The Junk Room

Everyone should have a junk room. Mine nearly lists with chochkies—an organ grinder, an elephantine creel stuffed to the brim with plastic muskrats, a shelf of maroon rummers, plastic hollyhock limbs, a closet of dirnells, demijohns on the dresser, driftwood sculptures, antique cruets, bulbous maracas, whirligigs, trivets.

My mother avoids the room. I can understand this. I too would rather forget than remember.

My mother lives with me and my father stays at the hospice. He doesn’t mind it: the hospice is nooked in a quiet, leafy street adorned with speed bumps every eighth of a mile. He knows he’s dying, but he maintains his cheerful nature. When we visit him he easily drifts into dreamy nostalgia. His eyes squint into the wall, as if he can see the trellis in it, the rigadoon lessons, the bouquets of amaryllis he held outstretched for his first lover. My mother learns something new about his past everyday, most of it unsavory, difficult.

The wattles under my mother’s chin look like bracket fungus—layer upon layer. Her eyes are still alert with possibility, though her eyebrows are usually fixed in a skeptical position. This is an unconscious action. Today my mother wears little makeup with the exception of lipstick, and she tucks a forget-me-not into the top button of her magenta blouse. She breathes softly, like an infant. Tucked under her hair, her ears are whelk-like, but her mouth looks slack.

We are perched at the breakfast bar, as the angle of the afternoon sun slants the light through the westward window. This usually makes our townhouse considerably hotter in the evening. We turn on the air-conditioning at or around four thirty and turn it off at eight-thirty. There is so much I want to say to her but can’t. Instead, we talk about sugar beets while, on the news, a crowd ululates.

“Your father is a good man,” she says. “I never expected him to…you know, be faithful throughout the long stretch. It’s fine.”

I feel phlegmy. The knowledge I have gained is unwanted. I am unmarried and plan to remain so. I consider these types of statements a contributing factor.

“How did you make it?” I’m dicing green onions for the omelet.

“Just like anything else—one day at a time.” My mother has always been stoic. She was raised in this fashion. This is what farm life entails. She is ultimately traditional.

My mother’s outlook is disarming. I expect more hand-wringing from her, even though this runs contrary to her nature. She doesn’t budge much from her core personality. My mother is stirring a jar of iced-tea. Mint sprigs revolve in quick licks.

“You know what was most difficult for me?”

Now I gut a green pepper, then dice that.

“What?”

“Being alone when he was away. I never minded when he was in and out here. I’d still see so much of him. When he was away…that was different.”

“Because then you didn’t—”

“I didn’t know. I’d get lost in my own head.”

There’s not much to say about this. I prepare the omelet and bake redskin potatoes and we eat. The tea is minty and cleansing.

Before we visit my father the next day I take my mother into the junk room. Most residents of The Bottoms use this room as a study or an office. In a sense this room represents my work too: my job is taking care of my family, what is left of them. My two sisters are incommunicado—pursing their independent version of the great American dream. One in California, one in Manhattan. I’m the oldest; I’m left with the residue.

“I don’t know why you’d want me to,” my mother says. I lead her by the hand into the junk room. I put a record of accordion music on the old turn-table and bob around the room to the herky-jerky beat. Something needs to break the mood, and this will do for now. My mother lifts a small carving of Devi my father purchased in Bombay. She places it in her open palm and rotates it as if Devi were a ballerina. Devi’s firm breasts look like missiles. My father was in the air force.

“There are mysteries,” she says.

I don’t try to clarify. The junk room smells of witch hazel and wool and Pine-sol. I hold up a cracked leather belt and ask my mother what it’s for. She tells me it’s for stropping a razor and that my father used to sharpen his razors every Sunday night. He liked a clean shave.

“He would smell so good in the morning. The day was fresh. I can see why he was so magnetic,” she says. I can see it in her eyes: she wants to tell me intimate details. Luckily for me she holds off.

She holds the belt, considers it. For a moment I wonder if she will bring it with us to the hospice. Her fingers close around it and she squeezes the belt, closes her eyes for a moment. Then she hands it back to me.

“Let’s go,” she says. We close the door to the junk room, and then we do go. We drive just under the speed limit all the way.