Katrina of Avon Place

I cleaned up by writing a check for
$2169.09 made out to Jagers and Sons.
I say I cleaned up.
I didn’t, of course. My work was easy.
The Jagers took care of the cremation,
the interment of the ashes next to my father’s,
the engraving on the headstone.

That same check covered the death certificates,
the guestbook at the service,
and the placing of obituaries in The Messenger,
The Public Opinion, The Ocean County Observer.
I drew the line there.
We didn’t need to send to The Dispatch or The Asbury Park Press.
That would be excessive.

Peter and Mark asked why.
They wondered was I being tight.
I didn’t want to waste her money, true.
I say her money.
It was our money by then, of course.

Anyway, one week after the D.O.D.
Mark drove off in her LaSabre loaded with the Spode
and the Westmoreland for the granddaughters.
Peter and I divvied up the stash of soap and toilet paper.
He drove off to Louisville with the boys
and with frozen vegetable soup she had made
I wondered when. I couldn’t have eaten it.
Funny, I could eat what was left of her bag of bite-sized Snickers.
And I grabbed the ball of string she had wrapped,
tying maybe a hundred small pieces together.

Before I left I ironed the white t-shirt
she had left on the ironing board.
I changed the message on her answering machine.
I thought about saying “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.”
I say I thought about saying that. I didn’t, of course.
I turned the heat back and shut off the water.
I pulled the door to 43 Avon Place closed
and locked it.
That was easy, like pushing the red Staples button.

I say easy.
It was strikingly easy to clean up the pieces of her life.
Of course the storm hadn’t yet hit.