Kifa sat on the stairs in her black dress, staring at her dead husband’s shoes. Pastor Waters was conversing with Vdekja and Tod, the small gathering of friends eating the food Heriotza had brought. The reverend had led a great service, but appeared uncomfortable still wearing her garments, tugging at the sleeves alternately and smiling beatifically as Kifa’s brother droned on.
“The way I see, Life and Death are two sides of the same coin or maybe the reverse of each other,” Tod said. “Life is always laborin’ away, deliverin’ new life like some sorta short order cook and all Death wants to do is blend all that life up and drink it down as easy and as quick as it can. No appreciation for how beautiful a life is, or how complex.” Tod paused long enough to take a sip from his plastic cup. “Life is always givething this wonderful spread, y’see—” He popped a meatball in his mouth. “Death is always takething away.” He munched away as he rolled the toothpick between his thumb and index. “From the moment after birth, Death is always sippin’ away what Life just got through pouring in.”
“But what is that supposed to even mean?” Vdekja said, cartoonishly shrugging his shoulders. “Death is something we all know. What does this mean?”
“I don’t know.” Tod shrugged. “Maybe Mort was even tastier than most of us. Maybe his straw went a little closer to the bottom. Don’t look at me. I’m not an expert.”
Tod always had a way of stinging with his words. He was Kifa’s younger brother, so Vdekja and Pastor Waters were inclined to give him leeway, but she saw her friend’s shift of discomfort and the faltering of the reverend’s smile.
It was another of those temporary inconveniences that would soon be forgotten, the only remnant the lingering discomfort of every person within earshot.
Pastor Waters’ sermon had been passionate, personal, polite. She had captured as much of the essence of her husband as Kifa could have expected. The reverend’s silence now, in respect of Kifa’s brother’s gaffe, was for her. He should have developed a condiment to go along with the foot he was always sticking in his mouth. His blunders were as common as shoes on feet.
Speaking of shoes…
Kifa sat upright, her eyes again returning to what she’d failed to actually see since they’d returned from the cemetery. She hadn’t seen the shoes for several months now.
They were right there, on the bottom rack like they’d always been whenever they hadn’t been on her husband’s feet. He’d been sick so long…he’d been in bed so long before finally surrendering.
“Are you okay, my dear?” Heriotza asked, suddenly next to her. “It’s a ridiculous question and I’m sorry, but I saw your face just now.”
“No. I’m sorry. I just—” Kifa sighed, pointing with her eyes to the pair of shoes on the rack. “Those are Mort’s shoes.” The other woman turned and looked. “His favorite shoes. Whenever he left the house, those are the ones he wore. No matter the occasion. Birthdays, graduations, funerals—except for his own, anyway.”
She bit her lip as if she could chew up her next words rather than say them. “I hate those shoes.” Kifa laughed and Heriotza joined in. “You know what the worst thing is?”
Her friend grabbed her hand, apparently sensing the next sentence or so was difficult to say.
“I don’t feel bad. I mean, I do. I love him and I miss him. But I don’t feel bad he’s finally gone.”
“My sweet. He was suffering. You’re only relieved it’s over.” She folded both hands over Kifa’s and gave her a gentle squeeze.
Tears had begun streaming down her face. “I feel bad because I don’t feel bad. Does that make some kind of sense?”
“My Kifa—you are a good woman. A loving woman. Mort was a good man. He knows your heart and he knows it was broken well before he passed. The pieces don’t have to fit together like they used to for you to let it heal.”
Heriotza was a good friend, but Kifa wasn’t looking for advice. Kifa realised she needed to feel what she felt on her own. She felt vulnerable and alone and needed to cut herself on those broken pieces.
The sickness that had grown inside him had bided its time over nine months. It had begged her to look and dared her to look away. Had it been sudden, there would have been a break in her grief and a definite point from which she would have been able to heal. Instead, the plasticity of her misery had laid across her soul like a band-aid; each memory of Mort, either in sickness or in health like a barb as she peeled that bandage away.
“Hey, sis, you alright?” Tod came over with a fistful of tissues. He was good for what he was good for, and she took a few with gratitude to dab her eyes.
“I’m good. I just saw…I just saw something that reminded me of Mort.” She blew her nose, then folded her arms, a chill slipping through her. “I think I need to lay down.”
“Almont and I will clean up and I will send him home,” Heriotza said. “I saw a bottle of Prosecco in the fridge. You and I will have a girl’s night.”
Kifa didn’t think she was up to having a guest but didn’t have the strength to withstand the disappointment in her best friend’s eyes. Her brother kissed her cheek and hugged her before she headed upstairs.
Kifa turned back, dashing down the stairs and scooping up her husband’s favorite shoes and hugging them to her chest.
“You all have a good night,” she said. “And thank you for coming.”
Their bedroom was to the left at the top of the stairs. Kifa crossed the threshold and laid in her black dress across the bed she’d shared with Mort for many years, shoes still in the crook of her arm.
They had never had children—her biggest regret was that there wasn’t a part of him still left in the world. She was an unwilling stone rooted in the wake of his loss. And despite Heriotza being here for her at every turn, she was alone.
Mort should have been buried with these shoes.
Kifa didn’t know how she’d missed them so long. Maybe she’d become immune to their presence like signs on oft-traveled roads. Their invisibility had probably been a kind of balm. The shoes of the man who literally walked everywhere in them and then suddenly couldn’t even walk from his own bed to the bathroom.
Seeing them a moment ago had been like a scoring across her heart worse than the last few days of her husband’s life.
She spread herself across their bed, covering as much of his territory as she could, reaffirming her claim against what had taken Mort away from her.
She cried into his shoes until she fell asleep.
Kifa became aware of coming awake. The heavy curtains had been drawn, but it felt like there should be daylight out still, despite the dark of the room.
“Hello?” she said, the quaver in her voice the only indicator she was afraid. “Is anyone still here?” Kifa had no reason to be afraid, but there was something that flagged her sense of danger. Heriotza should have been here unless she’d changed her mind and left. Before she’d come up, Kifa had wanted nothing more than to be alone, now she hoped her best friend hadn’t left.
She slid off the bed and reached for the bedroom door.
–SKRRP-
Something was in the house. That wasn’t a sound like any person she’d ever had in her home, and it sounded more…organic and less like the shift of an unbalanced washing machine or the metallic clanging of a starting furnace. Floorboards creaked and popped downstairs as something moved freely about.
She wrapped her hand around the knob and turned it as slowly as she could. The whispered whine as the metal innards slid across, around, or between each other—Kifa had no idea how such a thing worked—echoed up her bones from her hand to her mouth and she clenched her teeth to stifle the miniscule scream that would declare that she was here.
Rationality monologued that whomever she heard downstairs could only be Heriotza. Kifa mouthed the words to reassure herself as she drew the door inward and peeked into the pronounced dark of the hallway.
–SKRRP-
Kifa jerked her head back, a gasp of air crawling into her mouth. The first sound had been somewhere downstairs. Maybe in the kitchen, maybe in the dining room, or maybe by the front entrance. But the second one was definitely closer, accompanied by the squeaky rhythm of feet ascending the stairs.
She needed to call the police. Her cell phone wasn’t on the end table where she left it every night. In her distress before coming upstairs, she’d probably left it in the living room. They hadn’t had a landline in almost a decade, leaving her the only option to hide.
Kifa only had the two cliched spaces to hide. Under the bed had several shoe boxes and pulling them out would only underline exactly where she was. The closet door was slightly open and it was big. Maybe she might be overlooked.
She pushed her way inside, the door creaking slightly as she crossed the threshold.
-SKRRP-
It was outside of her bedroom, scraping away at the rock of her sense of security. Kifa found a spot near the back of the walk-in and sat, huddling her legs up to her and drawing her arms around her knees. Then she realized she was still holding Mort’s shoes. She wanted to hold onto them, like an anchor rooting her to a notion of calm. But she put them down on the floor so she could have both hands free to pull her dress down over her bare feet. Maybe if she were mistaken for a pile of clothes she could be missed.
The extended gait of feet dragging across the floor was just inside the bedroom. They went around the bed and paused—perhaps it was looking under the bed. She briefly wondered why she thought of whatever was in her bedroom as an it and not a person. Maybe because it was an undefined thing, that she hadn’t seen a face to make it a whole person.
Kifa squeezed her hand around her mouth, ready to crush any errant sound she might make against her will.
–skrrp-
It was by the closet. Hinges that had never wanted for oil groaned and she wasn’t entirely certain she hadn’t groaned with them. She could make out gradations of black and saw the motion of indistinct shapes, despite the lack of discernible light. As it came closer, Kifa willed herself to be a part of the wall, for her flesh to be the cotton-polyester blend of her dress and her breathing to be the trickle of air coming through the vent high up on the wall.
Kifa was emotionally and physically unarmed, seeing the long, thin bones of index and middle fingers, split like an upside-down peace sign. But they weren’t reaching for her, instead hooking the tongues of Mort’s shoes. This visitor had been in her home before, although the last time was for her husband’s unconditional surrender.
As Mort’s shoes were lifted out of sight, dragging feet moved away. Something trailed behind it and Kifa thought she could have reached out and touched the hem of its garment, but she was still too afraid to move. It retreated quickly, the previously pregnant air contracting into a less humid, breathable thinness. A long moment passed before Kifa crawled on her hands and knees, padding back into her bedroom.
They had never met officially and she hoped not to appear on its ledger for a long time. Kifa felt a wash of unexpected relief as her husband’s courier took him his shoes.
But when her hand grazed the lid of a shoe box on the carpeted floor, she paused. Kifa felt around until she found the box that had been beneath the bed before. Then she reached inside the box.
Her favorite stilettos that had been in here were gone.
