Dusky Rose (KOI 13)
Columbia. June, 1974
"I don't know," Gary smiled softly. "Some of it's sort of kinky. But Sherrie asked for you to have it.
"I... don't think I want to keep any of it," he added.
It was one of those watershed weeks provided by baroque collegiate logistics. With about twenty credits left toward his comp sci baccalaureate, Danny the redneck programming prodigy had been nominated and accepted for a fall semester's paid internship way out in sunny south California. It would delay his graduation by six months, and the incidental expenses would wipe out his scant savings, but the internship had the strong probability of leading to a real job... not to mention sending Danny to the Promised Land his Okie heritage made irresistible.
But Danny and Candi's trailer court lease ran through December. Not one to voluntarily lose their rent deposit, Danny hustled to make his interim arrangements. There was a small house in town that a departing friend had leased through July. It was a one-bedroom dump, but rented at no more cost than the trailer. Danny and Candi subleased the rest of the term on the house. I subleased the rest of the term on their trailer. After landing a clerical job on her very first Columbia interview, Becca rode in with her new Gremlin to provide the wheels to span the distance between the trailer court and College Town.
Our wedding had been set for the following Christmas. It was a shame Sherrie couldn't be one of the wedding party.
Sher's cancer had reappeared with terrible virulence in the winter of 1974. It was all over in little more than a month. Gary and she had lived with death for so many years, Sherrie's departure left her husband with a dull grief, but no sense of shock. He wasn't the sort of guy to carry grudges against powers as big as Death. Gary just quietly withdrew from the circle he and Sherrie had claimed as friends, and started applying for jobs five hundred miles from Monroe County.
Prepping for the move to the job he finally landed, Gary offered to help Becca shift her own closet, clothes and hope chest from her parents' house to Columbia. It would be the last time we would see him.
With Becca's boxes moved to the trailer and their contents stowed, Gary was seated on "our" couch, slugging away at what he said was his first bottle of Hearty Burgundy in months. Relaxing, he seemed to be regaining some of his gentle good spirits.
"I left the box back in my car," Gary said.
"Sherrie's... stuff?" Becca asked.
"Here... I'll just bring it in." Gary got off the broke-down couch and made the four strides to the trailer's entranceway.
"Shoot," sighed Becca as the door closed behind Gary. The outer, screened door slapped shut. "I thought this all was over with."
Becca was working on a half-jug of stale but sweet pink wine that Danny and Candi had left in the fridge. I was helping Gary manage the several bottles of red.
The trailer doors banged open again, and Gary bumped in carrying a cardboard box that had once held a pretty massive air conditioner. The box was light for him, but he dropped it to the floor in front of us like it was a lead weight.
"Huggy Bear," said Becca. The old stuffed animal's head was peeping out of the loose flaps at the top of the carton.
"All her Barbies," Becca continued to observe.
"I dunno, I tried to find them all for her," said Gary. The sadness in the room had a nostalgic tinge, not really unpleasant. I refilled Gary's tumbler.
A smaller box within the carton held a jumble of stuff. Gary or the families had disposed of most of Sherrie's incidental cosmetics and clothes soon after the funeral. These things, apparently, were held out for Becca by special request of the deceased.
Gary picked through the bottles and spritzers in the smaller box, and found what he was looking for. He sort of chuckled.
"I have no idea what this is doing here," he said.
They were a pair of powderblue panties, a couple sizes smaller than I'd seen of late.
"Oh, migod!" Becca's entire face brightened. "Sherrie's finally given them back to me!
"That stinker! She told me she'd lost them in the weeds. Instead, she musta been keeping them for a souvenir!"
We were laughing.
"Doggone her.
"Doggone her."
Dumpf. There was a sudden hollowness in the room. I refilled my own glass, and Becca stretched her arm though a jumble of Barbie clothes to search the bottom of the carton.
She pulled out a plastic baggie containing a thick lock of gray-tinged black hair. There was a tag neatly tied to the ringlet. The handwriting on the tag was clearly Sherrie's, but I couldn't make out the message from where I sat on the floor. Becca read the note, blinked, and set the package to one side. She reached back into the carton.
"Vi-bray-tor," Becca murmured. She pulled out the cheap drugstore rod, and its loose cord slurped rattling to the floor.
"I guess she wanted you to have it," Gary said. "I don't think I'll have much need for it."
Gary had been celibate, we knew, since late February. It seemed a natural enough inclination, considering...
Well, there had been that weekend alone with Becca, just after Sherrie had made her last trip to the hospital. But that had been pretty awful, from Becca's account.
"Oh, here," said Gary. "I guess these are from me..."
Another scoot into the perfume box that had held Becky's pubie panties. Gary pulled out a handful of plastic things.
"Cockrings?" I took a stab at identifying them.
"Cockrings, collars, ticklers... whatever you want to call them," said Gary.
Gary's face was flushed. "I dunno. You guys were good to us this last year. Maybe I should've just thrown these away. Sher and I hardly ever used them. But I guess they're sort of... I mean, they're from me, sort of, and maybe you guys would rather not..."
I thought I understood. For him, it had been Gary-and-Sherrie relating to Rich-and-Becca. Our friendship -- our love -- had been bound up in our mutual couplehood. Gary wasn't sure we had seen it that way.
"I understand, man," I told Gary, and let him drop the rings into my hand.
"How the heck do these things work?"
While listening to the two of us, Becca had absentmindedly dipped into the perfume box and sampled the contents of one of the bottles. Kind of a bad move. Sherrie's signature scent filled the air.
In her last months, Sherrie had taken to wearing altogether too much "Dusky Rose." It was as if she were trying to make up for something missing in herself, something which only she had felt was missing.