Why Grace Wilmot is even cleaning, God only knows. What they need to do is pack. This house: your house: the sterling silver tableware, the forks and spoons are as big as garden tools. Above the dining room fireplace is an oil painting of Some Dead Wilmot. In the basement is a glittering poisonous museum of petrified jams and jellies, antique homemade wines, Early American pears fossilized in amber syrup. The sticky residue of wealth and free time.

Of all the priceless objects left behind, this is what we rescue. These artifacts. Memory cues. Useless souvenirs. Nothing you could auction. The scars left from happiness.

Instead of packing anything of value, something they could sell, Grace brings this old box of paints. Tabbi has her shoe box of junk jewelry, her dress-up jewelry, brooches and rings and necklaces. A layer of loose rhinestones and pearls roll around in the bottom of the shoe box. A box of sharp rusted pins and broken glass. Tabbi stands against Grace’s arm. Behind her, just even with the top of Tabbi’s head, the door says “Tabbi, age twelve” and this year’s date written in fluorescent pink felt-tipped pen.

The junk jewelry, Tabbi’s jewelry, it belonged to these names.

All that Grace has packed is her diary. Her red leather diary and some light summer clothes, most of them pastel hand-knit sweaters and pleated silk skirts. The diary, it’s cracked red leather with a little brass lock to keep it shut. Stamped in gold across the cover, it says “Diary.”

Grace Wilmot, she’s always after your wife to start a diary.

Grace says, Start painting again.

Grace says, Go. Get out and visit the hospital more.

Grace says, Smile at the tourists.

Peter, your poor, frowning ogre of a wife looks at your mother and daughter and she says, “Four o’clock. That’s when Mr. Delaporte comes to get the keys.”

This isn’t their house, not anymore. Your wife, she says, “When the big hand is on the twelve and the little hand is on the four, if it’s not packed or locked up by then, you’ll never see it again.”

Misty Marie, her wineglass has at least a couple swallows left in it. And seeing it there on the dining room table, it looks like the answer. It looks like happiness and peace and comfort. Like Waytansea Island used to look.

Standing here inside the front door, Grace smiles and says, “No Wilmot ever leaves this house forever.” She says, “And no one who comes here from the outside stays for long.”

Tabbi looks at Grace and says, “Granmy, quand est-ce qu’on revient ?”

And her grandmother says, “En trois mois,” and pats Tabbi’s head. Your old, useless mother goes back to feeding lint to the vacuum cleaner.

Tabbi starts to open the front door, to take her suitcase to the car. That rusted junk pile stinking of her father’s piss.

Your piss.

And your wife asks her, “What did your grandmother just tell you?”

And Tabbi turns to look back. She rolls her eyes and says, “God! Relax, Mom. She only said you look pretty this morning.”

Tabbi’s lying. Your wife’s not stupid. These days, she knows how she really looks.

What you don’t understand you can make mean anything.

Then, when she’s alone again, Mrs. Misty Marie Wilmot, when no one’s there to see, your wife goes up on her tiptoes and stretches her lips toward the back of the door. Her fingers spread against the years and ancestors. The box of dead paints at her feet, she kisses the dirty place under your name where she remembers your lips would be.

July 1

JUST FOR THE RECORD, Peter, it really sucks how you tell everybody your wife’s a hotel maid. Yeah, maybe two years ago she used to be a maid.

Now she happens to be the assistant supervisor of the dining room servers. She’s “Employee of the Month” at the Waytansea Hotel. She’s your wife, Misty Marie Wilmot, mother of your child, Tabbi. She almost, just about, nearly has an undergraduate degree in fine art. She votes and pays taxes. She’s queen of the fucking slaves, and you’re a brain-dead vegetable with a tube up your ass in a coma, hooked to a zillion very expensive gadgets that keep you alive.

Dear sweet Peter, you’re in no position to call anybody a fat fucking slob.

With your kind of coma victims, all the muscles contract. The tendons cinch in tighter and tighter. Your knees pull up to the chest. Your arms fold in, close to your gut. Your feet, the calves contract until the toes point screaming straight down, painful to even look at. Your hands, the fingers curl under with the fingernails cutting the inside of each wrist.

Every muscle and tendon getting shorter and shorter. The muscles in your back, your spinal erectors, they shrink and pull your head back until it’s almost touching your ass.

Can you feel this?

You all twisted and knotted up, this is the mess Misty drives three hours to see in the hospital. And that doesn’t count the ferry ride. You’re the mess Misty’s married to.