Few Kinds of Wrong Read Free Page B

have Jamie not want to work at the garage anymore.” I pat the headstone before I turn to leave.
    I drive to my duplex off Thorburn Road. This was the house I shared with Jamie, and I probably should have moved, but everything was already there and I just never got around to it. Even though the house next door has two Rottweilers in the backyard that scare the bejeesus out of me, it’s home. I like to be here during the few hours a day I’m not in the garage.
    My answering machine isn’t blinking and I wonder once again why I bother to look. My friends know not to call. I see them on weekends. My mom also never phones. She knows I’ll see her on Sunday for our usual weekly visit. We sometimes watch a movie, talk about the week, have supper, and try to ignore the empty place at the head of the table.
    I walk to the answering machine and press play anyway, knowing there is one message there. It waits every night for me.
    â€œI finished the Tobin job, so no need to come in tomorrow. Mom is cooking dinner anyway so we’ll see you then.” Dad’s voice echoes through death and to my ears. His strong, deep voice speaks offhandedly, unaware how many times I will listen to his message.
    Twenty-two words preserved on my answering machine’s cassette and duplicated on two other tapes in case I might lose one. They were not Dad’s last words, but they are the only ones I have left.
    I pour Bacardi into a tumbler Jamie bought when he moved into the house. He decorated everything, always having a better eye for things like that. If not for Jamie, I’d still have the old green couch Mom and Dad gave me from their rec room and milk crates with a sheet over them as a coffee table. Instead, I have a maple cocktail table and a plush, navy living room set of sofa, loveseat, and chair.
    Jamie insisted I go with him to pick out the furniture, so I went along and nodded my agreement with whatever he suggested. At least until he wanted the beige couch. Looking at the fabric, I recalled years of my mother’s frustration with trying to keep everything clean from dirty hands. I remembered the sound of plastic squeaking when I sat on Mom’s light-grey sofa because Dad said a man should not have to change his clothes before he sat on his own sofa. I looked around the furniture store and told Jamie to find something darker or none of my money would be used to pay for it. Since I was the only one with any money, Jamie relented. My one and only decorating choice in the whole house.
    I turn on the TV and flick through the channels, stopping on a biography of Jane Fonda for a moment before moving on and finding an old black-and-white movie on AMC. Katherine Hepburn is in a boat with a greasy-looking Humphrey Bogart.
    The rum tastes good and before I know it, half the bottle is gone. My eyelids are heavier than I can manage to keep up. Just before I pass out on my usual place on the couch, I think maybe Bogey looks a little like Dad and don’t even bother to fight the tears I have struggled against all day.

2
    A T SIX THE next morning, I clear off a small space on my dining room table, pushing aside piles of bills and junk mail. I put my coffee on top of a coupon for Subway and open up a small notepad I dug out from a kitchen drawer. I write my name on a page then write it again, continuing for two 4” x 5” pages of my name. More than five years of writing Jennifer Flynn and initialling everything JF, means I have to relearn my old signature. You would think that writing Jennifer Collins again would be like riding a bike, but more often than not, the C in Collins, despite my best efforts, looks like it started as an F.
    Although I haven’t legally changed my name back, I decided I don’t want to use Flynn anymore. I really haven’t been Jennifer Flynn in a while. I stopped being married to Jamie more than three months ago.
    That morning had been warm for February. The fog was so