Boxed Inside
Back in my apartment, I finally feel like myself again after showering for a little longer than I normally would’ve. When
I was cleaning the rec room baseboards, the sponge juices kept dripping everywhere and dispersing micro particles of mouse
poop onto my body and soul.
I’ve settled onto my couch with a slice of peanut butter toast hoping to recover from the rec room ordeal. The whole time
I was cleaning, two streams of thought were floating in my mind:
1. I’m going to have to figure out how to get these people out of the rec room tomorrow evening (apparently that’s when they’re
planning to paint primer on the walls).
2. We’re all going to be moving out soon.
I lock eyes with Alice, who seems to find my plight all very amusing. It’s going to be a real chore to move her little bowl
into a new place. She’ll probably panic the whole time and for weeks after.
Luckily, looking around the place, at least Alice’s bowl will be the worst of it. All the rest of my furniture and clothes
should be painless and fit into one truckload.
It’s my poor neighbors who will have a tougher moving day. I don’t have a bunch of plants like Jane, and unlike Carmen, furniture
and junk aren’t stuffed into every closet of mine.
My throat sticks as I swallow the last bite of toast. But I’ll have to bring the box in my hall closet.
I should at least open that before then.
I ease out of my couch and make my way to the closet and pull the door open. There it sits, benign, still tucked on the top shelf, poking out from behind the wide-brimmed fedora I’ve been holding on to in case it comes back into style one day.
The box slides out easily. His writing scrolls across the brown packing paper he’d neatly wrapped it in.
Again, something catches in my throat like peanut butter at the sight of the words: With love, Dad.
I see his eyes first. Then, instantly I’m taken back to that day at the coffee shop when he gave it to me. He’d been sitting
with it taking over the table. He told me it was something he’d been putting together for a while, and it was how his eyes
looked as he gave it to me. So sparked with a glimmer of hope.
I hated it all.
I didn’t want to open it there in that coffee shop, so I shoved it under the table. “Thanks, I’ll open it later,” I’d said.
“Easier to carry wrapped.”
His grin took over his whole face as his fingers twitched nervously. “Sounds great, kiddo.”
I left it on my dresser that night, and for three weeks I was so busy that I forgot to open it. Too busy to meet him for coffee
again. To get to the hospital in time before he left.
Then he was dead, and this box became a thread to him. Something that I had left that was still unsaid. It became his last
words.
I stuffed it in my closet the day of his funeral.
Now, I rest the box on my dresser. “I guess it’s later,” I mutter to nobody.
I take a breath and try to swallow out the tightness pulling on my throat as I peel the tape off the end of the box. But as
soon as I hear the sound of the paper tearing, it’s like a weight presses my chest, constricting my air just enough.
Nope. I let out a breath and slide the box from the dresser and stuff it back in my closet in one swift motion. Then, I shuffle my hat in front of it and close the door.
I lock eyes with myself in the scratched mirror of my closet door for a second, before quickly averting my gaze.
I’ll open it later—at my new place. That makes the most sense.
And I have far more pressing things to worry about. I have a whole tour of people coming to this building tomorrow while Carmen dresses in whatever
he considers his “painting clothes.”
When night comes, I end up tossing and turning in bed. It’s because I still don’t know what to do about the rec room reno.
And nothing to do with the box in the closet next to me.
“Hello?” My mom answers right away when I call her on Wednesday morning. Her hair is clipped back in some mad updo, wisps
flying around her head. The peach-painted walls in the background indicate that she’s at home for once.
Finally, we can talk.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Mona, what is it? Are you okay?” My mom sets the phone down so that I’m staring at the ceiling.
“I was just calling to say hi. How are you?”
“Just saying hi? What is this?” My mom’s head bobs back and forth over the camera. I guess I should’ve expected this to be
confusing. She looks into the screen more clearly, her face scrunching with concern. “Are you at home still today? Are you
on a long vacation?”
“That’s actually what I wanted to talk to you about.” How do I explain that I miss my dad and want to talk about it with my
mom? How do I ask her to be there when I open the box so that I don’t have to be alone when I’ve never asked her for anything
like this before?
I guess I just have to say the words. I inhale. “Mom, I am kind of on leave, because . . . well. You know when Dad died we never really—”
A groan comes from behind my mom, followed by some choice Farsi cursing. My mom moves back into frame for a second and carries
the phone down the hallway.
“What’s going on over there?”
“Ah!” my mom says brightly. “I’ve put a new hair-removal cream on Auntie’s kos. It’s state of the art and better than waxing.
Straight from Iran. But”—her eyes shift—“it’s burning a little. Anyway, no problem at all.” Her voice brightens while the
camera pans to my aunt (just her face, thank god), who, if I’m being honest, looks like she’s struggling to find the will
to go on.
My mom twists the screen back to her face. “So, you are taking time off to feel sad about your dad, is that it?”
I’ve been struggling to have this conversation with her, but there it is, neatly expressed with no emotion whatsoever. She
knows what I’m trying to say. She’s just not emotionally there with me.
“Well, yeah,” I try, already getting the sinking feeling this is worthless. “Or, I guess, not quite sad. It’s more that I
never really processed a lot about the way things are with all of us and so—”
“Are they still paying you?” Her eyes widen with worry. “Mona! You should warn me if you’re fired. I shouldn’t have imported
this cream if the money is getting tight.”
And it’s like all the anxiety I’d built up falls like a stack of blocks. Because it’s not going to be anything. I don’t know
why I ever thought she could be my mom for once.
“No, Mom, it’s just a vacation. I should be going back on the—”
A loud groan interrupts my train of thought.
“Oh, that means Aunty is good and ready!” My mom’s eyes brighten. “Do you want to come over for kabob? You can borrow this
cream.”
“I’m okay!” I grin, but she’s hung up before I even answered.