Citrus County (McSweeney's Rectangulars) by John Brandon

Author:John Brandon [Brandon, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McSweeney's
Published: 2011-10-17T22:00:00+00:00

Shelby wore yellow rubber gloves. She’d lathered up the bathtub, had bleach and glass cleaner and some brand-new sponges. She was resting, sitting on the toilet bowl. She had already vacuumed all the carpets in the house, dusted the tables and dressers. She didn’t feel like they’d lived here long enough for it to get dusty. It had been someone else’s dust, the previous owners’ dust. Shelby arched her back to make her spine crack, relishing the scouring, chemical air.

She had a little radio with her, tuned to an AM station on which a very old man was relating stories about the past. Shelby felt like she was the only person listening to the station, like the old man was talking only to her, but she supposed that was how everyone felt. The old man was speaking about the establishment of the first national parks, about how men in need of work had come from all over the country to blaze trails and put in signs and build ranger stations. There were no commercials. When the old man went to pee, you had to wait for him to come back.

Shelby wondered if she was sanitizing the bathroom of Kaley. Shelby had given Kaley a hundred baths in here. She was scrubbing the last traces of her sister out of this room. She ought to be doing something constructive, like homework or like cooking or maybe exercising, but those things seemed so difficult. They required so much faith. Shelby felt comfortable on the hard, flat cover of the commode. She wished her father wouldn’t come home, that night wouldn’t fall. She could stay where she was and think of her sister calmly and honestly—just think of Kaley, not about whether or not Kaley was with them, whether she was gone forever. Kaley was not like other kids. It was a fact. She wasn’t like other people. Kaley never held onto anything, not grudges or promises. It was a type of toughness Shelby did not possess. Kaley could forgive. She was a person who could forgive the world and forgive the people closest to her.

The old man on the radio cleared his throat and broke it to his listeners that it was time for him to wash up for supper. Shelby heard his chair creak and then the swishing sound of his slacks.

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