I sit with that comment for a few moments, letting it wash over me. I lower myself to the hardwood floor, put my head in my hands, and breathe.
“Oh, sweetie, what’s the matter?” And now I’m alarmingthis poor woman who probably stopped by for a nice morning outing. She leans down.
I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. “I just think…I have some damage.”
“Well, then you’ve been well loved,” she says.
“I dunno about that. I’ve taken a lot of damage from men who have not loved me well.” Her smile is so kind and I don’t know how to explain abandonment, breadcrumbing, and situationships to a woman in her seventies.
“When you find the man who’s right for you,” she answers, matter of fact and all knowing, “he’ll see your well-loved side and know that it just adds to your character. Sometimes wear and tear can make something more beautiful.”
She touches me on the arm very gently and passes behind me with her basket full of rickrack.
All I can think about is Nick. Holding me, listening to me in the least-judgmental way possible. Sharing the well-loved parts of himself with me, too. I’m 100 percent certain he wouldn’t leave this journal completely blank.
I take a few more deep breaths and stand back up. I continue sorting through various bits of ephemera, piecing together the outline of this woman’s life. Her marriage, children, apparent divorce, remarriage, grandchildren. It’s a giant pile of extreme specifics—Christmas letters from extended family members detailing vacations they took in 1998, a middle school yearbook, lots of crayon drawings by children with still-developing motor skills.
I picture strangers poring over my dad’s long boxes in the same way I’m looking at this lady’s stuff. I imagine comic book collectors hurriedly flipping through the bagged issues, looking for a treasure. I watch the boxes get emptier until there’s nothing inside. As empty as the blank journal in my hand.
It’s the calmest I’ve felt in ages.
In the same way that my dad convinced himself that divine intervention gave him thatX-Men #1,I must have been meant to find that father’s journal.
Well worth the twenty-five cents to finally let go of those goddamn balloons.
I spend thenext day transporting the boxes of comics from a storage unit to my mom’s car to the apartment. My plan is to sell them online myself for maximum profit. It’s more work than sending the whole lot to a comics dealer, but the one thing I have right now is time.
After hauling the last box out of the storage unit, I stop by the office and close out the account. The amount I charge to my credit card makes me feel slightly ill. I will not be paying any more money for climate-controlled storage.
I shouldn’t even be payingthisbill, I think as I open the door to my mom’s car, now weighed down with long storage boxes.
I check my mirrors, thinking of Nick. I wonder if this association will last for the rest of my life and I’ll just feel sad every time I turn on the ignition. Forever.
An unfortunate side effect of diligently checking mirrors is that you also catch a glimpse of your own appearance after hours of sweatily lugging boxes up to a second-floor apartment without an elevator. The only word for it ishaggard.
I stare out the windshield at the ugly exterior of the storage facility. I feel a strange, irrational pull to call my father. To send him a bill, not only for the last few months of storage, but for the last ten years.
Panel 1:Establishing shot of a Subaru Outback, packed to the gills with boxes, flying down the interstate.
Panel 2:Close-up on Lydia Deetz, at the wheel, a wild, determined look in her eye.
Panel 3:The Outback screeches to a halt outside a condominium complex. The landscaping is dotted with palm trees.
Panel 4:With a surprising amount of strength, Lydia tosses the boxes out of the car. Comic book pages catch the breeze and fly upward into the air.
Panel 5:A gloved hand reaching over a balcony railing catches one of the pages.
Panel 6:Lydia looks up.
Panel 7:In a wider shot, we see a man on the balcony. But he’s not wearing gloves after all. There’s no cape. No helmet. He’s just an old man, in normal clothes.
Panel 8:Lydia—
My phone buzzes in my lap, snapping me into the present.
I glance down at the notification.
waterwingluna16
