Chapter 1 #2
“I’m about to run a load of laundry,” she says. “Unless you’re planning to shower in the next hour?”
When she actively wants me to do something, instead of just making a request or a suggestion, my mother will phrase it in the form of a question like a Jeopardy!
contestant. I used to chalk it up to midwestern politeness, but now I wonder if it’s the same technique she used to placate my dad, a man who has not once admitted fault for literally anything.
“Go ahead,” I mumble into the upper cabinet where she keeps the mugs. “I’m going down to the pool. Starting a new book.”
“Is Romily coming over?” My mom hands me a Nespresso pod even though I didn’t ask for one.
“Not today.”
Mom looks relieved. I think she’s worried about one of the nosy old sticklers on the condo board complaining about the way my cousin treats the “shared amenities” at The Bixby as a private health club with no membership fee.
Even though we went to the same high school just a couple of years apart (back when she was still “Emily”), Romily and I weren’t close until the pandemic put everyone’s social lives in a canister, shook them up, and spilled them out in completely different configurations.
Aside from the fact that my dad and her mom are siblings, we had exactly one thing in common: our respective rugs being yanked from beneath our feet just as our lives were supposed to get interesting.
We both went away to college…and ended up back in Ohio, living with our parents.
That was enough of an injustice to yoke us together in shared indignation.
We achieved a comfort level of scrolling our own phones in silence, without one of us suggesting that we do something more productive.
I believe this is the highest form of companionship: rotting, alone together.
Back in the relative privacy of the office, coffee in hand, I open my laptop to get some Nothing done. Pretending to be vaguely busy is a skill I’ve honed over the last few years.
More drilling, banging, and muffled male voices from the next apartment. Feet shuffling on carpeting, heavy objects getting dropped on the floor. The daybed shakes with each thummp.
The tall metal shelving unit next to my bed rattles against the vibrations from the drill.
I sit up, watching my precariously positioned storage boxes shift closer to falling.
Every time there’s a thummp from next door, I brace myself for my dad’s collectible comic books to crash down on the carpet in an explosion of faded newsprint.
Have I not yet mentioned that a full twenty-five cubic feet of this office consists of extralong storage boxes, each containing three hundred comic books? Or that those awkwardly long cardboard boxes are too deep for standard shelves and hang over the edge by roughly ten inches?
I watch the inevitable disaster play out in slow motion: after a few more seconds of drilling into the shared wall, the long boxes on the very top of the unit vibrate right off the shelf.
They land hard, tumbling end over end, smashing onto the floor. Hundreds of comics, encased in clear plastic bags, spill out.
I dive to the ground, sacrificing my knees to carpet burn, checking the issues for signs of damage. The tiniest crease can affect the value of these books, to the tune of hundreds of dollars. I care more about the condition of this stapled newsprint than my own body.
Some people set up a savings account for their kid’s college fund; my dad found a copy of X-Men #1 in a dead woman’s house while cleaning it out for an estate sale and decided to invest in comics instead.
I don’t draw anymore, but if I still made comics, this is how I would tell my dad’s origin story:
Panel 1: A pair of hands in weathered work gloves sort through papers in a cardboard box. Recycle? is written on the side.
Panel 2: Close-up of a piece of sheet music. It’s an “easy piano” version of “Hero,” by Enrique Iglesias. A sliver of bright red color protrudes just above Enrique’s hairline—the top edge of an illustration tucked into the sheet music.
Panel 3: The gloved hand pulls up the paper to reveal a large red X.
The comic book was already in the recycling bin with the other papers no one wanted. An actual treasure in the trash.
I understand now that Dad should have returned it to the family that had contracted him to run the estate sale.
He should’ve explained to them that those thirty-two pages with a cover price of twelve cents was worth far more than his Toyota 4Runner.
Enrique Iglesias had protected that issue well.
Dad seemed to believe it was some kind of miracle, or at least a sign.
And he turned that one issue into a massive comic book collection over the next twenty years.
Not that he’s a passionate comic book reader; he’s not getting in any arguments about Marvel versus DC or which Robin is best. His business is buying low and selling high, whether it’s a Tiffany lamp or a vintage Barbie doll. For him, the only factor in a comic book’s value is the last sale price.
I was the one with the emotional attachment.
Panel 4: A four-year-old girl sits in front of an audience of stuffed animals, “reading” a comic book in her lap.
Girl
…and Cyclops left his Madelyne and their baby to go back to Jean Grey, but it turned out that Madelyne was Jean’s clone and Jean became the Goblin Queen and…
Panel 5: The girl looks up from the comic.
Voice (Off-Panel)
Did you take that book out of the plastic?
I started drawing my own comics before I could read the hand-lettered dialogue bubbles on the issues Dad would give me. They were like picture books, but more grown-up. And I always strove to be more grown-up. A tiny adult.
All the drawing practice improved my line art skills.
I’d proudly show my sketches to my dad. As much as he nodded approvingly at my efforts, there was something else about my newfound hobby that proved useful to him: the more I learned about comics, the more helpful I became.
And because I only saw him every other weekend (when he was in town), there was nothing I craved more than his attention and appreciation.
Usually that came in the form of accompanying him to tag sales or flea markets in search of valuable comics.
He trusted me to identify key issues and keep track of storylines and popular artists.
He’d brag about me to the vendors and show them my drawings.
Those are core memories. And the artifacts of those weekends sit in one of those long boxes.
Fifteen or so years later, it’s part of a gradually decaying estate and I’m its keeper. I picture myself in twenty years, still sleeping in the office, having become both the Big and Little Edie of comic book inheritance.
My dad’s not dead, by the way—he just lives in Florida now.
He moved there when I was sixteen to “expand” his estate sale business and never came back.
He left me with the comics because he doesn’t trust the humidity down there—or the flood risk.
I suspect the real reason is that his girlfriend (I’ve never met her) won’t let him store twenty unsightly boxes in her house.
For years, my mom has urged me to sell them.
But this collection is still the nexus of our father-daughter relationship.
Without it, we wouldn’t communicate. Flipping is his greatest talent, and I know he’ll be back for them eventually.
If my dad has an emotional attachment to anything, it’s making money as a reseller on auction websites.
The daybed shakes again. I hear the muffled voices.
“Nonononono, put it down perpendicular. No. Let me show you, it’s—” Ka-THUMP!
I watch the shelf wobble again and decide to pretend to be vaguely busy somewhere less dangerous.