Happier Than She Was

“If walls could talk -”

“ - they’d tell you to shut up and start hauling.”

“How do you know they wouldn’t tell me who stole my Roger Clemens rookie card back in ‘87?”

“You’re STILL hung up on that damn card?”

“...I have an alert that tells me every time someone sells that card for fifteen hundred bucks, just so I can wince at it.”

“I will never understand you.”

“You don’t have to, as long as you do your part to get the house ready. C’mon, Jimmy. Let’s go check the attic.”

THE NEXT DAY

“Jesus Christ, Howie, can you lift your side any higher!?”

“I’m doing the best I can! I’ve got most of the weight here! Hey, while I’m holding this thing up, will you check the bed frame for my Roger Clemens rookie card?”

“Jesus Christ. Shut up, HOWARD.”

“Okay, you know what? Screw you, JAMES. Screw this. Move the damn thing yourself.”

“Hey, c’mon. Don’t be like that. We gotta get this stuff outta here. I can’t get out the door with this thing in the way! Come on! Jimmy? Jim!”

DISTANT DOOR SLAM

“Ugh. Sonofabitch.”

TWO HOURS LATER

“Howie?”

“Jim!”

“You’re still up there?”

“Dude, you won’t believe what I found. Get up here!”

“Um, the mattress is still -”

“Oh, right. Hang on. Lift on three?”

“One - two - three - UNH! Pivot! Pivot!”

“I’m freaking pivoting, Howie, I can’t pivot any further.”

“Okay, okay, come towards me. Easy, okay. Okay. And, down! Okay, now get in here, check this out.”

“Don’t tell me you found your Roger Clemens card.”

“Um.”

“Holy crap, Howard, did you actually -”

“Yes. It was between the floorboards. But it’s not just that, Jim. Look at this.”

“I told you I never took that damn card.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry for thirty years of blaming you for something you didn’t do, okay? Just LOOK.”

“What am I looking at?”

“It’s Ma.”

“Whaddya mean, ‘It’s Ma?’”

“I mean, there was a little arrow on the wall, in like, crayon or something - behind the bed. And it was pointing down to this one spot on the floor, which I could see because your stupid mattress was stuck in the doorway. And when I followed the arrow, it pointed to a spot on the floor that looked a little off, so I futzed around with it and it came up.”

“You’re telling me we had a secret loose floorboard hiding spot in our room for eighteen years and never knew about it?”

“Yeah, tell me about it. I’d have killed for somewhere to hide my -”

“Howie, finish that sentence and I’ll - ”

“ - anyway, this box was in it, and look - that’s Ma, right?”

“Jeeeez, when’s this from? She must be like, six years old in this.”

“Seven.”

“How do you know?”

“Says here on the back: Myrah, Birthday, 1949.”

“What else is in the box?”

“Stuff you’d expect from a little girl. Lookit this - valentines. She saved her valentines from grammar school, can you believe that?”

“Aw, that’s kinda sweet, actually.”

“She lived her whole life here, Jim.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I know too, but this is like - this was her childhood. Box full of valentines and, here, give it to me - what’s this?”

“A skate key, must be.”

“Yeah. And oooh, there’s a silver dollar. And - hang on, hang on.”

“Whatcha got, Howie?”

“Well, this is weird.”

“What is?”

“It’s a birth certificate.”

“Hers?”

“Uh, no. It’s for a Baby Boy Wissinger, born June 17, 1959 to a…holy crap, Jim.”

“Let me see that - Mother: Myrah Wissinger, Father: Unknown??”

“She was…sixteen, maybe seventeen.”

“In those days…”

“Yeah you’re not kidding. Jim, we gotta big brother out there somewhere.”

“Half brother. Who knows who the father is?”

“Look, in those days, who woulda admitted to it?”

“Baby Boy Wissinger. Holy crap.”

“She never mentioned anything to you, right?”

“Me? Hell no. I never heard a word about this. I never knew - Jim, are you ok?”

“Shut up, Howie. You never saw a guy cry before?”

“Not since Dad at the funeral, no.”

“Well some people cry at death and I apparently cry at surprise half-brothers showing up outta the floorboards.”

“Jim…you think we can find him?”

“Who? Baby Boy Wissinger?”

“Yeah. I mean, we could look online, do that whole DNA testing thing. There’s all sorts of stuff out there now, you know?”

“And then what? ‘Hi, nice to meetcha, you were our mother’s big secret, sorry there’s no inheritance?”

“Well, I wouldn’t put you in charge of the welcoming committee, but you know. Could be worthwhile.”

“Could be. Man, a big brother. What would’ve life been like if we’d had a big brother?”

“Well, we’d have a different dad, for one thing.”

“Yeah, well. That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

“You thinking if she’d stayed with the unknown father of Baby Boy Wissinger she wouldn’a divorced him?”

“I mean, I doubt it. Who knows? It might’ve been another teenage kid.”

“Or not.”

“Or not.”

“I just mean - you think maybe that’s why Ma always seemed a little bit sad, even when she was happy?”

“I think that was the clinical depression.”

“Yeah but what if it wasn’t?”

“You think she spent the rest of her life sad about a kid she had to give up?”

“I mean…wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I think I would. Idunno, Jimmy, there’s this whole life she didn’t get to have, with three boys instead of two idiots who fought all the time and a husband who didn’t come home smelling like someone else’s perfume until she kicked him out…”

“Hey, you know Dad wasn’t any happier than she was.”

“Were you?”

“Was I what?”

“Happier than she was.”

“Well sure, I guess. When we were kids.”

“You never walked around feeling like - like, Idunno, everybody else’s family knew something ours didn’t? Like they knew how to have a Christmas without anything getting broken?”

“Well, yeah. I know what you mean. But I don’t think I was unhappy.”

“Well, between you, me and the wall, I think I was mad at Ma. I think I’ve been mad at her for a long time, and when she got sick, I felt bad about it. And now here we are, cleaning out her stuff and I’m still mad.”

“Mad about what?”

“Idunno. Mad that she didn’t leave him sooner. Mad that she had us at all.”

“You’re not making sense, Howie.”

“I know. I know. It must be the grief or something. Something about being in this room. These walls.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Hey.”

“Hey what?”

“Now that you got your Roger Clemens rookie card back, whatcha gonna do? You gonna sell it?”

“Are you kidding? No way.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Look, if I die first, you can have it.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I mean it. Consider it an apology. For everything.”

“Hey Jimmy?”

“Yeah?”

“I was never mad at you, you know.”

“I know, Howie. I know.”

“What do you say we clear the rest of this room and then go get a beer somewhere?”

“I think that sounds like a good idea.”

“Great. Let’s move the couch next. The way you used to squirrel change in the cushions, there might be enough in there to get dinner, too.”

END