The first place Fred checked was underneath the kitchen sink. He set his cane against the counter, groaning as he lowered himself to his knees. A jolt of pain shot through his chest, and his legs slipped across the tiles. Suddenly, Fred found himself lying on his back, staring up at the rotating blades of the ceiling fan. And then, like the universe delivering a cruel punchline, he heard the fly buzz past his ear.
BZZZZZZZZ!
The fly hovered above his face, launching itself up and down and from side to side, strobing in and out of Fred's sight before hurling itself across the kitchen. Fred took a deep breath and held it for five seconds, just as Dr. Peterson instructed. Or was he supposed to hold it for ten seconds? Fred couldn't remember. As he exhaled, the pain in his chest slowly evaporated. Fred made a mental note to inhale for five seconds — it seemed to do the trick.
Lifting himself upwards by his elbows, Fred got back on his knees and opened the cupboard beneath the sink. He rummaged through tubes of bleach and dish soap, shoving aside plastic buckets with crinkled rags draped across them. He pushed his glasses up the brim of his nose, squinting past the rusted pipes.
It wasn't there. Shit, Fred thought.
"Shit," Fred muttered to himself. He took another deep breath and counted five Mississippis before breathing it out, hoisting himself to his feet. Standing above the dish rack, Fred felt dizzy. His head swirled; translucent embers danced across his vision. He felt empty. Weightless. His chest began to tighten again as his eyes focused on the dish rack, where a single coffee mug with swoopy cursive font read, "#1 GRANDPA!"
BZZZZZZZZ!
The fly rocketed past his ear, gliding in circles over the sink. Fred smacked at it, trying to keep pace with its senseless flight patterns. The fly zipped back and forth like a pinball before landing on Fred's wrinkled forehead. He swiped at it, but by the time he raised his hand, the fly was already zooming across the kitchen.
"You son of a bitch!" Fred yelled after the fly, watching it sail through the kitchen doorway. "I'm gonna get you, you son of a bitch!"
Fred paused as if awaiting the fly's response to his deceleration of war. But the house was quiet, as it had been for days. Fred knew this newfound stillness would take some getting used to. Surely there had been many instances during the fifty-two years he lived in the house when Katie had been away at school or Mary had been in town running errands, solitary afternoons and evenings where Fred had read mystery novels or watched Red Sox games. But if such moments occurred, he couldn't remember them. There had always been other people in the rooms around him, their presence marked by muffled noise: floorboards creaking beneath footsteps, pots and pans clinking together, toilets flushing, water running. It hadn't been until the previous week, when Fred returned home from Mary's funeral, that he felt the suffocating silence of the house and the unbearable weight of being alone.
Of course, Fred wasn't entirely alone. There was the fly.
It first appeared after Fred got the call about Mary's accident, or at least that was the first time Fred noticed it. For all he knew, the fly had been in the house much longer. Despite Fred's constant reminders to Mary to shut the living room window after indulging in one of her Marlboro Light 100s, she'd always keep it open. "I'm just letting the room air out so it doesn't smell," she'd tell him, to which Fred would respond, "Mary, you're letting out all the heat!" in the winter or, "Mary, you're letting out all the A/C!" in the summer. But no matter how many times Fred told her to close the window, she'd always forget. The fly had likely swooped in through the open windowsill during one of Mary's last cigarettes, patiently waiting for the opportune moment to announce its annoyance to Fred.
Since Mary's death, the fly had been incessant, an unwelcome roommate who refused to allow Fred a moment of peace. Night and day, it would buzz in and out of Fred's ears and scamper across his face. After taking out the garbage and inspecting the pantry for any spoiled food — of which he found none — Fred went to O'Tooles Hardware and bought a fly-trap. The kid behind the counter recommended it, crossing his arms across his red vest and assuring Fred, "This one is non-toxic."
The fly-trap sat at the edge of the kitchen counter. It was a neon-green cylinder wrapped in some sticky adhesive. Non-toxic or not, it bore no flies. Fred snorted at it, grabbing his cane and hobbling out of the kitchen.
The next place Fred checked was the bathroom. He opened the drawers beneath the bathroom sink but only found his orange prescription bottles. Fred closed the drawers, reaching for the plastic container at the edge of the sink. It had labels for each day of the week, and each compartment held a tiny offering of multi-colored pills. "It's to help you remember, dad," Katie had told him when she showed up to the house with it, along with bags full of other things he didn’t need.
Fred popped open the compartment labeled "WEDNESDAY." It was empty. Was it Wednesday? Or was it Thursday? How long had it been since Mary's funeral? Fred had lost track of the days. Where the hell did I put it? Fred thought to himself.
"Where the hell did I put it?" Fred said out loud in the living room, one hand steady on his cane and the other hand tossing throw pillows off the couch. Behind one of the pillows was the device Katie had given him for his seventy-fifth birthday, which Fred never used. Katie told him it was something that he could read books on. "You can download all those detective stories you like and read them all on this," Katie had told him enthusiastically, to which Fred nodded and murmured, "Oh."
He appreciated the sentiment of his daughter's gift. Still, like everything else she had given him, it was another piece of technology that created unnecessary complications out of supposed convenience. The collection of Raymond Chandler novels on Fred's bookshelf didn't have to be plugged in to charge; they could be opened up and enjoyed whenever and wherever. And the corded landline phone never needed a software update, unlike the "smartphone" Katie had gifted Fred and Mary the previous Christmas. Fred had gone his whole life without these unnecessary cords, adaptors, and screens — why did he need them now?
The fly spiraled past Fred's face, taunting him. "C'mon, old man!" he imagined it saying. "Just try and catch me!" He reached out his open palm and closed it into a fist around the pesky insect. His eyes widened. He caught the son of a bitch. But when Fred opened his hand, nothing was there.
The fly landed on his earlobe.
BZZZZZZZZ!
Fred slapped the side of his head, but the fly had already somersaulted across the living room. When he was a younger man, spry and agile with sharp coordination, he could have caught the fly in a few swift gestures. But his limbs now moved like glaciers trapped in quicksand, and every bit of movement hurt. The fly was too fast for him, and the fly knew it. The son of a bitch was teasing him.
From the corner of his eye, Fred saw the fly by the open windowsill, orbiting around Mary's ashtray. Fred had cracked open the living room window earlier in the day, along with the sliding glass door in the foyer, hoping they'd provide the fly with his long overdue exit. Fred stood still, anticipating a gust of wind to sweep through the windowsill and carry the fly out of the house. But the fly landed on the edge of the ashtray, descending into the pile of ash.
Mary would only smoke half a cigarette at a time, as if this made her nasty habit more reasonable. Fred knew his wife acknowledged her own cognitive dissonance, even if she never pronounced it. Mary had always been a pragmatic and rational woman, quick to label a spade a spade and call out bullshit as bullshit. When she started smoking 100s — twice as long as her standard Marlboro Lights — Fred didn't say anything other than, "You know, Mary, one day those things are gonna kill you."
Gazing at the ashtray, littered with crunched-up cigarettes stained with Mary's lipstick, Fred wondered if Mary would have stuck to her half-cigarette methodology if she knew her inevitable fate. He should've never bothered her with his passive-aggressive quips about her smoking habit. Instead, he should've encouraged her to suck every cigarette down to the filter and light up another; to cherish each soothing drag of nicotine and enjoy every smoke ring that escaped from her lips. Life was too short to spend it avoiding all the little pleasures that made you forget — even if for a moment — how long it really was.
The fly flew out of the ashtray. Fred watched it dash from one corner of the windowsill to the other, waving his hand as if to encourage it to finally leave. But the fly soared back through the living room and disappeared behind the couch. Where in the hell was that damn thing? Fred thought.
"Mary, where in the hell is that damn thing?" Fred called out before realizing Mary wasn't there anymore.
He closed the living room window, taking a moment to reposition the ashtray on the ledge. The cigarettes hadn't killed Mary after all. Fred had been wrong about that. Instead of lying in a hospital bed with an oxygen tank at her side, Mary's last breaths would be taken in the middle of a suburban intersection, looking up at an overcast sky. The driver who hit her had fled the scene, but a traffic light camera captured him blowing through the red light and crashing into Mary at a speed well above the twenty-five-mile-an-hour residential limit. Before her flight back to New York, Katie helped Fred remove most of Mary's clothes and jewelry from the house, but he couldn't bring himself to empty her ashtray.
In the front foyer, Fred opened the closet and sorted past his winter jackets, kicking aside the pairs of boots and loafers below them. Another wave of dizziness swept over him, and Fred tightened his grip on his cane. And then, as he closed the closet door, he saw it. It was on the top rack, leaning against the wall.
It looked like a tennis racket. When Katie gave it to Mary, Fred overheard her call it a "bug-zapper." She demonstrated how to hold down the button on the handle, which triggered an electrical current that ran through the net of aluminum mesh. At first, Fred had protested, telling Katie that her mother needed a simple fly swatter — none of this electric-zapping-mumbo-jumbo. Like the reading device that needed an outlet to charge and the smartphone that needed a Wi-Fi signal to update, the bug-zapper needed four triple-A batteries to work. Yet another piece of technology that required more technology to operate. Somehow, folks had figured out a way to complicate even a fly swatter.
Fred reached up, grabbing the zapper as a bolt of dull pain shot from his shoulder through his arm. He pressed the circular button on the handle — the same way Katie had shown him — and a green light illuminated around the button. You're toast now, you son of a bitch of a fly, Fred thought.
"You're toast now, you son of a bitch of a fly!" Fred called out loud.
Fred shuffled around the house, carefully surveying every room and brandishing the zapper before him like a sword. With each step, he listened intently for the fly's buzzing, manically flapping its wings as it twirled through the air, laughing at Fred's lethargic motions. "You silly old man!" the fly would say as it flew figure-eights around him. "You're too old to catch me!"
His thumb quivered over the button on the zapper's handle as he stepped back into the kitchen. He saw the fly whirling around the stained-glass light fixtures on the ceiling fan. He pursed his lips, lifting the zapper above his head.
In a flash, the fly dive-bombed from the ceiling to the floor, blasting back up and fluttering in front of Fred. He smashed his thumb down on the button, swinging the zapper. The zapper's net sparked as it connected with the fly, turning it from black to red as it sizzled in the electrical current. Fred took his thumb off the button, letting out a gasp of excitement. He gazed down at the fly, caught in the mesh lining and emitting a wisp of smoke.
Using the heel of his foot, Fred propped open the garbage can. He banged the zapper against its side until the fly dislodged itself from the netting, its burnt carcass tumbling down on top of the pile of used coffee filters and unopened retirement home brochures.
Fred smiled, proud of his accomplishment. But the joyous feeling quickly passed, and he felt lightheaded once more. The aching sensation in his chest began to swell and constrict. He held his breath and counted to ten as Dr. Peterson instructed. Or was he supposed to hold it for five seconds? Fred couldn't remember.
The walls began to close in, and the house's silence enfolded itself around him. Nothing moved, and nothing made a sound. For the first time since Mary's death, Fred realized he was now truly alone in the house. He instantly regretted what he had done.
I loved this! As a real life Katie, with parents of the same vintage, mannerisms and ailments, it made me smile :) A great rhythm to the story.