This is the photo album of the grandmother. It contains pictures of her as an infant growing into a hand-holding toddler standing on cathedral steps with your great-grandfather. It contains pictures of rides on old bicycles, beach vacations, high school dances, engagement photos. It holds images of a matriarch-to-be, unveiled with back straight and chin lifted high, regal, hefting a bouquet between laced hands.
The pictures age the way their subjects do. The early black and whites are clear, defined, before giving way to the yellow-blurred and faded color photos when your father begins appearing in his own album of memories captured on paper.
This is what the grandmother’s photo album does not contain:
Pictures of an uncle that never came to term.
The alcohol and paranoia-fueled fists of your grandfather.
Pictures of the many bruises those fists made.
Your father locked in a closet for hours as punishment for something he did not do.
The force it takes to make a switch leave welts on young backsides.
The briefest moment of true sadness when drunken grandfather tumbled down the stairs
and broke his neck.
The tears that were not shed by your father or your grandmother at the funeral.
The suspicious looks the neighbors gave your mother for years after.
The relief grandmother felt raising your father on her own.
+ + +
This is your father’s closet. The floor is lined with polished dress shoes, all laces tied in perfect bows. Seven shades of belt hang from the clothing rod, each hanging with equal distance between them. This is the motorized tie rack that keeps each tie perfectly folded and in place. It is organized by color first, followed by size and directionality of stripes.
His dress shirts are starched and stiff, ironed to a crispness you’ve never been able to perfect yourself. There are exactly twenty-one of them, hanging from darkest to lightest in the very middle of the closet, stuck between the belts and the fourteen suits, hung straight and dry-cleaned from darkest to lightest as well.
This is your father’s dresser, full of matching socks tucked neatly inside like stacked dinner rolls. Next to them, fourteen minimally decorative boxes containing uniquely designed pairs of cuff links. Gold, silver, platinum; they all glitter in the dim light of the ceiling fan.
This is what the father’s collection does not contain:
His love of the sound of ice clinking against glass.
His fear of crowds, a natural pushing away from the swell of human tides that makes him
feel insignificant, alone while surrounded.
The quiet he dwells in, savoring the taste of loneliness like old scotch on his soul’s
tongue. He swirls it around and basks in its layered flavor.
His love of the burn as it coats his throat.
The way he pines over lost loves.
The way he fell asleep on the toilet remembering memories that never were.
The way he wonders his what-ifs, what-could’ve-beens, the what-should’ves.
The way he ruminates on the past instead of relishing the present.
The way he questions the decisions that brought him to the now.
The way he turns the word “happiness” around in his brain, trying to figure out if he’s
found the key to fit its tumblers, wondering why he’s never heard their satisfying click.
+ + +
This is your mother’s jewelry box, all glinting and glittery in the dim light of the basement bedroom. Each facet glimmers and glams, hypnotizing her by the moments each piece evokes. It is a pastiche of costume shine and authentic dazzle. She believes that mixing up the expensive pieces with the worthless ones will confuse anyone who might break in to her home. Your mother doesn’t seem to understand that the common thief will simply take it all and sort it out later.
This is your mother’s perfume table, the bottled colors reflecting and refracting out onto the surface like a scented rainbow. This bottle (short and squat and full of amber) is from a former lover, a brief affair she will never admit to your father. This bottle (tall and jade in color, contents unknown) is from her mother, an engagement gift. This bottle (blue and almost nondescript) is the one she wears most often. It reminds her of your birth.
What these bottles do not show:
The smell of bactine on your first scraped knee.
The scent left behind of a man she did not know personally (her decision? your father’s?).
The sterility of a hospital room after surgery, the fear of needles and scarred belly.
The odor of her first (and last) attempt at family meal, burned and tough like shoe
leather, swept away only by the fanning of doors by you and your father as you shared
secret smiles across the room.
The popcorn-scented ticket stubs for movies she would go see alone, waiting and wishing
for the actors to smile down at her from the screen the way your father never could.
+ + +
This is your library. Stacks of political theory sandwiched between bad detective stories, a single romance novel, and nonfiction collections, a small few of which you can relate. The stacks are arranged by level of interest, biographically by latest whim to earliest. You don’t remember what lies at the bottom of the back-most stacks.
Your shelves are filled with three-ring binders full of class notes and graded papers and handouts you’ve never bothered to read through again. Bad poetry reviewed by other bad poets, deconstructions of papers comparing the inferno of Dante and Margarite’s involvement with the devil. This is your education compacted in a five foot square space.
What your library does not reveal:
The aversion to crowds, a feeling passed down by your father, though neither of you has
ever spoken to the other about it.
The collection of developed photographs, still in their processing envelopes, taken long
before the digital age. You remember all the faces, but not all the names attached to each
one.
The bouts of depression pushed through during your high school years.
The regret of your first backseat tryst that sits in the back of your memory, black and
cloudy and always floating near the surface of any given moment.
The way you silently stalk the men you fall in love with, even decades later into middle
age.
The way you turn the word “happiness” around in your brain like your father did, though
neither of you has ever spoken to the other about it.
+ + +
This is the crib your little brother never slept in. It is padded along each side and an unused blanket sits folded in the middle. A knitted bear you made while he was full in mother’s belly rests in the corner, black button eyes staring out through the wooden slats onto a room no one’s entered in years. Dust coats the changing table.
What the room does not reveal:
Little brother’s (future) name.
A picture of his (future) footprint stamped upon a laminated page.
Pictures of his (future) first days of kindergarten, elementary school, junior high. He
would have grown tired of the ritual by high school.
The (future) way he turns the word “happiness” around in his brain like his father did,
though neither of them will ever have the chance to speak to the other about it.
Anything of his (future).
