The Purge

Lisa sat on a dust covered wicker chair and examined the boxes around her, printer paper box shaped tree rings. The topmost was easily sorted through—bowls, knife and utensil sets, and the odd garlic press or grater—mostly the domestic aftermath of the dissolution of a one-year marriage. They’d waited patiently in these boxes while Lisa searched for and lost herself in exotic locales. Now that she’d returned, their fate was to wait for a new home on the shelves of Goodwill.

She’d wanted so much to want the life she willed into existence that year. The mortgage, stable jobs with 401K plans, her own car and car space in a garage. But the life came with an actual person included, and out of kindness to him, she ended the charade as painlessly as she could.

The next layer of boxes acquired in her college years contained essays written in the lifting fog of drug-fuelled parties, ticket stubs and brochures of random tourist places that were always seen as a lark rather than what they really were—a way to put off the future, if only for a few hours. Bottle caps and scrawled upon napkins that were talisman of moments she had felt she was fitting into her skin just right. The papers, the detritus of short-lived romances, and bug-ridden obsolete textbooks were dumped into a growing black garbage bag.

She had four days to remove her belongings from her mother’s attic before a new family moved in and crowded the spaces with their own memories and rubbish. Since she had moved half way around the world, she had repeatedly told her mother to throw out, donate, or sell all of it, mostly out of a desire to not face the boxes or the visit. Now that her mother had finally down-sized to a tiny apartment, she herself was forced to get rid of 30 years of accumulated treasure and begged Lisa for help.

Lisa put one box to the side, simply marked “Dad”, knowing that if she opened that one, she’d never finish. She then tackled the most battered boxes, some covered in stickers which still sparkled and if smelled closely, emanated a faint scent of grape and strawberry. These items had been handled hundreds of times when she was in her teens but rarely looked at in the last several years. There was the plastic tub of folded triangles, containing declarations of never-ending friendship and recycled gossip. There were brown stubs of corsages, rocks, shells, single earrings, and a mother of pearl handled knife found on a day she and four other girls skipped Chemistry and walked the four miles to the river. There were diaries with broken locks which contained poems that were much too sad for the purple and pink heart-filled pages. These bits and bobs went without protest to the bottom of the plastic bag where they instantly seemed to lose their magic.

She surveyed the small dusty room, noting that the bags of rubbish far outweighed the Goodwill piles. She tried not to take it as a sign that there was little worth to her life up to this point. Sighing, she drew the lone small box near her feet. She had never opened the box since filling it the day after the funeral. She’d been told to take whatever she wanted but it was obvious most of the treasures had been chosen long before her plane had arrived. It felt somewhat barbaric, like they were all a bunch of scavengers pecking at the remains of his personality.

At the top were coasters from pubs he’d frequented when he lived in London. Seeing them always made her think of cosy wooden booths, old Victorian carpets, the clanking of heavy glass mugs and his infectious laugh. When he was gone, she’d watch “Only Fools and Horses” on PBS and imagine that he was there, just off camera, maybe telling a funny story.

Nestled in a silver stein were small, greying plastic bags filled with coins, each bag from a different country he’d visited or worked in. Whenever he returned from a trip and added new coins to the stein, he sang David Bowie’s “Changes”, leaving off the -s. He showed her each coin, making up stories about what he’d bought---a sandwich for a tiger in China, a two-pound bratwurst in Munich, a newspaper for the Queen in London, taxi fare on the Amazon in Brazil. She’d beg for details and laugh and squeal until the sadness of him having been gone faded away.

Stories of faraway places became less frequent as she grew older and he travelled less. Conversations focused on algebra and college entrance exams. She wanted to spend a year travelling while he insisted she get a degree first, preferably in some field that had actual job prospects.

Pulling out the baggies of coins, the regret seeped in. The way she’d ploughed through her four years of schooling, ignoring his calls and emails out of resentment and spite. And the worst—leaving him on his own in the campus town so she could celebrate her graduation by getting high with people she barely knew. Though she didn’t have much, she’d give everything just to sit and chat with him again. Even if for ten minutes.

At the bottom of the stein was a folded piece of paper she’d never seen before. Opening it, she immediately recognized the imperfect scrawl.

“Your world is a big place. See it. But know that you are MY world and always will be.”

She’d placed the stein and its coins in the donation pile, hoping that some kid might be inspired to see where they’d come from. As she and her mother looked around the rooms and locked the doors for the last time, they both smiled, feeling the lightness of new beginnings. On the plane, Lisa folded and unfolded the note, marvelling at how something so small could be too big to throw away.

The Slice

When Mikey died the other ex-pats were surprised to realise that out of all the lies, the fact that he wasn’t really a New Yorker most disappointed them. Everyone had loved Mikey. He was a huge guy with even huger hands and when they hit you on the back with a “how yous doin’?”, you were “in”--even the curmudgeonly Chester whom nobody wanted to pat on the back let alone embrace in a long held bear hug. Mikey had a permanent growth of stubble and deep blue eyes with lashes so long the Thai girls swooned with love and jealousy. Though he was a big guy whose former muscles had turned a bit soft, he never seemed to sweat in the heat. A scent of aftershave and soap trailed him, even after a long session of drinking.

Mikey had arrived with a Harley and one suitcase three years prior and soon had set up The Slice, a small pizzeria with an actual wood burning stove imported from China and beers from Belgium. He sold slices, which the Thais ruined with lashes of mayonnaise and fake crab reluctantly offered for free. The ex-pats filled up a long table and ate an entire pizza as they went through the night, a new slice with each new beer. And all the while, Mikey and his infectious laugh and banter kept the night going. When people left the table at The Slice either to fall into a long blissful sleep or to frequent the shadier locales, it was with a sense of camaraderie and brotherhood. Mikey and his loveable New York accent and Italian-American hospitality made him the heart of the mostly unhappy and depraved bunch.

Everyone who found themselves in the tiny gulf-side town had a story and it was a rite of passage to eventually give the narrative, often in the hours before dawn long after beer had been replaced by whiskey. Mikey’s story involved vague references to the war in Iraq and a book that had sold well. Though the story was generally accepted, more than a few people thought it strange that Mikey seemed uninterested in any topics beyond sport, motorcycles, and comedy. They figured he had mob ties and had escaped with someone else’s money or was even perhaps in a witness protection program.

Many people asked to read the book. After all, there wasn’t much more to do than drink. Mikey just laughed and said he didn’t own a copy and that it would probably put them all in a coma if they found one, which they wouldn’t “on account of I used a fake name.” On the contents of the book, he was even more close-lipped. “No way I’m going down that memory lane. Life is the here and now.” And then he’d ring a bell which meant that everyone would get a beer on the house.

Mikey’s big heart, which organised charity rides for the region’s orphans and made even the most cynical of the ex-pats smile, failed him on a particularly hot day when the lads were playing basketball against a group of nimbler Thai teens. He wasn’t on social media and only used email to order products for The Slice, so the consulate in Bangkok had a bit of work in tracking down his next of kin, who showed up three days later in the form of a travel-weary fidgety man named John.

John had managed to contact someone in the group and met them in the hotel bar. After the requisite questions about the flight and the accommodation, they began lobbing questions at the wiry man.

“Why did you call Mikey ‘Martin’ in your email?”

“Mikey? Is that the name he used this time? I always preferred Vinnie. More ethnic sounding. Mikey sounds like an adult retard.”

“What are you on about?”

“Which story did he tell you? Ex-baseball player who lost his career after an injury? Former pilot for a drug cartel? Or was it that he donated a kidney to an oil tycoon? That was my favourite.”

At this point, John was twirling his empty glass between his hands and his leg seemed to be shaking uncontrollably. He didn’t look at any of the men as he spoke.

“Martin is my younger brother. We’re from Iowa. He was a welder like the old man. I escaped to New York. Parents were killed by a drunk semi-truck driver. They didn’t even see it coming. We got a huge settlement. More than two guys in their 20s would know what to do with.”

“Are you taking the piss? Mikey’s from fucking Iowa? But the accent? And what about Iraq?”

At the mention of Iraq, John became very still and looked at the man with two empty eyes.

“He said he was in Iraq? That surprises me.”

“Why did he lie to us?”

“Why do any of us do what we do?”

John had agreed to let Martin/Mikey be cremated in the local temple. After the long service in which more than a few Thai women cried and huddled near the body, the ex-pats sat at plastic tables in the courtyard in their finest clothes drinking their finest whiskey. They cried at the double loss of their friend and their trust. John was nowhere to be seen.

The ex-pats eventually got on with their lives, finding a new table to gather round at the end of each workday and trying to create the bonhomie they’d once had. One day, Nigel came in, carrying a book and looking paler than usual.

“The book was real. And it wasn’t about Mikey. It was about John”

There he was on the back cover, huge arms folded and serious expression that fit the synopsis about a man from New York whose older brother went to Iraq, came back mentally ill, and destroyed the family.

“I knew he was bonkers! But why did we believe that stuff about Mikey?”

“Why do any of us do what we do?”