art by Chelaxy
As living parents, more time is all we want, while in death, time is all we have. We spoke to Cynthia a week before the accident took us. She called us on a lunch break and explained her dream job was not working out.
“I like who I work with and enjoy the work itself. I’m just tired of feeling I’m doing this alone.”
Our poor, sweet Cynthia. We worried about her Westend apartment, which was too small, and her work, which demanded too much. We always told her she could come home. Her room was just as she left it. Instead, she worked all day, partied all night and swiped for love.
We could never comprehend meeting someone through your phone, especially since someone as bright and beautiful as our Cynthia had no success. She would sometimes show us the photos of who she had to pick from. Some were not even smiling. Some were without shirts. Some were holding fish. She would laugh about the dates she told us about, but we did not find them funny. In one incident, she met her match at a bar, and he did not look like the photos he had put on his profile.
“It’s called catfishing.”
In our day, our love began with handwritten letters. We waited patiently and penned our responses with care. Our first meeting was at a family friend’s debut, and we saw each other’s faces for the first time under the shade of a mango tree in the backyard. Our smiles were shy, and our conversation was brief. Our words were wrapped in a delicate whisper. The spell would be broken if we spoke too loud and too long. We would meet again at church and stole glances during hymns. Weeks turned into months, and we wrote letters and courted with the approval of both families. We spent afternoons on a hilltop looking down at the busy, growing metropolis below us and dreamed of a better life as we sang love songs to each other that we heard on the radio from America. We married after a year of patient and tender courtship, bringing Cynthia into this world a year later.
After our deaths, we awoke as one, suspended in the air over the front staircase. In stillness, we moved throughout the home, souls tethered. We looked out the windows, hoping to see the sun peek over the mountains, but we saw nothing. Only monochrome shades of the neighbourhood we left behind.
We tried to leave, but when we moved past the envelope of the house, we awoke, floating above the entry steps at every attempt.
On the fridge, we looked at plane tickets back to the Philippines ensnared under souvenir magnets alongside the plumber’s quote for a more oversized bathtub and our registrations for the half-marathon we had trained so hard for mocking.
Days would crawl by, and only the darkness would greet us at our unfinished ends.
Our sweet Cynthia finally came home, breaking the drab silence. The sun announced its brilliance as the front door swung open, and we could see the world outside again. Our eyes squinted at her silhouette against the window. Her movements were slow and deliberate as if noting every nook, recalling every cranny. When she started to cry, so did we.
She dropped down on the old couch, pushing a puff of dust-up, illuminated in a sun ray. She examined the clutter we left behind. A full laundry basket in front of the TV. A stack of dirty plates in the sink. A bookcase pill-packed with photo albums unopened for years. She opened our wedding day photos and noted out loud the faces she recognized, shocked at how young we all were.
She walked to her room and, through the doorway, she returned to her time as a teenager, confused by the world around her. Stuffed animals, plastic trophies, and diaries have been waiting since she moved away. CDs, magazines, posters, and all her youth relics welcomed her home.
When she cracked open our bedroom door, thick air escaped as the closed windows trapped the summer heat. Her fingers traced our favourite tie on the chair we hardly sat in. She flipped through our Bible on the nightstand to a bookmarked page and traced the underlined verses with her finger. She lay down on our bedroom floor and wept until she fell asleep.
We accessed her dreams to tell her we loved her and that if she ever left this house, our souls would be bound to a colourless existence. She woke up mid-scream and ran out the door. We chased after her but found ourselves again floating above the entrance. All we could do was go wall to wall, floor to ceiling and watch the clocks tick.
84 hours later, Cynthia came back dressed in black, followed by our loved ones, bringing life and colour back into our family and friends.
Their light laughter was followed by awkward silence. Prolonged hugs followed their anecdotes. It was a lovely gathering until our idiot nephew opened his stupid mouth.
“I mean, you gotta wonder, with real estate as it is in this town. You’d get a lot for the place.”
Our daughter nodded and smiled politely, picking at what was on her plate.
“You’re not wrong. I’m talking to some realtors now. Just trying to find someone I trust.”
“Right, right. How much should we keep it in the family? I’ll talk to the other cousins, and maybe we could turn this into an Air BNB.”
The shock on Cynthia’s face did not mirror ours. Of course, our caskets would not be fully settled in the dirt before he saw a real estate opportunity. We took over Cynthia’s mind.
“You need to leave. Now.”
“Take it easy, Cyn-ner. I was throwing an idea around.”
We all hated this nickname and the fool who coined it. We made Cynthia yell. We made Cynthia throw wine in his face. He stumbled out the front door and onto the lawn in his socks. He fell into the garden patch, trying to put on his shoes.
As we yielded control of her mind, our sweet Cynthia crumbled to tears as our siblings tried to console her. Her voice was in hysterics as she tried to explain she had no control over what she was doing, but no one understood.
In the 248 hours that Cynthia remained in the house, she had alcohol and groceries delivered. She phoned friends and her work with rehearsed lies, avoiding the world she worked so hard to build. It was painful to watch our daughter grieve, and our need for the world outside would eventually overtake us.
Her video calls with her counsellor were challenging to absorb. We cried when she did, and when being beside her became too much to bear, we discovered we could leave the house with Cynthia inside. It started accidentally. We raced out of the room during her session, detailing her stifled independence, which contributed to her ongoing struggles with alcohol.
Unable to explain ourselves, we spilled through the wall onto the porch. We realized we could go across the alley. Then, down the block.
It was not long until we were eavesdropping on an argument between new parents on the Skytrain. Then we wove in and out of rush hour traffic along Broadway untouched. We danced above Trout Lake at midnight.
At the house, watching our daughter grieving made us feel like bad parents. Out of the house, we were gods.
When we visited the intersection where we died, we watched the collision play out backwards and forwards. Again and again. We recalled our argument as we neglected to slow down at the intersection. We replayed the constellation of windshield shards shooting across the road.
We felt selfish that we were thankful that our death was instant—no pain or false hope but no goodbyes either.
We would drop in, at times, to check in on the therapy sessions, and we knew the counsellor meant well, but it was apparent that Cynthia tuned her out whenever the counsellor’s point would climax in an overrun maxim.
“It’s okay not to be okay.”
“You can’t pour from an empty cup.”
“You need to take it one day at a time.”
She would later laugh about these cliches on a call with Daniel.
“It’s not like I have a choice. Are there people out there who can take time differently? Weekly? Monthly? Fortnightly, perhaps.”
We laughed with them, but their banter was concerning, considering how close they seemed.
We returned home without warning on a gorgeous spring afternoon while dancing on top of Science World. We looked through every room, and Cynthia had undoubtedly left. We found ourselves trapped again within views of blurred black and grey, wondering why she had never told us about this Daniel person.
94 hours passed, and Cynthia returned with a petite, pushy lady dressed in business casual attire, taking pictures of our home.
“Hiring painters and a junk removal service would be a great idea. You could probably get at least 30% over market value. Also, the walls of homes like these are bulletproof. You can’t find construction like this anymore.”
“Sorry, I’m late. There was so much traffic.”
Daniel was better looking than we thought he would be. Although we didn’t appreciate his tattoos, we liked that he took his shoes off without prompt. With Daniel’s hand on Cynthia’s back, they asked the pushy lady pertinent questions, nodding in agreement in the back and forth. They waved from the window as the realtor drove off.
“What’s wrong? She seemed nice and knew what she was talking about.”
“It just makes me uncomfortable. She talked only about the numbers. The cost of this, the return on that. This was my parents home. I don’t like the idea of strangers making it anything else.”
Days became weeks as Daniel started leaving things behind. A sweater and travel mug after he stayed over for a weekend. She began staying at his place more often, too. We wondered what she left at his as we waited in the dark.
One summer afternoon, the tension between them had been intensifying,
“I know it’s not my place, but maybe you should give another realtor a shot.”
“No way. They’re all the same. And you’re right. It’s not your place.”
“I’m just being realistic about the future.”
“What do you mean? Why can’t this place be in my future?”
“I just don’t think this place is good for you. You’re different when you’re here.”
“I can’t imagine a for sale sign out front. I don’t want that.”
“I get it, but it’s just something I hope you think about. I don’t see myself living here. I love you and hope we have a future together.”
It was sure this was the first time he told her this, reading Cynthia’s expression. She kissed him deeply as they held each other close—a kiss goodbye, as it were.
They didn’t need to call another pushy lady, and there would be no for sale sign in the front yard as another pushy lady knocked on our door while Cynthia and Daniel were trying our pandesal recipe one Sunday morning.
This pushy lady wasn’t pushy at all. She had a calming way about her and didn’t mention anything about money, although the financial gain was implied.
“I’m here because I believe in preserving the stories within these walls while bringing new life to them. What if we could take everything this house represents—the good times, the laughter, the warmth—and pass it forward?”
At this, Cynthia leaned forward and nodded slowly as Daniel rubbed softly across her shoulders.
“Sure, this house and the next and even the one beside that one will be gone, but this doesn’t mean losing the heart that your family put into it.”
After the realtor left, the sweet smell of fresh bread hung in the kitchen, and the rumbles of an argument began between Cynthia and Daniel. We seized Cynthia’s mind as Daniel tried to persuade her with her logic and reason.
We made her stand and hover just below the kitchen ceiling, looking down at the fallen Daniel.
“We know you mean well, Daniel, and love her, but you must understand that she will always be our sweet Cynthia. She’s strong but fragile, too. We left her too soon, but now she has you. Just know, if you break her heart, we are closer than you think.”
We gave control back to Cynthia, who was in tears and, to our shock, Daniel did not leave.
15 hours later, they went through the house room by room and only set aside a single envelope of photographs, a few things from the kitchen, a stack of books (including our Bible), and three garbage bags full of clothes they would later donate.
We stood by in horror as strangers in boots rid our house of everything else by the truckload as neighbours watched on.
As our house was stripped down to its foundation, we could feel our lives pass through us like a hand in a stream. We smelled the warmth from the fireplace on our first actual winter day. We saw the moving truck drive away in the front window as Cynthia landed her dream job. We heard doors slamming so loudly that the neighbours noticed. We tasted Christmas dinners and Birthday cakes that graced the dining table. We felt a freshly cut key as homeowners in a new country.
Our existence was gone as we saw our sweet Cynthia across the street. When she started to cry, so did we.
Jeff Britanico is a second-generation Filipino-Canadian writer who works as a Food Service Designer in Vancouver. He has 10 years of experience in the culinary industry and is a recent graduate of the Architectural Design & Technology program at VCAD. This is his first published work. He resides in Burnaby, BC, with his spouse, dog and cat.