Afterthought

How long had I been sitting there? It felt like hours and I estimated it had become late in the afternoon, but it was impossible to know for sure. Anyway, he was dead. What difference did time make now?

I stared at the mess on my skinny black jeans. Wisps of old insulation and tiny remnants of sawdust. Ghosts of handprints where I had slapped dust off my palms as I rifled through old forgotten board games; disco-era poly-blended clothes pulled from the depths of old musty closets, in sizes too large or too small for any of us to fit into properly; letters exchanged during the last great war; artwork from bygone eras created in his signature style, the lines between fact and fantasy always slightly blurred, moving in strange directions sensed somewhere in the unknown. And the books. The fucking books.

I'd spent the majority of my life in that house, a Berkshire barn he'd painstakingly renovated long before I was born. Untold hours spent laughing, falling in love with Billie Holiday and others of her ilk, enjoying his (in)famous shrimp stir fry (out of which I would always fish the delectable crustaceans, leaving the sad brown broccoli and other limp poor-bastard vegetables to be scraped into the trash), or sitting in his large round living room among impossibly large piles of mail, allowing the gentleness of his voice to wash over me as he spoke of far-off places and things I could easily experience for myself if I read this book or maybe that one…

It seemed he was always at one of his dozens of oversized bookshelves reaching for some title to help him encapsulate whatever point he was making. And I was fascinated. The way he spoke with the voice of a professor and an artist; the way his eyebrows would slide up his forehead as he landed a verbal punch and waited for its depth to register on my face; the exchange of understanding often done only with our eyes, since attempting to hang even one more word would destroy the whole concept he presented me with time and time again: think for yourself. Yet no matter the topic of discussion, there was usually a book that ended up in my hands. And I would devour it.

Even as a small child books were a comfort to me. My mother likes to tell how she would read to me before bedtime and, once the story was through, I would tuck the book under my pillow for the night. She laughs when she recalls that every so often she would have to sneak in and take the books out from underneath my head, worried I was sleeping more on hardcover Little Golden books than the downy softness that was intended. So it was that by the time he came into my life at seven years old I was already a voracious reader, and he marvelled at my ability to absorb words with lightning speed. He told me once he envied how quickly I could cruise through pages of tiny text. Trivial as it may seem, it is a compliment I still carry with me.

I sat motionless in the detritus of what was once a grand library of knowledge. I watched tiny specks of dust and airborne anomalies floating through rays of liquid sunshine that squeezed, uninvited, through the cracks in the boards of his crumbling old barn. I let the tears run quietly down my face without wiping them away; to do so would not only leave filthy smears of dirty fingers on my cheeks but also would wipe away proof that I was heartbroken, that he carried me further through life than I ever realized and now it was too late to tell him as much. I cried for all the words I didn't say as I sat by his deathbed because they just seemed too final. I cried with shame for not being there the morning he was sent on to the next chapter. I cried for all the books he would never recommend to me when I needed advice or a good laugh or to escape for a while to a place I'd never even dreamed of. I was surrounded by his collection, by words of other men and women who had gone before him and still managed to touch his life, by thoughts of present and past and all the conversations I would never be able to have with him. All the unanswered questions left to float around in the void, not unlike the teeny particles that amassed themselves in the stale air around me.

My eyes drifted from my dirty jeans to the floor; splintered wood littered with mouse shit and trash. Stacks of randomness - once a hoarder's paradise - now a decrepit mess my family was painstakingly trying to clean up and toss out. A sob passed my lips, symptomatic of my inability to catch my breath as the grief filled my chest, stealing oxygen from my lungs while my eyes scanned the expanse of bookshelves long untouched since he’d lost the strength to use the stairs necessary to reach them almost a decade before. As my eyes strained to focus through saltwater I noticed an unremarkable volume nestled between old reference books. It was much smaller than the others, bound in black leather and clearly misplaced, its unassuming presence dwarfed by the books surrounding it in an almost ominous fashion. My tears gave way to curiosity as I peeled myself off the creaky floorboards, stepping carefully to a place where I could reach it and gently extract it from between its looming neighbors. I opened it slowly, careful not to stress the delicate spine as he had taught me so many years before. "You must respect old books," he would say with a gleam in his eye, "you are holding history in your hands."

Barely had I begun to flip its fragile pages when I realized it was written in his own hand; a journal tucked away in the most obscure of places considering his meticulous organization. A passage about a lover from long ago in a non-descript bedroom, a woman he had adored and touched in the most intimate of ways, some of them so illicitly described that my face turned quickly from grieving pallor to deep blush. Lists of items purchased and the prices of each, evidence he’d been a Depression baby and a bit of a miser. Humdrum day-to-day observations; train schedules from NYC to the Berkshires then back again, and the best stops to make if you wanted fresh pastry or a cheap ham sandwich on the way; reminders to return a phone call, answer a letter; fears and intentions alongside inspirations and recollections.

I felt guilty standing there in the swirling spores and the aroma of old paper and mildew, wondering if I was invading his privacy...and then there it was. Near the back of the book, written on fading lined paper folded smartly in half and bookmarking a blank page was one word: my name. My face flushed again, this time from sheer delirium. I tried to imagine what it could be. Maybe a forgotten note meant to accompany one of his marvelous birthday gifts or perhaps a "just because you're a dynamite gal" type of inscription. It's hard to say how long I stood there staring at my name printed in his calligraphic style, the ink a dim grayish tone that suggested it had been there for years, possibly even since my childhood. A wave of apprehension swept over me. I desperately wanted to unfold this secret communication. I wanted to open it and let the words cascade over my broken heart like healing magic, a tender reassurance from the great beyond that he was safe, filled with life again somewhere just beyond my reach but never too far away. But I was also struck with trepidation. This was it, the last time I would be able to pore over his words for the first time. I wanted time to move forward and also remain forever...

So I closed the book. I returned once again to the place where my body had left its imprint in the thickly settled dust on the unkept floor. I folded my legs underneath me, took a deep breath and once again gingerly opened the little black book to find what would now be his last written words to me. I looked around the space I occupied, wearing the face of a child who is about to do something they know is wrong. Nervous about being discovered rifling through this most personal of notebooks, afraid someone would take it from me and discover my secret, decimating the mystery and the magic of the moment I found myself entrenched in. But no one came. The house was silent around me as I extracted the thin piece of paper before nestling the journal considerately in my lap. I inhaled sharply and let out a round, heavy sigh as I parted the neat fold...

With Love to Aryca

xxx

Jerry

As I registered the strange emptiness of the words, tears began to fill my eyes once again. It didn't make any sense. Clearly this note belonged with some token of his affection but what was it? Did I already have it in my posession or was it some wonderful unknown thing that had been abandoned when his health began to fail? Again I cursed death and all the questions it leaves us to wonder about. I felt angry then. Betrayed. How dare he leave me this thing to uncover only to have it lead to some blind path he wouldn't be around to lead me down. I picked up the journal, more impatient than before, convinced the answer was in it somewhere. Some margin note concealed among grocery lists and train stops, perhaps, or a reference to a book that would help me crack some unseen code. I looked for anything that might be meant for me alone to discover, the bereaved adventurer seeking one last treasure map. The one that would make sense of it all. Lead me to some undisclosed destination to find him waiting there for me with smiling pride ready to exclaim how exalted he was that I figured it out; what a brilliant woman I had become in the years of his kind tutelage. But there was nothing like that at all. This journal was kept years before I had come into this life, let alone been brought into his. My confusion and anger snowballed, each thought more erratic and groundless than the last. The useless ruminations of a mourning mind, everything dark and out of control, swirling over and over again.

The offending piece of paper slipped from my hand as the tears took over, my eyes stinging and my heart burning in my chest. It was so unfair. Such a tease. I wished I'd never found the stupid book. I cursed the existence of the bullshit note. I had to get out of there; the space seemed to be closing in on me, crushing what little air was left to breathe. I moved the journal from my lap to the floor beside me and let out a ragged, grief-soaked sigh as I lifted myself up. My forced breath stirred the cryptic little note just so, and it fluttered away, turning itself over in the breeze of my exhale. As I stooped to pick it up, intent on setting the damn thing on fire, I noticed small, concise writing along the paper's edge. Numbers. Written clearly and deliberately, a phone number followed by a series of arcane digits:

800-___-7338 *4739001

A sense of hope came over me. A clue! How long ago this information had been jotted down and its importance were unknown. Was it truly meant for me to find or just some random note taken quickly over the phone or perhaps written mid-conversation on the closest available piece of paper? More questions. But I was closer to an answer. The feelings of anger and frustration gave way to a kind of calm and then a deep excitement. I took the tiny note and put it in the back pocket of my jeans. The journal I lifted carefully and hugged to my body as I made my way out of the dusty library and down the stairs, through the big round living room and out the front door into the late afternoon sunlight, letting the fresh air fill my lungs. I jumped into my truck and left the property filled with a strange mix of emotions, unsure of what I had discovered but certain it had to be something special. Something he had left to me in confidence. One last isolated moment.

It was days before I picked up the phone to dial that strange phone number. I must have turned that note over in my hands a hundred times since I had found it, memorizing each and every curve of every letter and number it offered me. As I started to dial the numbers I was taken over with a new sensation: embarrassment. What if I was a tremendous idiot? Another mourning moron engaged in a futile attempt to soothe my soul by tying meaning into a string of symbols on an ancient piece of office paper? Surely whoever answered the phone would laugh me back to reality and remind me that I was a fool, and a desperate one at that. I entered the final digit of the phone number. I took a deep breath, then another. I pressed the green Call button and waited. For one terrible second I imagined the mocking voice of an operator explaining that the number no longer existed, that it never did, that some cruel post-mortem prank had been pulled and I went for it hook, line and sinker. On the other end of the phone, a ring. Then another. And then the pleasant and inviting voice of a woman told me I had reached the offices of JP Morgan. My heart sank. Just an old number for a bank he hadn't even used in years.

"End of the line," I thought to myself, "time to let it go."

And then another voice entered my head, clear as day, and it said "Couldn't hurt to ask, though."

I pressed "0" to be connected with their customer service line and waited impatiently as the phone rang once, twice, three times. On the fourth, a gentleman picked up and announced himself, asking how he might assist me. I told him my name and divulged my story, quick to assure him that I knew how crazy it must sound and that if he couldn't offer me any information I understood. At this he seemed to chuckle, amused, as though he got this phone call all the time. He asked if I had an account number he might reference and I rattled the numbers off from memory, paying careful attention to the annunciation of each. I heard the clicking of computer keys in the background. I heard a voice in my head telling me I was a lunatic. I heard the blood whirring in my ears as I waited for what seemed like forever, the world hushed as my whole being anticipated his next words.

"Miss Rieser?" He asked politely.

"Yes?" I replied, meekly.

"Miss Rieser, I see here there is a trust account in your name worth twenty thousand dollars. Does that sound right?"

The whirring in my ears stopped. The voices, the very breath in my lungs. Everything stopped.

"I...umm..." I trailed off. The voice on the other end of the phone let out another small, courteous chuckle.

"...weren’t expecting that?" He seemed glad to be sharing this news with me, like he had been tasked with keeping this incredible secret for so many years and finally it was time for the big reveal.

"That's a bit of an understatement," I said with a laugh. "Please forgive me, I'm a little bowled over right now."

"Understandable, Miss Rieser." I could hear him smiling through the phone. "There's a notation here for you, would you like me to read it?"

"Yes, please." I said softly. My heart began to race. Suddenly the whirring in my ears was back.

"It says 'Dear Aryca, you must respect old books. You're holding your future in your hands."