Norm and I had been on vacation when Ed across the road from us took his spell or whatever it was he took that ended up killing him and left poor Thelma all alone in that big old house of hers. So, on account of us being in Wichita Falls at the time, Norm and I never had a chance to console Thelma or even bring her a casserole until three weeks after the fact. We didn’t know a thing about it until after we got home. Ray next door said there was quite a ruckus the night Ed died what with the sirens and flashing lights and police and ambulance people and even a big red fire truck parked a little down the road. And there was poor Thelma in her housecoat wandering after the police, following them down the front walk and floating around like she was in a fog.
“Absolutely the most pathetic sight you ever saw,” says Ray, and I can well imagine it seein’ as Thelma always looks a little bewildered even at the best of times. “Funny thing, too,” Ray said, “how she didn’t shed a tear.” Some people will practically drown themselves in a river of tears, but not our Thelma. Her eyes just kept as dry as dry can be.
It came as a surprise, then, to see Thelma start cleaning out the house so soon afterwards. In fact, I’m feeling a little guilty about it, pulling into our driveway after being on the road all day and well into the evening, and even as tired as we were, noticing how there was a D27 dehumidifier (the Desiccator) sitting at the end of Thelma’s drive waiting for the garbage collection, and thinking what a shame to throw out something practically brand new, and taking it inside even before we unpacked all our other things. It was only afterwards Ray came over and told us how Ed had died while we were away, and so we were feeling a bit peevish for having taken Thelma’s D27 Desiccator. It kind of felt like we were taking advantage of another person’s misfortunes.
Well it makes you stop and really have yourself a think when you hear how someone practically your own age has gone and died all of a sudden. For a while there, Norm and I wondered what it might’ve been that Ed died of, but seein’ as we didn’t really know, Norm moved on to talking about the D27 Desiccator. According to Norm, it was a top of the line model, just the very thing we needed to suck the moisture out of stuff. It’s always been so damp and mildewy in the basement. You can’t ever really store old clothes or books down there on account of the spots that grow on the fabric and the paper, and it sure is useless tryna dry clothes on a rack down there. Come back even a week later and they’re still damp, only now they smell. So Norm was just raving about the machine, calling it a marvel of modern engineering, so efficient it’d suck water from a chunk of granite.
Norm plugged in the dehumidifier and got it going. “Works just tickety-boo,” he said, and we wondered why Thelma’d want to get rid of a perfectly good D27 Desiccator. We felt guilty for a bit, then got to work washing dirty laundry from the trip. While the laundry was going, Norm did the lawn and I went across the road to pay my respects and to drop off a bunch of single serving lasagnas I’d thrown together.
Poor Thelma! She didn’t talk much, and none at all about her Ed, how he was dead, or even the circumstances of his dying. I tried to get her to talk about how Ed died, partly because I was curious but partly too because they say it’s good to talk things through. But all Thelma could say about it was that it was too horrible to tell. Mostly she just sat there in the front room staring out the window sometimes muttering something about needing to wash dishes or sometimes humming a snatch from a favourite song that maybe she and Ed had once heard on the radio years before. I’m not always patient about such things. I tried my best to bide the silences between her random comments and old songs, but pretty soon my patience had all dried up and I was itching to get back across the road to finish cleaning after our vacation.
When I’d left for Thelma’s, Norm had been cutting the lawn, but when I came back, Norm wasn’t outside anymore. Going inside, I called his name again and again but there was no answer. Norm’s funny that way, getting preoccupied with one thing and another and wandering off. I’ve always suspected he’s a little bit ADHD—always starting something, then getting distracted when he’s halfway through. Well, I couldn’t find Norm anywhere, so I went downstairs to hang up another load of laundry. I filled up the basket with Norm’s old underwear and work shirts, then set out another clothes rack by the new dehumidifier. That’s when I noticed—there on the floor by the D27 Desiccator—a mound of dust or ashes or grit or something—just a dried up old heap of dirt. “Damn!” I thought to myself, “but it’s well nigh impossible to keep a house clean with Norm living in it. He’s been here tinkering with the dehumidifier again and left himself a pile of dirt.”
I went and pulled out the broom and dustpan and set to cleaning up Norm’s little mess. I had to kneel to get at all the bits of grit, and there, closer to the concrete floor, light from the window well came in at just the right angle and caught the glint of something nestled in the dirt. I brushed away some of the flecks, maybe the way an archeologist might clean up around an excavation, and plopped in the middle of the mound was Norm’s wedding ring. “Damn it, Norm!” I muttered. The man would lose his own head if it weren’t firmly attached to his neck. I picked up the ring and stuffed it in my pocket for safekeeping, but when I did that, the motion shuffled around some of the dirt. There, underneath the first layer, was another glint of gold, something maybe the same size as the end of my pinky. I held it to the light for a closer look. Why, it was Norm’s gold tooth. “Norm!” I shouted. “What have you gone and done?” I scattered the dust some more and found other bits of metal—the rims of his reading glasses, his silver belt buckle, a few coins that he liked to clink around in his left pocket, the car keys. “Norm!” I screamed.
After that and for the next few days things went by in a blur, just the way Ray said they would. There was the police and the ambulance and the fire truck. There was making arrangements and phoning family and friends. There was making sure bills kept getting paid. So when I finally stopped to take stock of things, it seemed like everything had whizzed by in a dream. With a moment to reflect, the very first thing it struck me to do was to throw out the D27 Desiccator. So I called up Ray and had him help me carry it to the end of the driveway, which we did a couple days before garbage pick up. No sooner had I stepped back inside than I noticed how a neighbour in the next block over had pulled up with his van and was loading the dehumidifier into the back. I wanted to cry, but I just couldn’t. There was nothing left for tears.