Trina pulled into the familiar driveway and parked her Ford Taurus behind her sister’s BMW.  She braced herself for the weekend ahead and got out of her car, grabbed her bag from the backseat, and made her way to the front door and let herself inside.  “Lori, it’s me!” she called out, not wanting to startle her younger sister.  She heard footsteps and Lori was soon hugging her. 

“I hated walking in here and knowing that Mama wouldn’t be here,” Lori said tearfully.

“I know.  The house feels empty, doesn’t it?”

“It does.  Have you heard from Rob?” Lori asked.

“He said he would be here this afternoon.  I hope he was able to get away without Jennifer planting her fat butt in the car, too.  The last thing we need this weekend is her telling us what we should save or throw away.”

“Rob agreed that this was a job for the three of us, no spouses.  It is our Mama we are saying goodbye to, and our memories we are sorting through this weekend.”  Lori squared her shoulders.  “If Jennifer shows up with Rob, we will simply send her back home and one of us will take Rob home on Monday.”

“Hopefully she will respect our wishes,” Trina answered.  “Are we sleeping in our old room?” she asked Lori with a grin.

“Of course.  And Rob can sleep in his old room.”  They both laughed.  Their Mama gave
Rob the smallest bedroom in the house when they were children because Rob was a boy and she didn’t think boys needed as much room, which Rob always argued against; once Mama made up her mind that was that.  The guest room was kept in pristine condition for guests, not for children, and that never changed over the years.  Fortunately, they all lived close enough to come for holidays and visits without needing to spend the night.

“I am sure Rob will have his orders from Jennifer about what she wants, but I am not going to pay attention to that.  We are going to find a fair way to take what each of us wants, and Jennifer can go hang for all I care,” Trina commented.  She was executor of Mama’s estate, and Mama told her to make whatever decisions she felt right making.  Mama trusted her to be fair, and she would be, but ‘fair’ did not include Jennifer’s wishes… only Rob’s, and of course, Lori, too.

“Oh, it will all work out, Trina.  Mama knew that you would be fair.”  They heard another car door and then Rob came inside.  He looked sad, but he gave them one of his special smiles.

“I was afraid I’d find you girls crying your hearts out,” he admitted, swiping at his own eyes.  “I miss Mama so much.”

That was all it took for all three of them to start crying.  After a lot of hugging, Trina said, “I vote we all have a stiff drink and then get started.  We have a lot to accomplish this weekend.”

“Sounds like a good idea,” Rob agreed, and headed for the kitchen.  Their Mama wasn’t much of a drinker, and when she did drink, it was wine.  Still, there was a bottle of good bourbon on the shelf, and Rob added a stiff shot to each glass, then added ice and filled the rest with cola.  When they all had a glass in their hand, he held his up and said, “To Mama, may she rest in peace and be happy!”

“To Mama,” the sisters echoed.  The all clinked glasses and took a sip.

“Where do we start?” Lori asked, looking to Trina since she was the eldest and the one in charge.

“If it is all right with both of you, I suggest we start in the attic and work our way down.  There isn’t too much left in the attic.  Mama’s bedroom is packed full, however, and so are our bedrooms.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me, Trina,” Rob said.  “I think the attic will be fairly simple, and a good place to start.”

They took a box of trash bags with them, and a few boxes.  “If anyone wants something, please speak up.  Otherwise, we’ll put it in a box to donate to charity unless it is junk.”

“There is more up here than I thought there was!” Rob exclaimed as he climbed the ladder steps and reached up to pull on a string to light the bulb.  “It’s also stuffy.  I don’t think the fan is working, girls.”  His cell phone rang and he automatically reached for it and answered.  “What is it, Jennifer?” he asked when he heard her voice.  He listened and then said, “Tell Abby that she knows she is grounded this weekend, and I will not permit her to pick and choose when that grounding happens.  She is not going to beg off, and I expect you to see to it she stays home.”  He listened again, and then stated firmly, “Jenn, if I come home Monday and learn that you permitted Abby to go out this weekend, I am going to give you reason to regret it.  Am I making myself clear?”  He listened and then said, “Yes, I am serious.  And, Jenn, please don’t call me again unless it is truly important.  I promise I will stay in touch, but this weekend is for my sisters and I and we need this time to ourselves.  I expect you to handle Abby and tell her ‘no’.  I’ll see you on Monday.  I love you; goodbye.”  He closed his phone and then said, “Sorry, girls.  Jenn is testing me, and in some ways she is worse than the teens.”  He glanced down at them and noticed they were staring at him in shock.  “What?” he asked.

“We’ve never heard you speak to Jennifer like that!” Lori commented.  “It was surprising.”

“It is surprising to her, too,” he said with a grin.  “Now, back to this attic.  It’s too hot for all of us to be up in here.  How about I hand down the boxes, and we’ll sort through them in the hallway?  Okay?”

“Sure,” Trina quickly agreed.  She stood on the ladder and left Lori on the floor.  Lori had a bad knee and she didn’t want her to risk falling.  Rob handed down a box and Trina handed it down to Lori.  The system seemed to work, except for one time when Rob said something was too heavy for them to try lifting.  He brought it down the ladder and sat it on the floor and climbed up the steps once again.  Trina was truly surprised there was so much stuff.  “I thought Mama said she cleaned the attic after Daddy died!”

“She certainly didn’t throw away anything!” Lori said with a giggle.  “Mama was a packrat!”

“She certainly was,” Rob’s muffled voice came from the attic.  They worked for about fifteen minutes before Rob’s cell phone rang again.  “Yes…?” he answered, and then listened for a while before breaking in to say, “Abigail, you are grounded and that is my final word on the subject.  If you ask again to have this punishment lifted or changed, we will add another week to the grounding.  Is that clear?”  She must have threatened him with running away because Rob said, “Step one foot out of the house and I will prove to you that you aren’t too old for a good spanking, and the grounding will last until school is out for the year.  Is that clear, Abigail?  And, do NOT give your Mom a hard time this weekend.  You might want to help her around the house for a change.”  He chuckled when the phone clicked in his ear.  “I guess she didn’t like that suggestion.”

“Rob, what is going on at your house?” Trina asked.  “I’ve never heard you threaten the kids with a spanking before.  And don’t you think that Abby is too old?  Why, she is a senior and she’s eighteen!”

“She is still in high school and living under my roof.  The problem is that her Mom wouldn’t allow me to discipline the kids when they were little and now I’m having to be really firm to take them in hand.  Several months ago we found drugs in Abby’s room,” he said, his voice reflecting how upset he was over the fact. “Let me get the rest of these down, and then I’ll tell you the entire story.”

Lori looked at Trina, and her eyes were full of shock.  Rob didn’t sound like himself at all!  He quickly cleared the small attic of the rest of the items up there, and by the time he was finished, the hallway was full of boxes and trunks, and old furniture.  “This is the last of it,” he said as he backed down the ladder with another heavy trunk.”  “I can’t imagine what Mama had in all these boxes and trunks.”  He folded the steps and then pushed them up and closed the door to the attic. 

“This stuff can wait,” Lori said, her voice full of concern.  “I want to hear about what is happening with Abby!”

“Me, too,” Trina added. She loved her brother and his children, and she even loved Jennifer, she supposed.

Rob sat down on a box and said, “Like I said, several months ago we found drugs in Abby’s room.  Jenn and I were planning to surprise her with a complete make-over of her bedroom… Painting the walls, new carpet… furniture.  We arranged for her to go on a trip with some friends for the weekend, and once she left for school Friday morning, we started clearing her room.  The drugs were hidden behind her desk in a large manilla envelope.   Abby did that to make it look like something had fallen behind her desk, and that is what Jenn and I both thought, but then packets of stuff fell out and we looked at each other and asked each other if it was what we thought it was.  We got on the Internet, and sure enough, it was marijuana.  Jenn went out and bought drug testing kits and we picked up the kids from school that afternoon, and tested both of them.  Abby didn’t pass, but Craig did.  So, we canceled the room makeover, and Abby’s weekend away, and we’ve had Abby in counseling.  We came to realize that a lot of Jenn’s behaviors were giving Abby to think she didn’t have to obey any rules, and that is when I decided I needed to take charge and be the head of my own household.  I had a few long talks with Mama and she gave me some good advice, which I was smart enough to implement.  It hasn’t been easy, and it’s probably been the hardest for Jennifer because she has had to rethink her attitude.  Both the kids have been held accountable for their choices, and Abby, in particular, has been ordered to stay away from the kids who were encouraging her to do drugs.  Abby is chafing a bit because she was permitted too much freedom before she was ready to handle it.”

“But, you certainly wouldn’t spank her?”  Lori asked.

“If she sets foot outside the house without her mom this weekend, she will find out that I will do just that.  I don’t want to resort to corporal punishment, but since she knows what the consequence will be it is up to her whether it happens or not.”

“What if Jennifer permits her to go and promises her that she can do her grounding next weekend?” Trina wanted to know.

“Then I’ll have two girls with sore butts,” Rob answered them with a confidence they had never seen him exhibit before, especially when it came to his spoiled brat of a wife.  Rob abruptly changed the subject.  “Now then, we need to start sorting this stuff.  We’ve only got tonight, and tomorrow, and Sunday, and we all decided that we needed to just do it and get it over with so the house can be sold.”

“We’ll get it all done, Rob, but we wanted to know about what is going on at your house.  We love you guys, you know!” Trina told him.

“We certainly do!” Lori nodded her head in agreement.  “Why didn’t you call us?  I’m an RN; I would have helped you.”

“It was something that Jenn and I had to handle, Lori.  I had to step up and show my wife and kids that I could take care of them.  Abby’s drug tests come back clean now, and we are satisfied that she is with a better crowd of kids.”  He smiled at them.  “My marriage is a lot stronger now, too.”

“That is wonderful, Rob,” Trina said in relief.  She got to her feet and opened a box.  Inside she found old shoes.  “Oh my goodness!  Remember these, Lori?  We used to fight over this pair of sandals!  Why on earth did Mama save them?  They are so scuffed and worn, and so out of date!”  She laughed, and then said, “I hope we have enough trash bags because I have a feeling that nearly everything here is going to be thrown away.”

“This box is full of our artwork,” Rob said, chuckling.  “Look at this monkey riding a bicycle that I drew.  Mama used to plaster our drawings on the fridge, remember?”

“Yes, and she hung the grandkids there, too.  Mama always made us feel so special, like we were actual artists in the making.”

“Ahhhh!  Look at this pair.  There are holes in the sides where you wore them through, Rob!”  Trina held up one shoe.

“I want those!” Rob cried out.  “I can show them to the kids and tell them that this was how long I had to wait before I could buy new gym shoes.”

“They’re going in the trash, silly man,” Trina replied, shaking her head and dropping them into the large green bag.

“You’d deny me the right to torture my kids?” he asked in mock outrage.

“I’m doing you a favor and keeping you from smelling up your car and Jennifer’s clean house!  They stink!”

“Oh, here we go with the foot odor jokes!”

“You always did have the stinkiest feet, brother.  I remember Mama scolding you and sending you to shower before she’d allow you to sit in the family room and watch television with us,” Lori reminded them.

Trina joined in, mimicking their mother, “She would say, ‘Rob, you are going to be the death of us all!  Go and wash those grimy, stinky feet before we all drop over dead from the fumes!  Lordy, I need to open a window.  Lori, go get the Lysol!’ It was hilarious!  The faces she would make!”

“It was the socks she bought for me,” Rob insisted. 

“It was your feet!” Trina said, laughing.

“Oh, lookeee here.  Now, Trina, what is this?”

“Oh brother!  Throw that away, Rob!”

“Awwww, it’s cute, Trina!”

“I can’t believe Mama kept it,” Rob commented.

“She probably didn’t realize what it was, or she would have had a fit!”

Trina’s face was red.  “She said to draw something from nature, and I drew the dogs.  I didn’t know what they were doing!  I do remember that my teacher had trouble keeping a straight face when she saw it, and she quickly hid it on the bottom of the pile and didn’t choose it as one of the pictures to hang on the drawing board.  She put it in my bag and sent it right home.  Mama said, ‘How lovely! Doggies… Let’s hang them on the refrigerator and show Daddy when he comes home.’  Daddy looked at my drawing and laughed and said it was definitely a nature picture.”

“Mama didn’t know what the dogs were doing?” Rob asked with a grin.

“Well, I was only six, and I didn’t know what they were doing, and Mama knew I didn’t know anything about that, so it never crossed her mind.  Besides, I’m not that good an artist!” Trina said with a laugh.

They worked together to go through each of the boxes, and they did find some treasures to share.  Mama saved all of the Christmas ornaments they’d loved for years, and they divvied them up so that they all had a few treasures for their own trees.  There was also a couple boxes of photo albums and they spent time going through some of them and remembering their Mama, who was, agreeably, a character.  Another box contained Mama’s high school memories, and those they looked through with a lot of curiosity. 

“She was so pretty,” Lori said emotionally.  “You looked so much like her, Trina!”

“No, I was never this pretty,” Trina argued.  “Mama was simply beautiful.”

“I happen to think that both of you look like Mama, and if we ask your husbands, they’ll say they think you are beautiful,” Rob said firmly.  “It is so hard to imagine Mama so young.  My Abigail is the same age Mama was in this picture, and Mama was already engaged to Daddy.”

“It was common back then, and Mama truly loved Daddy,” Lori told him.  “Oh look, here is the picture that she gave to Daddy.  ‘For my darling Henry with everlasting love.’  Isn’t that sweet?”

“I thought we would lose her when Daddy died,” Rob admitted.  “She grieved so deeply, but she finally pulled herself together and she told me that she’d had a dream and Daddy gave her a scolding and told her that she had children and grandchildren who needed her to be strong for them.  She started eating and taking care of herself and we were blessed to have her for ten more years.”

“She almost always did whatever Daddy wanted her to do,” Lori recalled.

Trina smiled, wondering if she should share a memory…