Breakfast with Neruda (21 page)

It takes about twenty minutes, but enough space is cleared that I can reach the stacks of boxes resting on the desktop. I open the first box; it's full of cancelled checks from several years ago. I hand it off. Shelly reaches to place it somewhere and slips. A pile of detritus loosens and pummels her on the head. “Ouch.”

“Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

“Let me know when this gets to be too much,” I say.

“I'm fine,” she says.

After moving several boxes of checks, I finally unbury the desk. I pull on the top drawer. “It's stuck,” I say. “Is there a heavy object around here I can use to bang on it?”

Shelly and my sister rummage through a couple piles. “I found a brass lamp base,” Shelly says. “Is it valuable?”

“Nothing's valuable,” I say.

The lamp has no bulb or shade. Or even a plug. Just the base. I grab it from her hand and whack the drawer until it pops loose. I set the brass lamp aside. I'd throw it away, but it may come in handy again. I slide the drawer open. Part of why it was stuck is it's overfilled. I reach in and pull out crumpled paper, ripping it as I go. It's an old grocery list. I wad it up and place it in the trash bag. Inside the drawer are hundreds of pens. “Good God, look at all these dried-up old pens.” I toss those in the bag as well. I grab at everything in the drawer and stuff it inside the bag, clawing until the drawer is empty. I sigh and rest myself against a stack of crap.

“What?” Shelly says.

“It's all so pointless,” I say. “I emptied one drawer, but it's like cleaning one tile at a time in a cathedral. This could take years.” I want to throw out everything in sight. “How the
hell
did it get like this?” I yell. “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it! It's a needle in a fucking haystack. It's insane.” I'm angry at the amount of stuff, and that I did nothing to stop it from accumulating.

Shelly places a gloved hand on my back. “Keep going,” she says. Her voice calms me.

I open the next drawer. “More goddamned pens!” I trash all of them. The next drawer is crammed full of paperclips, which I also throw out.

I whack the bottom drawer with the lamp base to open it and find what looks like a ledger book with pink flower decals pasted on the cover. I pull this out and open it. Instead of numbers, it contains pages of writing. My heart starts thumping. “It could be nothing, but I may have found a diary.” I set the trash bag down and thumb through it. “Shit, it
is
a diary.” I look at Shelly and Annie. “Should I take it?”

“Duh. Yeah,” Shelly says. “It may have some answers.”

“What if she goes looking for it?”

“It's been in there like a hundred years,” Annie says. “You couldn't even get the drawer open. Mom's not going to go looking for it now.”

“You can sneak it back later,” Shelly says.

I nod and hand the book off to Shelly, who passes it to my sister. Annie takes the book and sets it on a semi-clear space on the floor. The rest of the drawer is just more paperclips and a set of keys. I stash those back in and shut the drawer.

“One more drawer,” I say. I grip the top of the desk and lean down to the lowest drawer. Inside is a bulging white envelope. I pull it out and peek inside. “More pictures,” I say. I hand these off to the girls. I start coughing and sit down. “I can't do any more,” I say. “Let's put the games and other crap back where they were.”

It takes us awhile to reassemble the mess so it looks undisturbed. Shelly grabs the pictures and ledger, and I drag the trash bag on the way out. As soon as I step outside I whip off the mask and gloves and add them to the garbage. The others follow suit.

“Wow, you filled a bag.” Annie says. “Good job.”

“Yeah, a whole bag,” I say. “It's useless, though.”

Shelly holds up the book and envelope. “These might give you a clue to your identity, though.”

“Maybe, but not likely.” I go out to my car and change into Josh's borrowed shirt and shorts as the girls change their clothes on the back porch. I also find my flip-flops. I can't throw away my shoes, but I can air them out before I wear them again. I won't reuse the socks, though. As I approach the porch, I open a new trash bag and dump my stinky clothes inside. After the girls dress they, too, trash their old clothes. I pick up both bags to hurl them in the trash bin, but Shelly stops me.

“Leave the bags,” she says.

“Why? We can't wear them again.”

“I have an idea.”

“I don't want them stinking up my car,” I say.

She ties each bag extra tight. “They won't.”

I shrug. “Now what?”

“Let's go somewhere where the air is pure as sunshine,” Shelly says.

“McDonald's?” Annie says.

We pull into McDonald's, and I reach into the backseat for the envelope and book. We go inside to order Cokes. I can't eat right now, but Shelly orders a sandwich and fries.

I sip the cola, and the aroma of Shelly's food wafts my way. Those fries do smell good. Maybe a couple won't hurt, so I steal a few and munch on them.

“So you don't feel the need to rush home and take a shower?” I ask.

She shrugs. She dips a fry in ketchup and swirls it around. “My hair kind of stinks, but like I said, I've been in some crappy places.”

I carefully pull the pictures out of the envelope. Their odor knocks me back. “I think we need to air these out too.” I slide them back in the envelope and clasp it tightly.

“Okay, but first we need to do something,” Shelly says.

Annie and I glance at each other and shrug. “She's the boss,” I say.

Shelly guides me to Graham Park and tells me to park near a cluster of picnic tables. “Do you still have the matches?”

“In the backseat.”

“Bring the McDonald's wrappers and bags too.” Shelly grabs the trash bags and marches to a metal dumpster. She dumps the garbage inside the canister. “This is a symbol of your past,” she says to my sister and me. “And what you will let go of. All the crap that has happened to you and what you have no control over, and what you can't blame yourselves for.” She takes the white paper bags and strikes a match until the bag is a torch. She tosses it on top of the trash. She adds other papers she found on the ground until the canister is aflame. Shelly stokes the fire with a nearby stick. The three of us watch as the stinky shirts and old, dried-up pens sizzle and pop.

“I feel like we should say a prayer or something,” Annie says.

“Let's observe a moment of silence for . . . what?” Shelly says.

“Finding out who Michael is,” Annie says.

I raise my drink cup. “I'll drink to that.”

We bump pop cups, drink, and drizzle the rest of our sodas over the embers to put out the fire.

“So who's up for a swim at my house?” Shelly says.

Shelly loans me Josh's trunks again, and she tells my sister she has a million and one bathing suits. She and Annie go to Shelly's room to change. I lie in a lounge chair and enjoy the sun.

Shelly walks out followed by my kid sister, who, wearing one of Shelly's bikinis, no longer looks like a kid. My sister is beautiful, and this thought both delights and disturbs me. Annie is not the kind of beautiful girl who flaunts it, yet her attractiveness will make her the target of men. We're awful creatures, really. We see girls and women and immediately assess their do-ability. Even nerdy guys like me who take AP classes and live in their cars.

Shelly sets a stack of towels on one of the lounge chairs beside the pool. She goes into the house and comes back a couple minutes later carrying a basket of clothespins and a wooden contraption that she unfolds.

“What's that?” I ask.

“It's for drying hand-washable stuff. I thought we could clip the pictures on here so they can air out while we swim.”

“You're a genius,” I say.

Annie sets a towel on the ground and dumps the contents of the white envelope on it. An array of people in color and black-and-white photos gazes up at us. “Some of these are really old,” she says.

I glance at each as we clip the edges to the dryer rack with clothespins. I recognize my mother, younger and less skinny. “Mom was really pretty,” Annie says.

I recognize a younger version of my grandmother, standing next to a man I have never met, and a teenaged guy who resembles my mom. “This must be our uncle,” I say. I pass the photo to Annie.

“Wow, they all look so young.” She hands the picture back to me and sneezes. “Sorry. These things are pretty rank.”

We quickly clip them all onto the contraption.

“Those pictures hanging there remind me of that time Rick and Ashley and I pasted Post-it notes all over your car,” Annie says.

“Right after Paul gave me the car,” I tell Shelly, “the three of them littered it with hundreds of yellow Post-its. I wasn't living in it then.”

“Some of the notes had messages on them, like ‘Cool car for a dork like you' and ‘Convenient if you plan to raise a family of whales,'” Annie says.

“That's how she got named the Blue Whale,” I say.

Shelly laughs. “When I was a cheerleader we used to do that to some of the football players' cars.”

I open the book halfway and let it sit in the sun as well.

“We need music,” Shelly says. She runs back into the house, and suddenly we are surrounded by sound.

“They have an outdoor speaker system?” Annie says. “This is so cool.”

“I know,” I say. “I keep asking Shelly if her parents will adopt me.”

“And I keep reminding him my parents don't like the children they have.” Shelly points to an outdoor shower. “We're all pretty gross. Let's rinse off before we jump in the pool.”

After the cold shower, the three of us dive into the pool, where I immediately splash my sister, who splashes me back. I recall a time when Annie and I were last in a pool together. So long ago, back when Bob was still alive. One of his colleagues had a pool, and I remember going to this guy's house for a party. Annie was small, and Mom had to hold onto her in the shallow end while Jeff and I splashed around and played. Annie was fearless, even then. We swooshed water all over her, and she laughed her baby laugh.

Shelly's pool is bean shaped, so it's not good for laps, but I still manage to do some breast strokes. I notice Annie and Shelly chatting as they linger at the shallow end. They crawl under the water, knees bent, looking like frogs.

“What are you guys talking about?” I say as I swim up.

“Boys and sex,” Shelly says. She dunks my head underwater. I pop up.

“My sister is not allowed to have sex until she's at least thirty,” I say.

They laugh. Annie dunks me.

We play in the water until our skin starts to shrivel. Each of us steps out to dry off. I spread my towel over the lounge chair, lie back, and close my eyes. “This is the life,” I say. “A perfect day.”

“Made exceptionally fine by your companions,” Shelly says.

“Absolutely.”

“You guys thirsty?” Shelly asks. “I'll go get us some iced tea.”

“Want some help?” my sister asks. The two girls go back into the house. The music has stopped, so I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of summer, thinking how long it has been since I have had a moment of stillness like this, a moment where I can turn off the world and tune in to just being alive.

I hear two sets of flip-flops slapping on the brick patio and shade my eyes from the sun to see Annie and Shelly walking toward me. Shelly holds a tray of iced tea and three glasses of ice, and Annie grasps a giant bag of potato chips and a bag of oranges.

Each of us pours tea over the ice and snatches an orange. As I peel mine, Annie offers me the bag of chips. I grab a handful and set the chips on my damp towel.

“I should have brought out some plates,” Shelly says.

“Those won't be there long,” I say. I set the orange peelings on the tray.

The three of us eat in companionable silence.

“Should we find out what's in the book?” Annie says. All three of us glance at the journal, its pages curling in the sun.

“I'm kind of afraid to,” I say.

“I'll do it,” Shelly stands up and walks to the book. She reaches down and stops. She turns and hands it to me. “No. Neruda, I think you should be the one to read it.”

“Why do you call him Neruda?” Annie asks.

“It's my fake ID surname.” I lean back and open the cover when my phone buzzes. I glance at the screen. It's Mitch.

“Ignore it,” Shelly says.

“I can't,” I say. “I need the money.”

Around midnight, I pull up to the dumpster behind Olive Garden to see if I might hit the jackpot again. It's Friday night, and the restaurant will have been busy. My door squawks as I get out of the car. I keep forgetting to ask Jeff to loan me some WD-40. I step over to the trash bin, and I hear rustling. Jesus. Are there rats in there? A head pops up; it's an older guy wearing a tattered knit cap. We stare at one another for a long second.

“What do you want?” he growls.

“Apparently the same thing you do,” I say.

“I was here first,” he barks. “Get lost.”

I notice the rolling cart next to the dumpster. Inside is a paper bag filled to the rim with empty pop cans. I realize there are different levels of homelessness. At least I have a car and a job, and have not yet resorted to collecting cans. “Okay buddy. You win.” I get back in my car and drive off. Plan B. Maybe Dan's Donuts has a fresh stash in their dumpster.

I find a bag of stale peanut butter cookies in the trash at Dan's Donuts. The best of many worlds! Sugar and protein wrapped in a wonderful-tasting package, and free at that.

I sit on the tailgate using the streetlight to read. I crack open the journal. Its pages are weathered and curled, as if they got wet and dried, but the pen markings are still legible. My mother's handwriting is smooth and juvenile, not birdlike and scratchy as it is now. It hadn't occurred to me our handwriting can change. I wonder how my own will evolve. It's pretty bad now.