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10

ZOEY

Grandma Minnie’s closet is an organized mess. At first glance, everything seems orderly. Arranged in neat boxes and tucked onto shelves. But then, once my eyes finish enjoying the beauty of a well-put-together space, I’m overwhelmed by the massive amount of stuff .

When I start taking out boxes, I realize, at one point, this was a walk-in closet.

Now, it’s a storage locker of random things Minnie felt the need to hold on to.

Hopefully, I’m not about to find thirty-year-old newspapers in these shoeboxes. Although that would make the decision about whether to throw it out or keep it easy.

The size of this task intimidates me. So much so that I feel the need to sit on the bed and stare at the closet and mentally prepare myself.

Other people might think my ideas for the furniture refurbishment are daunting ones. All that sanding and staining and reupholstering. And, sure, those projects will take up a good chunk of time. But time isn’t what scares me. Time is the whole reason I came to Grandma Minnie’s cabin.

This closet has me pausing because of the emotional strength I’m worried I might need to get through this.

Dragging out all these items seems akin to poking at a woman’s inner self. This closet is all that’s left of Minnie’s treasured possessions. Like a fragment of her soul she left behind.

Am I the right person to sort these things? To make decisions about them?

Is this closet the reason months went by without Mom making any mention of coming here to deal with the house?

“Sitting on the bed isn’t getting anything done,” I scold myself.

Too much sentimentality. Minnie is gone, and this closet is just stuff.

With a fortifying breath, I shove up from the old, squeaky mattress and zero in on the first box.

Opening it seems almost anticlimactic. Boots.

The box reads Hellmen’s Shoes —a shop I drove by on Main Street the other day. No surprise that Minnie shopped local. The boots are nice, barely worn. On a whim, I slip one on. Pretty good fit, which is surprising, seeing as how Minnie was a half a foot taller than me, if Mom told it right.

Guess I have big feet.

I set the box to the side of the room I designate as the Keep side. The next box in the stack is bigger and contains some worn flannel shirts and thick knit cardigans. Weirdly, my grandmother’s frumpy mountain woman clothes are exactly what’s in style. Despite them being a few sizes larger than my normal, I place the box next to the boots.

Last box in the first stack has ratty, old sheets, which make for good drop cloths.

I keep them too.

“Maybe I’m not so good at this clear-out-the-house business,” I mutter to myself while reaching for the next container.

This one is different, a wooden box about the size of a toaster oven. It sits on the top of a middle stack, easily accessible.

Curiosity piqued and worries set at ease after dealing with relatively impersonal materials so far, I place the wooden box on the floor and plop down in front of it. There’s a brass latch, but no lock, so I don’t expect any kind of valuables when I open the lid.

Still, the contents surprise me.

Cassette tapes. Neatly arranged in rows, as if this box was built for the exact purpose of housing them. I count them, coming up with just over forty.

Carefully, I slide one from the box and pop open its little plastic case. The old tech makes me smile. I’m just the right age to have used cassette tapes for a handful of years before CDs took over. The Walkman I used to have was one of my first prized possessions. I played my *NSYNC tape so often that the ribbon broke.

The curious thing about Minnie’s collection is that every tape is blank. Not blank of recording. They probably have some type of audio on them. What they’re all missing is labeling. The spines of the containers have blank white space, where someone could make a note of the contents of the tapes. But every one is void of any title or description.

I should put the box to the side and return to the closet. But I’m a cat, ready to die for the sake of curiosity.

I go on a hunt.

What I’m looking for isn’t in the bedroom, so I move to the main living area. Finally, after opening almost every closet and cupboard, I spot it sitting on top of the refrigerator.

A boom box.

The thing might be in easy reach for a woman approaching six feet tall, but I have to pull out the step stool.

I return to the bedroom with the boom box clutched to my chest.

My grandparents invested in wiring the cabin for electricity, but they didn’t opt for many outlets. I have to push the bedside table out of the way and unplug a lamp to set everything up. Any worries about the music player not working disappear when the analog numbers flash to life. I settle with the box of tapes in my lap and select the one from the top-left corner.

Nostalgia gives me a warm phantom hug at the practice of inserting the tape. After turning up the volume, I wait, knowing the tape is playing from the crackle the speakers emit.

Then …

“Helloooo, Denver! Are you ready to rock and roll? You’d better be because you’re listening to me?—”

Holy shit. Is that ? —

“Silly Selena! The hottest DJ in the biz. And I’ve got all the grooviest tunes on the radio.”

Oh no. This is too much .

“Right now, I want to play one for anyone who’s ever had a crush! Sing along if you know it!”

Behind the last few words, a song begins to play, and suddenly, I’m listening to Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl.” Brought to me by my adolescent mother’s first attempts at acting the DJ.

As the song goes on, I lie back on the bedroom floor, clutching my stomach as my uncontrollable laughter threatens to give me a hernia. Tears leak out of the corners of my eyes, but I’m too lost in my hysterics to bother wiping them away.

When the song comes to an end, Mom’s young voice pipes up with more enthusiastic radio-host clichés, and my giggles ramp up all over again.

Halfway through the tape, I finally exhaust myself to the point where I simply lie on the floor, panting and grinning.

Some of the joy at finding this jewel from my mother’s childhood trickles away when I turn my head enough to examine the boom box.

Despite the fact that it can play cassette tapes, it’s not some ancient machine. My guess is, it’s at least ten years old. Which means Minnie bought it long after my mom moved out.

A picture forms in my mind—of my stern grandmother in her kitchen, messing around with some of her mason jars. And at her elbow is this boom box, playing the voice of the daughter who left and never looked back.

How lonely must she have been?

And I wonder if it was anything like when I lived on my own for the first time.

My first semester of college.

The memories don’t come to me as individual days. They all flow together.

When I first left for my East Coast college, I was excited to strike out on my own. To show that I could do just fine without my family.

The first few weeks were okay, but at some point, everything shifted.

Living started to feel like a long, cold stream that dragged me along, keeping me on the edge of drowning. Floating always in the middle, where I couldn’t grasp anything to stop a forward progression to nowhere.

In the beginning, I made it out of my room, attended classes, wrote words that resembled notes.

But near the end, I couldn’t leave my bed.

And I couldn’t figure out why.

In my mind, I would tell myself to get up, to function. But my limbs were heavy. Waterlogged with depression.

I didn’t have that word then.

The only word I had was drowning.

Someone had to jump in after me. Someones. My brothers drove hundreds of miles when I stopped returning their calls. They found me in the cold river of my misery, dragged me out, bundled me up, and brought me home.

I didn’t save myself.

That’s something I’m working on.

Can I survive here? Can I survive anywhere that’s not right next to my lifeline?

Or will my head slip under the surface again?

I glance over at the bottle of pills on the nightstand. They help. I can take my medication without my brothers. I can talk to my therapist without my brothers.

But can I build a life? Make friends? Fall in love?

Terror that the current will drag me under again has me wanting to get in my truck and drive back to Denver. This experiment could be cataclysmic.

And that’s all this is. A test.

Anything I build here, I need to be ready to leave behind. Like a temporary structure in a flood zone.