All The Gone Things

All The Gone Things

The extraordinariness of losing, finding, and losing again

The sudden jolt from his body surprised me. Rushing to make the subway, he had knocked into my body as we passed, him entering and I leaving. Hard. I stumbled, so did he. It was an accident but it struck me as horribly violent. I’d been daydreaming; it brought me back to reality with a harsh jolt. It struck me how quickly an unexpected touch can make its way into your bones.

During the collision, my book flew from my hands and landed on the floor of the train car. I tried to hold the doors open to reach for it but they pulled themselves shut, my fingers escaping just in time. The incident reminded me of a mouse trap we’d had as a child; I hated the sound it made when it snapped shut.

As the car speeds away, I see the blur of a familiar face staring back at me. Shaken, I try to ground myself. I’m okay, I’m fine.

Except I have to get back that little black book. I write in it everyday, religiously, stories upon stories, and memories too - it’s everything from the last I’m not even sure how many years of my life. Stories, drawings, life, and childhood tied up in one small book racing uptown, away from me. The concept of having something one minute and it speeding away the next is hard to wrap my mind around. That moment of losing is so close, it still feels alterable, like my hands can just reach it and I’d be able to move things around.

I am in a sudden panic. Running through options in my mind - finding it, recreating it, what are the other options? Are there any? Can something be lost forever? Where does it go?

On the hurried way home, I try to remember specific pages, specific moments -

My mother’s face smiling at me over the kitchen counter.

Good morning,

The sun streaming in behind her, warming the January marble in the cold house.

A portrait of her with her hair up, loose auburn strands tumbling down around her delicate face.

But there was something else too, wasn’t there?

My mother searching through the cabinets, opening one after another with no clear purpose. We lost her at the end and she lost us. Waking up to all the cabinets open like a ghost had blown through the house. Although, I suppose, at one time or another, we all look for unnameable things in strange places.

I remember her, grasping for my name, like she just might be able to reach it. A cruel disease swept through like the winter wind knocking every leaf to the ground, taking my mother’s memories and eventually, taking all of her from us.

In my apartment, I make a careful sketch of the cover of the notebook, to the best I can remember. My sister had given me a calligraphy kit for Christmas many years ago; from it, I’d chosen a bright silver, fine tipped pen to draw on the cover of the book. It made it distinctive. I held on to the idea that this detail might help bring it back to me. On the cover, I drew the cross-section of a house, a house constructed like I imagined my mind was. Spacious, sunny rooms full of good memories, locked away drawers, attics with skeleton keys, and forgotten rooms too. All resting under an endless sky. I’d gotten the sky just right.

I call my grandfather and tell him what happened on the subway. In his usual cryptic way, he simply says,

“If it’s meant to be, it will find its way back to you.”

Decidedly unhelpful. That aside, my grandfather and I have always been close. We understand one another. He has the reputation in my family as being distant, serious, and business minded, but I know better.

I remember surprising him early one morning as he sat at his big wooden desk, hunched over a piece of paper, something in his hand. I, 6 or 7 maybe, approached and saw a stick of charcoal. Drawing. He looked me up and down and then held the paper out to me to show me what he was working on. He decided something in that moment.

“But you can’t tell anyone. Promise?”

I promised and from then on, it was our secret. His drawings of imagined castles, gentle still lifes, occasional paintings behind sheets in the attic. He hid these private things from everyone, his children, his wife. Not me.

The next morning, I rise early and print off simple signs with the image printed next to my phone number and text:

LOST

PLEASE CALL IF FOUND

I hang them all around the platform where it had happened and in neighboring stations. I call the office and say I’ll be a couple hours late - my boss on the other end seems angry, but I don’t have time to care. It takes hours to travel station to station, hanging the signs, and quietly searching too, hopeful the book will find me somehow, show up at my feet. I hang the sheets next to lost dog posters, ads for house painters, music lessons, everybody searching for something.

Finally, at the desk of my office job, I answer phones and take messages. I don’t remember the specifics of that day except that it seemed to go on for several days.

That night, it’s a disjointed sleep that takes me, dream after dream about falling, about chasing people I cannot see.

The next morning as I wait for my train in my usual spot, tired and raw from my poor night’s sleep, I turn towards one of the columns where I’d posted the sign previously and I see something quite peculiar.

The bottom is unsecured and waving in the wind blowing from the departing train on the opposite track. I have to hold down the paper to be sure I am reading it right.

LOST

PLEASE CALL IF FOUND

$20,000 REWARD

It’s my sketch, my book, but someone else’s phone number, and someone else’s reward. It doesn’t make any sense. I rip the sheet off the pole and board my train. I stare at it the whole ride, uncertain if perhaps I’m still dreaming.

Finally, almost suddenly, I remember the face as the train was leaving the station. It was the friendly face of Charlie Hassock, the bartender at a little hole in the wall near my apartment. We know each other well, as a regular does the six-night-per-week bartender. I am filled with a sudden warmth and hope; maybe he saw me drop it, maybe he picked it up. Maybe, maybe.

I hurry to the bar after work. I hover impatiently for him to finish with his current customer. A girl in a velvet tank top leans over the bar, flirting with him. Her makeup impeccably done, her hair wild, red lipstick just slightly smudged. I feel momentarily self conscious, underdressed in my wrinkled clothes from the office. Charlie sees me anyway, winks, and begins making my usual, but that’s not what I’m here for. His easy grin approaches, he puts my drink down, the constellation tattoo on the curve of his hand dancing as he adds the lemon slice. Little ink stars dot his fingers. I take the drink, frustrated, grateful, and impatient.

“What’s wrong, love? You look a little rough, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“Yesterday, did you see me on the subway train? I dropped something, did you pick it up by any chance?”

I sound much more desperate than I intend.

“I thought that was you! I saw a girl making quite the commotion on her way out, banging at the doors and whatnot. But I’m sorry, I didn’t see you drop anything. Was lost in my own thoughts, I’m afraid.”

The disappointment hits me deep inside, the way a good feeling cradles your whole heart, an empty feeling drops through my chest and stomach as I accept it is unlikely I’ll get the book back.

“Thanks, Charlie.” I drink my cocktail in a few quick, deep sips. The coldness feels good. I order two more and they’re done in less than an hour’s time. I head home, my mind working quickly.

My mind returns to other pages -

My mother, spitting angry words out at me from across the room. She could be so cruel, so calculated when she chose to be. I screamed right back until I was breathless; I was her little mirror.

I wrote them all down. Every word I could remember. We never got to talk about them as adults, we were never able to find closure. She slipped away and left me alone with the burden of all our words.

It’s impossible to get an apology from someone who doesn’t remember the fight. They all told me to let it go, they told me to stop asking her, to stop apologizing, but I couldn’t just throw the words away. Where was I supposed to put them?

Home, I dial the number from the sign again and again, like a sleepless ex-lover.

Finally, on my tenth or eleventh try, I get an answer. I’m surprised to hear a voice at the other end.

I lie and say I have found the book. I’d like to exchange it for the reward.

“You don’t have the book,” the voice tells me, with an alarming confidence. I shout out details, about the cover, about the interior, I’m aware I sound pathetic and on edge.

And finally, they give in. Just like that, everything seems to ease at that moment, like a dam breaking.

He provides an address on Madison Avenue that I immediately recognize. I make my way there, not sure what to make of any of this.

The taxi pulls up in front of my grandfather’s brownstone. I arrive and knock, a door attendant I haven’t seen before opens the front door for me. I rush by him and up the stairs to my grandfather’s study.

He sits in his armchair, looking as old as I’ve ever seen him.

“Where is my book? What is going on?”

I’m afraid you just missed it.

“What is going on?”

We are in his library. I’d been here countless times as a child. Wood panels, books up to the ceiling, a ladder that moves around the room. It’s extraordinary and I’m no less struck by its greatness now than I was the first time.

“Indeed, a young man found your journal on the subway and came here for the reward. He was curious to know why it was worth so much to me. I told him it was evident he had not read it, that it contained the first chapter of a very important book. I gave him the option of $20,000 or the book. He chose the book, Beatrice.”

“So I suppose this is for you” He holds out an envelope towards me.

I feel upside down and confused. I take the envelope. I don’t understand. $20,000 check made out to no one in particular, now mine.

“You’ve always been very special, Beatrice, but you’ve made the same mistake over and over. You’ve kept your words close to yourself, hidden them away. You must let them out, let them see the light of day to help and to heal others, to make way for new ones to be born. You have an endless well inside you but you must let it out. You must let that book go and start anew.

Pay your rent, take some time off, travel, do whatever will grant you the freedom to write what you choose. Please, Beatrice, don’t make the same mistakes I did. Art is meant to be seen, and yours, my dear, begs to be seen. Your words matter, and we all, eventually, must learn to start again.”