Next of Kin

The chandelier is from Costco. You take the pieces home in a box and assemble it yourself. Over two hundred pieces, crystals, that you place one by one on a metal beam. It is a tedious task. Mindless, but tedious. You could listen to music while you do it; you could watch TV. It will take several months to complete, because you work for a living, and not as a chandeliersmith, which is the name you give to whoever designs the chandeliers they sell at Costco. That person is an artist, and you feel like their apprentice, bringing the prototype to life. You’ve paid for the pleasure. But it was a bargain, fifty-nine dollars, and it looks like a million bucks. That’s why you’re a proud Costco Gold Star Member, for the bargains and the quality goods. Once the job is finished, you will hang it above the dining room table, and the room will be complete. You will host guests for whatever holiday comes next on the calendar. It is Arbor Day. You will host a gathering on Arbor Day! And as you indulge in your Arbor Day feast, you will look up at the chandelier, feeling the outline of the rectangular Costco card in your back pocket, and you will feel satisfied.

When you die and leave your dining room behind, unfortunately before Arbor Day, your father, in town to mourn you, will position the fiancée and two stepdaughters you also left behind under the chandelier and pull a camera out of his pocket. He will ask them to smile. He will say they can do better than that. Your fiancée will tell him that it is kind of hard to smile. She won’t say why, because it is obvious. You have just died, and they will be sad. Not just sad; their world will have been turned upside down. That is a big thing. A thing that feels bigger than anything you ever got to feel, because you yourself have never experienced the type of loss you’ve just inflicted on them, the loss of a partner and of a stepfather. The loss of someone so immediate.

Losing you will perhaps have yet to sink in for your biological family, your mother, father, brother, and sister-in-law, whom you left behind long before you left the world behind. They will be so cavalier as they pace around your house that your fiancée and stepdaughters can only assume they let the grief out of their systems during the four-hour flight from Denver. They will arrive in Miami less than forty-eight hours after your death like they are on vacation, the men of the family in Tommy Bahama button-downs, and the women in flowing dresses with swimwear peeking out from underneath. They will wear these clothes to your cremation and to your shiva. They will wear these clothes as they make your posthumous decisions for you, because you did not have a will, and as your next of kin, they will screw over your fiancée and your stepdaughters.

Your fiancée will slip the extension piece into the dining room table, a task you would normally help her with, but now it is your brother who helps. He will slide his finger across the smooth wood once it is in place and ask whether it is mahogany, or perhaps sandalwood. Your fiancée will not know the answer to this question. All she knows is that the table, like the chandelier, is also from Costco, also a bargain. Your family will take their seats and it will look like a conference table, a far cry from your Arbor Day dreams.

Your brother, the first to open his mouth, will get right to it. “As you know, my brother did not have a will.” He will look around the room, taking a mental inventory of everything in it.

Your fiancée, fighting tears, will share about the time just a few weeks before when you tossed an air mattress into the pool and floated on it together, your skin borrowing more red from the sun than you had time left to give back. You always got her into the pool, she will say, and even if her hair got wet, she wouldn’t mind. Your sister-in-law will adjust the shoulder straps of her swimsuit and pull out a brochure for a company that turns human remains into hourglasses.

“Isn’t it timeless? Pun not intended,” she will smirk. Her legs will be propped up on your brother’s lap. She will look comfortable. “I think he would have just loved this.” She will pass the brochure around the table.

Everyone will remark how beautiful it is, how it is both decorative and practical for time-telling purposes, how it just screams of you. When the brochure lands in your younger stepdaughter’s hands, she will tear it in half and run into her bedroom. The door will slam, sending the dangling crystals of the chandelier into a mild frenzy. Your fiancée will apologize to everyone on her behalf, and kindly explain to them that it was she who found you, not two days earlier, on the bathroom floor. At only thirteen, a sight like that. She will then summon the strength to request that they not discuss matters of what to do with you, or your belongings, so soon. She will request more time to mourn. And isn’t that why everyone has gathered in your home in the first place, she will ask? To mourn you?

“You’re absolutely right,” your mother will say. And she will direct everyone’s attention to the chandelier. She will pull out her phone and show everyone the photos you sent her, without any responses back, of the chandelier in progress. Every week you sent her an update, the number of crystals growing each time. “He worked so hard on that thing,” she’ll say, and everyone will marvel at it. Your father will snap another photo of it with his camera. Your mother will pull her phone back towards her, the contents of the screen reflecting off her glasses as she searches for appraisals of similar chandeliers. Your sister-in-law will fantasize of an estate attorney granting it to her. She will shake the attorney’s hand and kiss your brother like they have just gotten married. And your brother will assess the bolts and screws that hold the chandelier against your ceiling, estimating the size of the screwdriver he will need to remove it and then bolt it into his own dining room ceiling.

Your fiancée will smirk, as though you could see it, at the fact that this beautiful chandelier came from Costco, and they would never guess that you once carried the box of unassembled pieces under one arm, the other hoisting a $1.50 hot dog to your lips, while an employee in an orange vest drew a line through your receipt at the exit. The hot dogs, your fiancée once said, made you so fat.

No one will expect the arrival of your ex-wife and, by extension, her daughter. Who is your daughter, too. The one whom a judge once mandated you call every Friday, though you felt the urge to call her on other days of the week as well. She would only answer on Fridays. It would be brief. She would remind you to fill her bank account and say “uh huh” in response to your work stories and memories you’d recall from her childhood.

The last time you saw her in person was two years earlier, when you and your fiancée took a road trip out to visit her. She would not look your fiancée in the eyes and only took two bites of the meal you treated her to. When you would not buy her a new phone, she told you to drop her back at her mother’s, and once she turned eighteen, about three months before your death, she stopped answering your calls. When the news breaks of your passing, she will post an old photo of the two of you on social media and then spend $500 on a day-of flight to Miami. She will not be wearing a swimsuit, but it is in her suitcase.

No one will expect their arrival, but they will enter your house like they own the place, because they technically will. Your fiancée will nearly faint upon seeing them. Your mother will roll her eyes and remind your father that your daughter never thanked them for the crisp twenty-dollar bill they sent in the mail for her sixteenth birthday. Your brother and sister-in-law will curse under their breath, knowing full well that the battle over your belongings will only be made complicated by their arrival. Your stepdaughters will marvel at the sight of them in the flesh, as they will have only seen your former family in the photos you shared. Your ex-wife will fall into your fiancée’s arms at the door and they will embrace the only way two women who once loved the same man could. It will shock everyone, even each other.

No one will know what to think of your ex-wife’s display of emotion, of whether it is genuine or not. Only you could know that, but you will be gone. You will not be a participant in the game you set up for everyone to play. All that is clear is that your ex-wife and your biological daughter now have the upper hand, because everything goes to the daughter when you don’t have a will.

When your ex-wife removes herself from your fiancée’s arms, her cheeks damp with smothered tears, she will take notice of your fiancée’s ringless hand. It will be all she needs to see in order to breathe a sigh of relief. Your fiancée is, in fact, your fiancée, it’s what you call each other. But her previous divorce had yet to be finalized because her ex-husband was holding things up. So, you were waiting to make it official, to sign the marriage documents. You both knew it was real. Your stepdaughters knew. You were a family, but this could only be proved by word of mouth.

Your biological daughter will introduce herself to your stepdaughters. She will say that she’s heard so much about them. Your stepdaughters will marvel at how her facial features so closely resemble yours. They will feel envy toward the shape of her jaw and the point of her nose. Your biological daughter will lead the conversation, not because she is more extroverted, but because the grief she feels will not be the same type of grief your stepdaughters feel. They still have a long way to go in order to acclimate to the lack of you, while she has already done this, and by her own hand. Your biological daughter will convince them, in their vulnerable state, to lead her to the garage, where most of your belongings are stored.

At the same time, your fiancée will lead your ex-wife to the dining room, where your ex-wife will assume the seat at the head of the table as your fiancée unfolds a metal chair. The chair, un-cushioned and lacking in back support, makes her come up shorter than everyone else. She will wonder if your biological family will want to take this chair, too. They would pull it out from under her if they had to, she thinks.

Your ex-wife will inform everyone of the arrangements she has made at the cremation center several towns over in Weston. It will be in a strip mall nestled between a Publix and a small casino. It will have four stars on Yelp. Your fiancée will cry. She will feel confused. She won’t understand why she will be sending your body to burn in a place she knows nothing about when just two days earlier your breath warmed her shoulder as you snored in bed. She will be unsure of whether these are the proper arrangements to make. She will not want to have to make these arrangements at all, because you should still be there. Your ex-wife will explain to your fiancée that she will not be making the arrangements, that they are taking care of it for her. Your fiancée will beg them to give you a proper burial. She will beg for just a small piece of your remains. They will offer to give her a small piece of you, but only if she lets them sell your house. Which is your fiancée’s house, too, though her name was never on the paperwork. They will insist that it is the smartest thing to do. She will fight and fight and fight your blood relatives, and if you could see it, you would be ashamed of the mess you left her in.

In the garage, your biological daughter will dust off your old notebook containing song lyrics from your time in that rock band. She will read your lyrics, which you wrote when you were in your twenties, and they will make excessive use of the words fly and baby and tonight. She will laugh at your efforts. Your older stepdaughter, wondering what on earth is so funny, will see the book in her hands and recall the day you unpacked all of your belongings after moving into the house. You were both in the garage, and she marveled at your stuff like you were setting up a museum of your personal history, trying to get a good read on who her new stepfather would be. You dusted off the book, which you had never shown to anyone before, and handed it to her as a gesture of sorts. She laughed at the book, too. It was one of the first things the two of you bonded over. So, she will snatch it from your biological daughter’s hands.

“He gave me this,” she will say. But it won’t feel convincing enough just to say it, so she will hug the book into her chest and attempt to cry over it. The tears, fake, used as a tool to convince your biological daughter that she, too, is yours, will emerge from her eyelids as if being dragged.

“Keep it if it means that much to you,” your biological daughter will say. “My mom really just wants me to take what we can sell. I don’t think anyone will want his songbook. The band never really took off.” She will run a finger across the rims of your record collection and wipe the dust on her jeans. She will tap the bell on your bike. “I can’t believe I’m finally seeing where he lived. And you guys. I was always kind of jealous. Florida. You probably go to the beach every day. He invited me here so many times, there was one Thanksgiving I almost bought a plane ticket.”

“Why didn’t you?” your older stepdaughter will ask, wiping a tear from her cheek.

“My mom wanted me to spend it with family, so I stayed with her. I mean he’s family too, but, you know.” She will stick her hand in your baseball mitt, twice the size of her own hand, and for a moment, she will remember the rough texture of your palm as she once gripped it, trusting you to guide her through her youngest years.

Your older stepdaughter will retreat to her bedroom with the book. She will take photos of every page just in case they find a way to take it from her. She will cry real tears over it. She will feel nearly orphaned, fatherless. Your biological daughter will continue to snoop around the garage, stuffing items into her backpack that she insists you would have wanted her to keep. Your younger stepdaughter will keep watch.

Your fiancée will catch your brother in the kitchen, sticking his face in your fridge.

“Sorry,” he will say. “I just wanted to see what he was eating.” He will pull a bottle of wine from the fridge door. “Or what he was drinking.”

“Well, that one’s mine,” your fiancée will say, pulling two glasses out of the cupboard.

“I guess I’m just looking for answers at this point. I don’t know what he must have done to himself this time to end up dead.” They will both take a sip. “I think it’s quite funny that he ended up in Florida. I don’t know if he ever told you, but we used to come down here when we were kids to visit our uncle in Fort Lauderdale. He’d say the same thing to him every time we came down to visit. ‘You know why you’re so big and he’s so small? Because he eats what’s right, and you eat what’s left.’” Your brother will chuckle and shake his head. “We booked a hotel not far from where my uncle used to live. Right on the beach.”

“I’m sure he’d be happy to hear that.”

Your brother will set his glass on the kitchen island you built from scratch. “You only had him for six years, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“He’s my brother, we grew up together. You’re not even married.”

“We were engaged.”

Your brother will glance down at her ringless hand. “You’re in no place to give us a hard time for selling the house and wanting to make something nice out of his remains. My wife has wonderful taste, you know, and she picked out that hourglass.”

Your fiancée, realizing that she will never be able to explain the love she has for you, that it is beyond explaining, will look your brother straight in his eyes and tell him, God forbid, to imagine that his wife, your sister-in-law, has just died. That he will never see her again. And then, perhaps, he would understand the gravity of this loss for her. Your brother does not take kindly to this comparison. Your sister-in-law, overhearing the argument, will run to your brother’s rescue. She will console your brother, caressing his shoulder with the same hand her own engagement ring rests on.

Your mother, who has slipped into the backyard, will dip her toes into your pool, which you’d luckily cleaned the leaves and tadpoles out of just before you passed. She will make a phone call, arranging for your memorial service in Denver, to be held in a room just big enough to fit everyone from your past life. She will be discreet on the phone, speaking quietly, so your fiancée will not hear of it. Your father will hover over a bush next to the pool, taking a photo of a lizard with his camera. When your mother hangs up the phone, your father will lean over his shoulder and tell her how excited he is to show you the photos he’s taken.

“He’s dead, sweetheart,” your mother will say, shifting deeper into the pool to wet her calves. “We’ve been over this.”

When your biological family leaves your home for the day, each of them retreating back to their respective beachfront hotels, your fiancée will open the door to the bathroom you died in two days earlier. She will not have set foot in there since it happened. Your toiletries will still be on the counter, your toothbrush gone dry. She will open all of your drawers, and the smell of your deodorant and shaving cream will escape from them. It will smell like you are standing right next to her. She will run her finger through the tiny residual hairs shed from your electric razor and then place them inside a plastic bag. She will hold it to her heart and cry over it. It will be the only physical remain she will keep of you.

* * *

The chandelier at Costco catches your eye as you lift a miniature spoonful of chili to your lips. It occurs to you, in this act, that perhaps the free samples are meant to bring the size of the world back to scale. The store, bulk in its structure as well as its contents, makes you as a shopper feel small, and only when you are handed a sample do you reclaim your largeness. Readjusting to your true proportions, it occurs to you, also, that your entire world is right here, your fiancée’s hand in yours as you sample your way through the store, your stepdaughters guiding the shopping cart in front of you. Drawn to the light, you release your fiancée’s hand and approach the chandelier, marveling at its potential to bring light into this world you’ve made for yourself. Into, at last, a family.

ELANA MARCUS

Elana Marcus is a New York-based writer from South Florida. She received a BA in creative writing and playwriting/screenwriting from SUNY Purchase, where she received the Ginny Wray Senior Prize in Fiction for her story “Next of Kin.” She is the co-editor-in-chief and founder of Horseheads Magazine.