My Father's Room

Brooke didn’t know how long he had been standing in the doorway to his fathers home. Taking one step through the front door seemed to stop time completely. The branches of the trees outside brushed their skeleton fingers across the windows. Winter was here. All the plants had lost their colours and the clouds lulled across the sky in smokey violet greys. The old walls of the house once painted a pale green had chipped away and now exposed the raw wood beneath. Brooke looked before him at the darkness that loomed at the end of the hallway. The power had been shut off weeks ago, so the rooms before him stood sinister and black. He knew he should have come many weeks ago but he had found himself dreading the visit. The thought of the creaky floorboards that groaned like ghosts and the sour smell of mould made his skin crawl. 

In his youth, the front door of his fathers home was surrounded by roses. He could remember the golden plumes of their petals, and how they rested their heavy heads against the frosted glass. The very last signs of colour before entering the darkness inside. It seemed strange to Brooke, that a place he spent his most innocent years within could evoke such feelings of anxiety. His father had been a fierce man, with eyes that looked perpetually damp and hair that was peppered with grey.

Brooke had grown up an anxious child, having become accustomed to the icy swirls inside his stomach. He spent most of his time alone outside, huddled beneath the great plum tree that stood at the end of the garden. He would scratch his fingers across the moss growing from its bark and imagine all the animals that might be living inside its great trunk. The light from his fathers garage would always be on, glowing like fire amongst the darkness of the night. His father spent most of his time in that garage, working on projects that never saw completion. The grating of saws and the thick smell of varnish was the essence of Brooke's childhood. 

Brooke made his way through the front door and into the kitchen. His footsteps thudded loudly and bounced off the walls as he walked. In the center of the kitchen floor was a hole. His father had started to rip up the boards with plans to replace them with new shiny planks, however to this day it still remains open. The floor gaped wide like a mouth, revealing the dark earth below. The sound of the scuttling feet of mice could be heard inside the cabinets. Small pockets of sunlight peeked through the cracks of the closed blinds, painting thin golden stripes across the floor. 

Brooke's father passed away a few weeks ago, his death was sudden, so most of his possessions were still inside the house just as he had left them. His morning newspaper still sat on the kitchen table, with his sheepskin slippers resting beneath his chair. It was Brooke's job today to begin packing away his fathers things, deciding what was to keep, donate or sell. As an only child this responsibility fell solely to him. Having had a strained relationship with his father, especially in his adulthood, Brooke felt strange being the one to make these decisions on behalf of his father. They looked alike and shared the same name but as far as Brooke was concerned those were the only things that connected them. 

His father was a conservitive man and had conventional few points on how one should live their life. His ambitions for Brooke was for him to go to university, get a stable well-paid job and marry himself a good woman. Despite the fact his father was divorced and never remarried, he had a strong opinion on what kind of relationship he desired for his son.

From a young age Brooke knew his was gay. He came out to his father when he was a teenager and felt he never really accepted it. Although his father never outwardly said he didn't approve, he never behaved in a way that would suggest otherwise. Brooke supposed to suggest his father didn't 'accept' his truth wasn't quite an accurate way to put it, as that would suggest his father had actually given a response or reaction, but in truth his father had said nothing. So it seemed to Brooke, more appropriate to say that his father refused to 'acknowledge' his son's truth.

Because he never said a word. There was just a lot of silence and an ever growing divide between them. As Brooke grew into a man he saw less and less of his father, and over the past decade had only spoken to him a handful of times over the phone on holidays and birthdays. He had always been looking for a sign that his father saw him for who he was and loved him unconditionally. But as Brooke had gotten older, he was beginning to lose faith it would ever come.

 The kitchen cupboards were mostly packed with mugs and other usual things, apart from one that stood at the very corner of the room. This cupboard boasted his fathers impressive collection of model cars. Brooke reached inside and pulled out the shiny 1967 chevy impala. He ran his finger over the cold metal, tracing the lines that carved the doors and windows.

He remembered on Christmas, picking out that glistening red car from a toyshop as a gift for his father. He could hear his fathers voice now, ringing out like bells as they gathered in front of the Christmas tree.  “My Boy!” his father had exclaimed, clasping his great hands around the car, cradling it like a baby. Brooke could picture the way his father’s eyes had twinkled with childlike wonder and the crinkles at the corners of his mouth that grew deeper as he smiled. This was one of the only times Brooke could remember seeing his father without his usual stern expression. He placed the little car inside one of the cardboard boxes laid out on the floor. The cars would be kept, he decided. 

After the kitchen was the small bedroom. The walls were a blushed pink, a colour his mother had picked out when she was still married to his father.  The bedroom was the one room out of them all that didn’t fall to the mercy of his fathers home renovations. The ornate oak dressing table his mother had selected still sat at the corner of the room, with the ceramic ornament of Edinburgh Castle they had purchased on a trip to Scotland.

A small single bed was pressed against one side of the wall, a glass of half drunken milk still sat beside it on the floor. Something felt so lonely about this scene. Brooke imagined his father, then in his 60’s lying alone in this small damp room, tucked up in this little bed for one. He felt a growing sense of sadness as he poured through his fathers possessions, his books, clothes and travel souvenirs looked like they were from a lifetime ago. It was as if his father had frozen time inside this little room. 

 However uncomfortable Brooke had felt imagining returning to this home, and surrounding himself with his fathers things. Now standing there in the bedroom, looking at a place that reflected his fathers frozen memories, he felt more sad than afraid. He could remember growing up in this house as a boy. Listening to the wind as it howled through the trees and the branches that scratched on his bedroom window like witches nails. He could remember hearing the rumble of his father snoring through the wall and how the sound seemed to vibrate through the whole house. 

Brooke quietly worked his way through his fathers drawers, unearthing envelopes with old bank statements, a dozen loose coins and rolled up silk ties. The bottom drawer held his fathers clothes, Brooke pulled out a pile of old looking knit sweaters and dress shirts. They were all wrapped up together in untidy bundles. As he pulled out a pair of his fathers trousers a wallet fell out of its pockets. The smack of it hitting the hard wood floor broke the silence. Brooke bent down and picked up the shiny black leather wallet and turned it over in his hand. His father had kept the same wallet since Brooke was a boy, it was one he had picked up from a market. It was smooth and had a small anchor embossed on the front.

He opened it up and flicked through the sleeves that held his fathers old cards. Plastic bank cards, paper loyalty cards for fast food joints and other little bits that gave snippets of how his father spent his time. Inside the cash pocket receipts bursted out, some of them were so old that the print had faded and you couldn’t decipher what they said anymore. Beneath the receipts Brookes finger suddenly touched something. He grabbed hold of the object with his fingertips and slid it out.

It was a photo. He turned it over and was met with his own face smiling back at him. It was a picture of him and his partner Jeff. They were standing in front of the new house they had purchased a few months back. They had their arms wrapped around each other and were grinning goofily at the camera. In his fathers hand writing there was a message that read, “Brooke and Jeff - 2015.”

Brooke stood holding the photo, standing in quiet contemplation. Wondering how it had come into his fathers possession but mostly, feeling comforted by the fact his father had chosen to keep it so close to him. Tiny streams of sunlight dotted through the window, causing the dust in the air to sparkle like glitter. Brooke placed the photo back inside the wallet and held it against his chest. This was it. This was the sign.

The wind outside rocked through the trees, causing bursts of green and yellow to flash past the windows. Inside, the walls creaked softly, like a voice whispering, trying to speak.