ST1.7 | "Usufructus"
PROMPT: Freedom, in any sense, is rarely obtained without a struggle. From illness to interpersonal drama to all-out war, the object a person chooses freedom from sets the level of conflict encountered. And freedom itself, though touted in this country in a jingoistic sense, is much broader in ways we seek it than the American definition allows. We can seek freedom from any number of things—relationships, work environments, addiction, incarceration, even simply expectations. Help us celebrate this July in true RHP fashion, by sending us stories of characters engaged in personal bids for a freedom they desire. What happens when they get it? And can they ever truly be free?
USUFRUCTUS
by Suze Kay
Morgan takes the call on the porch.
“How is he today?” Renee’s voice is tinny and pinched over the phone. Morgan can’t tell if that’s because of emotion or the shit service she gets out here in the bayou.
“It’ll be soon.” She stares at the scummy green water below and wishes it were clean. When she was a child, she swam in there. She and Renee. When the algae clung to their hair, Mom called it a mermaid dye job.
“Long day at the salon, ladies?” she’d say in the outdoor shower, sudsing up their scalps. They’d giggle, imagining a swamp mermaid salon. Morgan looks at the shower now: badly weathered, door off its hinges. No one’s used it in years. No one’s swum in the water for years either, not since the Robichaux girl got sick from it.
“You said you couldn’t make it, but . . .”
“You know I can’t.” Renee sounds even fainter, and Morgan knows it’s not cell service that’s dimming her. She remembers how Morgan got on the phone when she cried in high school. She held the phone inches from her ear, as though struggling to hear the boy breaking up with her or the friend telling lies on her would make it all go away. “I’m sorry,” she moans. “It kills me to ask you for this. It kills me that I can’t be there.”
“You’ll make it for the funeral, though, right?”
“Yeah, of course.” Her voice comes through clear again, all business. “Make sure you send me a copy of the death certificate as soon as you get it, so I can take time off.”
***
The house is muggy. Swamp air doesn’t have boundaries, it wafts in through windows and doorways; it rises through the floorboards. Edna sits, languid on the musty couch.
“I think he done shit hisself,” she says. “Stinks in there.”
Morgan rolls her eyes and walks down the dark hallway. All the windows in his room are open, but the pervasive smell still overwhelms her. He whimpers as she changes his diaper, settling again when she pulls the blanket up over his sunken chest. His eyes never open. The blanket is clammy with humidity under her touch, but his skin is hot and dry as paper. The fever is rising again. She hopes it takes him.
Not for the first time, she looks at the bottle of morphine on the dresser.
It would be so easy. He wouldn’t exist anymore. Morgan could leave the bayou. Renee could pay off her loans. Then they’d all be free.
***
He passes that night, without her help. Morgan lays on the bed beside him and feels the furnace-like heat of him for the last time. His face tightens when she strokes his forehead, and she can’t tell if she’s helping or hurting. She does it again. Edna stands in the doorway. His breathing slows, rattling terribly in his chest. It stops.
“He’s gone?” Edna asks. Morgan sits up and blinks tears out from her eyes. She presses shaking fingers to his neck and nods. “I’ll go make the calls, then.”
Morgan lays back down. She whispers all the things she wasn’t brave enough to say before into his ear until it’s cold and the hospice nurse arrives. After the funeral home takes him, she changes the sheets and offers the master bed to Edna.
“Nah, I’ll take Renee’s room again. Gives me the heebie-jeebies, thinking of sleeping where he passed.”
Morgan sleeps there. She dreams that he sits on the edge of the bed and tells her he’s here to give her the heebie-jeebies, and all the fruits thereof. She wakes in the gray-green dawn with gritty eyes and a jaw ache from grinding her teeth all night.
***
I have some bad news, Renee’s text reads. I just can’t do it. I can’t go back. Morgan calls her but can’t hear her on the other line. Like she’s whispering through a tin can on string, she hears only the vaguest mumble of regret.
“Renee, if you’re not going to fucking show up, you need to at least tell it to me straight. Hold the phone to your goddamn mouth for once.”
“I CAN’T!” she screams. Morgan almost drops her cell. “Don’t you get that?”
“Then what? I have to do it all? I have to stay here by myself? You promised. You said I could leave when he died. You promised me we could sell the house and I could leave.”
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. I’ll be there on Zoom for the reading of the will. Just calm down. We’ll figure it out after that.”
Morgan hangs up on her sister. Walking into the house, she slams the screen door so hard it rattles on its hinges. Edna’s in the kitchen, pouring herself a dram of his nice scotch.
“Trouble in paradise?” she croons. It’s clear this tipple isn’t her first of the day.
“You could at least pretend to be sad.”
“It’s not like he was my husband.”
“Yeah, and you know why. Then he couldn’t have lived here in my mother’s house.”
“I always wanted him to leave. Move into the condo with me,” she sniffs. The condo is up in Houma, left to her by one of her previous husbands. “This place is a shithole.”
“Then go home, Edna.”
“I’ll stay on for a little while. Be a comfort to you, and so forth.” She takes her drink to the porch, leaving the bottle open and Morgan fuming.
***
“To my daughters,” the lawyer reads, “I leave my earthly belongings, including the truck and the boat. Go fast. I leave the money in my accounts, and the contents of the safe deposit box at Houma Republic, to them as well. To my beloved Edna, I leave the house on the bayou and a lump sum of $10,000.”
“No, that’s not right,” Renee interjects from the laptop. “The house was held by him in usufruct. It was our mother’s. When she died, it was his until death or remarriage. Now it’s ours.”
The lawyer raises his eyebrows and looks at Edna, who’s fanning herself with exaggerated bashfulness. “Well, that’s something we can unravel in due time. What it says here is that Ms. Edna Layton gets the house. You two get the belongings and the money. It seems perfectly fair to me.”
The air conditioner in the legal office is working overtime, keeping the pristine room so cold Morgan thinks ice wouldn’t melt. She shivers in her thin cotton dress. Her mouth feels dry as she asks him when the will was made.
“May 16th, just about two months ago.”
“Are you kidding me?” Renee shrieks. “He could barely talk on the phone at that point. Who witnessed it?”
“Myself and Ms. Layton. I assure you he was of sound mind.”
“This is a farce. You’ll be hearing from our lawyer.” In her apartment half a continent away, Renee slams her laptop shut. A descending two-note tone announces her departure to the chilly office.
“Well, I never,” Edna drawls. She paddles the fan briskly before her, pushing bedraggled curls this way and that.
***
Renee’s voice pours through the truck’s speaker, ranting about Edna’s duplicity, his stupidity.
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” Morgan feels herself reverting to a long-forgotten childhood avatar, that of the whiny younger sister. Too tired to play. “Why can’t we just let her have it?”
“It wasn’t his to give,” she seethes. “He was only the usufructuary. That house was Mom’s. That house was always supposed to be ours. You really want shitty Edna to have it?”
“Renee, you aren’t here. Do you know how bad it is? It’s falling apart around me. The swamp stinks like shit and dead meat. You can’t even fish in the water anymore. It’s not worth anything.”
“Everything’s worth something. You said it’s falling apart? Take pictures. If it’s really bad, we can make a claim against the money he left her.”
“If you want pictures, come take them yourself.” She hangs up.
Back in the house, she sits on his bed. The room has finally lost the sour smell of sickness. Now it reeks, like everything else, of swamp and mildew. She googles usufruct Louisiana and reads until her eyes hurt. She must fall asleep at some point because he comes back. He looms over her on the bed and tells her that there are no fruits left: the fish are dead, and the alligators are angry. The heebie-jeebies are all, and they shouldn’t be hers.
Edna announces her return with a wheezy slam of the screen door. Morgan rubs sleep out of her eyes and goes to meet her.
“You can’t make me leave,” Edna says. She pulls the scotch back out and pours herself a glass.
“I’m not trying to.” Morgan is exhausted. Renee should be here to have this fight.
“He said this house was mine,” Edna says. She pours one for Morgan, too.
“Did I say he didn’t?”
“Well, your sister certainly thinks I’m a liar. You two have no idea what it’s like. Loving people who die. Being what’s leftover.”
“Why are you so awful? I loved him too, you know.” Even as she says it, she isn’t sure if it’s true. Edna takes a sip of her scotch. His scotch.
“Could’ve fooled me. Never called, never wrote. All he did was talk about you two, and you didn’t even show up until he couldn’t say it to your face. Ms. High-and-Mighty didn’t show up at all.”
“You don’t know anything.” She takes her scotch and leaves the kitchen. At the doorway, she turns and says, “You don’t know anything about what happened in this house.”
***
That night, he crawls over her like he used to. She freezes and pretends it’s not happening here, it’s not happening to her, like she used to.
“I’m trying to set you free, you stupid bitch,” he whispers, hot in her ear. “I’m trying to say sorry and let you go.”
When she wakes up, gasping, she calls Renee. Renee picks up, still half asleep.
“Let her have the fucking house,” Morgan sobs. “Why would you even want to own this place? You can’t even come back here. You made me come instead. For me, please. Just let it go.”
“I don’t want him to win.” For once, Renee is audible. “I don’t want him to take this from us, too.”
“I’m leaving in the morning. You can do what you want, but I’m leaving and I’m not coming back, and I’m not going to help you with this.”
***
On her way out of town, in his truck, with his boat on a trailer, she stops at Houma Republic to look in the safety deposit box. Inside is her mother’s jewelry, some pictures, and a letter. Girls, it reads, I left the house to Edna. I took out a loan on it, and I don’t want it to be yours to deal with. Let her have it.
It won’t make up for what I did. I’m sorry. I pretended I didn’t know what I was doing, and I lied. Take the money and leave.
Morgan puts the jewelry in her purse, then chooses some of the photos to take as well. Just the good ones.
She takes a picture of the letter for Renee but leaves it in the box, where she hopes it stays forever.
And then she follows her father’s instructions for the last time, and leaves.
Suze Kay graduated from Yale with a degree in Art History. She currently works as a pastry chef in New Jersey and writes short fiction, horror, and fantasy. You can find more of her writing on Vocal Media.