In his Will, Dad left me the righthand corner of our back porch, the crawlspace where I used to hide out as a child, the basement where he first caught me making out with a boyfriend. Our eldest brother with the weight issues had been left the pantry where the earthquake crackers were kept. The middle brother, who inherited Dad’s drinking problem, had been left the cat door and the old liquor cabinet. He had been left all the closets, although he couldn’t afford an apartment.
It seemed Dad had broken down our old house into doorways, closets, corners and such, thinking it wasn’t right to leave the whole place equally to all of us.
After Mom’s cancer, Dad had been forced to return to care for us kids, and to him, the house felt like a cage. So in a way, his odd divisions didn’t surprise us. Our house stood empty, infested by moths, and none of us wanted to live there.
“Fascinating,” one brother said, as we stood there looking around, batting away the dust in our eyes.
“He left me every single one of his Playboys,” my sister chirped, the only sibling who had been given something of Daddy’s besides a part of the house. She sat on the toilet hooting about the desperate ways people mated.
*
Later, when my sister and I were arguing over Mom’s holiday bowls, a moth buzzed around near the kitchen window, thumping against it loudly, damaging its wings.
“Jesus, there you go again, trying to get out, Dad,” she said.
I opened the window. Out he flew.
In that moment it felt like our father finally knew what he needed to do, or who he might belong to. I imagined him landing briefly on the mailbox, staring back at the glow from Mom’s old chandelier before making further use of his wings. But instead, as if he still needed her light, he fluttered madly against the glass.
