Pitcher Plant

“To Katherine Woods,” the letter began. 

Katherine was not familiar with the jargon of an executor; she read the paper three times before she even remotely understood what it said.

Someone named Susan Porter died and left a storage unit to her. Susan Porter? Katherine would have never claimed the ability to win a memory competition, the alcohol made sure of that, but she was as certain as she could be that she never met a Susan Porter before. 

So Katherine did what any millennial would do and looked her up on Facebook. There were hundreds of Susan Porters in the world, nothing to signify which was hers, no mutual friends, and none from the same area. With her phone already in hand, she listened to the call sound before her brain could catch up. 

Calling her mom for answers came instinctually. As did her ability to ignore everything her mom said about her life choices and ‘getting her life together’, while she bulldozed on and spewed whatever was on her mind. At 30, it was a wonder how her mom continued to put up with it. 

“Kat, you have to stop calling after midnight. I answer because I worry something may be wrong, but it’s just you in your stupor giving me a play-by-play of your neighbor's cat getting into the trash bins. It’s really unfair, love. You know, I have to get up early-” 

“Yeah, mom. I got this letter in the mail. Someone died and left me their storage unit,“

“What do you mean? Read me the letter? Who died?”

“I’m not reading you the letter. Too many words I don’t know how to pronounce and I’ve already read it a bunch. Do you know a Susan Porter?”

Silence. Katherine pulled the phone away from her ear to make sure the call was still connected and saw the bottle of wine from last night was out, open, and had a swig left in it. She sniffed, it smelled more of vinegar than the oak and berries the label promised. But not being one to waste, she gulped it down.

“Mom. Are you there?”

“Katherine. This isn’t easy. I’m just going to leave work now,” Katherine could hear her telling the supervisor there had been a family emergency and she had to go. 

“What in the world, Mom? Family emergency? You’re leaving work?”

The confusion mixed with the dull headache Katherine was used to waking up with started to overwhelm her. 

“Yeah, I’ll be there in 30 minutes,”

“No, seriously don’t worry about it.” Katherine began to panic looking around her apartment. When was the last time she took out the trash? Evidence of the life choices her mom worried about were littered everywhere. There wasn’t a single flat surface without a can or bottle on it. 

“I can come to you, Mom” 

“No, we need to do this in private. Your dad’s home,”

They were both well versed in keeping secrets from her dad, most commonly was the money her mom gave her to keep her fed, lights on, and rent paid. She could never afford her habit without mom’s help.

“This is weird and I don’t like it,”

“I’ll be there soon” 

The stove clock said 11:30 am. Katherine sprang into action powered by fear of judgment and anxiety, what she felt anytime anyone came to her apartment. She had a trash bag in her left hand and tossed the empties in with her right. With the kitchen counter clear and stress pumping through her veins, she believed she needed and deserved a drink to calm down.

 She moved the unopened bottles of red wine from the counter to inside a cabinet, knowing her mother would remark on them if they were out and they’d dye her mouth if she had some now. Instead, she reached into the fridge, twisted the green screw top off the Sauvignon Blanc, and chugged what she’d consider about a glass worth. Then placed it behind the expired milk, with a third of the bottle gone. 

She continued the frenzied cleaning and hid the 3 bags of trash in her hall closet. She spiraled the whole time wondering who Susan could be, how it could be considered a family emergency, and why her mom would leave work early to talk to her about it. In cataloging her family, Katherine had a mother and a father, then the list fell off to nothing. She grew up without any living grandparents and both of her parents were only children, then they had just her. 

How is Susan a family emergency? She wondered as she absentmindedly reached back into the fridge for the bottle of wine, took a long drag, then forgot to hide it behind the milk when she put it back.

It had been a few days since she showered or even released her hair from its current bun. There wasn’t time to do much about that now, but she did wash her face and frowned at the  dark circles under her eyes and her near-gray complexion. She attempted to give life to it with makeup. Then she brushed her teeth and used mouth wash to hide the possibility of smell giving her away.

She had just closed her blush when she heard the knock at the door. 

“Coming”

Katherine opened the door to find her mom as polished as ever in her black slacks and black pumps, always put together and in control, her signature look even when she wasn’t in her fancy banker’s office.

“Kat, what are you wearing? What’s that purple stain from? Ugh, it smells in here. Have you eaten?

Her mom had the unique and annoying skill of asking a minimum of three questions without pausing for an answer, and Katherine was equally skilled at ignoring them all. It did make her realize she forgot to change her clothes and it was more than just a little slosh of wine last night on to her light gray t-shirt. Also, she hasn’t eaten but that’s not what her mom was here for. 

“Susan Porter. Who is she, Mom?”

Katherine yelled over her shoulder while changing her shirt with the bedroom door open.

“Let me see the letter”

Katherine handed her mom the letter then busied herself in the kitchen looking for food. The grocery situation was bleak. Her pantry had one stale box of crackers and the fridge was home to mostly empty condiments, expired milk, and white wine. 

“Have you eaten? Want to order lunch?” 

Katherine said more brightly, her mood shifting to the tone she always used when she wanted something from her mother. 

“I can not believe she did this. How dare she! After all this time,” 

Her mother was in tears, head in hands. 

Not used to being on this end of the comforting, Katherine paused for longer than would be considered polite. 

“Hey now, it’s okay. You’re alright. Who is she?” 

She patted her mom’s back awkwardly, eyebrows creased. She wished she would’ve gone a bit harder on the wine to deal with this. 

“Susan is my sister,”

“Sister? You’ve always told me you were an only child?”

“And I wish I was. I would've been better off for it,”

“Mom, I don’t really know what to say… Can you find a way to start at the beginning?”

“Okay. Once upon a time, I had an older sister named Susan. She was a drunk by the time she was 20. She used and abused all of us. Taking everything she could get. Then pissing it all down the drain. She showed up to your birth and couldn’t walk a straight line. Asked your father for a grand an hour after you were born. That was the final straw. I told her to disappear and never reach out to me again. The end,”

Katherine was stunned. Her mind clung to “a drunk” and “used and abused”.

“I don’t know what to say. What would she want with me? Why leave me a storage unit?”

“I wish I knew, Katherine. I don’t like it one bit. It’s been 30 years and it was always radio silence between us. I can handle this. Just give me the key and don’t worry anymore about it,”

Her mom was always cleaning up her messes. This didn’t feel like one she should hand over. Especially with the way her mom talked about Susan. Her mom’s reaction threw Katherine’s walls up in a way she was sure Susan would understand.  

“That’s okay, mom. Thanks for telling me but I’d like to look into it on my own. I’ll take pictures and call you after. Give me some time to process the dead aunt I didn’t know I had and get to know her through this mystery storage unit,”

Her mom was still crying and looked ready to argue. 

“I didn’t tell you about Susan for a reason. There’s not a thing I’d want you to know about her. I hate that she's doing this to me. To you. And she’s not even here for me to tell her how I feel about it. This whole things is not right and I don’t want you involved,”

“I love you but you don’t really get a say. You got to choose to keep her away from me my whole life, but legally, now that she's gone, she’s told me she exists. I get to see this through,” 

“I’ve always worried about you, Katherine. But I’ve never been more worried in my life. The last thing you need is Susan coming into your life,”

Her mother said as she opened the cabinet and pulled 3 bottles of wine down. Then she opened the fridge and poured the rest of the Sauvignon Blanc down the drain. She walked out of the door without looking back. 

Katherine found herself panting, with shaking hands as she locked the door behind her mom. This was a lot to process. She didn’t even know about Susan a day ago yet she already felt protective and a strange understanding washing over her. She grabbed her wine key and twisted into one of the bottles of wine, it’s what her aunt would do. Susan would understand. 

__________

Katherine read unit 316 then slid the key into place. The storage unit was smaller than she anticipated, more like a closet than anything else. She didn't know what she thought she’d find but it wasn’t this. 

Inside the unit, there was a stack of framed paintings leaning against the wall. They were all of the same thing, some type of plant with a juglike feature. Some were all green, others purplish and red. But in all of them there was an animal, like a bee or salamander, shown falling or trapped inside the jug of the plant. 

Katherine had never seen such a thing before but she found she couldn’t look away. The paintings made her curious and sad. She flipped through the painting one by one, taking her time to soak in every detail. She liked the way Susan signed a fluid S.P in the corner of each. 

At the very back of the stack, Katherine found a magazine titled Painter’s Corner with a corner folded down in the middle of the issue. On the page, she found pictures of the very paintings in the unit with her and an article titled Painting Pitcher Plants and Putting Booze Down. Katherine suddenly couldn’t breathe as she stared at the portrait of Susan at the bottom of the page. It was like looking in a mirror 20 years down the road. Katherine thought of all the times someone would say “she doesn’t look much like either of you” and the sorrow that would cross her mom’s face over the years, now she understood why. 

She sat down cross legged on the concrete floor and read. The interviewer asked Susan, “Why a pitcher plant?” 

Susan replied, “A pitcher plant is full of irresistible nectar that draws insects in. They want what the plant has so bad, they lose sense of their surroundings. As soon as they get that first taste, they are doomed. They will crave more and they will crawl closer and closer to the center of the jug lips until they fall in. Trapped. Victim to the thing they loved the most. It’s poetic really and like my relationship with alcohol. I lost everything to my drinking. Everything that is, except my art. I heard once that you will never drink less than you did the day before and that certainly rang true for me. Like the insects, the nectar was irresistible to me. I fell into the jug. I died to everyone around me. I’ve been trapped in a pitcher plant for longer than I’ve been alive. It’s ironic that this collection is what finally got me noticed now that I’m truly dying.”

Katherine gasped and realized she wasn’t breathing, but kept reading.

The interviewer went on, “The art community has been in mourning since you bravely shared the news of your late stage cirrhosis and I am so thankful you agreed to this interview to spread awareness. What message would you like to part us with?”

Katherine closed her eyes and took deep breaths before reading the last words she’d get out of her aunt. Susan said “Fly away while you still can. Find freedom in the sky. Don’t end up trapped in the jug or 6 feet under, like me, with no one there when they toss the dirt on. Your life is art worth making.” 

Katherine decided at that moment she’d never drink again.