I kept going, but I had no idea what I was looking for. A journal that explained everything? More broken glass, more blood? There was a box of papers on an upper shelf, but it was all bone dry: birth certificates, tax forms, marriage license. I stared a while at the signatures on that last one, trying to imagine my parents—twenty and twenty-four, an unborn Hank already dreaming behind my mother’s navel—standing shoulder to shoulder at the registry office.
There were small mysteries here. Tantalizing, but with meanings impossible to discern. In the bottom of a hideous backpack purse of flaking fake leather I found a sandwich baggie full of feathers, most of them brown or gray or mottled but a few the hot bright colors of Hi-C. I slid a tube of Rum Raisin from the pocket of an ancient pair of overalls and found the lipstick had been removed, replaced with an evil-looking clatter of needles and pins.
Beneath a shoe box holding a pair of high-heeled boots was a copy of Mary Oliver’s Dream Work, an age-thinned receipt stuck into it like a bookmark. I pulled it out. A quarter century ago my mother bought CoverGirl eye shadow and a pack of Bubblicious at a Walgreens on Halsted Avenue, then wrote an address on the receipt in blue pen. A friend’s apartment, probably, or a coffee shop. Something that meant a little bit back then and nothing now.
And yet. The thing was so carefully preserved, pressed like a flower in the pages of a book. I took a photo of the scrawled address before returning the receipt to its place.
I was setting the closet back to rights when I paused. In front of me was a soft wall of hanging clothes, black on black on the occasional blue. Following a rootless instinct I thrust my arms into their center like a diver, pushing hangers aside until I could see the closet wall.
Embedded into it was a safe the size of a cutting board.
I froze, more surprised by my hunch paying off than by the safe’s existence. Then I ran out of the room and across the hall, to my dad’s home office. I flipped over his chunky keyboard, freeing a scatter of everything bagel crumbs, and took a photo of the Post-it Notes stuck to its underside, scribbled with years’ worth of passwords.
Back in front of the wall safe, I scanned the list: combinations of family birthdays, jersey numbers, strings of letters that seemed random but were probably mnemonics. Cutting out the passwords that wouldn’t fit left me with a reasonable handful.
I cracked the lock on my third attempt. Dry-mouthed, ears chugging in the quiet, I opened the safe.
Inside it was an object the size and shape of a trade paperback, made entirely of gold.
I’d heard of people keeping their money in gold bars, but this seemed too big for that. And it was too beautiful to just be currency. It looked like something you’d find at a museum or an antique store, under glass.
When I lifted the object it felt hollow, but there was no seam I could see. Its surface was just a little warmer than my skin. Gently I tilted it from side to side, then shook it, taking in its burnished top, its expensive heft, the way its sides broke the light into a prismatic gleam. What was it for?
I pressed an ear to its top. Nothing. Of course, nothing. Again I turned it over. Impulsively, I touched it to my tongue.
My palms tingled with the struck vibration of a bat hitting a baseball. The metal tasted shocking, electric, alive.
I heard my mother speaking in my ear. I didn’t imagine her, I heard her, low voice tip-tapping over a crooked bundle of syllables I couldn’t quite discern. My eyes fell shut and I dropped into a memory of such startling clarity it felt like teleportation.
I smelled the wide cold fragrance of the lake at night. I saw the stars the way they look when hung over water, like they’re checking their faces in a compact mirror. The vision was as palpable as a freshly painted canvas. I could’ve reached out to smear its colors if I wanted to. Though I couldn’t turn to see her, I could feel my mother beside me, warm in the cool air.
When I opened my eyes I was sitting on the closet floor. I stared at but didn’t see the rattan front of my parents’ hamper, the frill of cobweb at its base. The gold object was inert again, whatever static charge I’d made with spit and metal fizzled out, died away.
A dream, I thought dizzily. A piece of wishful thinking, cooked with paranoia into … whatever had just happened to me.
But I didn’t really think so. It had stirred something up, something real. A memory so buried it didn’t feel like it belonged to me.
I licked its shining side again. Nothing happened. I considered keeping it, but I didn’t want to be on the hook for losing something priceless. So I returned it to the safe, for now. And as I did I saw something I’d missed, tucked into its very back.