THE SLIDING DOOR

The rental home isn’t my style– ‘90s wannabe Mediterranean with a random mix of decorative chickens and seashells thrown in–but it has plenty of room and a fenced-in pool that my daughter cannot get enough of. Seven in the morning and we’re out here already, Aimee twirling in the water in a giraffe inner tube, me clutching a cup of dark coffee with a towel thrown over my legs for warmth. She’s transfixed by the floatation efforts of a rubber ducky she’s found, while I alternately watch her and the group of barrel-chested white birds poking around the fence. They are either great white herons or common egrets–I forget the difference. The birds hunt for worms, whatever else they can dig up on a rainy morning.

My grandmother would have known their full Latin name, the species’ geographical spread, and how they raised their young…or didn’t. But she isn’t here– that’s why we are.

A Florida funeral. Which in this family means cremated ashes thrown into the Indian River, surreptitiously under the cover of darkness since the county had outlawed it several decades ago. Florida had too many old people, too many deaths. Maybe officials thought that if everyone went around willy-nilly tossing ashes in the beautiful places, the rivers would clog–the water choked with bone grit and skin flakes, and it would get too dark for the manatees to see, or more likely, for the tourists to paddle board. Where you could put cremated remains (“cremains,” officially) was more regulated than where you could dump toxic waste. The superfund site down the road from my grandparents’ house in the mangroves could tell you as much.

Tonight, we’d meet my sister, Tina, who was driving down from Tampa, and my great-uncle, Gene, who lives around here but will never tell any of us exactly where, as though whatever shithole he occupies is full of treasures that our generation is dying to get our greedy little hands on. Decorative plates purchased off QVC late at night, a water-logged stamp collection, maybe his old service medals.

Or maybe he does have a trove of Krugerrands and gems–I wouldn’t know. Tina might. She is the good one who stayed local, who invites Gene to all her picture-perfect Thanksgiving celebrations, her July 4th- Halloween- President’s Day extravaganzas. Aimee and I participate in these via social media only, the occasional like or “so cute!” comment.

He’ll come to her house occasionally, but as far as I know, she’s never been invited to Gene’s. In my experience that generation– the greatest according to a completely unbiased television reporter who happened to be a part of it himself– has plenty of secrets they keep to themselves. And when they come to light, people care or they don’t. More often the later.

It’s too much energy to keep secrets. I didn’t really have any myself, other than the identity of Aimee’s father. I didn’t tell my family that particular fact for one reason: I don’t want him to know. And most of the time, living a long day’s drive away in Richmond means that isn’t a problem. We won’t run into him at the grocery store or post office, anywhere he could see her light brown, freckled face, her crinkly plaited hair that didn’t come from my Northern European side of the family. I’d have to be more careful here.

So anyway my sister still thinks I’m someone who can’t discern the identity of her child’s father through the haze of an ever-revolving cast of bed partners. Fine by me. Drinking my coffee now, the thought makes me laugh. Tina always assumes I’ve been up in Virginia, living the good life. In one way I have—Aimee— but it’s been half an eternity since a man shared my bed. Six years and eight months, give or take, to be specific.

“Watch me, Mama!”

I glance up at my daughter, who is precariously balanced on a waterfall fixture between the in-ground pool and the currently-cold hot tub beside it.

“Sweetie, be careful! That edge is slippery.”

Her little feet grip the edge, while her hands grab the giraffe innertube, hiking it higher on her tiny waist. “Cannonball!”

Before I can tell her not to throw herself– before I can even register how fast my heart starts beating– she hurls her small body off the edge. One moment she’s airborne, her entire body suspended like a trick of the eye, afternoon sun glinting off the reddish tint of her hair.

Then she’s gone. The giraffe inner tube floats on the surface of the pool, empty.

My coffee cup clatters to the cement. In a second, I’m on my feet about to jump in, so sure she needs my rescue. Water is filling her little lungs, choking out the vibrant life force that makes my only true purpose on this earth. My heart supernovas in my chest.

Then she pops up beside the floatie, grinning in victory.

“Why are you so scared, Mommy?”

###

The intercoastal waterway smells like compost, the dying gasps of wet dirt and old trees wafting up from the clusters of palm fronds and fallen branches caught in the wooden slats of the breakwater that hold it back. Through the thick dark I can see the bright fuchsia of hibiscus and birds of paradise flowers lining this semi-abandoned stretch of river. Too far from the new, pricey developments to be much of anyone’s concern, other than maybe the conservationists who want it left alone. Or I think that’s what they want. I have always respected the efforts of Florida environmentalists. They are bailing out a sinking ship with one small bucket, and the bucket has a money-colored hole right in the bottom of it.

Tina says that I shouldn’t have brought Aimee with me tonight. She says this in front of my daughter, who hasn’t seen her aunt at all in two years. I laugh, so that she will think Tina is joking, but I catch a small frown on her serious little face. I could smack Tina for that, but I don’t. Violence at funerals is trashy, even for Floridians, current and lapsed.

“Really, you could have just left her with Tom. If you’d come to Tampa like I asked you to.” Tina’s tone is sharp, though I can tell she’s going for sisterly. Her own three kids are at home with her accountant husband, probably eating stove-popped popcorn and watching a developmentally appropriate family movie that they’ll have a fruitful discussion about afterwards.

Aimee’s here with me because I take her everywhere. As a single mom, I don’t have much choice. And I want her to say goodbye to her great-grandmother, who offered us a respite when I was pregnant and sad and between jobs and two men who both were terrible for me. My grandmother showed me early and often what unconditional love really looked like— before her slow decline into dementia broke my heart a thousand times over the last decade.

“Maybe next time,” I say, noncommittally.

Tina stares back, trying to tell if I’m fucking with her, which I am. Next time someone we both love dies? Who would that be? There’s no one left but me, and her, and hapless Gene, who’s here in too-short camouflage shorts and a faded Margaritaville t-shirt, looking back and forth like we’re playing catch with a loaded weapon.

Aimee’s crouched over her feet, playing with the fallen hibiscus flowers. I lean down, pick up the fleshy stem of one and tuck its glorious pink bloom behind her ear, getting a smile that warms me through the dark. “Just a little bit longer,” I tell her.

Tina rolls her eyes, clutching the urn that contains Gigi’s earthly remains like I’m going to steal it.

Gene clears his throat. “Shall I start?”

“Yes, go ahead,” I tell him.

What’s left of his hair has gone completely white, and I remember that he’s older than Gigi, somewhere in his late seventies. His body is thin and rangy, meaning he’s probably still biking around his neighborhood despite the fall risk. His eyes are cataract-milky around the edges but clear blue around the black. He straightens, and for a second I picture him wearing a suit behind a lectern, giving a eulogy in a church like a normal family.

“Georgia Ann was the best older sister any boy could ask for,” he begins. I avoid eye contact with Tina, who is three years and several generations older than me.

“She’s the one who made sure I had clean clothes for school, who brushed my hair and taped up my shoes until we could get new ones. She was smarter by a hundred miles than me, even though she didn’t get past the ninth grade. Dad got called into the Army, and mom had her… fits, so it was hard for a long time. But Georgia Ann always took care of me.” The slick glint of a tear shines on Gene’s sunken cheek.

I put my arm around his thin back, while Aimee watches in fascination from the ground. She now wears the flowers in a crown on her head like a tropical princess. Her pink dress is too long for her even though it should be the right size. She’s always been on the small side, an attribute she got from me.

Gene swallows his Adam’s apple as Tina unscrews the top of the urn. But he doesn’t hesitate, plunging his sinewy arm deep into the metal container and withdrawing a fistful of gray ashes. “I’ll miss you, sis,” he says, tossing them into the black water.

“I’ll go,” I volunteer, not sure of the thousand things I appreciated about my late grandmother to share. “Gigi was warmth itself. The love oozed out of her, whether she was picking me up at school or later, picking me up off the floor.”

Tina winces at the mention of my drinking days, as though the memory physically hurts. It shouldn’t, considering she had absolutely nothing to do with me during that time.

“Gigi… would never abandon anyone. She stuck by us all, and I’m grateful for that.”

Aimee looks up at me, curious. I grab her hand, lift her to her feet and hug her to my side, my precious, wild daughter. With my other hand, I too grab a fist full of Gigi’s ashes, feeling small chunks of cold bone catch between my fingers. Aimee squeezes my leg and we walk together to the edge of the water, and throw my grandmother’s memory in.

###

Later, after three seltzers and four episodes of Doc McStuffins, Aimee sleeps cross-wise on her side of the bed so that her head faces my heart. I look down at my hands, thankful that my nails are cut to the quick so no ash has snuck in under the tips.

Gene had said to call him before we left, but I won’t. Aimee hadn’t said much of anything, for once. We all knew something was ending, or maybe that it already had and this evening was just a postscript. Our life isn’t here. Tomorrow we’ll be back in the Sentra, headed north at a respectable sixty miles an hour.

I reach over the glass-topped wicker nightstand to turn off the light, and nearly knock my can of tasteless bubbles to the floor. A shadow, moving quickly across the pool deck, is just visible beyond the sliding door that separates outside from in.

Sensory reflexes from years of living in shitty apartments have me out of bed in an instant, checking the lock on the door. It’s engaged, but one hard pull and it would open. Hadn’t the owners of this house seen ANY crime documentaries? Sliding doors from the ‘90s were like an invitation to serial killers. Oh, come on in, have your way with us.

I kill the light, plunging Aimee and I into darkness that matches the sky. Submerged lights inside the pool filter up through the water, the only illumination in the sparse yard. My eyes strain, searching the scene for any sign of movement, a person-shaped shadow.

Behind me, Aimee smacks her lips in her sleep. The ceiling fan whirrs above us, sending unevenly conditioned air wafting around the room.

There– by the edge of the pool. Something white flutters into the water. The shape reminds me of Gigi, the way she’d swim fully-clothed to protect her pale skin from the sun. A wide-brimmed hat over her apple cheeks and faded lips. My breath catches raw in my throat as I remember the safety of afternoons together, the way she looked at me as if I were whole even when I wasn’t.

I pull the curtains closed, shutting us off from anything we cannot see.

Lara Henneman is a freelance writer and novelist who is writing short stories to deal with the anxiety of having her first novel out on submission. She has had work published in Mutha Magazine, Mom Egg Review, Dreamers Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and more. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Denver Korbel School of International Studies, Lara has worked for a variety of nonprofits focused on social impact causes. She is a member of the Author’s Guild and Pen Parentis, a non-profit that supports parent-writers. Lara lives with her family and miscellaneous pets in Maryland.