Not This Time
23
Estate
I CHECKED IN at a Motel 6 on the edge of town. The desk clerk frowned as he looked at my credit card and then at me, but then he shook his head and handed me the key. He pointed out what room I was in and I left him to puzzle out what he was thinking. I didn’t recognize him, so I didn’t think he could have anything more than recognition of the last name, if that.
I went to my meeting at Scoval’s office Monday morning and he went over the inheritance. There was a little money in checking and savings that had been used to maintain payments on the house and my mother’s life insurance policy with me as beneficiary. My parents hadn’t been smart enough to have mortgage insurance. When Dad died, Mother had to keep up the payments, mostly out of his life insurance. Property taxes were escrowed, so the money in my mother’s accounts was sufficient to pay for the mortgage until the house sold and settled. I didn’t think it would take long. I wasn’t going to try to make a killing on the property. What I intended to do this week was get it ready to sell. That would mean taking loads of crap to Goodwill. I’d left it all behind, so there was nothing there I planned to take with me.
Great plans.
Scoval gave me the keys and I went to plan my strategy for getting it cleaned up. I had phone numbers for handymen, movers, and three different organizations that picked up donations. I didn’t even care about the tax credit.
Entering the house was like walking into some kind of historical museum. I remembered things all too well, but I felt like I was looking at the artifacts of someone else’s life. Photos on the end table. A sofa I remembered lying on watching soaps. I forgot that I’d done that when Willa started school. A stuffed animal on my bed that I didn’t recognize with a note that just said ‘Someday.’ Clothes in my closet that I’d left behind. A book. It looked familiar, but I couldn’t identify why until I reviewed memories of my former life. I’d pressed my prom corsage between its pages before I knew I was pregnant. This time, I’d just dumped the stupid flower in the garbage.
There was a picture next to Mother’s bed of her pushing me in a swing at the neighborhood park. I didn’t remember that. It looked like we were having fun. If I had it to do over again, maybe I’d wait until Dad died and then try to make contact with the woman she’d become.
I snorted at my stupidity. I was doing it over. And not much better this time than the first time.
I set about packing things in boxes from the liquor store and stacking them on the front porch for pick up by the big green truck.
“Oh, my. Look who’s here,” a familiar voice said. I looked up at Jesse. I knew I should have ordered take-out, but I just wanted to sit with a beer. Might know I’d choose someplace that he frequented. I briefly considered denying that I knew him, but discarded the idea quickly.
“Hello, Jesse,” I said flatly.
“Hey, I heard about your mom. Sorry.” He was actually being nice?
“Thank you. I just came back to get the house on the market.”
“So how have you been? Where have you been?” he asked.
“Look, I’m not really interested in going into that. I appreciate your condolences, but I never got along with my mother and I don’t plan to be back in Fargo again,” I said.
“Okay. Ah… I’m glad I saw you, though. I just wanted to say thank you.”
“Huh? For what?”
“I know you left town because of what I did to you. I assume you got an abortion someplace. You could have ruined my life instead of just making it impossible to get a date for a year. My mom explained it to me in terms I could get through my thick skull. I just want to say thank you. And I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t do anything for you, Jesse. I got my period the day after prom. You didn’t get me pregnant,” I lied.
“Oh. Well, that’s good then. Um… anyway, if you need any help cleaning things up at the house, let me know. I’ll tell Rebecca I saw you,” he said.
“Rebecca?”
“I, uh… married Rebecca Parsons last year. We dated all through college. We both went to Moorhead,” he said.
“Yeah. Well, good luck to both of you.”
Jesse was nice. My fucking husband who drugged and raped me and stayed on the oil rigs as much as possible, who had affair after affair while I raised our daughter alone, had gone to college and married the slut he slept with the week after he knocked me up!
I could not have been wrong about what I did. I couldn’t!
Still, here I was in my hometown confronted with a letter from a mother who said she loved me and the father of my child who turned out to be a nice responsible guy.
It was a nightmare!
My mother loved me. Jesse was a nice guy. Rebecca was happy with her husband.
It was all my fault. I was the one who made everyone so miserable in my other life. How could I have been such a terrible person? I always considered myself the victim. It was me who carried a child alone. Me who labored alone in the hospital. Me who ultimately raised her alone. Me who my husband cheated on. Me who my parents were ashamed of.
How could my existence have been so terrible for so many people?
And if that was the case, was I doing the same thing to Lily and Bruce? To Emily? To Jim and Gordon? Was I going to ruin their lives since I’d failed to ruin so many others?
Did I come back to Fargo to nail on the sixth side of the coffin?
Darrell Farrell taught me everything I knew about real estate. When I went to the local office with my new license, he took me under his wing and showed me the magic power of listing and how much work it took to sell. He’d been the top salesperson for five years running when I donned my gold jacket. And now I sat across from his desk with my attorney and listed my house with him.
Darrell was a fit and dynamic man, about ten years older than me. He had boundless energy right up until the day he died. That day, we had just closed a sale. He was the listing agent and I sold the property. We finished the closing and went back to the office.
“I’m going to have a big steak and a bottle of wine tonight. I recommend that you do the same thing,” he said. He reached out to shake my hand and crumpled to the floor.
That was ten years before my translation from my former life. Nine years from now in this life. He took the listing and reached across the desk to shake my hand. It was all I could do to grasp it.
“Darrell,” I said, “this might sound a little weird coming from a complete stranger like this, but before you have a steak and a bottle of wine, make sure you get your cholesterol checked.”
“I keep intending to do that, but I never have time,” he laughed. “So many houses to sell.”
“Well, I just don’t want this one to be your last,” I said. He looked at me a little strangely. For a minute, I thought he recognized me from my other life, though we hadn’t met for five more years.
“That would really suck, wouldn’t it,” he said thoughtfully. “I think I’ll take that advice.”
Scoval looked at me a little strangely after that exchange, but walked me back to my car. We’d signed all the papers necessary to give him power of attorney to close the sale when it came. I never actually had to use my Minneapolis address. All correspondence would go to his office. So far as I knew, he was the only person who actually knew where I lived. And he only knew my office in Minneapolis, not my home. Not that he would have any trouble finding me now.
“We’ll get this closed and retire the mortgage. I think the market for a place like this is pretty good now, so with Darrell on the job, it shouldn’t take long. You could get more if you did some updating,” Scoval said.
“If the house was in Minneapolis where I am, I’d consider that. But it is empty and clean. That will have to do. Take any offer that pays off the mortgage. I really don’t care if I see a dime from it,” I said.
“As executor of the estate, it’s my duty to do my best for you. But as your personal representative, I’ll do whatever you say. Drive carefully back to Minneapolis.”
Five days. It seemed like I’d been gone an eternity. I couldn’t wait to get back to my family.
I found it hard to look my lovers in the eye.
“Did you have an encounter in Fargo that we should know about?” Lily asked.
“I think I’ve told you everything,” I said as I continued unpacking a box of photographs. I looked at them and then began packing them up again.
“Honey, you’re hiding something from us,” she said. “Maybe not something that happened, but something that is important.” She lifted my chin with her finger and forced me to look into her eyes. Tears started rolling down my cheeks.
“It was so hard, Lily. It was so hard to see them and to be there. People whose lives I did or could or saw destroyed,” I sobbed. “Jesse is happily married to a nice girl who loves him. He doesn’t have any idea that he has a daughter here in Minneapolis. I’m sure he forgot about even seeing me the minute he got home to his wife. The house I grew up in looked so completely ordinary. I looked for evidence of the crimes I felt my parents committed against me. I couldn’t find anything that didn’t look like a completely ordinary family home. My mother didn’t even discard the photos of my cheating father! They were still there on the bedside table—the three of us happily posing in front of Wall Drug. I don’t even remember having gone there. I drove by Marcie’s house—her mother was giving my father a blowjob when they were killed—and it was derelict. Did I cause that? Would my father have not strayed if I’d stayed home? What happened to Marcie?”
“There, there, honey. The only one of all those people you are responsible for is you. They made their own decisions,” Lily said while petting my hair. I collapsed on the bed, pushing the box of photos aside. Lily lay down with me.
“When the time comes, how will I explain to Emily that she had grandparents I never let her see, who died not knowing they even had a grandchild. How will I answer her questions when she discovers that her father doesn’t know she exists?”
“Just raise her with love—with all our love—and everything will work out.”
“I’m an evil person, Lily. I’m Satan’s bride. Hell! Satan is a woman and she is me! I take the souls of those who love me. I captured you and then Bruce. And because I loved you both, I made you accept each other. I made us have this strange lifestyle so I could have everything I wanted. And I put Emily in the middle of it and used her to tie us together. I’m evil. I’m selfish.”
“Wait…”
“This isn’t like feeling I’m not pretty at Christmas. This is knowing that I’m dirty. This is looking inside and vomiting at what I see.” I turned my head to look at Lily and tears were streaming out of her eyes. Now she knew. She knew what a foul person I was.
“Then you need to quit looking inside. You need to look here. In my eyes. See what I see. Look into Bruce’s eyes and see what he sees. Look into Emily’s eyes. No evil can possibly be reflected from that innocence. Leave the rest behind. Come forward with us.”
I almost succeeded. I left the people of Fargo to be whatever they wanted to be. I even managed a laugh when I discovered who bought the house.
Allen Jenkins and El Sanderson Jenkins.
My God! The best lover I’d ever had—though combined, Lily and Bruce were much superior—and the girl in my class reputed to give the best head in Fargo. I wondered if he even had a clue whose house he’d just bought.
I just hoped—really hoped—they were happy.
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