Take Me

The Spring of 1990 was a time of great turmoil in Bayport, Michigan. The students at Benedictus College were at odds with the local residents and protests by some locals had turned ugly. The entire population had become polarized in the wake of six bomb scares, two of which turned out to be real. The resulting explosions caused no injuries, but there was considerable damage. I dealt with this crisis in the way that I knew best: I cleaned out my attic.

I know it must seem silly, but if you knew anything about my family, you would know how serious an action that was. My grandparents, Lucia and Antonio Malessi, first came to Bayport from Italy in 1910. Raising a large family in a small town, they had to teach their children to conserve and to be economical. Their five sons took the lessons to heart, making thriftiness and saving a way of life. For the Malessi boys, though, saving meant never throwing anything away. It also meant never letting anyone in town throw anything away if there was a remote possibility of it being repaired or used for parts. My father and his four brothers were famed throughout Bayport County for their relentless acquisition and hoarding of junk. A cousin (by marriage) once said that our family motto should be "That's worth money"--usually referring to some broken appliance found by the side of the road. As for me, having grown up with this ethic, a loaded attic was more valuable than a full bank book. Having a genetic link to trash accumulation should be enough, but I ended up marrying John Cartelli, who could collect junk better than a natural-born Malessi.

How this fits in with the crisis in Bayport is rather complex. It started the day I came home three hours early from work due to a bomb threat at our office building. I was nervous, agitated, and tired of the disruptions these terrorists were causing. After pacing the living room for nearly an hour, I needed to do something--anything--to get my mind off the situation. That's when the attic came to mind. "Yes, what a brilliant idea," I thought, "I can get rid of the old, move on to the future, eliminating all the clutter on the way!” I imagined some sort of symbolism in these thoughts, something like sweeping away all the turmoil as I swept the attic. It felt profound at the time, though the connection escapes me now. I started hauling things out of the attic immediately. I had the living room stacked high with dusty furniture and boxes when my husband came home from work.

"What's going on here?", He inquired cautiously, his wide eyes scanning the piles slowly.

"I've had enough,” I responded, “I'm getting rid of all of this!”.

He stood quietly for a few moments, staring incredulously. "Wait...what do you mean?"

"I've just had enough. This stuff has been in the attic for years without being used and it never will be. I want it out of here. Then maybe we can remodel the attic and make it into a bedroom for Robby."

His head rocked slowly from side to side.

"But you can't just throw all this away. Most of this is worth..."

I interrupted loudly, "Stop right there! I don't care what it's worth--I want it out of here!"

He recognized my tone immediately and he knew that I was serious.

"Look," he muttered in defeat, "you are probably right, but it's senseless to just throw away valuables like this. Why don't we have a garage sale? We can put the money we get from selling it toward the remodeling."

I thought about this for a while, wary of some sort of trick. I reluctantly agreed.

We finished cleaning out the attic that night, putting most of the furniture and other items out in the garage. I let John handle the garage sale. He put an advertisement in the Bayport Press and placed large signs all around the neighborhood. When the sale day arrived, only seven people showed up. No one bought anything.

I was still determined to eliminate these useless possessions. Rather than throwing everything away, we put it all on our front lawn and attached several small signs that said: “take me”. We hoped that none of my uncles or my father happened by. The furniture disappeared the next day and almost everything was taken after three more days. All that remained was six boxes of souvenirs and a broken television set. The trash collectors graciously took it all with them the following Monday.

I can't express the relief I felt after eliminated this stuff from my household. It seemed that a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders and that life was brighter, more carefree. Just a week after we threw away the last item, I was merrily dusting the attic and mentally planning its remodeling when I stumbled across a small brown suitcase that we had missed during the cleanup. It was tired-looking, with simulated leather cracking at the edges. The large belt encircling it had two locking clasps, one of which was broken. I took it downstairs and deposited it outside next to our trash cans.

Unfortunately, John noticed it there when he got home and quickly retrieved it.

"Hey, you can't throw this away. This was the suitcase I used when I went away to college!"

I stared impatiently. "Look, we went through all that before, and we agreed to get rid of everything, didn't we?"

He shook his head hesitantly in agreement, "Yes, but it really is a good suitcase. Let's set it out so some needy person can get to it."

"We still have one of those 'take me' signs left in the closet. Put that on it and put it by the road," I replied.

He attached the sign to the suitcase and put it in the hallway.

"I'll take it with me on my way to work in the morning--I know a good place to leave it," he said as he sat at the kitchen table. "That small shopping center where I go for breakfast on Wednesdays has a Laundromat and a dime-store next to the restaurant. A lot more people will see the suitcase there."

I nodded in agreement, eager to eliminate this last link with my "pack rat" past.

I was grateful to see the suitcase gone when I got up the next morning and I thought nothing of it as I went off to work. The day passed uneventfully and John and I arrived home from work at almost the same time.

We had a quiet, peaceful dinner together. When we were done with our meal, John sat down in the living room and turned on the evening news while I went into the kitchen to make hot chocolate. I was getting ready to pour the steaming water into our mugs when I was interrupted by a shriek from the living room: "Oh my God. Oh my God. Laura, come here!"

I rushed to the living room. John was standing before the television, his face ashen, staring at the television.

"What...what's wrong?"

He just pointed at the screen. A young woman news reporter was standing in front of a small shopping area that was crowded with flashing police cars and curious citizens. Across the top of the screen was a bright red banner printed in large, block letters saying: "Brookside Road Bomb Scare"

I looked at him inquisitively.

"So, another bomb scare..."

"Just watch!" He gasped, his voice a hoarse whisper.

The wind tossed the woman's short blonde bangs around as she addressed the camera. "Earlier today Bayport police officer Christopher Caldrone told TV 8 News that he was stopping for a coffee break at 9:30 this morning at the Pepper Mill Restaurant at 749 Brookside Road here in Bayport. As he was parking his car, Officer Caldrone noticed a small brown suitcase on the sidewalk between the Dairy Store and Laundromat adjacent to the restaurant. Attached to the side of the worn suitcase was a small handwritten sign reading 'take me'."

I started to feel a little dizzy.

"Officer Caldrone said that with all the recent bombings, he decided to immediately call headquarters. The desk officer on duty then, Lt. Janesco, said he contacted the state police who dispatched its bomb squad to the scene. Suspicious about the sign, the unit used its latest weapon: a remote-controlled robot."

The picture changed to show stock footage of a long, narrow, box-like vehicle, which had a dull steel finish with five tall, knobby tires on each side. The vehicle rolled across the screen for a while before the scene shifted to the interior of a van where two police officers controlled the robot.

"Sergeant Vanetti from the Michigan State Police bomb squad stated that when they rolled the robot over the suitcase, its X-ray cameras showed nothing inside. Taking no chances, Sergeant Vanetti had the robot drop what is known as a 'water cannon' on the suitcase before moving away from it. It was later determined that the suitcase was empty."

The reporter pointed her microphone at a young man standing near her. "This is Anthony Fortuna, who observed this morning's events. Mr. Fortuna, tell us what you saw."

"I was in the Pepper Mill, eating a cheese Danish, when the cops made us all get up and leave. I climbed the hill across the street where I had a good view as they rolled that silver contraption over the suitcase. It was real quiet for 10-15 minutes, then it rolled back and there was a muffled bang--no big explosion like I expected. They probably spent a hundred grand just to blow up some guy's dirty underwear."

I turned off the sound, then stared nervously at John.

"There wasn't any underwear..." John said quietly.

We sat, staring at the picture on the screen of a policeman standing over the sodden remains of our suitcase. Visions of striped uniforms and steel bars passed wordlessly between us.

The next few days were nervous ones. We didn't know if we had violated any laws and we didn't want to find out, so we kept our mouths shut. When the story finally disappeared from the news, we told a few friends what had happened. That did little to ease our minds as most of them just laughed. We are pretty sure that it was one of those friends that phoned John a few nights later and asked him to meet Captain Gionfriddo at the police station the next morning to discuss his suitcase. John, nearly in a panic by the time the morning came, forgot the meeting place and time. He called the station to find out where and when to go, and the desk sergeant told him that there was no one named Gionfriddo working there. When the sergeant began to inquire as to what this meeting was about, John hung up immediately.

It has been over two years since this incident and we haven't heard anything else about it. I think the statute of limitations has passed, but I'm not going to ask. Robby loves his new attic bedroom. Just last week I found myself in another cleaning mood, this time targeting the basement. Showing signs of recovery from "Malessi-itis," John and I put twenty boxes out for trash pickup, along with four broken lamps and a worn-out eight-track tape player.

The lamps and tape player turned up at my uncle Joe's house two days later.