Voicemail 3
I can’t return everything on the list you sent me because I’m barred from entering the last K-Mart in the state of Massachusetts now. It’s just that I had something to replace there. I know you’ll find this funny, but it’s not, so don’t laugh. You left behind the heart-shaped box of earrings you were going to give me for Valentine’s Day. I put them all in a shot glass of hydrogen peroxide to sanitize them of your hands and they dissolved. First they turned blue, like a shipwreck. Then they were dust.
And I figured you would ask for them back once you realized you had left them–you were always so careful with your bank account–so I went to buy some more. You’d find someone else to give them to–you were always so practical. The K-Mart doesn’t look so good anymore, like it did when we were kids. I was one of the only people there and the color of the floor made me sad.
The Valentine’s jewelry was displayed on roundabouts in the aisle, circle tables tiered like wedding cakes. I wanted to cry. I remembered your mother telling me how when she was young she used to steal from this store so much that her classmates would place orders with her for a small fee. Our world was excess, she said. Shirts and perfumes and hairsprays and jewelry. I didn’t cry yet. She would get anyone shampoo for free. They never caught her.
I spun the carousel and found the last red heart with earrings inside. One pair was different than the ones you had bought for me. They were all so tiny and bright. The backing paper looked worn. I hoped you wouldn’t notice that the glass hearts were missing.
Maybe somehow you never opened the box. I don’t know why I did this, but I put it in my purse and kept walking. When they caught me they told me that I could have just put the earrings on layaway and paid for them later if I didn’t have enough money. The security guard said it to me like it was the simplest thing in the world. Layaway, lady, while he took my picture in front of the claw machine by the door. I’m crying in the photograph.
I had this other picture in my mind of myself walking out of the yellow light into the day, past the religious store next door, winking at the statues in the window and getting into the car and putting those earrings on. I just wanted that picture for myself. It gets hard sometimes feeling like I live in this world where everything else is fading.
Anyway, I asked them to put the earrings on layaway under your name. I’ll mail a check to your mother’s house tomorrow. I have a few of your socks too which I will send separately. Don’t come by to get them, I might not be here.
Elizabeth Walztoni’s work appears or is forthcoming in Roi Faineant, scissors & spackle, HELL IS REAL, and elsewhere. She received a Nature in Words Fellowship from Pierce Cedar Creek Institute to complete her first short story collection. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net & the Pushcart Prize.