The Recurring Charge

The break-room microwave beeped on someone else's leftovers. I opened the bank app because payday had landed and I like to watch the number before lunch gets to it.

Debit. GRAVEKEEPING. $12.00. Merchant: Oak Hill Cemetery Assoc.

I do not have a plot. I have a studio, a bus pass, and a mother in Ohio who still sends clippings.

The bank's phone tree smelled, in my head, like the hold music: thin piano. A person named Denise asked for the last four and then, as if it were a security question I had set, "Which plot number is the charge for?"

"I don't have a plot."

Keyboard. "We have a note on the account. Date of death June 12, 2026. ACH started June 13. It's been posting monthly. You didn't call in May either."

Today is August 19. June 12 is two months behind me. I ate a sandwich at this table on June 12. Turkey. Too much mustard. I remember because it dripped on my badge.

Denise offered a dispute form. I took the number. I also asked who had authorized the ACH. She said the cemetery. Originator name matched the merchant. The routing was mine.

I asked for the first posting date again. June 13, 12:01 a.m. I had been asleep. I asked whether a death certificate was on file. Denise said banks do not keep those. They keep notes. The note was enough for her screen. It was not enough for me.

Oak Hill is eleven minutes from the office if the lights on Carson are kind. I went at 12:40 because a form is paper and a ledger is better, and because sitting at my desk refreshing the app felt like agreeing.

The cemetery office is a brick room with a counter worn pale where elbows go. A fan ticked. The clerk, older, glasses on a chain, did not treat me like a prank.

"Name?"

I gave it. She pulled a green ledger, the kind that does not live in a cloud. She photocopied the page without being asked, as if people come for copies.

My name. Plot C-117. Date of burial June 14. Date of death June 12. Paid by ACH, my bank, my account, $12 on the thirteenth of each month. Interment: simple. Next of kin: blank, then a later pencil note: self.

I walked. Gravel under the shoes I wear to work. The map on the office wall used a Sharpie X for C-117, already there, not drawn while I watched. Rows of stones with dates that stay put. A mower somewhere, gasoline and cut grass. C-117 sits on a slight slope near a maple that drops early. The stone is gray, small, my name spelled correctly, birthday correct, death date June 12, 2026. The grass has had time. It needs cutting. A jar of mums — bronze, the kind my mother buys in September — sat in the plastic ring.

I called my mother from the slope. She was at the grocery. She had not driven here. She had not ordered flowers. "You're at work," she said. "You texted me a sandwich photo in June."

The groundskeeper had a radio on his belt and dirt on his knees. I asked about June 14.

"Quiet one," he said. "Family of one. Gray coat. Paid the extra for the mums just last week, actually. Said the stone looked unfinished without them."

He described the coat. He described the way I hitch my bag on the left shoulder. He described me.

I asked who signed the internment papers. He pointed me back to the office. The clerk found a carbon copy in a folder: signature in my handwriting, the G in my last name the way I make it when I am late. I did not sign in June. I have the badge swipe log from the office turnstile if anyone wants a Tuesday.

I do not own bronze mums.