“That’s fine with me,” I answer and Jessica elbows me again. “What?”
“I’m going to need his help carrying stuff,” Jessica says. “Do you mind?”
Harold, who had been standing at the bottom of the stairs, moves to one side so we can walk past. I don’t know why Jessica was elbowing me, but assuming Harold doesn’t follow us up the stairs, I plan to find out.
We get to the room and, with Jessica’s dad still on the main level, I close the door and ask, “What the hell were you elbowing me for?”
“The second one was because you should know from what I was telling you that it’s not a good idea for you and my dad to sit down and chat until you two get to know one another better,” she says. “The first one, that’s because you basically just told him that whatever our plans are tonight, we’re planning on waking up together in the morning.”
“I did not,” I defend and think back to the conversation, trying to piece together how she could have gotten to that conclusion.
“Whatever,” she says. “Let’s just grab the stuff and go before this gets any worse.”
She walks over to the closed closet door and opens it.
“What the fuck…?” she says in a half-whisper.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, coming up behind her.
“They’re gone,” she says, her voice shaky. “They’re all gone. They got rid of them.”
“Oh, I’m sure they didn’t get rid of your stuff,” I tell her. “Why don’t we just ask your dad if he knows where your boxes are and I’m sure he’ll know where to—”
“You don’t know my mother,” she says. “I know you think she’s some brilliant, altruistic woman who just happens to have a particularly grating technique of proving her point, but she really is about the most hateful person I’ve ever met. God, I feel like such a bitch saying that with her in the hospital.”
“Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I’m sure they’ll turn up around here somewhere. Let’s just go ask your dad.”
There’s a particular reason that I want her to ask her dad about this, but I promised him I wouldn’t give it away.
“You don’t get it!” she says, tears welling up. “Every single thing I ever won, every time I ever did anything I was proud of, that woman just kept knocking my feet out from under me about it. I told her not to touch my boxes.”
“Jessica,” I say, putting my hands on her shoulders, “let’s go talk to your dad.”
“What’s the point?” she asks. “This is how everything is in my life, and it’s the way it always will be. Every time I think I’m about to make some big stride, something comes along and tears it away from me. I’m sorry I’m crying,” she says, pulling a tissue from her purse. “I’m just so pissed off!”
I don’t know how to put it any other way, so I just repeat, “Let’s go ask your dad about it.”
“Will you stop saying that?” she yells, but she finally notices the anticipation on my expression. “What?” she asks. “What’s that face?”
I just smile and pull her in for a hug.
“I think you’re in for a pretty awesome surprise,” I tell her.
She takes a minute and dries her eyes before we go back out of the room and down the stairs.
“Dad?” she calls.
“In the kitchen!” he answers.
We go into the kitchen and Harold is standing over a pan of bacon.
“You kids hungry?” he asks.
Not wanting another elbow thrown at me for causes that I’ll never understand, I just stay quiet.
“Dad, have you seen my boxes—the ones that were in the closet?” she asks.
“They’re not up there?” he asks.
“No, Dad,” she says, “they’re not up there.”
“Huh,” he says and turns off the burner on the stove. “Did you check under the bed?” he asks.
“They wouldn’t fit under the bed,” she answers. “There were at least three boxes, overflowing with stuff.”
“Well, let’s go take a look,” he says and leads the way back up the stairs.
We follow him up, but of course the boxes haven’t magically appeared in the closet.
“Huh,” he says. “Maybe they ended up in the storage room.”
With that, we follow him back down the stairs and into the garage or, as he called it, the “storage room.”
The place is packed with stack after stack of boxes and loose items. I stand in the doorway so as not to break anything, but Harold walks through the space effortlessly, his muscle memory knowing well how to navigate the mess.
“Do you see them anywhere?” he asks.
“No,” Jessica says, following closely her father’s footsteps and looking over every box in the garage.
“Well,” he says, “I don’t know what to tell you. I guess we must have thrown it out. Hey Eric, this is your first time here and we haven’t given you the tour yet. What do you say we—”
“We’re going, Dad,” Jessica says, trying to contain her hurt and frustration.
I’d love to just tell her now, but her dad shakes his head as the empathy comes over my face.
“What do you say, Eric?” he asks.
“Sure,” I tell him.
“Well, you’ve already seen Jessica’s room, although I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’d be able to say that, huh?” he asks.
Yeah, I’m not stupid enough to answer that question.
“I would show you the room me and her mother share, but frankly I don’t know you that well,” he continues.
As endearing as this surprise is sure to be, I can’t help thinking that Jessica’s family is pretty all-around strange.
“Let me show you the basement,” he says.
“No Dad,” Jessica protests. “You’re not dragging us down there. The place smells like feet.”
“I cleaned,” he says. “Well, it’s been a while, but the smell’s gone anyway. Come on,” he continues.
Reluctantly, Jessica comes up to me and I take her hand as we follow her father back through the house and down the stairs.
The basement is unfinished and either it has no windows or they’re so deftly covered that no light comes into the space.
“Sorry,” Harold says, “the light switch hasn’t really worked all that well down here for a while.”
The thought occurs to me that what he told me over the phone could just have been a ploy so he could get me into his dungeon and do god-knows-what to me for dating his daughter.
“You’re not scared of the dark, are you, Eric?” he asks.
“Nope,” I answer and Harold takes Jessica’s hand, leading us as a chain through the nearly pitch black basement.
“Your hands are sweating,” Jessica whispers back toward me. “Don’t worry. He’s probably not going to try to kill you.”
“You know,” I say, feeling a lump in my throat grow as I am now walking blind, “maybe we should go. It is starting to get a little bit late, and I’ve got a new business strategy to implement tomorrow, and I’ve got to talk to—”
“Oh, nonsense,” Harold says. “We’re almost there.”
After another ten, slow feet, we come to a stop and, in front of me, I can hear a doorknob turning and a door being opened.
Do I really think that Harold brought me down here to torture or threaten me? Of course not. At the same time, I am starting to get the impression he wouldn’t feel too bad if I were to trip and injure myself.
I really have no idea how to take this guy.
“All right,” he says. “Jessica, you stand here.”
She lets go of my hand, and I can hear the shuffled sound of him positioning her in the middle of the room.
“Eric,” he says, “well, it doesn’t really matter.”
With that, he flips on the light, blinding all of us for an instant.
“What do you think?” Harold asks.
My eyes adjust to find what he told me about over the phone.
The room is filled with trophies and framed certificates, all on shelves or in glass cases.
“Oh my god,” Jessica breathes.
“Hey, looks like I found your stuff,” Harold says in an overly affected voice.
“When did you do this?” Jessica asks, “How?”
“Well, it took me a while to build the shelves and the glass cases, well, we had to buy those, but it was your mother that set everything else up,” he answers.