Late Stories

What They’ll Find

He wakes up, washes, dresses, makes the bed, lets the cat out, and right after he puts his sneakers on for a short run, he gets a sharp pain in his stomach. He lies down on his bed, doesn’t know what’s causing the pain but thinks it’ll go away. It gets worse and won’t stop. He sits on the toilet awhile, thinking maybe it’s that, but nothing comes. Three hours after he first got the pain, and when it’s hurting even worse than before, he decides to drive to Emergency in the hospital about two miles away. He puts on his muffler, coat and cap, gets his wallet out of the sideboard in the dining room and his keys off the hook by the front door, but feels too weak to drive and sits down by the phone in his wife’s old study and dials 911. EMU comes, checks him over, has him walk to the truck outside and lie down on the gurney in back, and takes him to Emergency. He dies two hours later. In his wallet, under a two-by-three-inch piece of transparent plastic — it’s the first thing one sees when the wallet’s opened — is a handwritten note that says “If I should die unexpectedly or be incapacitated, my name is Philip Seidel, SS#099-56-3324. Instructions on other side.” He wrote that and inserted it in his wallet after he got out of the hospital the last time. The instructions say “Call my daughters, first one first,” and gives their names and cell phone numbers. “If neither’s reachable, call Aaron Henry,” and gives his home, office and cell phone numbers. “If he’s unreachable, call Maggie Rothman,” who was his wife’s best friend since they were freshmen in college together and became sort of a surrogate mother to his daughters after his wife died, and gives her phone numbers, though she lives in New York, as do his daughters. Next he gives his own address and home phone number. Underneath this folded-up slip of paper are two sterile adhesive bandages and several passport and school yearbook photos of his wife and daughters, all of them at least ten years old, which is about how long he’s had the wallet, and one of them his wife’s visa photo to the Soviet Union that goes back to three years before he met her.

His daughters will be called. Or one of them will, and she’ll call the other. Maybe his friend and former colleague will be called by the hospital too, or one of his daughters will call him. His daughters will come to the hospital straight from the train station. They, and possibly his friend — he’s sharp on things; that’s why they’d want him there — will deal with whatever needs to be done after someone dies. Documents. Signing papers. Going through his wallet to find his Medicare and Blue/Cross Blue/Shield cards. Contacting, probably with the help of a social worker at the hospital, a funeral home to pick up the body later that day or sometime the next day to be cremated, something he told his daughters he wanted done with it. His daughters will go home. If his friend came to the hospital, he’ll stick around and drive them, or else they’ll take a cab.

This is what they’ll find at home. The door will be unlocked. The cat will be outside, sitting on the doormat. They’ll let him in and give him fresh water and food. Both of them will probably pick up and hold the cat till he starts squirming in their arms, which he does with everyone when he’s held more than thirty seconds or so, and he’ll either jump to the floor or they’ll let him down.

His daughters will turn most of the lights on in the house and probably, for a while, the outside lights too. They’ll probably check the thermostat in the dining room to see if the heat’s on or at a temperature they want. All the rooms will be clean, other than for some tracks the EMU people made on the kitchen floor. It was still a little wet outside that morning. The cleaning woman, who comes every Tuesday for four hours and then makes herself a mug of herbal tea and a sandwich from smoked turkey and a roll he bought at the local market the day before and lettuce from the refrigerator’s vegetable bin, will have been there just two days ago, and he was always cleaning and tidying up after himself in the house. He never liked to see a single thread or a leaf from one of his houseplants on the floor. There’ll be some slices of turkey left in a zipper bag in the deli tray in the refrigerator. He used to give it to the cat, in small pieces, the next two to three days. He once shared what turkey was left with the cat but hadn’t for months. Not since he stopped eating anything with salt in it after his doctor told him his blood pressure was getting dangerously high and he wanted to put him on a medication to lower it. He told both daughters in separate phone conversations that he didn’t want to go on another pill if he could avoid it. His bowels were already too affected by the pills he’s taking. That maybe a salt-free diet and a short jog in the morning and a long walk that ended with a short jog at dusk and more exercise at the Y than he’s been doing will lower his blood pressure to a level where he won’t have to take any new medication. His doctor didn’t think so, he told his daughters, but they’ll see. It can’t hurt or make things worse, he said; just make eating less interesting. He was already taking a pill three times during the day at six-hour intervals for his Parkinson’s and another pill once a day for an enlarged prostate. He would have taken the Parkinson’s pill with his breakfast this morning after his run and the prostate pill a half hour after breakfast. The pills are in pill containers on a shelf above one of the kitchen counters. These pills and the little smoked turkey left — in fact, everything in the deli tray — and some other foods in the refrigerator they think might be too old or past their expiration dates or they just don’t want to take any chance on will be the first things they’ll dump into the trash can in the kitchen. If they get hungry and don’t use his car to drive to a market or a restaurant for dinner, what will they find in the house to eat? When he knew they were coming for a weekend or more, he bought things they liked. Flax seed bread, bagels, almond milk, Honey Nut cereal, Greek yogurt, goat cheese, other foods he didn’t eat. There’s half a loaf of whole wheat bread in the refrigerator that he bought for himself a week ago, but it’s salt-free. They’ll find it tasteless, even toasted and with butter or jam or both. In the freezer are two of the six bagels he bought for them the last time they were here and which they didn’t want to take back with them, so he froze them and they can have them this time. Also different dishes in plastic food containers in the freezer. He liked to cook and would only eat a quarter of what he made and freeze the rest and rarely ate what he froze and most of the time, a month or two after he put them in the freezer, he threw them out. They’ll dump almost everything in the freezer the next few days and all the spices on the spice shelf on the kitchen wall, most of which have been there more than a year. There are cans of different kinds of salt-free beans and diced and crushed tomatoes and tomato sauce in a kitchen cabinet. There are also several pastas and a box of rice noodles in that cabinet. So it’s possible that instead of eating out in a restaurant or going to a market for food they’ll make dinner from some combination of what they find in the kitchen cabinets and a salad from the refrigerator’s vegetable bin and fruit from the fruit bin and the bowl in the center of the dining table — bananas, clementines, a grapefruit, ripe pears — and wine from one of the bottles in the two wine racks under the sideboard.

They’ll find in the refrigerator part of what was to be today’s breakfast he prepared the night before. A bowl with soy yogurt and cranberry compote he made a large batch of so he could have it every morning for one to two weeks and a sliced banana. That’ll also be dumped. They’ll also find in the refrigerator a small plastic container of cut-up fresh fruit. Sometimes he prepared three containers of fruit at once, usually the same fruits equally distributed in the containers, lidded them and took them out one at a time with the bowls the next three mornings.

A salad fork for the fruit and tablespoon for the bowl of cereal will be on the one placemat on the table, a folded-up cloth napkin under them. He put the utensils there the previous night before he went to bed, something he did every night if he knew he was going to have breakfast at home the next morning. The napkins and placemat will be a little stained with food, since he also used them for his last two lunches, and they’ll drop them into the washing machine in the kitchen. They won’t find anything in the washing machine when they open it or anything in the dryer next to it. He did a wash two mornings before and folded up everything and put it away. The spoon and fork they’ll put back into the utensil drawer under a kitchen counter.

The coffeemaker on the short counter between the stove and sink will also have been prepared the night before: water, filter paper and grounds. Alongside the coffeemaker will be the mug he planned to drink the coffee out of and a thermos he was going to pour the rest of the coffee into after he filled up the mug.

He didn’t pick up his newspaper by the mailbox this morning, so it’ll still be there. They’ll pick it up the next morning with the next day’s newspaper. They knew his morning routine almost by heart now. They’d seen it when they were there and got up early enough and he talked self-mockingly about it on the phone several times. “It’s crazy,” he said, “but since your mother died this is what I do.” If he hadn’t gotten sick he would have made sure the living room door to the porch was locked, gone outside through the kitchen door and locked it, taken a short run with maybe a brief stop or two on the roads’ shoulders when cars were coming his way, got the newspaper at the end of the run, unlocked the kitchen door, hung the keyring on one of the hooks by the door, turned the coffeemaker on, taken the container of fruit and bowl of soy yogurt, compote and banana out of the refrigerator, or done that before he left the house, got the jar of sodium-free granola off a kitchen shelf and spooned some of it into the bowl, set the bowl and container of fruit on the placemat on the dining table, poured out a mug of coffee and put it on a coaster on the table, poured what was left in the coffeemaker into the thermos, shut off the coffeemaker, let the cat in by now if he wanted to come in and given him a fresh bowl of water and a plate with wet food on it, which he would have got out of the refrigerator or opened a new can of cat food from the kitchen cabinet that had all his canned foods, or if there was very little food left in the can from the refrigerator, done both; brought the newspaper to the table if he hadn’t already left it there when he came back into the house after his run, taken his first Parkinson’s pill of the day if he hadn’t already taken it, and sat down at the table and started to eat his breakfast and drink his coffee while he read the newspaper, starting with the capsule weather forecast for the Washington edition at the top right corner of the page.

They won’t find any dishes or utensils or pots or pans or anything like that in the kitchen sink or dish rack. He washed the little there was last night and put them away. The paper bag of paper, plastic, metal and glass for the single-stream recycling pickup this Friday will be next to the trash can in the kitchen. On top of the dryer will be the book he was reading last night in the living room easy chair and which he put there by the door so he wouldn’t forget to take it with him to the Y the next day. They’ll find in the refrigerator an aluminum pie pan, covered with aluminum foil, the dinner he would have had tonight. He’d cooked two chicken breasts and some root vegetables together in the oven last night. Then, standing beside the stove and without cutting up the chicken breasts but waiting till they were no longer hot, he ate with his fingers about half of what was in the pan. The dinner was so good, and he was also a bit tired of cooking something different almost every night, that instead of freezing what was left in the pan, he’d have the same dinner tonight. They’ll re-cover the pan with the same foil they found on it and throw all of it out too.

Dining room will be tidy, everything — chairs under the table, place mat, napkin, eating utensils — in its place. He rearranged the fruit in the fruit bowl the day before so it’d look neat and nice. Living room will also be tidy, except for an empty juice glass on the end table next to the easy chair, which he drank two glasses of red wine out of while he was reading the previous night. The empty wine bottle will be on top of the recycling bag. They’ll think it was so unlike him to leave a dirty glass on a table overnight, and he must have forgot to bring it into the kitchen to wash it. They’ll figure out, if not this week then the next, which day the garbage gets picked up and which day all the recyclable stuff, and also to put the trash cans and things on the street early that morning or the night before. They’ll bring the juice glass to the kitchen and probably have to soak it awhile in soapy water to get the dried residue off the bottom of it. There’s no scrub brush in the house to get in that glass, and a sponge with detergent on it never got rid of all the residue.

Their beds haven’t been touched, other than for the cat taking morning and afternoon naps on them, since the cleaning woman cleaned their rooms and straightened their covers and pillows the last time she was here.

They’ll have some work to do in his bedroom. He made his bed after he got up. They’ll strip it and wash the linens with the two towels and washcloth from his bathroom, and in another wash the patchwork quilt Abby and he had a woman in Maine make for them about thirty years ago. They’ll throw out his personal items in the medicine cabinet above the sink: comb, hairbrush, toothbrush, nailbrush, shaving soap, and maybe his shaving brush and razor and package of razor blades. Or maybe they’ll include the shaving brush with the other things of his — clothes, shoes, slippers, his one tie, and so on. . coats, sport jacket, belts, his one dress shirt, which he ordered from L.L. Bean several years ago and never took out of the plastic bag it came in — they’ll give to organizations like Goodwill and Purple Heart. What also might go will be what remains of their mother’s skirts and shirts in his bedroom closet and which they told him a number of times they didn’t want. They never took any of her clothes other than two mufflers, and those only when it was very cold outside and they needed something warm around their necks, and some head scarves he never saw them wear and two knitted wool caps she brought back from the Soviet Union before he met her. For the last three years he’s been gradually giving her clothes to the same organizations. There are two empty drawers in their dresser that were once filled with her belongings. His old terrycloth bathrobe, hanging on a hook on his bathroom door, is too ragged to give away, so they’ll dump it. They’ll also probably throw out the shopping bags of tax receipts of the three previous years that are in his bedroom closet and seemed to spill over to the floor every time the cat got in there. They’ll probably keep, once they see what year it’s for, or at least till they speak to his tax accountant, the bag of receipts for this year. They’ll also give to Goodwill or Purple Heart the two ten-pound weights on his night table that he exercised with most mornings, and the two fifteen-pound weights they’re resting on, which he stopped exercising with a year ago when he bought the ten-pound weights.

What to do with his writings, though? And his typewriters, two spare ones on a shelf in the guest closet, and the remaindered copies of his books in cartons in the basement, and all his writing supplies? Between them, they’ll keep a few copies of each of his remaindered books and give away the rest. Maybe his former department will want some to give to its students, or the Baltimore County library system might be able to use them. They won’t know what to do with his old manuscripts of published works they’ll find in the file cabinet under his work table and the newer unpublished manuscripts and photocopies of them on the bookcase in his bedroom, and will have to ask his writer friends and former colleagues. Maybe the school library’s special collections department will take both the old and new manuscripts along with whatever notebooks and letters and such they find of his and a copy of each of his books. As for his writing supplies — one of them will keep the unopened ream of paper for her copier. The other stuff — typewriter ribbons, correction film, binder clips, lots of cheap pens and two staplers and a box of staples and so on — they’ll probably stash in the bags for Goodwill and Purple Heart, hoping some of it can be used. The typewriters, if no writer they speak to wants them or knows anyone who does and none of their friends want them either, they’ll give away to one of those organizations. And all those photographs. Boxes of photographs, albums of photographs, drawers of photographs. He kept them without ever taking them out and looking at them, except for the memorial album his daughters made of their mother, but they’ll know what to do with them.

On his writing table is the typewriter he worked on the last few years. Never broke down. “Never gave me trouble,” he used to say. “I have spares that I’ll probably never use.” To its immediate right on the table is the first draft of the story he was working on. To its immediate left is the pile of scrap paper he took from to work on the same page of the story over and over again till he was satisfied with it and was ready to switch to the clean final-copy paper. And to the immediate right of the first draft of the story is the stack of clean paper. Behind the typewriter is the part of the story he completed — fourteen pages held together by a binder clip. All the stacks will be neat. He made them that way yesterday after he finished writing for the day and fitted the dust cover over the typewriter. It was getting dark out and the two lamps on either side of the typewriter, each with warnings on the inside of the shade not to use more than a 60-watt bulb, don’t give enough light to write when it gets that dark. Besides, he was tired after writing for a total of about eight hours that day. The story in progress, the completed part and the first draft, will also probably go to the special collections department if it’ll take it with his other manuscripts. The dictionary and thesaurus he kept on the table to the left of the scrap paper pile are in too bad a shape — lots of dog-eared pages, especially at the front of the books, and covers separating from the spines — to give to Goodwill or some other place or keep themselves. So they might put the books in their own shopping bag, because they’ll be so heavy — maybe even double up the bag before they put the books in — and put it out with the rest of the recycled paper or throw out with the trash.

What they call the guest bathroom — the one off the hallway between their bedrooms and his — will be in the condition the cleaning woman left it the last time she worked for him, except for the kitty litter box, which might need changing. The cleaning woman, which was okay with him, never took care of that. Though the cat, even when it was raining or snowing, usually found a dry place outside to dig a hole and piss and crap, so they might not have to deal with it. The towels on the towel racks in the bathroom and the bathmat folded over the bathtub rim haven’t been used since he washed them after his daughters’ last visit, so they won’t have to be changed either.

His wife’s old study will also be neat and clean, other than for a demitasse saucer on the computer table that he used as a coaster for whatever he was drinking while answering e-mails or just seeing if he got any. If the saucer seems clean they’ll probably put it in the kitchen cupboard on top of the other demitasse saucer and small plates without even rinsing it.

There are no other rooms in the house. The basement, but nothing down there but the furnace, water heater, well tank, dehumidifier, which he got when they bought the house and turned on when the weather started to get muggy and left on till around the middle of October, and a floor lamp and empty dresser. Also a few children’s records and an old phonograph, that has no needle in it, on top of the dresser, and cartons of remaindered books — not only his but ones his wife translated, and for two of them, wrote introductions to — stacked one on top of another with the titles of the books written on the sides of the cartons facing out, and many stretched and rolled-up paintings his daughters did in high school and college. Up until about ten years ago they also used the basement as a playroom and later as a place to hold sleepovers.

Closets? Nothing much in them except for the one in his bedroom. By now his daughters’ closets are almost empty. And the hallway closet has his two reserve typewriters and a couple of his coats and, hanging from hangers, about five of his wife’s shawls friends of hers had given her once she was only able to get around outside in a wheelchair. Also a walker he was discharged from the hospital with after he got sick with a bowel obstruction two years ago and had to be operated on and a shower chair his daughters bought him after he got home. He’d been meaning to bring both to the basement and leave them there for possible future use or give to a loan closet.

They’ll know where to go to start dealing with his personal matters. Everything they’ll need for this is in a file folder under the computer table next to his wife’s sewing machine, which they’ll also probably give away. The folder has specific instructions what to do if he dies or is mentally or physically unable to handle his finances anymore or the business of the house and car and taxes and so on, and all the documents that go with them. Stapled to the folder’s flap is a sheet of typing paper — he’s told them this and pointed it out a number of times — saying something like, but definitely using this greeting: “My darlings. Instructions what to do in event of my death or permanent inability to conduct my own affairs are in the first sleeve of this file folder — sleeve A, and right at the front of it, first thing you’ll come upon.” The instructions, which are three typewritten pages, start off with the names and phone numbers of his lawyer, financial advisor and tax accountant. Each should be told of his death or incapacity as soon as possible, the instructions say, so everything he owns and things like the federal and state estimated taxes they’ll have to pay and their mother’s testamentary disclaimer trust can be temporarily or permanently transferred to their names. Included in the instructions are the account numbers of his portfolio with his financial advisor, the number of his TIAA-CREF account and the phone number for it, the phone numbers of all the places he pays his bills by automatic bank withdrawals — utilities, phone, secondary health insurance, E-ZPass, AAA and so forth, his Social Security number and the Social Security Administration phone number to call if he dies so it’ll stop depositing a monthly check in his bank account. Everything like that. His credit card and checking account numbers and phone numbers there. Even the phone number of the funeral home that cremated their mother and should cremate him. “What to do with the ashes?” he wrote. “Your call. But I’d advise leaving them at the funeral home.” Each document and contract in this folder, the instructions say, will be in the appropriate alphabetical sleeve. House deed and home insurance in the “H” sleeve, for instance. Title to the car and auto insurance in the “A” for automobile, sleeve. “You’ll figure it out,” the instructions say. Contract for the roof put on about ten years ago—“It’s a 20-year guarantee”—in the “R” sleeve, new windows put in just a year ago, in the “W” sleeve, and so on. “Don’t think of all this as being morbid,” he wrote in the instructions. “I don’t want you to go through the hassle and stress I did after your grandfather died. He left no instructions what to do with his estate and where his investments were and who was the insurer for his co-op and where the keys were to his safe deposit box at his bank, and dozens of small and big things like that. You know the story. He said all the important papers and contracts and monthly statements and names and phone numbers of the financial people to get in contact with and such after he died were in the top drawer of his dresser. But there was nothing there but boxes of cuff links and tie pins and watches and about 20 white handkerchiefs and the same amount of black socks, and a thorough search of his apartment also turned up nothing. He was a great person,” he wrote in the instructions, “and I loved him more than I did my own father, but it took me a year and a half to sort everything out. Your dear mother, his only heir, was unable to help other than for going to the bank with me about once every two weeks to get her signature notarized on one document after another.” He also wrote where to find the key to his safe deposit box at his bank, which has a lot of valuable gold coins in it—“Krugerrands, they’re called, which your grandfather gave your mother a few of almost every year.” Also, that behind the Beckett section in the bookcase in the living room are two small jewelry boxes with their mother’s very valuable pearl necklace, which her mentor at Columbia willed to her, and the not-so-valuable, other than its sentimental value, amber bead necklace he gave her as an engagement gift. “In those boxes are also some pins and earrings and earstuds of your mother’s, and our gold wedding bands and the much wider gold wedding bands of her parents, all of which — certainly the four wedding bands — ought to be worth something at Smyth Jewelers on York Road, which is where I’d go to sell them,” he wrote. “But you two should keep the necklaces and wear them, as your mother did, on special occasions. Or anytime you want, really, and hand them down to your children, if you have any, when they grow up and if they’re girls, or your daughters-in-law, if you only have boys, and they marry. The Krugerrands will only get increasingly valuable every year, maybe so much so that you’ll be able to send your kids through college for a couple of years after you’ve cashed in the coins. But do what you want with everything. Don’t keep anything just for my sake.” At the end of the instructions he mentioned the automatic generator outside and the well in the basement and what companies to call to get both serviced twice a year. “It’s important to do that if you want to keep them running smoothly. If you sell the house right away, tell the new owners this.”

They’ll come into the house, after they leave the hospital, and probably find the kitchen ceiling light on. It was gray and dreary out the morning he got that sharp pain that wouldn’t stop and kept getting worse, and he had turned on the light when he first went into the kitchen. Usually he didn’t have to.