Free The Adjustment League by Mike Barnes

sticker, black italics on gold: Dr. Max Wyvern , with an address at Yonge and Eglinton. Franked stamp on the right.
    A story in a card. Mother’s Day, but he mails it from the same city. Gets his secretary to fill it out, present it to him for signing. She would have bought it too, hitting the lobby pharmacy on her way back from lunch. The doctor my son.
    A keeper. I put it in a coat pocket.
    Another keeper a photo of mother and father and sons. The family minus Judy. Maybe ten years old, but the most recent group shot I can find. In the white border under each person, an identification in the shaky blue over-pressings. My husband me (Maude) son Max son)Sandor The dead -X firmly through the husband’s face.
    There’s one more object that, on instinct, I pocket. A little box of unfinished wood, maybe two inches by three, with a plastic top window and a cheap clasp, I’ve seen them in Dollarama. “Precious Things” printed neatly in blue ink above the window—not in Maude’s hand anytime lately, and probably not ever. Something mannish, almost Roman, in the firm strokes. Though the quote marks an odd touch. Whimsical? A bit fey?
    Inside the box, a balled-up nylon whose cheesy smell wafts out when I open it. It’s stuffed in, almost filling the small box. Uncoil it, though, a limp snakeskin, and underneath are a pair of nail clippers, two bobby pins, and a USB stick with a self-adhesive label cut to fit on the side, titled “Christmas Music.” Same quote marks and neat blue letters, though perhaps a different hand. It can be hard to tell with printing.
    With a silent apology to Maude, I stow her “Precious Things” in a pocket too.
    Standing in the stripped room, boxes around me. Bureau, bed, chairs. A couple of small tables. Feeling tired by it. And feeling the other presence fainter now. The parts left in her things detaching, beginning to float free.
    What did you do to earn this neglect? The answer not far to find. Staring anyone who looks in the face. You got sick .
    Â§
    The Strongbacks men waiting by their truck, outside. Why, I have no idea. Do they need our permission to do their job? Judy with them. The square-bodied young guy leaning against the passenger door, smoking. The seedy older guy chatting Judy up, smiles and gestures. Judy nodding. Flirting? Nothing’s impossible—she must cycle through every drama eventually—though it’s a vice with men to mistake vacant for coy.
    Are they wrong? She can’t object if she’s left the premises.
    After we’re loaded up, I tell them I need to go back for a minute, one last thing I need to take care of. The young guy has his pack out before I’ve turned.
    Â§
    1111.
    A skeleton confronts me a few steps from the elevator. Socket eyes, lips skinned back from yellow teeth, a thin glaze of skin over planes and scarps of bone. The instant I return his gaze, he drops his eyes, fusses with the ties of his housecoat. Turns away.
    Some kind of baking activity at a long table in the kitchen. A staffer passing the mixing bowl to a resident, lifting his fingers to the handle of the wooden spoon. A bridal dress, even earlier, it seems to come from Depression films, hanging on the wall in another alcove. A WWI soldier’s uniform. Fathers, uncles could be that old. More photographs, war medals. A tuxedo and an emerald dress on adjacent dressmakers’ dummies. Like stiffened ghost dancers. While I stand there, waiting for I don’t know what, two residents shuffle over and touch the fabrics. The bubble lady stands by a window near the uniform, blowing her slow soundless pops. With each generation, they’ll have to update the memory aids. Twenty years from now, it’ll be jeans and peasant blouses and an Abbey Road poster. Then what? An iPhone and a Gap T-shirt? Time not only moving more swiftly, but also becoming more insubstantial. Leaving flimsier traces. For those losing their minds in the