
Published: 2013-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

My mother’s house is on the smallest of the three lots Don parceled off to raise money for his retirement. The couples who bought the other lots and built their houses commute to Green Bay. “You can knock on their doors when they come home,” Debbie told us, “but I doubt they can tell you anything.” The lots are half a mile down the road from the farm.

“These were sent last week,” Jill says, squinting at the mail she pulled out of the mailbox.

I unlock the front door and we step into the foyer. Jill rips open an envelope and announces, “She still has her electric bill sent here.” She tosses the rest—ads and flyers—in the corner. The small table that used to be in the entrance is pushed against the living room wall with the rest of the furniture. My mother has put all the furniture in the living room and all the boxes in the dining room.

In the kitchen, the cupboards have been cleaned out and the refrigerator unplugged. The stove is so spic-and-span it looks new. The bed in the master bedroom is stripped. The shelves have been removed from the smaller bedroom she used as a craft room. When I returned for Don’s funeral, my mother asked me to stay with Jill because there was no room for me in her new house. Her spare room was occupied by a work table covered with dried flowers and ribbons. She grew dozens of plants for fresh and dried flower arrangements, mostly as a hobby but sometimes for money.

“What about her business?” I ask Jill. “Anyone who hired her to arrange flowers for a wedding would know how to contact her.”

“Good idea.” Jill nods. “Maybe she kept her business records in one of those boxes.”

We spend the afternoon going through the boxes. Jill drives to the general store in Denmark and comes back with bottled water, apples, crackers, cheese. We sit on the dining room floor and eat from paper plates. My mother’s paring knife, unpacked from one of the boxes, looks out of place. She didn’t leave any receipts or invoices for her business. All the people on Debbie’s list told us they hadn’t seen my mother in months.

“I asked Mr. Waters if Kumiko’s been at his store lately and he said no,” Jill says.

The only vaguely promising item is the engagement calendar I found, but when Jill and I open it, all we can see are the dates my mother had marked for when she started her flowers indoors and transplanted them outside, when she cut and dried them. In the winter, the pages are blank except for the records of snowfalls and low temperatures. In late February, she noted the return of the robins. The mornings she babysat for Debbie or the evenings Jill visited are unmarked. All she ever did, according to this calendar, is watch the yard. Outside the kitchen window, nothing is planted in her flower beds. She must have known that she wouldn’t be here.

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