Personal Effects (10 page)

Dad stares at the wall. Cooper waits.

Finally, Dad looks Cooper in the eye. “Thank you.” And that might as well be good-bye.

Cooper shakes Dad’s hand. Nods my way. And he’s gone.

I push myself out of the kitchen, pinballing off the wall for support.

Dad hasn’t moved — he’s still holding the door partway open.

Then he closes it and turns to look up the stairs.

He stands at the bottom of the stairs, hand on the banister, one foot on the first step.

I’m dizzy, and sick, but standing.

He heaves himself onto the first step and up.

I stagger after him, pulled along as if he’s towing me up the stairs.

Dad’s in front of the open door to T.J.’s room. I want to run past him and lock myself in there until he leaves, but my legs won’t work. I push against the wall, force myself up two more steps. It feels like walking against a strong current, sinking ankle deep into the mud with every step.

A soft click. My knees buckle and I land on the step. Dad rests his hands on the worn wood of the closed door. T.J.’s stuff on the other side. Stuff I didn’t even think we’d get. Stuff Dad hasn’t hidden or gotten rid of yet.

A vise clamps around my ribs; my lungs can’t work.

Dad turns, marches away from the door, then leaps, startled when he sees me. He steadies himself against the wall.

The dim hallway hides his face, but his whole body surges up and his hands grip and flex in the air. He stomps down the stairs so fast I stumble backward to get out of his way.

I try to follow, but I can’t. I have to go up there, now. If I don’t . . . My legs tremble. He closed the door.

I watch each step down the stairs, one foot in front of the other, waiting to wake up or breathe or get my brain to work. I need to figure out what to do. What if I’m still asleep? Downstairs, in my room, asleep, and I wake up and there’s nothing upstairs in T.J.’s room?

Dad’s standing at the sink, rinsing out his mug, as if nothing happened.

He turns to look at me. I wait for it, hoping that maybe, maybe this time, he’ll get it. He’ll let me . . . Even if he said “Later,” it would be enough. Something. He hardens his eyes. Warning me off. Warning me off even asking, or letting on that any of this just happened. Unbelievable. I knew it, and still, fucking unbelievable.

He reaches for his keys.

“Dad?” I hate my voice.

“Yes?”

“But . . .”

“What?” Hard. Angry already.

I try to form a question that won’t get me thrown through a wall.

Dad does his best to make sure I don’t feel like asking any questions. When I start to work my mouth anyway, he turns — full frontal challenge.

“What?” Begging me to say a word

“Dad . . .” I can feel my eyes looking up, like I can see through the ceiling. My throat burns, locked tight. Eyes sting.

He’s over me, in my face, so close I have to step back, wedged between him and the wall.

“You mind your own fucking business, you hear me?”

“But . . .”

“No.”

Dad holds his ground. I have no choice. No way I can get at them now. And if I stay, if I fight with him . . . he might haul them out right in front of me.

I back down, look at my feet. Shake my head. Act as whipped as I can. For now. I need time to regroup. I retreat. Grab my backpack and leave, without looking back.

I walk to the site in a daze. All the way there, and for most of the morning, I keep turning it all over in my head. I’m such an idiot. Dad, and Uncle Mac, and Aunt Janelle — everyone — called that bag T.J.’s personal effects. When months went by with nothing else, I thought that’s all we were gonna get. But now there’s more — three footlockers full — but for how long? How long until Dad moves them, too? Or gets rid of them, if that’s what he did with the rest?

I’m pretty sure that bag was in the hutch for weeks, until he moved it, maybe because of how I looked at it sometimes. And the flag — it was up in T.J.’s closet for months. And the pictures. He waited until just a few weeks ago to get rid of the pictures. But he won’t wait so long this time. Not now. Not after this morning.

I’ll risk the beat-down, if it’s what has to happen, to get something of T.J. back. The bag’s either hidden somewhere or gone. Either way, I can search for it later. Right now, I’ve got to get into those footlockers.

S
ATURDAY SUCKS
. H
ARD
. B
ESIDES
D
AD
’
S FRUSTRATIONS
and glares, by the time we’re done with the storm windows I’m covered in sweat, grime, and stinging scrapes. And my shoulder’s throbbing.

I keep up my kicked-puppy act the whole time. Biting my cheek when I have to. The longer he thinks I’m the old, beat-down me, the longer it’ll take him to get rid of the trunks. I checked them last night, just for a second, just to be sure. They’re still upstairs, for now.

Dad heads back inside while I clean up, hauling the windows back to the storage shed and then winding up the hose. Dad had plans to go out tonight. I hope he still does, that I’ve acted whipped enough not to tip him off. If I’ve blown it, I have no idea what I’ll do. I can’t wait. Not for long.

Dad’ll be around Monday — Memorial Day. No way we’re “celebrating,” but no way he can work, either. No sites to inspect on a national holiday. We’ll both be here, pretending nothing’s happening. Be like him to get rid of it all tomorrow, if he’s leaning that way. And even if he doesn’t, after tonight I’ll only have after school, when I’m not working, unless I cut. And if I cut, I’m screwed. Has to be tonight.

I can’t stop thinking about what could be in the footlockers — the sweatshirt with the ripped front pocket T.J. wore everywhere. The pictures he took when he was over there, maybe even a couple pics of him. His camera. His CDs and iPods. Please, let his iPods be in there.

I kick off my muddy shoes on the porch and wipe off the worst of the crud before going inside. Dad’s standing at the counter, drinking a glass of water.

His white shirt is starched crisp, the pocket sealed to the shirt and the cuffs sharp, and he smells like a sweet cedar closet from a healthy dousing of his favorite cologne. Those aren’t poker night or hanging-around-with-Uncle-Mac clothes. Either Dad has an actual date or he’s hoping to find one later.

He flashes a grin on his way to the door. Damn near whistling. He might as well have said, “See you tomorrow.”

If he does come home tonight, no idea how late he’ll be, but I’d bet he’ll be gone at least a few hours. And he never brings anyone here, at least not until he’s been seeing them for a while. Really no way of knowing if he’s got all-night plans or just hopes to have an all-night plan soon.

And he might already have plans to get rid of the footlockers.

What if I wake up tomorrow and he’s hauling them out the door?

Or come home sometime next week and they’re gone?

Like the bag. Like the flag. Like the pictures.

If I don’t do it now, tonight, I might never get the chance.

I wait just long enough to be sure Dad’s date isn’t gonna crap out, text Shauna to blow off our plans, and then start for the upstairs.

Standing at the bottom of the steps, it’s like a rush.

Every step is a separate defiance.

Four long strides from the landing to the spot right in front of the door to T.J.’s room.

I spent eight years living in the room behind me, more than two of them staring at this closed door and wanting to be inside. Wondering whether T.J. would let me in if I knocked. Wondering if I could get in and get whatever, look at whatever, before T.J. came home, the fear of being caught clogging my throat. How many times did I sit here in the hallway, reading a comic book or playing a game, waiting for him? Most of those times he stepped over me, walked into that room, and shut the door behind him, without a word.

It takes me three tries to make myself actually touch the doorknob. But once I turn the cold metal, the door swings wide like someone pulled it open from the inside. I stare into the room. T.J.’s old bed. His desk. His dresser.

It looks pretty much the way it did when T.J. left for Basic, only dustier. Same plaid bedspread and nearly flat pillow barely making a lump. Same faded posters and stuff on the walls: Dave Matthews Band between the closet and the door; some pages cut from magazines, mainly
Rolling Stone
; the huge-ass Bruce Springsteen rocking out over his desk, the
Born in the U.S.A.
album cover blown up and stretched across the far wall, and the
Human Touch
album poster on the wall next to his bed; and smaller pics and ticket stubs and notes and stuff on the corkboard. I can practically hear T.J.’s music radiating from the walls.

Stacks of CDs overflow the rack next to the desk. In the far corner, a few boxes T.J. left before his first tour in Iraq and never bothered to take with him later.

Crossing into the room feels wrong, and not just because I haven’t been in here in a few months or because Dad would pummel me if he found out.

No, it feels wrong because it still feels like T.J.’s. Like he’s deployed on an extra-long tour and could be home anytime. Or like the times between deployments — he didn’t stay here for more than a few weeks at a time, but this was still his room.

The clock in the living room ding-dongs its quarter time. I don’t know quarter after or to what, but it’s enough to make me step over the dividing line of competing carpets and into the room.

The cardboard box — Cooper said that’s the commemorative chest. Waiting to be filled, meaning there’s nothing in there now. It can wait.

The three footlockers sitting in the middle of the floor are made of heavy black plastic. New, not scarred. These haven’t been anywhere but wherever they packed his stuff up and here. Inside could be anything, could be everything.

An itchy anticipation crawls over me.

I can’t stop hoping for all kinds of things.

Then cold dread sweeps it away. There are zip ties locking the footlockers shut. I try pulling at them, to see if they can be opened or something. But there’s no way in except to cut them.

I stand there, staring at them. If I cut them, and he comes in here, even just to check, he’ll see what I’ve done right away. I was hoping to take just enough so that he’d never really know. Now he’ll know whatever I do. Shit. No choice. Whatever happens, I can’t walk away, not again.

I race down the stairs, through the house, and into the kitchen. Dig around until I find the scissors and some tape.

I examine the zip tie loop through the latch of the first footlocker again, just to make sure there isn’t some way to pull or stretch it open. There’s not. No way in except to cut them. I’m wasting time.

The scissors are awkward in my hand. It takes me three tries to get them positioned just right to cut the zip tie up near the top of the latch where the cut won’t show unless Dad looks closely. My hand shakes. The first cut feels like it takes forever, almost vibrating through my fingers, ending with a whisper of sound.

I pull the loop free and test the plastic, lining up the ends. It’ll be easy to tape the ends back together enough to hide the cut some, at least from across the room.

The first bit of excitement cuts through the fear. I’m actually doing this.

The latch snaps up with an audible pop, slapping back at my fingers. I open the lid a little too hard, and it falls back with a loud bang. For a split second, I wait for the sound of Dad’s feet or an alarm. But the pounding fear fades fast as I look inside.

On top is a heavy coat and a set of sheets, smelling like some probably supposed-to-be-odorless laundry detergent. The sheets look pretty new, even though T.J. had been in Iraq this last time for almost six months and on base before that. Was this just his stuff from the last tour? He had to have left some stuff in storage or something, right? Maybe that stuff comes later. Or maybe they don’t even know where it is. Who knows.

I lift out the sheets and the coat and lay them aside. The coat slips, unfolding in my hands, too fluffy and slick. I try to refold it, but without something to hold it down, it doesn’t want to be folded. I dump it beside the sheets. A flat, faded-out pillow is next, nearly as flat as the one on the bed behind me. At least it still smells a little familiar. I put it on the opposite side of the footlocker.

Next are some clothes — a couple of sweaters, jeans, thermal shirts, and sweats. Nothing all that interesting or special, and all of it smelling like strangers. No sign of the T-shirt or sweatshirt I want the most. Got to keep moving.

Next down are bags of socks and underwear, and then shoes — sneakers, loafers, flip-flops. A pair of low hiking boots I think he loved more than any other shoes he’d ever owned. I pull them out. New laces, not even creased or worn, still tight and clean. The boots are too big for me; stupid to take them. I put them back in.

An old pair of slippers — worn and beat-up, and duct taped at the bottom. I didn’t even know he wore slippers.

Other shoes and clothes. Nothing worth taking. I pack everything but the pillow back in as best I can and shut the lid and slip the zip tie back in place. Takes me four tries to get the edges lined up and the tape in place to hold them together without looking wrong or having a bunch of tape sticking off the side. But once I get it right, you can’t even see the cut without looking real close. Perfect.