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Though a large mahoganydesk dominated the space, this room was more than a home office. It was a library. A conservatory. A man cave.
Petra associated different facets of her father with different rooms of this house. In the kitchen, she was most reminded of his Greek heritage. Her mother had learned to cook dishes like moussaka for him, and had taught Petra to cook them as well. She thought of the peppery halkidiki olives he preferred, and the way he mentioned, every time he opened a jar, how they reminded him of his grandmother.
Those Greek traditions, which had hardly featured in their lives otherwise, carried on into the dining room, where they sat at the table in the way he’d been raised, with mother and father at the sides, not the ends. Petra had always sat beside her mother.
They had kept the formal living room for guests, so she thought of her father as a businessman there, entertaining colleagues and clients. In the bedroom he’d shared with her mother, he was a husband. In the family room, where they’d watched television together when she was young, and where her parents had always brought her to have serious talks, he was a father. And, in the end, when he was alone, it was the family room where she most thought of him as a very sad, very lonely drunk.
But this office, his study—this was where her father was a man. An individual with interests of his own, with a personality unattached to obligation or responsibility, uncompromised by the space another person might demand. Though he sometimes did work here, the room held so much more of him than his profession. In this room, he was simply Alec Maros—who’d loved late-1960s rock bands like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and The Rolling Stones; who’d enjoyed books about European history and politics; who’d hated computers and loved Italian Renaissance poetry; who’d journaled every day of his life and had always written with a fountain pen.
In this room, Petra would pack up the man her father had been. Not the broken alcoholic who’d been too weak to face the consequences of his mistakes, but the complete man he’d been, made of affections and interests, irritations and annoyances, successes and failures, virtues and flaws. Memories and plans.
She sat in the dark-blue leather chair behind his desk and studied the bookcases that lined the walls at either side from floor to ceiling and side to side: they were packed full of books and LPs, framed photos and knickknacks, and a vintage Bang and Olufsen turntable that hadn’t been vintage when he’d bought it in college.
On his desk, among the pieces of the brass and leather desk set and beneath the green-shaded brass and glass desk lamp that had sat there all her life, was an old, carved walnut chest. It heldhisfather’s pipe and tobacco that must have been fifty years old by now. Her father had never smoked, but he’d enjoyed the aroma of his father’s pipe tobacco. It was the heirloom from his father he’d most cherished.
She pulled the chest toward her and lifted the lid. The interior was divided into two compartments. On one side, her grandfather’s pipe, carved from gleaming, burled wood, sat bedded in green velvet. A metal tin nested in the other side. She drew it out and opened the lid.
After so many years, the tobacco was very dry and stale, but with a deep breath, she pulled the ghost of its scent into her head, and with it came a sharp throb of loss. Petra hadn’t known her grandparents; it was her father she felt in this box—something he’d cherished of someone he’d lost.
When she was little and he saw her lurking outside the closed French doors, he’d wave her in, pull her onto his lap, and talk about the music he was listening to, or tell a story about when he was young. Sometimes he’d open the pipe chest and let her smell, and tell her a story about his father. In her mind, these stories were like fairy tales, and her grandparents had the fantastical aspects of storybook characters.
This chest, something she’d hardly thought of in years, brought the enormity of her loss in hard and fast.
Her father was gone. He’d never be back. He’d left her. Abandoned her.
He was gone.
Grief landed on her with a thud. All of it, all at once. Petra drew the chest close, wrapped her arms around it, and wept.
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~oOo~
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When Petra got backto her apartment, Jake was there, sitting at the island, working on his laptop. He jumped up and came over to meet her at the door.
“Hey, hi,” he said, his arms shifting awkwardly, like he wanted to hug her or take the stuff she carried from her or something, but not sure what she wanted him to do. He’d been careful around her for weeks, always trying to be just what she needed and wanted at any given moment.
He’d texted throughout the day, checking on her, and had made a fairly strong push to come over to the house after his shift, but Petra had been firm—she’d needed this day on her own. Even when she was lonely and scared, it had felt right to be alone today. She’d needed to get her head around this next hard thing without having to think about anyone or anything else.
Now, though, she was so glad he was here. She set her bag and the walnut chest down and slipped into his ready arms. They closed around her at once, drew her snugly against his strong chest, and she sighed with relief.
“Hi,” she whispered, and his hold tightened even more.
“How’d it go?” he asked softly.
“Hard.” She cried so much throughout this endless day, her eyes felt hot and twice their normal size. “But right. I did what I needed to do.”
She’d gone no farther than her father’s study, but she’d managed to go through his desk, his credenza, and the shelves and sort things into the usual groups such things got sorted: keep, give, sell, discard.
About half the books, she’d decided to keep. She’d display them at Gertrude’s somehow. A few of the paintings he’d favored as well. The rest, she’d donate to a library. For herself, she was keeping only the walnut pipe chest and his mahogany case of fountain pens.
His journals, almost forty identical leather-bound tomes, each one containing a year in his life, Petra had set aside. She wasn’t sure what to do with them. It seemed a sacrilege to discard them, and an intrusion to read them—moreover, she was afraid to read them. Knowing her father’s most personal, private thoughts couldn’t help but change her image of him, and she couldn’t bear it if the change weren’t to the good.
“What can I do now?” Jake asked, drawing her back to the present moment. She could hear in his voice, feel in his arms how eager he was to do something for her. He’d been worried all day, and now he wanted to make her feel better.
But she needed a moment to transition from the sad solitude of the day to an evening in the company of this man she loved, who wanted to take care of her, pamper her and take up all her burdens.
