My elderly stepfather hoards his grudges in towering piles, leaving only
narrow paths to his sink, stove, and bed. My sister wonders if these stacks
might collapse. It’d be a terrible way to die, she says. Even his housekeeper can
barely fit inside his door each week. He lets her wash a dish and dust a little
while she tiptoes between the tallest mounds. When his tabby cat dies, he lets
her bury it in the yard. Otherwise, he concentrates on filling every available
surface: again and again, he probes memories of his graduate thesis on
physics, his three failed marriages, that builder who cheated him. The
grudges tremble and sigh, then hiss out puffs of smoke. The piles obscure
the windows and tv, overflow the tub, spill from closets and bookshelves. It
was once a lovely home, shaded by pines on the shore of a clear cold lake. If
he could press all this rancor into stones, he’d pave a path that leads away.
Who plagiarized him? Who voted him off the board? The heaps shimmer
like heat above a highway while he hunts, he really digs, but he can’t find the
injury he’s looking for.