by Delia Ephron
Dad kept bundles of old newspapers around in case he needed to ship his art. Old copies of The New York Times, which he read every single day without fail, are under an old walnut desk in the corner, tucked behind a microwave he never used. I have to get on my hands and knees, and I scrape my arm against the wall doing it. Inspecting, I notice that the whole side of my arm is white. All my insides lurch, my stomach drops into my feet. Mold. Killer mold. I bat at my arm to knock the mold off, and a bit chips off. Dry paint. Not mold. Dry white paint that has rubbed off on me…when? A second earlier. The wall I scraped my arm against had been whitewashed. I’d done the whitewashing myself under my dad’s supervision. Months before.
I have to calm down because now I’m sweating. I sit on the floor for a while. I’m certain Dad did not whitewash his face before he died, so this paint on my arm and that white on his face have nothing to do with each other. I am really nuts.
I haul out the microwave, and behind it, between it and the newspapers, lies yet another salvaged object, a cardboard suitcase. Whoever heard of a cardboard suitcase? Aha. That’s why Dad liked it. It’s an object made of something that particular object is not normally made of. You had to know my dad, get into his head, to understand where his thoughts led him. I yank it by the handle. Man, is it heavy. Something shifts inside as I slide it out from under the desk.
The suitcase, banged up, dented in the corners, is splotched with water stains. If Dad had showed it to me, he would have waved it around, pointing out those faded watery blotches against the plain tan background. “Abstract art, Frannie, you think it came out of nowhere?” Once he showed me a photograph of Main Street—a view smack down the middle with stores and a sidewalk on each side. Little by little, he blocked all the images until only the white line down the center of the street remained. “Abstract art,” he proclaimed, “is the reduction of the landscape or the scrambling of it. It’s been there forever, right in front of our faces, but it took hundreds of years before an artist saw it. Always trust your eyes. They’ll lead you where you need to go.”
Trust my eyes? I’m not sure what he meant. How do we not trust our eyes? What other way is there to see?
I have to think about that.
My apologies. I’m getting sidetracked. I have to remember everything Dad said, you see, because who else will? I press the buttons on the rusted locks. They release. Even so, the top and bottom refuse to separate.
I find a screwdriver and pry open the top of the suitcase. Inside lies an object about the size of a gigantic dictionary in the school library, those books so mammoth that they have to have their own stands. Tissue paper is folded around it—crackly old tissue faded into uneven shades of pink. As I lift the heavy object, it falls out of the paper and thuds to the floor. I gasp because it is beautiful, and because, in my first encounter, I nearly damaged it.
My birthday present. Not a doubt. I know instantly.
A carved wooden box. The most exquisitely carved wooden box with my name engraved in the center. Not in curlicue letters. My dad hated fairy-tale kind of lettering. He liked it plain. Underneath, it says “1000.”
FRANCES ANNE
1000
Never before has my name seemed elegant. For a second I forgive my parents for giving it to me. It isn’t the name of my grandmother or great-grandmother or some highly admired friend. There’s no excuse for bestowing that dreary tag on me. But carved by my dad’s hand, my name has beauty. Even a pleasing lilt when I pronounce it. Which I do right now, very softly. Around it, setting it off to perfection like a lace ruffle around a valentine, he carved a rectangular border of Celtic knots.
My dad was Irish, and all Irish were Celts a thousand years before anyone had a hair dryer. When my dad first mentioned Celtic knots, I thought they were real knots made of rope, but they’re not. They’re designs found in an ancient Bible called The Book of Kells from 800 A.D. “Loops with no beginning and no end,” my dad explained. “Like time or the ocean.” It must have taken him ages to carve something this intricate and delicate.
I stroke the honey-colored wood. It feels meltingly soft, as if Jenna has given it one of her super-duper moisturizing treatments.
Considering that this gift is from my dad, it’s very wrapped. Fancily wrapped. Usually he used aluminum foil. Occasionally he twisted newspaper around whatever he was giving me. He never sealed anything with Scotch tape or tied it with ribbon. He’d saved this paper for sure. Dad and I recycled everything, while my mom has a bad case of Discardia. That’s what he called the tendency to dump perfectly useful things. Here’s what’s eerie. It wasn’t like Dad to plan ahead. When he had to complete art for a show, he always slaved down to the wire. But he finished this before my birthday. Weeks before. Could he have had a premonition that maybe he wouldn’t be here?
“Frannie!”
My mom can certainly wreck a moment. She bellows. She could call the cows home, I’m not kidding. What a waste that we live in a place where there are no cows. And her timing is hideous.
I mash newspapers over the box. This is none of her business. “I’m in Dad’s studio. I’ll be out in a second,” I bellow back.
She saunters in anyway. “How’s it going?”
“Fine. I was looking for newspaper to wrap up Dad’s special artifacts.”
“Those things on the bookshelf?”
“I love them.”
“I know you do.”
She takes a quick look around and heads for Dad’s drafting table. Leaning across it, she studies a watercolor tacked on the wall. I don’t know why Dad liked that watercolor, because it wasn’t his style. For one thing it was fruit, specifically red and green grapes. How ordinary. For another, it was pretty—well, Dad would probably call it “decorative,” with a sneer. That would let you know he had higher standards. Trust Mom to make a beeline for the most conventional. Maybe Dad appreciated the painting because it was on a placemat. At least I think it was a placemat, because the white paper was a rectangle about placemat size with scalloped edges.
“A bunch of grapes,” I tell her, because they are smudgy and watery—more impressionistic than realistic and maybe she doesn’t get it.
“I know,” she says.
“Mom, I left clothes and stuff that I want to take in the living room. Would you be a doll and help me pack them up? I’ll be right inside.”
That catches her attention. She stops scrutinizing the grapes and swings around. “‘Be a doll’?”
I am so lame. How fake is that? Mom is going to glom right onto this gigantic lump covered in newspapers and drill me about it. “What’s going on? What have you got there, Frannie?”
But instead she laughs. “‘Be a doll’? I guess I could be a doll.” And she leaves. In a second I hear her shoes squishing the wet moss, and then the screen door to the house bangs.
Quickly I empty a smelly old cardboard box containing cans of turpentine. I set my beautiful present inside, protected by several layers of newspaper. I wrap up Dad’s work in progress too, the wavy bird, and tuck it inside, then stack some tools around for camouflage: a hammer, screwdriver, electric drill. The box weighs as much as Mambo, Jenna’s Labrador retriever. I try not to huff and puff carrying it into the house, but Mom doesn’t notice anyway. She’s standing next to the CD player listening to Dad’s pennywhistle music. The pennywhistle (a little flute a goat herder might play to keep herself amused) sounds like birds dizzily twittering back and forth. Everyone says birds sing, but in my opinion they don’t. They just make the same few chirps over and over again. The pennywhistle is the birdsong of your imagination—if birds really could jump on a tune and run with it. It’s major Irish, hence Dad’s infatuation. And it must have been on his CD player, so I guess Mom just punched the thing for music to keep her company. She doesn’t hear me walk right past—undoubtedly because she’s trying to think of something nasty to say about the music, it being another of Dad’s eccentricities. I’m able to lug the box through the living room and out to the ca
r without her paying the least attention. When I return, she’s still in the same place, her foot thumping in irritation.
She stops mid thump, her shoulders jerk in surprise. “Oh, hi, Frannie.”
Who else were you expecting?
She begins thumbing through Dad’s CDs. “Where were you?”
“Putting a box in the trunk. What are you looking for?”
“Huh?”
She’s acting weird. She’s acting like someone I know. Who? Me. She’s acting the way I do when I’m feeling guilty—slightly unglued. I look closely to make sure she isn’t pocketing something of Dad’s that she doesn’t want me to have. “I’m packing,” she adds.
Only of course she isn’t.
Mom hits the button, silencing the birdsong. “So?”
“So?”
She grabs the tape dispenser, karate chops a collapsed box to open it up, seals the seams in two shakes, and begins packing up Dad’s clothes.
7
Having that secret present makes it much easier to leave Dad’s. I try not to pay too much attention to the ransacked quality of the house. Nor do I want to consider the irony: Some leftovers might end up in the dump, right where they came from.
“You can come back again,” Mom tells me.
“I know. I’ll come whenever I want.”
“Until it’s sold.”
Thank you for the reminder.
“We should store everything in the garage,” she says as we pull into the driveway. “There are at least twelve boxes.”
“No, in my room. I want them with me.” I fake a little catch in my throat, although here’s a warning: Working up to a crying fit, even as a big fat act, is like being in a rowboat on top of Niagara Falls. Pretty hard to change direction.
“All right, fine,” my mom says, as I blow my nose on a tissue she provides. “Whatever you want.”
Wow. Me have power. I think she might be scared of upsetting me.
Cardboard could not possibly absorb oxygen (or emit carbon monoxide). Impossible, right? But no question my room smells stale now that it’s a storage facility. Breathing ceases to be a pleasant activity. I move four cartons down to the garage. Strategically, I believe it makes my mom less likely to hound me. Practically, I believe it ups my odds of survival.
I have to wait until ten at night to look inside my beautiful carved box. Ten is when Mom and Mel turn into pumpkins. Most likely it’s a jewelry box. Little compartments. An upper shelf that lifts out. But what about that 1000?
FRANCES ANNE
1000
What does it mean? Obviously not my age. Could it be a year? Doubtful. A lucky number? Dad never mentioned a lucky number. How about a mystery number—something he expects me to spend the rest of my life puzzling over? My dad was a bit twisted—imagine liking crazy bird music—but he wasn’t that twisted. Could it be something inside the box? Maybe a check for a thousand dollars that my mom will force me to put away for college. No way. Dad never gave money for presents. One thousand…let’s see. One thousand balloons that I have to blow up myself? That’s more likely. One thousand pearls. Get real, Frannie. One thousand wild-flower seeds. A bit tedious to count them, don’t you think, although Dad and I do love wildflowers.
As soon as the light blinks out under Mom and Mel’s door, I dig the box out of its camouflage. I carry it to the windowseat, my favorite place to cuddle up, and ease off the top. At first look the contents seriously underwhelm. Flat pieces of wood. Not to get too negative, but the box is jam-packed, every inch, with bits I might sweep off his studio floor.
My dad wouldn’t spend months carving something gorgeous, then use it for a wastebasket. That makes no sense.
Just when I’m beginning to get grumpy, the box catches a beam of moonlight and shines in its very own pool of white light, illuminating dots and splashes of color. I grasp a handful of wooden bits. Each, about the size of a postage stamp, is painted and its edges have tiny knobs and notches—little fingers poking in and out. I feel ridges along the cut edges, the roughness of the paint. A handmade jigsaw puzzle. Dad painted and cut every piece.
There have to be hundreds of pieces here.
My heart is racing. I feel jittery, as if I might topple over.
I’ve done puzzles. At Jenna’s. Her family does a giant puzzle every Christmas. The hardest one they ever did was called New England Fall. From participating, I knew that you should always begin with the border. Then do sections, preferably buildings or animals—solid, clear, identifiable objects. That’s why New England Fall was such a nightmare—it was all trees with masses and masses of leaves. “Don’t go near the blues until the end,” her dad would say over and over, and Jenna would groan, “We know that, Daddy.” Blues mean sky or water, the hardest part of any puzzle.
Digging into the box, letting the pieces fall between my fingers, I collect all the ones with straight edges. Over and over, I plow through. Ouch. A paper cut. I put my finger in my mouth and suck it, which causes me to raise my head. From spending hours in a weird bent-over position, my neck makes crinkly sounds, as if a paper bag was stuffed inside. I hope my vertebrae aren’t disintegrating. By now my eyes ache and I’m loopy from concentrating so hard. Perhaps that’s why it takes me a good ten minutes to realize that, if I got a paper cut, there must be paper.
A birthday card? A note from Dad?
I leap up, or try to, but my legs are nearly paralyzed from not moving for hours. Man, doing puzzles is a bitch; you have to stretch and massage to recover from it. I do not have a proper puzzle work space, that’s for sure. Carefully I move the border pieces in neat piles to the top of my bureau, then dump out the remainder of the box onto the bed. The pieces tumble out in a pile, and a photo slides out with them.
A four-by-six snapshot of somewhere ancient by the sea.
A village nestled around a cove at the base of a hillside. The houses, three and four stories tall, all have green shutters and tile roofs, but are painted a variety of colors. I know a lot about paint, thanks to Dad, and even in a photograph where color gets distorted, I can tell that the sun tortured these colors, stripping them of vibrancy but leaving something lovelier. There are bleached-out pinks of every hue, colors faded to white but exuding whiffs of peach or lime. Some buildings have horizontal stripes, yellow or white bands below the windows on each floor, which is kind of nutty, at least nothing I’ve ever seen before. It makes me think that this village is a cheerful place. Beyond the town, near the top of the hill or small mountain, there’s a block of green (a garden or woods?), and next to that something orange (a structure?). In this small snapshot, the details are unclear. Along the right side, stone steps lead up the mountain. The cove has a shallow shore, a little outdoor café with brightly colored patio umbrellas, and at the far end a gray stone church.
I’m going to draw the photo for you. A lifetime of celebrating mundane moments, such as an empty ketchup bottle next to some half-eaten French fries, did not prepare me for landscapes, but here’s my best shot.
Here’s what I think. This is not the United States.
Here’s why. No motorboats.
Cape Cod’s a very old place for the United States. I went there to see my dad’s show. While Dad and I ate lobster rolls on the beach (which had pale, soft, pillowy sand and giant dunes, nothing like that narrow, flat brown beach in the photo), he told me that Cape Cod wasn’t half as beautiful or old as the country where his grandparents were born.
According to Dad, there are sleepy seaside towns in Ireland where nothing has changed for centuries. The village in this photo has no motor boats; it looks like it might not even have televisions, telephones, or cars. If there were cars, on what would they travel? I see neither a road, nor a driveway, nor a garage. Examining this photo—trust your eyes, remember—I have the distinct impression that these houses crowded together are survivors. They are so picturesque as to be from another time.
The place must still exist, because the photo isn’t old. It’s indistinguishable
from any small snapshot that you get back from a local one-hour photo lab where the clerk asks, “Glossy or matte?” This is glossy. “Border or no?” This has a border.
The photo is a miniature replica of this puzzle. It has to be. Why else is it in the box? It all adds up, doesn’t it? It’s impossible for anyone to do a gazillion-piece puzzle without some idea of what it is. Dad had to know that. He wouldn’t set an impossible task. What kind of birthday present would that be? Ireland is the home of my long-demised great-granny and-gramps. I bet this is the very village they grew up in. A piece of my past. My past in pieces.
I rest there thinking about Dad for quite a while. Over the last weeks I have tried to conjure him up a few times, vegging in my bedroom in the afternoons. If I lie still, without moving so much as an eyelash, maybe I’ll feel his energy floating around me, above me. Somewhere. But nothing. I despair that I’m not the spiritual type. But this puzzle makes him feel closer. It’s here for a reason, it must be. Something sacred, a secret just between us. Once I put it together, I’ll know.
8
The next day is Sunday.
On Sundays Mom and Mel are home. As usual she’s stretched out on the couch doing the crossword, while he’s parked in the modern metal-and-leather armchair with stacks of papers around his feet.
They always sit in the same places. Mel owns the chair, Mom owns the couch. It’s like they have assigned seating.
I need to get to Kinko’s all by myself.
I also need to sneak a big board into the house.
Here’s what I realize about my life. When Mom and Mel are home, I have only the illusion of privacy. Life may be an illusion, as Dad says. I have no idea. For me, privacy is an illusion for sure.
