What is Left Behind

"Come over," he'd said. "Go through her things. She would have wanted you to have them."

His wife's death had left my neighbor with a world that wasn't his. The dogs his wife had trained were now his responsibility, as were the horses. All over the house her absence was almost more of a presence than she had been, a giant pit in the floor that you had to step around.

We rang the doorbell. Never once in the almost twenty years we'd lived next door had I rung the doorbell and not been greeted by a cacophony of barks and howls and yelps so predictable and consistent that it was as if the doorbell itself rang to the tune of the neighborhood dog pack. This time when I rang there was silence. The noise that should have been there was a tangible thing rattling inside my stomach.

Dave opened the door and pointed us toward the kitchen. We rummaged through pots and pans and dishes that he would never use (his wife had always been the warm body in the kitchen), opening cupboards that belonged to a woman who was no longer around to be embarrassed by their disarray. It seemed unfair. A head-start in a race we would have won anyway.

"Dave, do you want this big saucepan?" my mom asked. The ghostly thin image of a man who'd only two months ago received a full set of teeth shook his head. "I only need the smallest one. For my camper." I could picture my quiet neighbor, who eats mostly mashed potatoes and meatloaf, who would never think of asking another soul for help at the risk of intruding, heating himself a can of chicken noodle soup on a trailer stovetop in the middle of Arizona. His daughter had told my mom that she worried he would head out on the road and she'd never hear from him again. Never a burden, to the point of being a burden.

I opened a cupboard door and saw that his daughter, at his behest, had stripped the shelves of everything except three small plates and two cereal bowls. My stomach clenched. 

"Do you want to take a look at this pile here, Dave, and tell us what you might need?" My mom gestured to a stack of dishes and pans we'd balanced on the counter. "No, I won't need that," he answered, not even glancing over from his seat in front of the TV set that I didn't think I'd ever seen turned off. My mom and I each gathered an armload of kitchen necessities that suddenly weren't so necessary anymore and headed toward the door. "Thank you, Dave," I said, hoping he could sense that I meant for his unerring wisdom, his stability, the constant peace of mind that came from knowing he was always next door. I turned to face him, desperate to offer some semblance of generosity to the frame of a man across the room, but his head was down.

In his lap he was twiddling his thumbs.