Following is a piece of fiction based on truth. It is an excerpt from my novel, Stuff Piles Up: the story of a boy named Brad who believes in the power of possessions to hold his family together. As a retiree about to make a major move, Brad must confront the stuff he’s amassed over a lifetime, the stuff he’s mistaken for his loved ones and himself. In this segment, Brad confronts the remnants of a closet when his dog offers a distraction.
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The closets are empty of clothes. But they’re far from empty.
For 12 years, the sliding smoky mirrors and particle-board doors concealed my loose ends, dangling participles, and cliffhanging chapters. They also hid the unwritten eulogies of abandoned careers and decomposing remains of relationships once aflame with promises ripped from works of fiction. They’d lived as attic-locked children on Addison Street for 10 years and, 24 years before that, chained to the boiler pipes in grandma’s dank cellar and stuffed in every crevice of Uncle Harry’s bedroom furniture. Along the way, I picked up the lonely pieces of others’ lives and kept my vow to guard them against the revisionist historians, whoever they were.
Now, I confront all of it. Mine. Theirs. Ours. I plot my path forward without the stuff I’ve until now never imagined having to live without. I play utility against fantasy, joy against pensiveness.
Wedged between the closet-dwelling file cabinet and dirt-streaked wall lives a mud-brown portfolio case bulging with four-color logo and brochure proofs. Interleaving this evidence of my middle years are sheets of smooth velum from Uncle Harry’s drafting projects as a SP4 stationed at Fort Ord. Pre-post office. Before the paranoia and switch-back moods.
An exposed corner of translucent white invites my tug, and a sunrise of sprockets peeks above the earthy edge of the portfolio case. The sprockets fit perfectly into well-tooled groves. Tooth penetrating grove. Groove accepting tooth. Tooth and groove sharing the same anatomy of alternating functions. The Yin and Yang of industry cranking the world forward. The inseparable matter and vacuums of space. Occupiers and occupied. Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Max Sartre dazed by being and nothingness. Mother and father. Assault and retreat. Hugs and release. With but a few lines — straight and curved, hard and yielding — Uncle Harry both phrased our existential condition and proposed a solution to it.
So I’m to wad up his pithy philosophy and stuff it into the blue recycling bin where it will keep the company of shredded eight-year-old tax returns and unhinged Amazon boxes. Bid it a teary farewell when the disposal truck’s claws seize the blue bin, arc it over a sea of anonymous packaging and bully its contents loose. Laud my green-leaning conscience when the vellum exhales in a flotation bath gently dissolving the 60-year-old ink, the particles clinging to whorls of air bubbles popping on the surface. Uncle Harry’s rarefied wisdom disbursed to air. The naked vellum pressed into a suffocating ream awaiting breath for months — or years.
I lean the portfolio case back against the wall. A thread of dust peels off the edge and tickles my nose. Lilly bounds over to me, a furry chicken clamped in her maw. Yes, baby girl. Play’s the remedy for every stalemate. And, it stifles my sneeze. You thrash the helpless chicken like a tiny T-Rex. Pump its chest and make it squeak. I leap toward you. You spring back out of reach. Give me the whale eye. Dare me. I feign disinterest. Break your gaze. Then—
Gotcha! You wriggle and snort, a doggie dance of seven vails. Chicken clenched between wanton teeth. Grinding your street bling into my lap. Marking me playmate and daddy. Wrestle. Tumble. Daddy’s got your chicken now! Whatcha gonna do, baby girl? Leap. Lunge. Fling goes your chicken, sailing into the living room. Go get it! Your padded toes scramble the hardwood, gaining traction. Tear after chicken. Three or four gallops and you skid to a halt. Glance forlornly at me over your shoulder. You sense a weight on daddy’s heart. Trot back to me and plant your butt against my hip. Good medicine . . .