Chapter 6
Six
Ali
Up until one week ago, if something like this had happened, Ali would have talked to Ted about it.
But Ali didn’t call Ted. She didn’t call her sisters. She’d quit her job without anyone’s two cents about it.
She did talk to her former co-workers though.
Some came to her dad’s house with their pleas for her to stay. In between packing her dad’s stuff, she listened to them vent.
“Don’t leave us!”
“I’m calling the board; you shouldn’t be his assistant. It should be the other way around.”
“If 13ABC or 11 News knew how much you did to make Frogtown a success, you’d be the woman of the year.”
She had done that. And she was proud of it. But Ali felt done. No amount of sweet talk from co-workers could change her mind.
And the truth is, no one is indispensable. They’d find a new manager.
She’d miss them, and they were a good team. A team she’d built. And one she’d loved leading. Ali had gone to bat for them with Jerry when they deserved raises. She’d put out fire after fire and knew how to handle whatever crisis occurred at Frogtown Convention Center.
And there was always another crisis. She didn’t mind that. She liked solving each problem. She loved managing the vendors, the staff, and the visitors. She just didn’t love doing it for Jerry.
Ali knew what Ted would say. He had said it many times when she was frustrated about work. Ted would have told her to suck it up. Play nice. He’d have told her to get along. All the while, she’d listen to his tirades about being passed over for tenure or a colleague getting a paper published that he’d deemed “sophomoric.”
Well, he had tenure now and a grad assistant girlfriend to accessorize his rise. She didn’t want Ted’s career counseling any more than she wanted to work with Jerry another day.
Ali was at a crossroads in every phase of her life. She’d quit her job, her husband had quit their marriage, their kids were happily in college, and her aging father was done aging.
All she could think to do was busy herself organizing her childhood home.
She boxed up Bruce Kelly’s clothes, looked through old albums, and slept. She needed sleep more than anything else.
Over the next few days, one question emerged.
Who was she now?
Who did she want to be?
More than once, she wondered, if her mother was here, what would she say.
Her mother was denied the luxury of a mid-life crisis. Was that what this was? Midlife?
Two weeks after Bruce Kelly died, the Kelly Sisters officially learned what they already knew. His house and assets were to be split among his three daughters.
Blair wasn’t in attendance for the formality, but there wasn’t much to decide. The lawyer explained the process. Knowing they would get the house, Ali had already polled her sisters. No one wanted to live in the old Kelly house. Their lives had all moved on from their childhood in the house on Densmore.
Ali had called a real estate agent the day after Bruce passed. Lingering or waiting was bad business in this market. Demand was hot in this neighborhood, and the house was meticulously cared for.
As was their family dynamic. Ali handled it all, including the fielding of offers for Dad’s house.
“I’ve got three offers on the table. Two cash and one financed, but the financed offer sweetened the deal by adding ten grand over asking.”
“Oh, yeah, go with that one,” Blair said.
“I agree,” Faye chimed in as well.
Three to zip. Sell to the highest bidder.
There was no hurry, but there was also no hold-up. Bruce Kelly, the working man, had paid his mortgage years ago. He’d lived frugally. He’d saved.
He’d died with three hundred thousand dollars after all was liquidated to split among his three girls.
“We’re heiresses!” Faye joked.
“Sure, yeah, well, we need to be smart. You need to be smart.” Ali pointed to Blair, who tended to buy the first thing that struck her fancy. As evidenced by the mirror workout thing she’d bought that was in her Cinci apartment collecting dust.
“Oh, come on, just one dumb thing.”
Cinci could be expensive. At least this money would put Ali’s mind at ease about her baby sister. She’d be able to pay rent for a few months! Maybe even a whole year. But while it was great, a windfall for sure, it wasn’t quit your job money. Which, of course, she’d done, regardless of Bruce Kelly’s last will and testament.
Faye threatened to buy a Harley, but in truth, she was just as frugal as Dad. Her weakness was plants. She’d buy every annual at the Toledo Flower Market Sale and then some.
What was Ali’s weakness? Not having a dream? Not having any idea how to splurge? She’d been so careful. All this time. She hadn’t cultivated the muscle required to kick up her heels.
But thanks to Dad, she did have some time—not a lot of time, but some. She didn’t have to replace her income from Frogtown immediately.
But she would have to find a place to live. Soon.
In the meantime, she had two weeks to clear out fifty years at Densmore. So that was her focus. Cleaning out the old family home.
She could do that. She was organized, methodical, and knew every contractor in Toledo. She knew exactly how to move, ship, dispose of, and repair stuff if needed.
Instead of overthinking her career, her marriage, and her midlife malaise, she handled things at the house.
One room at a time.
Bruce Kelly was neat and tidy and non-sentimental, which made going room by room mostly painless.
The death of their father had Ali thinking about their mother, Joetta Kelly. She was young, so very young, when she became a mother, and too young to die.
Bruce hadn’t let his girls indulge in maudlin emotions. That they were motherless wasn’t his fault. He expected them to all get on with it.
But now, as she worked through the grief of his death, she couldn’t quite get on with her mother’s death even though it had been a lifetime.
Ali was nine years old when she was drafted into service as the person who took care of food, pigtails, and Christmas gifts for the Kelly Sisters. Faye was seven and said she remembered their mom in bits. Blair was a toddler when it happened, so the memories weren’t really memories. They were stories that Faye and Ali told Blair about having a mom.
Were they together now, Bruce and Joetta? She didn’t know if that sounded like a happy ending or not. What she remembered of her mother and father together was fraught. They argued, they screamed.
Well, maybe they had that happily ever after somewhere, if not here.
Remembering the brief time she shared this Earth with both parents was connected to shouting from Bruce and tears from her pretty little mother.
As Ali pressed on and packed the house, she didn’t find one article of clothing or memento of her mother. Her father had excised it all after the car accident that claimed their mother.
Once, when she asked to visit their mother’s burial site, Bruce explained she’d been cremated, and the ashes were at the lake. He’d taken his wife to the lake once or twice, and she’d liked it. “She liked being on a beach.” He had said, offering a tiny morsel of memory to a daughter starving for more details.
By the time Ali made her way to cleaning out Bruce’s workshop in the garage, the house was pretty well buttoned up. The garage workshop was the last of the things to sort through.
Tools, cans of nails, bits of wood from the projects he’d done around the house, and a tin case of drill bits of every size were all that remained. Should they sell all this or maybe just donate it to Habitat for Humanity? Ali had worked with Habitat over the years. She decided to give them a call to see if they wanted the snow blower, or the circular saw, or the set of wrenches.
She looked around the workshop, built into the narrow length of the garage, and remembered there was an attic up there.
“Ugh, I forgot about that.” She said aloud to herself.
There was a little rope trailing down, so she tugged at it. The attic stairs unfurled. This was where they’d kept old Christmas lights and boxes of magazines Bruce had gotten from their grandpa. He said Grandpa insisted the magazines were “collector’s items,” but Bruce called them junk. Bruce didn’t like junk cluttering up his space. Ali was glad of it now. She’d heard horror stories of Hummels and baseball cards and egg cartons to be disposed of after her friends’ parents passed. This was a gift Bruce gave to her, no clutter.
Ali climbed the ladder. She was going to have to dress in more layers if the attic was packed with stuff. It was freezing in the garage. Toledo in January was no joke, weather-wise.
She pulled a cord in the center of the attic space, and a single lightbulb flickered on.
There were cardboard boxes on top of boxes, but they were all stacked neatly. This was a relief; she could manage these. She could bring them down one at a time.
She scanned the writing on the outside of each box.
Taxes. Halloween Costumes. Bulbs.
Yep, no surprises there.
Each box was clearly marked.
She’d deal with it tomorrow. It would likely take a morning to bring these down, and it would also likely take a dose of Advil to recover from the task.
She positioned herself at the ladder to go back down and then one box caught her eye.
It had no label.
Hmm.
She crouched over to it and on the top, very small, were the letters JB .
The box was taped shut with masking tape that had gone brittle with age.
Her mother’s initials. Joetta Bowles.
Was this it? Was this the only thing left of Bruce Kelly’s marriage?
And if it was their mother’s stuff, why hadn’t he ever let them see it?
Ali was irritated anew by Bruce Kelly’s stern streak.
She decided to grab the box and bring it down. She’d look through this one box tonight and tackle the rest tomorrow.
It was no easy task, navigating the ladder-like stairs with the big box in one arm and her hand on the ladder itself.
“If I break a hip doing this…” Ali muttered to herself as she made her way down. She managed to set her two feet back on the solid concrete floor of the garage without loss of life and limb.
She was getting cold, though. She wanted to open this box immediately but also wanted to warm up.
“Okay, JB, let’s get inside, get some coffee, and see what’s what.”
She’d tackle this box when the feeling returned to her fingers and toes.
A short while later, as coffee brewed from her dad’s ancient (“It works just fine!”) Mr. Coffee machine, Ali stood at the kitchen table.
She had the kitchen shears at the ready, but they weren’t necessary. The tape peeled off easily, and the old cardboard came with it in some sections.
“Geez, Dad, has this been sealed since Mom died?”
She thought back to what her dad looked like back then, really for most of his life. He was strong. At six feet, he was tall for an Irishman, her grandma used to say. He was military in his bearing, meticulous in his grooming, but utilitarian. He was a man who went to the barber, shaved every day, and kept everything ship shape but nothing “froofy,” as he called anything that had the whiff of feminine energy—no cologne or hair products for Bruce Kelly.
She needed to do that more often, force her mind’s eye to put the younger Bruce in place of the one she’d just watched die.
It wasn’t fair to the pillar of strength that he was to hang on to what he looked like in the end.
Ali wiped a tear. Her father may have been stern, harsh even, but he was a rock. They never worried that there would be food on the table or a roof over their heads. He was tough, and he taught them to be, too. He was always there, whenever and for whatever they needed him.
She remembered, with shame, the anger she’d had at her mother for leaving, as though it was her choice to do so.
Enough. She was getting lost in the emotions of the last few days.
Ali opened the box and looked inside.
A slightly musty smell wafted in the air around it.
She carefully removed three large manilla envelopes and laid them on the table. They were all sealed with string wrapped around a cardboard disk. Ali had the urge to open them first but resisted. She decided to get it all out and then dive into each after the box was empty.
She gasped when she saw what was under the envelopes. A photo album!
As far as she knew, there was one lone picture of Joetta Bowles. It was that framed wedding day shot on the tea cart in the corner.
My goodness, what if these are more pictures of our beautiful mom?
There were Valentine’s cards, thank you cards, and little notes. They were signed “JB.” The “b” looked practically like calligraphy. Her mother’s writing was so flowery and feminine that it was almost art.
Ali ran a hand over the puffy cover of the album but, again, set it next to the envelopes instead of opening it.
At the bottom of the box was a jewelry case.
Wow. Okay, jeez, Dad, if this is Mom’s jewelry, why the heck wouldn’t you have given it to us?
She was freshly annoyed with Bruce Kelly at that moment.
She lifted the blue jewelry box out and set it next to the rest of the items.
Two more artifacts made up the rest of the little treasure trove.
There was a mason jar. She picked it up, and dozens of little snow-white seashells shifted in the jar. A souvenir from a long-ago beach vacation?
Finally, the bottom of the box was wrapped in a deteriorating plastic dry-cleaning bag. Ali’s emotions nearly knocked her over.
It was the dress! The wedding dress! A mini; so pretty, so modern for its day. Bruce had hung on to his dead wife’s wedding dress.
She slid it out of the box and then placed the box on the floor. She had to see this dress.
The plastic bag fluttered to the kitchen floor, and she put her hands on the fabric. It was cream, not yellow. The photo made it seem yellow. It was so much more delicate than the picture, now fading, in the frame.
This dress was expensive. It was easy to see, to feel. In fact, Ali was quite sure she’d never held a garment this luxurious in feel. It was simply beautiful. A mock turtleneck and long sleeves gave it a modest vibe on top, and a paisley pattern in light caramel overlaid the ivory fabric and added interest without making it look too busy. A tiny fabric belt cinched the waist, and the more conservative top part of the dress contrasted with its length.
A mini! Ali still couldn’t quite believe that.
The buttons were all covered and the stitching, the finishing, were clearly a higher quality than anything Ali had ever owned. Her mother looked so sweet in this dress. Ali had gazed at the picture a million times. And now it was in her hands!
Ali found the label: Miss Dior. Was that Christian Dior? Wow!
Another shocker. How did her mother afford this? She wondered if Joetta Bowles Kelly had thrifted it. What a detail to learn now, after this expanse of time, that her mother liked to find quality thrift pieces. Maybe she’d snagged it at a garage sale in nearby Ottawa Hills? Ali did have vague memories of walking the sidewalks with her mother at the exclusive and more well-to-do version of Old Orchard. It was just a few blocks away and could have yielded this treasure for her mother’s wedding day. Ali’s imagination was unlocked as she held the garment.
She looked at the label, size 2. Her mother was tiny.
That was it—the entire contents of the box. Ali wanted to dive into the album first to see the photos.
But then she stopped. It felt too much to do alone, too overwhelming.
This was, in fact, her sisters’ mother, as well. Faye and Blair deserved to see this, too. They deserved to have this memory. Was it selfish to do this alone? She wished her sisters were here right now.
Ali kept the album shut and decided to move to the envelopes. Ali pulled out the first one. It was clearly all legal documents.
She read the heading. It was a law firm with a Florida address.
Dear Mr. Kelly….
In very formal legal jargon, the letter appeared to be discussing a property in Mangrove County, Florida.
Ali located her smartphone and plugged in the name of the county.
Okay, so it was on Florida’s Gulf side, wedged between Manatee and Pinellas Counties. She’d never heard of Mangrove County, but all she really knew of Florida was Disney and Miami.
She wasn’t a lawyer, but it looked like this letter was informing Bruce Kelly about several acres of “prime” beachfront real estate.
Was Dad trying to invest?
She slid the letter over to reveal several more legal-looking papers.
It was a deed.
The words “Haven Beach, Florida,” were typed into the open lines of the documents.
Okay, so Dad owned land in Florida at one point? That did not seem like Bruce Kelly at all. But maybe you never really know your parents.
She scanned the deed, wishing she was more versed in law and real estate and all that.
Whatever this was, it was old. Decades and decades old.
She read through to the end and then saw it.
Did it mean what she thought it did?
Deeded, in perpetuity, to Ali Kelly, Faye Kelly, and Blair Kelly.
What?
She opened the next folder. In it were copies of more letters from this law firm.
Despite your refusal…
Held in trust….
Until such time as…
Bruce Kelly had filled this box with secrets. Ali was, in turn, curious and furious.
What mess was this? Was it long over? In perpetuity? That didn’t sound over.
She picked up her phone.
“Hey, Faye. You need to get over here.”