The Drawer of Missing Things

I was the first to go.

His splotched hands removed me gently from his wallet, and I never returned back to the comfy leather slot I had called my own for these past five years. Sure, I was expiring soon, but aren’t we all in a way?

When he placed me safely in his sock drawer, lodged neatly against the side, at first I didn’t understand.

Was he hiding me from his wife? Trying to resist the temptation to buy his weekly lottery ticket? Making sure he would put a new pair of socks over those tired feet?

As it turns out, the answer was not so simple.

I could hear him softly cursing as he limped around the bedroom, patting down his pockets. He must have opened his wallet a dozen times before throwing it onto the bed in frustration.

His wife assured him he would find me, and that she would pay until I was located. Her faith in him reassured me, but even then I knew something was up. The next evening, after lying amongst his scrunched up pairs (and plenty of odds), the drawer opened and light streamed in from above.

Finally, a release from the musty drawer!

Instead, I was joined by an old friend- his wristwatch. The battered black thing had proudly kept time for a lot longer than I’d been around, but suddenly, after eighteen years on his wrist from dawn til dusk (even on Sundays), it found itself alongside me, face-down to make it worse.

It hurt to hear him so upset, and i wanted to yell out- “Here! In the sock drawer! We’re waiting for you!”.

But all we could do was listen to his head-scratching, his pacing, his puzzled sighs, and wait.

I didn’t like my new home, but it was nice not to be sliced through dirty metal four times a day, and I guess I was holding out for a happy reunion. The man wore socks everyday- we were bound to be discovered at some point.

But day by day, my hope dimmed as he did.

Each morning, he would open the drawer and grasp for a new pair in the early morning light that leaked in through the brown shutters.

He had done this morning routine for the better part of thirty-three years I’m told, so he didn’t need to look. And we had been placed in the far right-back corner, almost as if he were hiding us. But from who?

After two weeks , I really started to worry for the fella. Our neighbours in the drawer now included a toothbrush (not his), a pack of mints, his phone charger, and several hand-written shopping lists.

His frustrations were clear to hear, and there were times when I wished the wood of my new quarters were thicker, such was his distress. He couldn’t understand what was happening to his things, and more than once the idea of mischievous fairies was mooted.

The family cat, Tabitha, came under immediate suspicion, but slowly, surely, the thread of this mystery began to unravel.

He began to leave notes for himself around the house, weathered fingers scrawling reminders on scraps in a desperate attempt to retain control, though some of these inevitably ended up in the sock drawer with us.

She helped in every way possible, but the strain was there to see every morning, when he would stubbornly refuse any offer of assistance, and linger around the closet, eventually reaching for his tie.

During the evenings, he would wander in through the doorway, then out, then back in again, and she would patiently ask what he was after.

I gave up all hope of being found, for though she searched every inch of the house when he wasn’t looking, he had stashed us away so as not to be stumbled upon, like birthday presents bought months in advance. Nestled beneath his oldest, raggedy socks, I resigned myself to years of disuse, and even found that I missed those beeping machines now that I couldn’t get out.

Then one day in fall, many months after I had been carefully lost, and after a tense conversation of which I tried my best not to hear by concerning myself with repeating my account number over and over, she stopped and simply held him. I could not see of course, but I knew it from the silence on the bed.

He had been stomping about, rustling in old shoe-boxes, when the noise came to a halt, except for the quiet sound of a wife holding her husband, rubbing his back, giving him something strong to hold on to. They breathed together without a word, and though I couldn’t see his watch, I felt the heavy seconds turn to softer minutes.

The next day, he didn’t put his tie on when the light broke through, but slowly hauled a cardboard box across the bedroom floor. She had the radio on in the kitchen, and Harry James crooned along the hallway, mingling with the sweet smell of bacon and berry pancakes.

He hummed along, neither sadness nor joy easily apparent in his tune, and carefully began to pack his little life into that box, starting with the ties, the swish of their silk sliding down to the floor.

Eventually, he came for the sock drawer. It was mid-morning and they were puttering together in the bedroom; Harry James finished, pancakes long gone, when he found us.

Bit by bit, my cotton neighbours were lifted out, and I knew that this was it. When the drawer was almost empty, his fingers brushed my edge, and I felt him stop in bewilderment. When he let out a cry, she rushed over, and I felt her exhale fall onto my shiny surface.

I braced for the blow-up, the accusations, the breakdown.

Instead, she rubbed his sleeve affectionately, and his seasoned eyes crinkled in half-delight.

Here lay all the forgotten treasures, the misplaced mementoes, the unremembered ordinary pieces of a long and little life.

He picked me up, trembling hand scraping my sleekness off the wooden floor, and held me to his gaze.

“There you are“, he said with a sigh.

There I was indeed.