It smells the same way the rest of the house does, foreign and cold. I flick on the overhead light and survey the room. Their paisley bedspread is perfectly made, and my father’s dresser is stacked with books, as it’s always been.
A lazy brain is a dull brain.
I still momentarily from the memory of my father’s voice, then shift my eyes to my mother’s bare dresser. I walk into the room, wondering if I’ll smell my mother’s perfume again, but I don’t. Nothing strikes me. Not even guilt or longing, and this worries me. Shouldn’t I drop to my knees in tears? Shouldn’t I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck? I’m in the room where they slept, where, as a little girl, I’d crawl into their bed in the mornings and cuddle up against my mother’s side. She’d snuggle me in close and kiss the top of my head as my father slipped out of the other side of the bed.
I walk to his side of the bed and sit on the edge, again waiting for a sudden impact to steal my ability to move.
Nothing happens.
I’m not sure if this is good or bad.
Does it say something bad about me? Am I losing my ability to care?
I have no answers. I reach over and open his nightstand, feeling mildly like a Peeping Tom. My father was a private person, but I asked Aunt Lara to leave my parents’ room for me to pack. This is my last chance to learn about them. As I stare into his meticulously neat drawer at a notepad, two pencils, and four quarters, I know that I won’t learn anything more about him from these items. I close the drawer and my shoulders drop. I don’t even know what I’m searching for.
I cross the room and open his dresser. Every pair of underwear is neatly folded and color coordinated. Wow. I had no idea he was this meticulous. His socks are separated from his underwear by a thin wooden slat. The items in his next drawer are equally as neat and ordered. White undershirts in one stack, beside grays, next to more whites. We learned at a young age that our parents treasured their privacy. I remember opening my father’s nightstand drawer when I was little, and he gave me that disapproving look, slanted brows, lips pressed in a thin line. Even then he didn’t need words. It never occurred to me to nose around after that. Now curiosity gets the better of me, and I head into his closet and sift through his color-coordinated suits and dress shirts. Benignly patterned ties in grays and blues hang from a wooden tie rack, each perfectly spaced from the next.
The top shelf of my father’s closet is lined with shoe boxes. I use the shelf at the back of the closet as a step as I grab the boxes one by one and drop them onto the floor. There are eight boxes, and when I drop the last, I sit among them trying to imagine my father deciding which shoes to keep in boxes and which to put on the two metal shoe racks on the floor. I look at the full racks. My father did like shoes, even more than my mother did. I never thought about that until now.
What man is this neat? Wyatt’s shoes are toed off at the door and left where they fall, not set neatly on the mat, the way my father always left his. My father had high expectations of us—and neatness was part of who he was. When Wyatt and I were home, we were extra careful not to leave a mess. I never questioned my father’s rules, and now, as I open one of the boxes and find a pair of leather flip-flops, I begin to wonder about his parents. I didn’t know my grandparents very well before they passed away, but what kind of meticulous expectations did they have for him to have turned out like this—and why aren’t Wyatt and I neat freaks, too?
I put the lid back on the shoe box and set it aside, then lift the lid off the next. Loafers. I repeat the process two more times and come across a pair of white sneakers. I don’t remember him ever wearing white sneakers, and these are particularly ugly. I take one out of the box, shaking my head. He should have had my mom help him find sneakers. I put them back in the box and set them aside. Those are definitely going in the charity box. I lift the lid off the next box and there are no shoes, only a dark wooden box. I lift it out and run my finger over the edge. It’s not fancy, and the simple golden clasp lifts right up when I flick it. I lift the lid and find a stack of folded papers. As I lift them out of the box, I imagine my mother writing my father love letters. They met in high school and dated all through college, even though they attended different schools, marrying shortly after graduation.
With the letters on my lap, I wonder if I’m crossing a line I shouldn’t. What if they’ve written personal stuff that grosses me out? I close my eyes and think of my parents. I can’t see them writing about sexy nights and longing for each other. I can only imagine my father detailing long nights of studying and my mother writing about missing him.