Bear

Chapter 29

After, there were so many things to do. Sam and Elena called out of work. They sat on the living room sofa while Elena phoned the funeral home. People came to pick up the body. It seemed Elena and their mother had discussed all this: how many copies of the death certificate the family would need, how to arrange for direct cremation. Elena read a credit card number into the phone while Sam stared after.

Elena took care of everything. She spread out papers on the kitchen table—their mother’s bank statements, the car and house titles—and made more calls. The cell service, internet, and utilities were in their mother’s name. Elena brought out their mother’s tax returns. She called the probate court and waited on hold, tears running down her cheeks.

Sam stripped their mother’s bed. She took the last glass their mother had used to the sink, where she scrubbed, rinsed, rubbed it dry with a cloth. The house still smelled of their mother. Her shampoo, her breath. The bedroom held her emptied oxygen tanks. Sam sat in there and watched an episode of a soap.

Sam had imagined their mother’s passing as a release from long disease, a bitter kind of liberation. But now she just wanted her mom back. Having her mother was natural. It was foundational. Sam was hollowed, while at the front of the house, Elena wept on.

The sisters slept in their mother’s bed each night. Time passed too slowly and too fast.

On Wednesday, Elena went back to work. Sam said she should stay home longer, but Elena shook her head. Sam drove her over to the club. Returning to the empty house was awful. Sam crawled into their mother’s bed to nap. When she went out again, early that evening, to pick Elena up, she found a casserole dish on the front step. Its tinfoil cover had been ripped open and the lasagna it once contained eaten out. Tomato sauce smeared the concrete.

The bear. Its presence, at their home, in this moment, was offensive. An insult. That it should come here, now, and take more from them, when in these past few days they’d already lost so much.

Sam picked up the dish and brought it inside to scrape what was left into the trash can. Washing it, she found herself shivering. There was no note. The bear took the note? Did it do these things on purpose, did it intuit what would hurt them most? Or did it operate on instinct in order to ruin their lives? If it came next into their home, shat on top of their mother’s bedding, she wouldn’t be surprised. God—she hated the thing. Its proximity. Its behavior. She tucked the rinsed casserole dish into a cupboard and went out to the car to get Elena.

She didn’t tell Elena about the bear’s red-stained visit. She wanted it and her sister to stay as distant as possible. Elena, meanwhile, announced that she’d arranged with the club to hold a gathering in their mother’s memory that Saturday. Sam asked, “Why? Who’s going to come?”

“Mom’s friends,” Elena said. “Our friends.”

“What friends?”

Elena shook her head. “Neighbors. People she used to work with. People we know.”

Sam didn’t see the point. She told Elena she thought it was stupid, and Elena said she didn’t care what Sam thought, their mother would’ve liked it, and Sam said, no, she wouldn’t have, and Elena went into the bathroom and slammed the door. Sam could hear her crying in the shower. All that water doubled up. In her room, Sam tried filling out a survey, but the page reloaded in the middle and she lost the whole thing. She put the phone down next to her and shut her eyes.

The phone buzzed. She picked it up. A text from Ben: I heard about your mom. So sorry, Sam. Here for you

She put the phone back down.

Going to bed side by side on their mother’s mattress was a return to Elena and Sam’s childhood, when they shared a room and let each other’s night noises soothe them into sleep. Elena’s teeth rubbed together when she dreamed. Sam took solace from the grind. A third of their household had dropped away; so many of the tiny beloved disruptions that Sam had come to rely on—their mother’s door opening, the rise of her voice, the background chatter from her television—were absent. Sam needed Elena now more than ever. Even when they bickered, their sisterhood, the strength of it, held.