Whisper Me This(23)
A large planning calendar sits in the middle of his solid wood desk, the squares filled with notes made in his precise, tiny handwriting. The Dad Font, I’ve always called it. A notation for next week catches my attention: Dr. M./POLST.
All the warmth flies away. If Mom was planning a POLST, like Dr. Margoni said, then it’s probable that there really is an advance directive somewhere.
If I were my mother, where would I keep such a thing?
The most logical spot is the four-drawer cabinet that has stood behind locked closet doors in this room for as long as I can remember. Dad takes his clients’ confidentiality seriously.
Finding the keys is too easy. The inside of the middle desk drawer is like an advertisement for one of those little plastic organizer trays. Everything is neatly stowed. It’s the complete opposite of my desk, in which items are piled so high you can’t even see the plastic organizer.
But when I go to open the closet door, it is already unlocked. Behind it, file folders and papers are strewn helter-skelter all over the floor. The top drawer of the cabinet is open. Even the picture of Jesus and the little children that hangs in front of the safe is on the floor, and the safe door is also hanging open.
My heart slams against my chest.
That small, twisted shame I felt watching drool trail down Dad’s chin while he slept resurfaces. I’m not supposed to see this. It’s sacrilege of a sort. My father has made this mess. He left the file cabinet unlocked. The safe open. The closet unlocked.
I put my hands on either side of my head and squeeze them together. This is not my father’s behavior. He doesn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this. That dementia word comes crawling back into my brain, a snake of a word this time, poisonous.
I can’t think of any other explanation for a calm, methodical man to be burning papers in a fireplace, scattering files around like this. I want to sink to the floor in the middle of the scattered files and wail like a frightened child, but I can’t. There’s too much to do. And I am the only person anywhere around to do it.
I begin cleaning up the mess, all the while asking myself what he might have been looking for. The safe contains passports, both his and Mom’s. Stocks and bonds. A copy of their will, which noticeably is lacking any mention of an advance directive. Nothing of any particular interest, like gold or expensive jewelry or some terrible secret.
The files strewn all over the floor are client income taxes, mostly. Mom’s old medical records. A year of utility bills and car repairs and home maintenance. Receipts. Nothing that would indicate a reason to start burning things.
An overwhelming sense of exhaustion creeps over me as I contemplate trying to guess where these files are supposed to go under Dad’s careful organizational system. And then I realize that it doesn’t matter, and I just shove them in any which way, using the Maisey Organizational System, which consists pretty much of “I know it’s in there somewhere.”
If his mind has deserted him, he won’t know or care. If he comes home okay, he can fix it himself.
Curious now, trying to track the unusual workings of my father’s mind, I pick my way through the muddy mess in the living room and crouch down by the fireplace. I saw a movie once where some guilty soul had burned papers, and the words were still visible. No such luck here. The papers are too blackened for me to read any words. A manila folder lying on the hearth looks like a thousand other folders. Beige and noncommittal.
What makes it stand out from all the other beige folders on the face of the planet is my name. There’s a sticky label, printed, that says Maisey.
I have a folder at home labeled Elle. Per the Maisey Organizational System, it has all things Elle in it. Her birth certificate. Social Security card. Vaccination records. Certificates of excellence from school. A funny picture of her with her hair all disheveled, cuddled under a blanket and sitting on the heat vent, one of her favorite places to be.
Mom doesn’t organize things the way I do, by which I mean to say she actually organizes them. Social Security cards will be in a file so labeled. Vaccination records will be under vaccination records, probably with a separate folder for each family member. I can’t imagine what would be in a folder with my name on it, unless it’s childhood drawings or school papers.
The folder feels empty, but I open it anyway. All I find is a tiny little sticky note that reads, Shred this.
A hollow space opens in my chest where my heart is supposed to be. This—whatever this is—is about me. My mother had Maisey secrets and told my father to destroy them.
I blaze a trail back to Dad’s office. The shredder under the desk is jammed with a wad of paper stuck so tightly that I can’t pull it free. Unplugging the electrical cord to prevent any accidental shredding of my fingers, I anchor the base between my feet and tug with both hands. No dice.
There are scissors in the desk, and I use those to saw away at the paper, cutting and tearing it free just above the shredder blades. I’m holding eleven half-sheets, their bottoms mangled, the top halves legible. Eight of them are my mother’s old medical records. The tops of the pages hold only demographic data: her address, date of birth, allergies, medications. Whatever she saw the doctor for is missing, and I move on.
Page nine is a different kind of paper, smaller, the sort that comes on one of those refrigerator magnet to-do list pads. It’s pink and has a butterfly and flower on the right. A cute little header says, Life Is Short, Do It Now.