by Kaden, John
“Just fine.”
“Any problems?”
“Nothing but.”
Jason laughed again. “Well, you look good. A little tired, maybe. The medication treating you okay?”
“Treating me fine, and before you say anything…” Milton grabbed a bottle off the kitchen counter and removed one of the pills, held it up for Jason to see, then popped it in his mouth and rinsed it down. “There. Satisfied?”
Jason shot him a sheepish grin. “Thanks. Gotta do it, you know.”
“I know.” Milton settled onto a bar stool by the counter and watched him unload the groceries.
“Hey, check this out—” Jason reached his arm down into the paper bag like he was fixing to pull a rabbit out of a top hat, only instead of a rabbit he removed a slender blue box of Ho-Hos. “Don’t tell the home office, okay? This is strictly between me and you.”
Milton’s eyes lit up. “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
“I’m touched.”
Jason started to file the box away in one of the cupboards, and Milton said, “Hold on there, buddy. Pass ‘em here.”
“You want one now?”
“Open that sucker up.” Milton pointed his finger at Jason. “You’re gonna have one, too.”
“I am?” Jason made a face like he’d just been asked to drink strychnine, then quickly replaced it with a smile. “Well… I suppose one Ho-Ho won’t hurt me.”
“Good Lord. You kids are too damn healthy!”
Jason gave his eyes a good roll, then cracked open the box and fished out two cellophane-wrapped snack cakes and slid one across the counter toward Milton. “Here you go. Hey, speaking of healthy, you feel like taking a walk around the block today?”
Milton ignored him and focused on undoing the wrapper. “What’s that you say?”
“A walk. I asked if you wanted a walk today?”
Milton tore off a hunk of Ho-Ho and let his eyes fall shut, savoring the too-sweet grit of it on his tongue. When it was chewed and swallowed, he said, “A walk, huh?”
“Sure. Get a little sunshine and exercise.”
“Yeah, yeah. All right. I suppose I oughtta.”
“We’ll make it a quick one, if you want.”
“Deal.” Truly, a walk didn’t sound half bad. He was starting to liven up a bit. Having company over always gave him a little extra vigor.
Jason strolled over to the window in the living room. “It’s a nice day to get outside,” he said. “Not too hot, not too humid.”
Milton wasn’t listening. His attention had been claimed by the cigar box on the table by the window. The trinkets were scattered around it in a circle, and the gold and ruby brooch rested on its lid.
Milton stopped chewing and stared at it.
How the hell? I put them away. I put them all away… Then, more soberly, he thought: No. I must have forgot. I must have left them out. That’s all it is. I just forgot it. Just being careless. Just my mind slipping away like the goddamn tides…
Jason waved his hands and said, “Did you hear me, Milton?”
“Yeah. I heard you. Nice day for a walk,” he said distantly.
“Say, are you feeling all right? You look a little queasy all of a sudden. I hope it’s not the, you know… the Ho-Ho.”
“No. Huh-uh. I’m fine.”
“Okay,” Jason said, but his skeptical tone suggested he wasn’t convinced. He looked at Milton for a few seconds, then said, “Maybe a little fresh air would do us some good. You want to get your shoes on while I finish up in the kitchen?”
Milton drew in a heavy breath and let it fall out. “You know, I think I changed my mind. I’m not sure I’m up to a walk right now. Might be best to lie down for a while.”
“Do you feel a spell coming on? I can stick around, if you like. You can rest for a bit, and then maybe we can hit that walk a little later?”
Milton waved him off. “No, no. I think you’re right. I think it might have been the sweets after all. Acid’s coming up, that’s all.”
A guilty look came over Jason’s face immediately, a look that said I knew I shouldn’t have bought him that damn junk food. Milton hated to see that look, because it meant nothing but fruits and vegetables from here on out. But it didn’t matter, at least not right then. Milton felt a sudden need to be alone, and that meant getting Jason to leave.
“You want me to pick up something for your stomach? I can swing by the drug sto—”
“I got Tums,” Milton said, cutting him off. “I’ll be in good shape after I take a Tums and lie down.”
Jason’s eyes lingered on him, appraising the slight pallor that had come over his face, then he said, “All right. Guess I’ll get out of your hair then, let you get some rest.”
Milton thanked him for the groceries and assured him that an antacid tablet and a short nap were all he needed to feel right again, then showed him to the door. Once their goodbyes were spoken, Milton swept the door closed and turned the deadbolt.
Then he turned back to the cigar box.
The gold brooch glittering on its lid looked magical in the early afternoon sun. He rubbed a hand over his mouth and stared at it. “Where did you come from?” he said, under his breath, to the empty apartment.
A forgotten vacation? he wondered. It had crossed his mind before. Maybe these were the mementos from an old road trip with June, a trip that had gotten lost in the murky fog of decades past. Perhaps it had been a short trip, and not that memorable in the first place. A weekender, maybe. A jaunty little Friday night drive down to the Keys, then back home by Sunday afternoon. They had taken plenty of quick getaways just like that, and a lot of those trips had gotten sort of blurred together over time, and that blurring had already started happening long before the dementia ever reared its ugly head in Milton’s life. It was just a thing that happened with memories. They got jumbled.
Fortunately, though, June had been a dedicated scrapbooker. She and her Polaroid had documented it all: the wedding itself (of course), their anniversaries, and all of their countless vacations and dinner parties. Milton had thumbed through the pages (five thick books in all) hundreds of times since her death, and that helped unjumble things a bit, break apart the collage of memories and put them back into some semblance of order in his mind.
Nothing in those books had rung any particular bells regarding the contents of the cigar box, though — but maybe he wasn’t looking hard enough. Maybe he had been thinking about it all wrong from the get-go.
He paced over to the table and plucked up the treble clef-shaped brooch and studied it. Dozens of tiny rubies glimmered in their gold settings.
“Maybe she had secrets,” he said to no one in particular. He didn’t believe June had ever kept anything from him, but he didn’t rule it out as a possibility. She must have been awfully lonely, what with him being gone for days and sometimes weeks at a time. And what do women do when they get lonely? he wondered. They go shopping, that’s what. They buy expensive crap that they don’t want their husbands to find out about. A second later he scolded himself for even having that thought. June simply wasn’t that kind of lady. Besides, even if the brooch had been an impulse purchase, that didn’t explain the rest of the contents of the box. The sequined bow-tie? The hula girl lighter? No. Not June. Not in a million years.
Milton laid the brooch aside and slid his hand along the cigar box’s lid. The virile fisherman gazed out lifelessly, the eternally half-smoked stogie hanging from his mouth. It dawned on him (for the first time, oddly enough) that he had become a man with an obsession.
He thought about tossing the gold and ruby treble clef back into the box and putting it out of his mind, then retiring back to the bedroom for an afternoon nap. All that talk of naps earlier had made him a bit drowsy. He couldn’t, though; not when his mind was alive. These lucid periods could last for days or weeks, but the forgetting always came back around sooner or later, and going to sleep was too big a risk — there was no telling where his mind mi
ght be once he woke back up. Use it or lose it, isn’t that what they always say?
That settled it.
Milton put everything back inside the box and headed to the kitchen.
III
Three hours later, surrounded by empty Ho-Ho wrappers, Milton huddled over the kitchen table with the trinkets spread out before him in a semi-circle. June’s scrapbooks were stacked off to the side, and the top one lay wide open, showing off neat rows of blurry, faded Polaroid pictures from their vacation to the Grand Canyon, circa 1991. He was hoping to at least narrow down the timeframe, figure out in which era of his life the box had first made its appearance. A photograph featuring one of the items would have been a jackpot, but so far nothing. It was just another nostalgic trip down Shaky-Memory Lane.
With a worn stub of pencil, he made a list of the box’s contents:
hula girl lighter
gold & ruby brooch (musical note)
pen with boat
keychain pendant
red bow-tie
coins and bills
The gold brooch and the money were the only items of any value. Everything else looked like it could have been picked up at a cheap souvenir shop. Hell, that’s probably where they had come from; and if so, what difference did it make? Give it a rest, he told himself. Pawn the jewels and toss the rest in the garbage can and be done with it. It’s no use worrying over.
That was out of the question, though. The box had a grip over him.
He reached out and touched the pen. Pen with boat, he had written on his list. It was one of those souvenir floating pens. The bottom half was a simple ball-point job. The other half contained a miniature diorama suspended in clear fluid — it showed a seaside village, and a small cut-out of a sailboat slid back and forth depending on which way you tipped the pen. Milton picked it up and watched sullenly as the little vessel sailed from one end of the tiny village to the other.
Next, he picked up the keychain pendant. Flimsy red plastic with faded white lettering: Tropical Paradise Awaits. He wrote this phrase on his list and circled it several times. It might be a clue, he reasoned. Maybe he’d be able to research the phrase and figure out where it had come from. He scribbled a quick reminder for himself in the margins. Worth a shot, at least.
He set it back in its place and held up the lighter next. He eyed the flashy brunette, dancing the hula in her grass skirt. He flipped back the lid and thumbed the spark wheel and it lit up on the first strike, and he gazed into the flickering orange flame like an old shaman searching for mystical visions in a ceremonial fire.
No visions came, though.
He shut the cover and snuffed the flame, then closed his hand around the metal casing and felt its warmth on his palm. It felt good in his hand, like it belonged there — as if simply holding it was the whole point. The same was true of all the objects. It was like they craved being held.
Milton shuddered and dropped the lighter.
He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his bleary eyes.
The apartment was silent, save for a soft tapping that came from the living room. It sounded like fingernails drumming on a hard surface. He craned his neck and half-expected to see June sitting on the couch, clacking her press-on nails against the glass top of the coffee table. It was too dark in the living room to see much of anything, though. The late afternoon sun had vanished behind a wall of storm clouds, and fat drops of rain plinked against the windowpane — tap-tap… tap-tap-tap…
He rose from the kitchen table and went into the living room to turn on the floor lamp. As he turned to walk back, June’s face caught his eye. Her framed portrait hung slightly askew above the TV cabinet. Her hair was done up and fastened, the way Milton always liked it.
“If you’re up there somewhere,” he said in a low voice, “I could sure use a hand down here, sweetie. This damn thing’s got me in a fit. You’d sort it out, though, wouldn’t you? You always did.”
He kissed his fingertips, then touched them lightly to the portrait. Moments like this, he swore he could still feel her presence. Five years gone, but she still seemed so terribly close. He slumped his shoulders and walked back into the kitchen.
“Jesus!” he said, stumbling back a step or two.
The lighter stood on end. The cover was flipped back, and the orange flame flickered.
Milton eyed it suspiciously. “I’m losing my goddamn mind.” He reached out and snapped the cover shut, let out a resigned sigh, and thought, No, you dumb old fool, you lost your mind a long time ago.
IV
The rain came down good and heavy for the rest of the night. Milton carefully placed his collection of mysteries back in their designated container, the Sweet Life cigar box, then heated up a chicken pot pie and ate it in the living room by the pale glimmer of the television set. The nightly news was on but he barely paid attention to it.
Part of him wished for the blight to come back, for one of his “spells” to overtake him and make him forget the whole damn business — the box and every wretched thing in it. He had wasted the entire day on it. Actually, he had wasted a lot of days on it. Far too many. It was drinking up his life like a greedy lush, robbing him of his lucid hours.
When he finished his meal, he trundled back to the bedroom without even bothering to clean up his dishes. His daily checklist rested on the nightstand:
Turn off burners
Lock doors
Check taps
Take medicine
Lights out
Milton glared at it and said, “To hell with you.”
He turned off the lamp and crawled right into bed, and within fifteen minutes he fell fast asleep.
The dreams came almost immediately, whisking him away on a wicked carnival ride of spinning red bow-ties and grinning fishermen and hula girls shimmying and shaking in their long grass skirts. He ran — or tried to — but in the strange way that dreams work, his legs never seemed to carry him very far. It was a slow-motion madcap dash, zigging and zagging, but whichever way he turned the same neon sign always glowed directly in front of him, impossibly bright in the blinding sunshine, and the blinking letters on that looming sign read: TROPICAL PARADISE AWAITS. It shifted across the landscape with each frantic turn he made, and even though Milton couldn’t help but run toward it, he had the dreadful feeling that it was following him, placing itself in his path, blocking his way to freedom.
Then instantly the neon sign was gone like it had never been there at all, and Milton was alone in the strange carnival, and then there wasn’t any carnival, or any hula girls, or any grinning fishermen, there was only the darkness of his bedroom and the steady drumbeat of his heart as he sat up in bed with the sheets around him soaked with sweat.
Every trace of the nightmare vanished instantly from his memory, replaced by a cold, sterile confusion.
Outside his bedroom window, the storm raged.
V
First thing in the morning, as the sun rose over the rain-soaked streets of Miami, Milton Brooks wandered through his apartment, searching for his dead wife.
He paced from room to room, then doubled back again. He was dumbfounded. It wasn’t like June to just up and leave without kissing him goodbye.
She must’ve gone out to get groceries, he figured. Or maybe she was planning to surprise him with something. Was it his birthday? He wasn’t sure, but he supposed it might have been. Good old June. Always thinking. Always a step ahead.
Milton stopped in the center of the living room and scratched his chest. Something wasn’t quite right. The television was still on with the volume muted, and there were dirty dishes sitting on the TV tray in front of the sofa. One thing about June: she was meticulous. She always kept the place spotless. She had all kinds of special touches that she added around the house, like placing scented candles at strategic locations, stacking their old magazines and newspapers in separate piles on the end table, all kinds of thoughtful little acts — but as Milton gazed around the apartment, he found these ho
usehold flourishes curiously absent. In fact, there hardly seemed to be any trace of her at all.
He shook his head. This was worrisome. She could be in trouble, he thought gravely. He’d give it an hour, he decided, then he would phone the police.
He paced over to the window and looked down at the sidewalk, hoping to see her walking back home with a grocery sack in her hands. He saw nothing but a sidewalk full of strange faces, and just as his hope began to sink a little, a brilliant new thought struck him: Maybe she left a note!
He turned on his heels and marched straight into the kitchen, to the wipey board stuck to the refrigerator door. It read: Eggs. Mayonnaise. Cheese slices.
Next he turned his eyes to the countertops, the corkboard, and finally over to the kitchen table. Yes… there was something there, wasn’t there? A piece of scratch paper sitting next to his old cigar box. Milton picked it up and stared blankly at the list he had written the night before. He knew it was his handwriting, but he didn’t remember making it. The phrase “Tropical Paradise Awaits” had been circled numerous times with a heavy hand, and next to that: ask Jason to web search it.
“Huh,” Milton said.
Still, he picked up the box and tucked it in the crook of his arm. The weight of it felt good to hold. Comforting. He ambled back into the living room, cast a long look at the door, pining for June to come bustling through, then settled down on the sofa with the box resting in his lap.
A framed picture of him and June sat on the end table. They were arm in arm, big smiles on their faces. A red, white and blue banner hung behind them, and they were surrounded by a crowd of people.
“The American Legion dance,” Milton said wistfully, and reached over and picked it up. “That was a heckuva night.”