Jelly Side Down
by Jack Croughwell
Shortly after the death of her son, the bank informed Cecelia that she would be losing her house. This, of course, was the source of a good deal of worry. Though, one could hardly tell while watching her work over a boiling pot of apricot jam. The kitchen was rich with the sweet aroma of sugar and fruit. The table was a pyramid of variegated jars: plum, grape, pear and peach, sour cherry and nectarine. Cecelia finished up the apricot and let it cool. She spooned it into the jar and, as the soft orange goop settled within the glass, she saw her son’s face float by.
Cecelia paused. She used her apron to wipe streaks of sweat from her wrinkled forehead. Holding the jar up to the light as one would a counterfeit bill, she saw, yet again, her son’s face. “Will?” she asked, but it didn’t respond, given that it was a jar of apricot jam. The image inside the jar solidified until Cecelia could see his hands, small and warped, press against the glass. She repeated a shocked and hopeful, “Will? Is that you?” Even if it was her eyes going, or her mind, she swore that the ghost in the jar gave a nod.
She set the jar down, horrified, yes, but she had dropped jars before and did not want this to be another case of that. Cecelia then turned to the pyramid on the table. Had she missed someone? Had she accidentally baked someone else into the mix? Cecelia examined a jar of blueberry jam, dark and incorrigible the color. She couldn’t make anything out in it. The peach was fine; she saw no faces. She fished her reading glasses from the den for a more thorough assessment. Soon enough, the pyramid was disassembled, hoping to find other ghosts. Perhaps friends of Will’s. With the final jars of apple cinnamon, Cecelia’s neighbor Vittoria let herself inside.
Vittoria and Cecelia had lived next door to each other for twenty-five years. They had brought up their children together. Vittoria had spent more time at Cecelia’s now that the nest was empty and that Cecelia needed help packing. She stood in the archway at the kitchen’s edge, in awe of the evenly laid out grid of jars that Cecelia had made. In lieu of the day’s hellos and how-are-yous, she asked, simply, “Why?” Cecelia waved her neighbor over to the counter where Will’s jar was sitting. They tiptoed across the floor and, crouching at the counter’s lip, the women stared at the apricot jam and waited. This is it, Vittoria thought, she’s finally lost it.
They considered the jam jar for some time. The eagerness and enthusiasm on Cecelia’s face only served to further boggle her friend. It had seemed that this was no different than any of the other hundreds of times that Cecelia had made some preserves but, in the spirit of practicing gentleness, Vittoria considered playing along. She reached for the apricot jam. She tested its weight in her palm. Vittoria went for the lid of the mason jar and Cecelia let out a shriek. “What are you doing?” Cecelia asked.
“I wanted to smell it?”
“You know what Will smelled like.”
The sentiment halted Vittoria. Yeah, she knew what Will smelled like. Generally speaking, he smelled pretty bad, like constantly-overslept-on-need-to-be-washed-sheets and deodorant-in-lieu-of-shower bad. He was a nice kid, but the idea that he smelled like that made Vittoria wonder if her friend hadn’t just ruined a perfectly good jam. That would be a shame. Apricots were Vittoria’s favorite. Cecelia snatched the jar away. She weaved across the kitchen to place Will at his spot at the dinner table, on a chair. Cecelia lingered at the place setting with an unearthly reverence. Vittoria balled up a dishrag and threw it at her from across the room.
“What was that for?”
“We’ve got to pack, C. We had plans to do the den today, remember?” Cecelia could not. All plans of packing were from a pre-apricot world. Vittoria continued, “I think now we ought to do something about all these jars.” Cecelia examined her friend. Vittoria went about collecting ten, fifteen, sixteen jars off the floor, even when she hadn’t been asked to. Why was she here? Perhaps, Cecelia thought, Vittoria did not realize how the circumstances had changed.
“Vita,” Cecelia said, “I won’t be moving after all.”
“You paid off the mortgage?”
“No, but Will’s back now. We can start making the payments again soon.”
Shocked, Vittoria let a jar slip. Peach. The pinkish goo splattered and settled on the ceramic tile. The glass fractured. Shards, clear and curved, rose from the jam like the teeth of a bear trap. Half-joking and half-not, Vittoria asked, “Who was in that one?” Cecelia rushed over with the dustpan, chuckling.
“No, I checked all of them. There was no one in any of these.”
Vittoria didn’t know to what degree she should be relieved. There was not a baker’s séance’s worth of possessed jellies to worry about. There was just the apricot jam. Vittoria wondered how Will could make the mortgage payments. Was Cecelia going to put the jar in his old suit and send him off to the accounting office? How would a mason jar use a calculator anyway?
They tidied up the broken glass and scrubbed until the sweet tackiness disappeared from the kitchen tile. Vittoria listened to the pop of Cecelia’s knees as she got back up. Whatever was happening with her friend, Vittoria knew they would be set back for the move. She asked, “Did you look at the apartment on Orange Street?”
Cecelia said nothing. She gathered Will from the kitchen table and put him to bed. “He’s had a big day,” she whispered.
* * *
Cecelia got her son ready in the morning. On the corner of his bed, she’d set his suit for work. And in the kitchen, she put out breakfast: toast, pancakes, he was always one for carbs to start the day, but she didn’t put out jam, ever. That would be inappropriate. Cecelia did not rush him through his morning routine. He was grumpy before coffee. She had taken the coffee pot out and wiped off all the dust.
As she ate her own breakfast, sitting across from an empty chair, she thought that there wouldn’t be any harm in checking up on him. She was shocked to find that he hadn’t even got out from under the covers. She pulled back the comforter, held up the jar to the light.
Will was still in there, but he was no longer banging on the inner edge of the glass. He looked defeated, Cecelia thought. Of course, he would need some help getting back to where he was. This would be a major adjustment in anyone’s life, possessing a jam jar. He shouldn’t be expected to do it all alone. Cecelia made the bed, put the clothes back on a hanger — they didn’t fit him anyway — and then sat him back down for breakfast. She stayed calm even though he didn’t so much as touch his food.
Cecelia wanted to show him some photographs. She had all these albums in the den from when he was a child. She just needed to unpack them, wherever they were. Vittoria had been at it. Cecelia found the albums in a box marked with her friend’s handwriting. Will stayed upstairs for this, and she was glad. It would have been awkward to explain why half the basement was packed away. What were the chances Will had seen the skip in the front yard? How embarrassing. He’d think they were leaving. Cecelia ripped open the tape on the box.
Vittoria came over at noon.
She came in through the back, figuring that she could at least begin to move some boxes before Cecelia got in the way. Vittoria flicked on the light in the den, aghast at the sight. They had only just started on that room; they were halfway through it a couple days ago. Now it was haphazardly strewn with cardboard husks. Boxes on their side, pillows and photographs scattered about.
Vittoria examined the rest of the house. She didn’t know what kind of damage her friend could do in a single night, but Cecelia was industrious. When she went to ask Cecelia about the damage, Vittoria paused in the kitchen threshold. She saw her friend flipping through pictures of Will from middle school with the jar of apricot jam.
Vittoria frowned. Beside her, she saw the notches Cecelia had made on the doorframe. Will, age 5, accompanied a jagged pencil line. Above that one, Will, age 6, then 7, 8. There were fewer updates after puberty. Age 24, was the tallest one. He was 5’10. They were going to have to paint over this soon. Vittoria stepped back. She saw a newer, fresher mark on the jamb, six inches off the ground. Will, age 32, it said. She had written it this morning.
“C,” Vittoria called out, “what’s happened to the boxes we packed?”
“Will and I wanted to look at some old pictures, Vita,” she said, turning a page. “We should really be unpacking those boxes as it is. When Will’s up on his feet, he’s going to want the den back. Oh! Come look at this one. We’re all so young. Do you remember—”
Vittoria slid the album away. She glanced at the pictures, and shut the book. They had already gone through them when they packed them up days ago. Vittoria said, “Yes. I do.” There was horror on Cecelia’s face from the terse language and the admittedly forceful shut of the album. Vittoria thought that might be a good time to apologize. Right now. Any second. Here she goes. And yet.
“I think I would like to spend time with Will today,” Cecelia said, retrieving the album. What she wanted to say was: I think you should leave.
* * *
Vittoria called the leasing office at the Orange Street apartments. She had help set up an appointment for Cecelia to check out a modest single-bedroom. The leasing agent said that Cecelia had not shown up, and that the apartment had since been rented. Orange Street was just a short walk away from where they both lived now, and if that apartment had gone... Vittoria did not like to think about that eventuality.
Without Cecelia to take up her time, Vittoria sat in her own kitchen with her hands folded on the table and the wall clock ticking. After a few hours, which turned out to only be a couple minutes, she moved to the living room, sitting in the armchair by the window, where she sat with her hands folded on the quilt draped over her legs. Big day, she thought, big day.
Vittoria’s children had grown up and gone. Her oldest daughter had a family now, but they lived three hours away. They called each other often, maybe not as often as Vittoria would like, but she never said so. Vittoria went to her daughter’s old bedroom. It no longer had all the posters on the wall or the clothes in the closet. The bed had different blankets now, different smells. Vittoria sat down on the corner of the mattress, listening to the wheeze of the springs. The air was stale. Vittoria curled into a ball on top of the covers and slept.
It was light when she woke. Vittoria felt compelled to return to Cecelia whether or not she was wanted there. Vittoria cleaned herself up, changed, and, for the first time in years, Vittoria knocked. After finding the kitchen covered with jam jars one day, and the boxes ransacked the next, she didn’t know whether the inside of the house would still be standing.
Vittoria realized that after Cecelia had lost her son and was soon to lose the house, without Orange Street she would lose her friend, too. They didn’t like going far to socialize. “Vita?” Cecelia had put up her hair, which had somehow done nothing to tame all the flyaway locks. The air from inside was hot, and sweet. She had been making jam.
“I’m not here to pack,” Vittoria said. “In fact, I was wondering if the photo albums didn’t work with getting Will” — she felt ridiculous saying this — “back to his old self, then why not see if bringing him to work would? That way they could even get his office ready for him.” Vittoria braced herself for the reply. There was no way that Will’s firm had saved his office for him on the off chance he would return in the form of a condiment. She just hoped that bringing other people into the fold would snap Cecelia out of whatever it was she was doing.
Cecelia brightened at the prospect. “That’s a wonderful idea. He’s brushing his teeth right now, but I’ll get him ready and we can go.”
“I’ll drive.”
A half-hour later, Cecelia appeared beside the car. She had tied a tie around the mason jar because, apparently, it was the only thing the still fit him. Cecelia buckled him into the back seat. Vittoria gripped the steering wheel. She didn’t move. She waited for Cecelia to call some bluff. When Cecelia finally spoke up, a spark of hope flashed in Vittoria, though Cecelia asked only, “Do you know the way there?”
The building was beige, blocky, and unimpressive. The women got out of the car and collected themselves. Vittoria kept her hands in her pockets. Cecelia held the apricot jam. The tie dangled from the jar and billowed softly on the breeze. Inside, the front desk came up to their shoulders. Cecelia set Will on the desk next to a stack of business cards.
The man behind the desk said, “Uh, hello? May I help you?” Cecelia, at first, was sad that the man did not recognize Will, but she forgave him quickly because there was the chance that he was new there.
“Yes, this is William Blanca. He was away for a while, but he’s come back to work.”
The man blinked at the apricot jam, then at Cecelia, and then at Vittoria who hoped her face had enough of a plea that the man could tell something was off about her friend. The man took a deep breath. He was uncomfortable to have been roped into whatever game these women seemed to play. He had known Will Blanca. And he had known that Will Blanca had passed away six months ago. The company had hired a new accountant.
The man pretended to type something on the computer. Cecelia tried leaning over to see. He moved the screen away from her and said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s against company policy to hire... what is this: jelly?”
Cecelia was shocked. Surely, they couldn’t have a policy that specific and narrow-minded. Will had worked here eight years and when he finally returns, well, to be turned away at the door like this? She snatched him off the desk top, afraid someone might mistake him for something he wasn’t.
“Come on,” Vittoria said, gingerly. “Let’s go.”
The drive home was quiet. Cecelia had buckled the apricot jam into the backseat again, but the tie had fallen off, and she wasn’t interested in fixing it. When they got home, the women sat in silence awhile in the driveway. Vittoria, not having the words, offered her hand. Cecelia accepted it. They sat there. Ten minutes, twenty, thirty, an hour passed. Quiet came easily to them.
“What’s on your mind?” Vittoria asked, finally. Cecelia reached behind her for the jar.
She spoke slowly, “We’re going to lose the house. Nothing stays.” A breath. “Nothing stays.” Cecelia looked down at the jam. The light coming in hit the glass. The pale pinkish-orange glowed. She pressed a finger against the glass. Vittoria took the jar away from her.
“How’s this?” Vittoria said. “I’ve got the space. Come across the street and live with me.”
Cecelia said nothing. The proposition floated in the air for some time. “I’d like that, I think,” Cecelia said, her heart sunk. “It’d be easier for sure. I missed my Orange Street appointment.”
“I know.”
“Of course. Of course.” Cecelia pressed Vittoria’s hand against her face. Vittoria turned the car off. “I suppose we should go pack.” The women shambled out of the car. Vittoria still had the apricot jam with her. She looked down, examined it in the observant light of a willing sun. Apricot jam had always been her favorite. She reached for the lid, and paused. Vittoria rubbed her eyes. She thought, for a moment, just a moment, that there was a shadow inside the jar. A hand pushing out from the inside. Of course, there couldn’t be. Not at all. Unless. Unless. Unless...
Copyright © 2024 by Jack Croughwell
