Treasure

“Treasure”

by Mark Burr

Bree took a swig from her Bud Light Lime. “Fuck her, your grandmother left that to you. Fuck her, Mia.” Brie was a short skirt with bright green ruffles and pink flip flops and a white tank top that stained with sweat. Summer had descended upon Ocean Springs, MS in a wave. The humidity hit everyone like a wave.

“Fuck it. Let’s do it,” Mia cried out and raised her Coors Light high up over her head.

“This is my B and E,” Mia said shoving her friend to the side.

She carefully pulled back the screen over the side window, undoing each of the latches so none of the plastic parts would break. She set the screen down on its side and pushed up on the window. She leaned forward in her flip-flops—standing on her tiptoes.

“Bree, give me a boost,” said Mia.

Bree crouched to give her a boost into the window. The girls were both too short to pull themselves into the window by the kitchen on the side of the house without fear of falling over and their skirts flying everywhere. She took a flowery pink foot into her hands and with a heave, pushed her friend through the window. For a second all you could see were a set of tan legs wriggling out the window—like the girl had been cut in half. With another push she fell in.

“I’ll open the door,” said Mia.

Mia walked through the kitchen, the floors had just been mopped but a huge pile of empty boxes still lingered around the sink by a pale green garbage bin. The garbage bin was faded from too many nights of just dragging it out onto the driveway and forgetting it until long after it had been emptied and flipped over the next day.

Everything in the rooms—the elaborate dining room table made of cherry with ochre inlays and etchings from the Gilded Age, the reclaimed Persian divan upholstered in Italian silk, Luminist prints that lined the walls (no one could tell they weren’t real, not here at least)—gleamed with lacquer like everything else in her sister’s life. She married well. But nothing in this room was real. And nothing about Sarah was real either.

Mia picked herself up off the floor and smoothed down her skirt—something she found at the thrift store with poppies, red and yellow poppies, all over it. She walked through the granite mausoleum that’s called a kitchen and unlocked the heavy, mahogany front door.

Bree quickly opened the door and shut it behind her—she thought she saw someone pull down a shade across the street. She thought she saw a looky-loo. She found the one blotch of sunlight that filtered through the bamboo slat-shades—the spot was the size of a bathroom mat, and stood in it, though it looked like she was considering lying in it.

“I thought your sister had kids,” Bree said.

“She has two”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

“This place is a tomb.”

“Smells nicer though.”

“She’s got this thing with smells—it used to be perfumes. Clinique Happy, Curve, Dolce and Gabana Light Blue, Chanel. I remember she almost used my entire bottle of Chance.”

Mia left her purse in the car but looked around the room like she had brought it in and forgot where she set it.

“Now it’s candles—she spends hundreds of dollars on candles and oils. Diffusers. Bullshit.”

“Can we sit? I’m afraid of breaking something.”

Mia pushed over a blue and white porcelain “vessel” with embossed pictures of English gentlemen and ladies rowing on a river. It shattered into four pieces.

“Don’t be afraid.”

The girls straightened their clothes, smoothed down their skirts, and wiped sweat from their brows before sitting on the couch in the living room.

“Did you grab my purse?”

“I left it in the car. I’ll get it,” said Bree.

Bree handed her a purple, leathery bag that made a clinking sound as it was being passed, like coins in the dryer or the sound of glass against glass.

Mia fished around in her bag for a cigarette. Her fingernails were the same color as the bag. She had this thing for the color purple.

“Everything that’s good is purple—I mean think about it,” she had said before. She filled her bathroom at home with purple things. Purple mouthwash, purple hand-soap, purple towels, and purple face-wash. “I didn’t notice it until after it was done—but everything is purple.”

They sat together for a minute and smoked in the air conditioning.

“This is my favorite sound, you know.”

“What is?”

“This,” EA pointed at the ceiling.

“I still don’t get it.”

“Just listen.”

The air conditioning kicked on again and hummed and Bree understood.

“My grandmother was an artist. Did I ever tell you that?”

“No.”

“Well, she was,” EA took the last drag on her cigarette and exhaled, “she’s even in the Smithsonian. The one for American Art. If you’re ever in DC.”

Bree finished stubbed out her Marlboro and looked at EA.

“So, why are we here again?” Bree said.

“My sister has something that belongs to me—she knows it belongs to me, but she won’t give it to me.”

“What a bitch.”

“I know, she knows that it means a lot more to me than her. She’s always been like this, I swear.”

Mia got up off the couch and started walking around the house. She saw fishing poles in the hallway, mass-produced nautical paintings in the bathroom. Then she saw what she was looking for in her niece’s room.

“Goddamn her,” Mia said aloud.

“What?”

“It’s in Carley’s room.”

“Yeah?” asked Bree.

“It’s just like her to give something like this to a child than to give it to her own sister. I should just destroy it.”

“Fuck yeah! Burn it all—I mean it belongs to you anyway,” said Bree.

Mia walked into Carely’s huge room, much bigger than any room Mia had ever made her own.

Mia noticed the stacks of colored pages, all scribbled outside the lines, on the little dresser below where the painting hung. Mia’s grandmother had painted this portrait of her when she was a little girl in Eupora, MS. Mia couldn’t believe how small and peaceful she looked when she was little—nothing like her niece Carley. Small painted figures, little Barbie clothes, and a couple of movies hung around it. She noticed the sheet of pink stars, the purple highlighter Carley stole from her bag and a stuffed cat Mia gave her one time---she bought it one day at the store when she needed change.

“Bree—come look. It’s her treasures.”

Bree walked in and looked at the pile of knick-knacks the five-year old girl had put on display.

She picked up a plastic, purple heart jewel.

“You’re right, these are her treasures,” said Bree.

Mia looked at the painting one more time and noticed there were leaves painted in her hair. She had forgotten about climbing trees. The more she looked the more she saw her niece.

“Fuck. I can’t do it,” said Mia.

“It’s okay. Let’s go get drunk.”

Mia took off her amethyst ring from her ring finger. It belonged to her grandmother too. She set it next to the stuffed cat and the sheet of pink stars.

“Can we get tequila?” Mia asked.

“Yes. All the tequila in the world.”