“Nah,” I manage, bags in my hands, “should never hit a man while he’s down, you know?”
An hour later, I start with the kitchen, but instead of ripping out the cabinets, I decide to take them down carefully and repaint them white, covering up the orange-toned wood with several layers of shining finish.
The day goes by fast with hard work, and my body falls into the familiar patterns of demolition. I decide to take a wall out in the middle of the kitchen, and it feels good to bury my sledgehammer right in the center of it, ripping out the drywall and exposing the guts.
I blast music through the house — enjoying getting to choose what plays on the job site for once — and move through the rooms, ripping out anything I don’t want to keep. Sometimes in the old days, when we did a demo, we’d write on the walls first, scribble out funny messages to each other, but I don’t do that.
Instead, I smash and tear, pulling out walls and completely gutting the bathrooms, one of which still has the pink fixtures original to the house. If I were seeing a therapist, they might tell me the process was therapeutic. I wonder if I had been able to tear this house apart as a teenager, would I have been healed enough to come back and talk to my dad before he died?
I bury those thoughts and focus on what I’m doing until I get to my bedroom. Breathing hard, I walk inside, drop the sledgehammer, and sit heavily on the bare bed, the plastic mattress cover instantly sticking to my sweaty legs.
For a second, I just listen to the music playing from the living room, then I take a deep breath and force myself to stand, look for something to rip out in this room.
My eyes lock on the door to the closet — a walk-in might be just what this room needs. I open the door forcefully, intending to find just the right spot to bury the sledgehammer, but instead my eyes land on something on the floor, pushed right into the back corner.
This room is completely empty, aside from the furniture, just like it was the day I left - the day I came home to find my things boxed up and on the curb.
Aside from the box in the closet.
As if I’m in a dream, I set down the sledgehammer and kneel forward, grabbing the box from the back corner and pulling it toward me. It’s covered in dust, like everything else in this room, aside from a few ovals where it’s been smudged away.
Fingerprints. Someone has opened this box recently.
My heart jumps up into my throat, and I grab the box, hauling it up and carrying it to the kitchen, where I set it down on a folding table and rip the lid off. What could be so important that he would put it in that closet? Something he wouldn’t want Shelby to find in the house?
Books?
I set the lid of the box to the side and reach inside, running my hand over one of the leather books. I’ve never seen my dad reading anything other than the newspaper, so what in the world would he have a box of books for? Maybe they’re Shelby’s.
I crack open a book on the top and find shaking, scrawling text on the first page, dated to just a few months ago.
Got my four year chip today. Lawrence insisted on some fancy silver thing that probably cost him more than it’s worth?—
I stop reading the instant I realize what the book is. Not a book at all. A journal.
Myfather’sjournal.
Going completely still, I try to parse this — the memory of the father I knew versus the image of him writing in a journal. It doesn’t compute. I can’t picture it.
Icanpicture what he would have done if he’d foundmewriting in a journal, how he would have called it “pansy shit” and made fun of me. I could imagine him scoffing if he got one of these journals as a gift. But the thought of him sitting at this table, writing his thoughts and feelings down in the book?
It doesn’t make sense.
And if the rest of the box follows the pattern, that means it’s full of his journals. His writing. Details about his life I never asked for and never wanted. I’d never seen him doing something like this before.
Picking up the journal I’d opened, I flip through quickly, looking at the dates. It spans about six months.
Glancing back at the box, I realize there must be at least fifty journals. If they all cover about the same time span, that’s his journaling all the way back to before I was born.
And what did he mean byfour-year chip? The only time I’ve heard that kind of language is with sobriety, but I can’t picture my dad getting sober.
“Jake?” my sister’s voice calls out.
Jumping like I’ve been caught with a bag of drugs, I close the journal in my hand and try to shove it back into the box before Shelby can see it.
But it’s too late.
“What is that?” she asks, stepping into the kitchen as the front door shuts behind her.
