The imposing, ornate statues and obelisks are arrayed behind her on the broad hill that slopes north toward the entrance. Here the markers are modest; her father’s is a pale granite slab, three feet wide and two feet tall. She didn’t have a hand in choosing it. Her father’s brother, Jeremy, took care of it, albeit grudgingly. At the time his attitude barely registered with Jackie, as she was simply grateful not to have to cope with it herself. Her mother was deeply uninterested, and Samuel Strelitz had no other family nearby.
Jackie visits the grave every year on her father’s birthday, November 3. Grace began joining her on the fourth visit, when Grace was twenty-two, the same age Jackie had been when their father died. Jackie never asked her sister if this was the reason; they never discussed the visits at all except to comment that every year, without fail, the weather was fine, like today. Jackie always brings blankets, a thermos of tea, and lunch. Grace brings as few of her children as possible.
A caretaker drives a small tractor along a nearby path. Jackie considers that she has been honoring this ritual for almost as long as she had a father. If she doesn’t always find it comforting, it nevertheless feels right.
“Hey there, Jacks.” Grace walks up, arms spread wide. She’s wearing an enormous coat—probably belonging to her husband, Hector—which makes her appear smaller than she is. She’s only a little shorter than Jackie, but finer-boned and packed with energy like a terrier.
Jackie scrambles to her feet and embraces her sister. She smells of almonds, as she has since she was a newborn, and banana, a consequence of having five children between the ages of one and seven. “No babies. How did you manage that?”
Grace tucks a windblown lock of auburn hair behind her ear. “Hector’s sister to the rescue. I feel positively naked.” She spins in a carefree circle, then frowns. “Probably shouldn’t do that in a cemetery, huh?”
Jackie gestures to the headstones. “Lots of moms here who understand. Tea?”
“Please.”
They sit cross-legged, drinking tea and eating ham sandwiches, their father’s favorite. That tradition began after Grace asked, during their third annual visit, what their father liked to eat. The sisters did see their father after he left, but no more than two or three times a year, and never overnight. Their mother, Cheryl, remained in control, helped along by Samuel Strelitz’s descent into alcoholism. Jackie is the repository of their father’s memory, which she doles out to Grace, piece by piece, at his grave. They rarely speak of him outside these visits, either because their interest in him cannot be sustained or because they both tacitly acknowledge that Jackie’s repository is not very deep and they would soon run out of stories. What then?
“I remembered something,” Grace said, as she finished the last of her sandwich.
“Yeah?”
“Or I think I did.”
Jackie nodded. Memories were slippery, but especially Grace’s, since she’d been only five years old when their father moved out.
“The night he left, did he come into our room? To say goodbye? Because I think I remember that.”
Jackie gives her sister a weak smile. They could not have known he wouldn’t be coming back, so it was just another night to them, one like many others during which they listened at their bedroom door to their mother’s serrated accusations and their father’s unintelligible replies. If they had understood the importance of that night, the details would be cemented in their memories.
“Maybe,” Jackie says. “I don’t remember that, but maybe.”
“I think he was looking for something, or said something.” Grace pulls her knees to her chest and sips her tea. “Probably a dream, huh?”
“It makes sense, though. I imagine he wanted to say a lot of things he never did.”
“Like what?”
They had this conversation during a previous visit. Jackie can’t recall when, nor can she recall her answer. When your father is a ghost, it’s hard to pin anything down, even the simplest things. “That he loved us. That he was sorry.” Grace nods. “He probably didn’t see the point in saying it because from his point of view he’d failed us already. He’d lost us and probably thought what he said or didn’t say didn’t matter.”
Grace’s eyes fill with tears. “That’s too sad, Jacks.”
“I know.” Her throat tightens.
“He hadn’t lost us at all.”
“I know, Gracie.” She pulls her sister into her arms. “That’s why we’re here.”
They hold each other for a long while.
Jackie pulls back and adjusts her hat. “I remember when he walked me to the school bus, you rode on his shoulders every day.”
“I remember that. Or maybe it’s just from you telling me.”
She shrugs. “Is there a difference?”
Grace’s nose scrunches as it always does when she’s thinking. “A little? But I think of it every time Hector gives a ride to one of ours. In the end, that’s what matters.”
Jackie smiles and busies herself refilling their mugs. She’s happy that Grace can link an uncertain memory of their father to positive experiences in her own family. Jackie only wishes she knew how it felt.
Sometimes the grave site ritual lifts her up; other times, like today, it makes her pensive, even brooding. Miles texted her earlier to say he would be running errands this afternoon, so when Jackie arrives home, the house is empty. She leaves the lunch containers on the kitchen counter and goes directly upstairs to the extra bedroom, which serves as a home office. She carries a side chair into the walk-in closet, positions it in at the far end, and steps up. A small suitcase is stacked on top of a file box. The exterior is a muted-blue vinyl with ivory overstitching faded to yellow and worn at the corners and edges. Jackie pulls it down by the plastic handle, climbs off the chair, and brings it into the room.
She places the suitcase on the floor and kneels in front of it. The clasps are touched with rust, but when she presses the buttons with her thumbs, they open with a clean click. Jackie lifts the lid, and the distinctive smell hits her nostrils: starch, old cardboard, and a hint of lavender. The suitcase is lined with material the same shade as the exterior. An elasticized pocket runs the width of the lid. It is as empty as the day she appropriated it.
From her vigil at her bedroom door, Jackie heard her father leave the house after an argument with her mother. She heard the clink of the keys in his hand, the opening and closing of the front door, the creak of the door of his truck, the rumble of the truck’s engine. Her mother was in the kitchen, running water. Jackie crept into her parents’ room and, with only the dim light from the hallway to guide her, reached into the inky darkness under the bed and dragged the suitcase out. She carried it, bumping against her leg with every step, to her room, and hid it under her bed.
The next morning she relocated the suitcase to the far reaches of her closet. Later that day, her father returned, and she knew she’d done the smart thing. You can’t really leave for anywhere without a suitcase. Everyone knew that.
Now Jackie runs her hand along the bottom of the suitcase, concentrating not on how she failed to prevent her father from leaving but rather on how proud she was of her tactical strike. She granted herself agency and created hope, when in truth she had rights to neither. She never felt foolish for trying, just not powerful enough.