After Mom died, I stopped opening the garment bag.
For the first few weeks, I couldn't even look at it without feeling something tighten behind my ribs.
Dad left the sewing room almost exactly as she'd kept it. Her scissors remained beside the cutting mat. Spools of thread stood in neat rows on the wall. A half-used piece of tailor's chalk still rested near the machine.
Sometimes I opened the door simply to smell the room.
That embarrassed me, though there was no one to see.
Grief made me do strange things.
I started listening for the garage door at the time Mom used to come home. I kept expecting her mug to appear beside the sink. Once, half asleep, I called her phone because I couldn't remember where she'd put a recipe.
The number rang twice before I realized what I had done.
Dad grieved differently.
He cleaned.
He organized.
He made lists.
If a cabinet hinge squeaked, he repaired it immediately. If mail arrived, he sorted it before setting down his keys. He worked late and spoke constantly about keeping life "moving."
We almost never talked about Mom unless I forced the subject.
Then Shirley began visiting.
I had known Shirley for years. She and Mom had called each other best friends, although their friendship had always seemed complicated to me.
Shirley was loud where Mom was quiet. She loved parties, expensive perfume, bright lipstick, and stories in which she somehow became the central character.
Mom had affection for her, but she also occasionally watched Shirley with an expression I couldn't interpret.
"She's just Shirley," Mom would say whenever Shirley said something insensitive.
After the diagnosis, Shirley came around frequently.
She brought casseroles.
She drove Mom to two appointments.
She sat with Dad in the kitchen when Mom was sleeping.
At the funeral, Shirley held Dad's hand for almost the entire service.
I noticed.
I told myself it meant nothing.
Two months later, she was still coming over.
By four months, she had a key.
At five months, I saw her kiss my father in the kitchen.
I had come downstairs for water and stopped halfway around the corner.
Dad saw me first.
He stepped back so suddenly that he hit the counter.
Shirley did not.
She simply looked at me.
"I'm sorry," Dad said.
For one absurd second, I thought he was apologizing for bumping the counter.
Then I understood.
I put the glass down without filling it.
"How long?"
Dad looked at Shirley.
That was the wrong person to look at.
"Not long," he said.
"What does that mean?"
"Honey—"
"Was this happening before Mom died?"
"No."
His answer came immediately.
Shirley crossed her arms.
"We cared about your mother very much."
I looked at her. "I didn't ask you."
Her face stiffened.
Dad stepped between us emotionally if not physically.
"Your mother would never have wanted either of us to stop living."
I remember that sentence because it was the beginning of a phrase he would use repeatedly whenever I objected to something.
Your mother would want me happy.
Your mother wouldn't want us alone.
Your mother understood Shirley.
My dead mother gradually became evidence in arguments she couldn't answer.
Six months after the funeral, Dad told me he and Shirley were getting married.
There was no proposal announcement.
No long engagement.
He told me at breakfast on a Tuesday.
I stared at my cereal.
"When?"
"Next month."
"Next month?"
"We don't see a reason to wait."
I looked toward Shirley, who had begun spending most weekends at our house.
She smiled carefully.
"We're not trying to replace your mother."
I still don't know why adults say that when replacement is exactly what their behavior resembles.
The wedding was small.
I attended because Dad asked me to.
Shirley wore ivory.
During the ceremony, she cried more than he did.
Afterward, people told me how wonderful it was that Dad had found happiness again.
I learned to smile and say, "Yes."
Within two weeks, Shirley moved into our house.
That was when everything began disappearing.
The first thing I noticed was a framed photograph from the hallway.
It had been taken on a beach when I was twelve. Mom's hair was blowing across her face, Dad had one arm around her, and I was squinting into the sun.
The empty nail remained in the wall.
"Where's the picture?"
Shirley looked up from unpacking dishes.
"Which picture?"
"The beach picture."
"Oh. I moved some things."
"Where?"
"I don't remember. Probably storage."
I retrieved it from a cardboard box in the basement.
The following week, two more photographs vanished.
Then the family portrait from above the fireplace.
When I confronted Dad, he rubbed his forehead.
"Shirley should be allowed to feel like this is her home too."
"Mom lived here."
"I know."
"So why does making Shirley comfortable require removing her?"
"Nobody is removing anybody."
I pointed toward the blank place over the mantel.
Dad had no answer.
Mom's clothes were next.
Shirley filled black trash bags with them one Saturday while I was studying.
I heard hangers knocking together upstairs and found her inside Dad's closet.
"What are you doing?"
She didn't turn around.
"These have been sitting here for months."
"Put them back."
"Your father said it was time."
I grabbed one of the bags.
Shirley held onto it.
For several seconds, we stood pulling opposite ends of a garbage bag filled with my mother's clothes.
"Let go," she said.
"No."
"This isn't healthy."
"Neither is throwing away someone else's things."
"They aren't someone's. Your mother is gone."
The sentence struck harder because of how casually she said it.
I let go.
Shirley stumbled backward.
I went downstairs and found Dad.
He was sitting at his desk.
"Did you tell her to get rid of Mom's clothes?"
He hesitated.
That was enough.
"Some of them."
"Without telling me?"
"I thought you had enough reminders."
I stared at him.
"I don't need fewer."
His face crumpled briefly, but instead of apologizing, he said, "We can't turn the house into a museum."
I left before I said something I couldn't take back.
That afternoon I rescued what I could.
Mom's favorite cardigan.
A scarf.
Her sewing box.
Three photographs.
A recipe book with handwritten notes.
And, of course, the prom dress.
I moved the garment bag from the back of my closet to beneath my bed.
Shirley noticed more than I realized.
Over the following months, she began making little comments about my resemblance to Mom.
People had always told me we looked alike.
I had her eyes, the shape of her mouth, and the same habit of lifting one eyebrow when something didn't make sense.
Shirley hated when other people mentioned it.
At a family dinner, my aunt said, "You're looking more like your mother every year."
Before I could respond, Shirley laughed.
"Hopefully she'll develop her own style eventually."
The table went quiet.
Dad pretended to be interested in his potatoes.
Another time, Shirley saw me wearing Mom's scarf.
"You're too young for that."
"I like it."
"It makes you look like you're dressing up as her."
"I'm not."
"Sometimes you should let the past stay in the past."
I looked directly at her.
"Does Dad know you think his first wife is something that needs to stay in the past?"
She didn't answer.
Later, Dad told me I needed to stop provoking her.
The strangest incident happened near the sewing room.
Shirley rarely entered it. She claimed the clutter made her nervous.
One evening, however, I found her standing in the doorway, staring at Mom's machine.
She didn't hear me approach.
"What are you doing?"
She jumped.
"Nothing."
"You were looking at something."
"It's a room."
"One you never use."
She brushed past me.
As she did, she glanced at my face.
For just a fraction of a second, I saw something raw there.
Not grief.
Not affection.
Resentment.
And suddenly I wondered whether Mom's photographs and clothes were disappearing for a reason that had very little to do with "moving forward."
Several weeks later, I came home to discover that the sewing room had been emptied.
The machine was gone.
The cutting table was gone.
The shelves had been cleared.
I stood in the doorway, unable to move.
Shirley appeared behind me.
"I thought we could make this a guest room."
I turned slowly.
"Where are my mother's things?"
"Storage."
"Which storage?"
"Your father knows."
Dad didn't.
And for the first time since Mom's funeral, I understood that Shirley wasn't simply trying to make room for herself.
She was systematically erasing every visible piece of the woman who had been here before her.
Except for one thing.
Me.
And unlike photographs, clothes, and sewing machines, I wasn't something she could put into a box.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: Three Months Before Prom, Shirley Became Suddenly Interested in My Bedroom—and I Failed to Understand What She Was Really Looking For
Eight Days Before My Mother Died, She Finished the Dress She Knew She Would Never See Me Wear
Part 2 of 10
