Something Found Along the Way

Water dripped from somewhere up high. The water was hitting the floor with a rhythmic tapping. Drip, drop, drip. Aside from the completely inadequate plumbing, the house seemed unrecognizable. The ceiling was mostly collapsed and the walls looked like a tornado hit them. Of course, that was the case, and Monica was surprised at how much was preserved. She would have been happier if the entire house was gone, but such was life.

Monica held out a hand and let water drip onto her palm. The water was the color of dark chocolate. She wiped it off on her blouse and continued her walkthrough of the damage, carefully avoiding the puddle.

The dining room was strewn with debris from the walls and ceiling. Wood and brick lay on the once-polished, beautiful mahogany floor. The dinging room table had broken in half under the weight of the debris. The bookshelves were nowhere to be seen. The books they were meant to store, on the other hand, were mixed seamlessly in with the debris, sprinkled all around.

Monica looked down at her feet, noticing a neon green, spiral-bound notebook. On the cover of the notebook were the initials M.G. Her heart, which had been beating at an even pace, started to kick it up a notch. She started to feel something. Was it relief or nervous anticipation? She reached down and pulled the notebook out from under a piece of wood. She dusted the cover off with one hand. “How long has it been?” she asked the room. There was no answer.

She opened the notebook to the first page, which was a decorative title page. In big, bold, hand-written letters, in the center of the page, were the words “Monica Gideon.” She felt the page with her dusty hand. It crinkled under her fingers, stiffened from being moistened then dried over the years.

After all this time, she still remembered being transported to so many different places. There were the late nights, snug under the bed, where her parents’ shouting seemed so distant. Or the days under the school bleachers, tucked away from the bullies and divas. Any confined and empty place would work, so long as her back was against a wall. That was when the portal would open and she would fall back into an all new world, with characters that took her in and showed her around.

She flipped the page. Her handwriting had not changed since freshman year of high school. It was still the tidy cursive that she had worked so hard to perfect. The only impediment to reading was the occasional water stain. Most of the words were still clean.

Monica looked up to find herself standing in the corner of the room. She leaned back against the wall and slid down to the floor. She began to read.

Nothing was as she remembered it. The characters she had developed seemed lesser than she thought. Their motivations were thin. The plot happened too fast and did not seem to develop organically.

When Monica leaned back, no portal opened that drew her into that world.  Maybe it didn’t want her anymore. She gently rested her head against the wall, defeated. The story took minutes to read, but she could not escape.  Maybe she had lost the ability.

A buzzing sound went off in the pocket of Monica’s jeans. She pulled out her phone and glanced at the caller ID, which read J. Gid.  “Hi, dad,” she answered. “I just got here. What’s up?”

“How does it look?” said a raspy voice on the other end of the line. “Pretty messed up? I heard news reports in the area.”

Monica glanced up at the ceiling. “We could probably salvage some nails,” she said.

There was a fit of coughing from the other end of the line. The coughing turned into laughter. “That bad, huh? I’ll see about gearing up and coming out tomorrow morning.”

“No, dad,” Monica said, trying to mask her frustration as she looked around at the wreckage. “You—You don’t have to come out. I don’t think you can salvage anything, but I can get a construction crew in here, if that’s really what you want.” 

“Construction crew?” her father asked.  Monica could almost see him on the other end, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

The air stood still for a moment. The only sound was the gentle tapping of water onto the floor. Drip, drip, drop. After a moment of silence, Monica’s phone started to buzz again. She looked at the Caller ID, which read Mom. “Someone’s calling me, dad. I have to go now. Talk to you later.” She hung up the phone before dad could respond, then answered the new incoming call. “Hi, mom, what’s up?” She tried her best to sound chipper, without a care in the world.

“You hear about the tornado?”

“Tornado?” Monica said. “What?” She pulled her knees up under her chin.

“It went through Gerald,” Monica’s mother said.  She then added, “The town you grew up in,” as though Monica would have forgotten. 

“Oh?”

“Have you talked to your father recently?” The unmistakable clinking of mother’s clear crystalware could be heard from the other end of the line. This crystalware was the sort that could not be used for anything but the finest of fine wines or liquors. She only drank on especially happy or unpleasant days.

“It’s been a minute since we spoke,” Monica said, which wasn’t technically a lie.

“It’ll be a couple weeks before I’m available to come out to assess the damage. You live only an hour away. Could you drive down there and see what’s what?”

“That’s two hours of driving,” Monica said with a sigh, as she nudged a mound of debris with her sneaker. “Gas doesn’t grow on trees, or so I’m told.”

“I’ll send you some gas money and something extra for a meal on the road.”

“Deal.”

“Monica,” her mother continued with her own sigh of exasperation.  “If you do have occasion to talk to your father, will you tell him to stop billing my office for his chemo sessions? Our cease and desist letters must keep getting lost in the mail. Maybe if we can go ahead and sell that house, he can buy a new pair of lungs.” She paused for a moment. “That’s another thing I wanted to tell you. I’m going to forfeit my right to that property. Your dad can do with it what he will. I just want you to look at it, because who knows if he even pays enough attention to know that it got hit?”

“I’ll talk to him,” Monica said. She hung up the phone and looked back down at the notebook in her lap. She called her father back. “Dad,” she said before her father could get a word in. “I think we should demolish the house and sell the property.”

“We wouldn’t be able to get hardly anything for that property,” Monica’s father said. “I’ll come down tomorrow and fix it up nice. Nothing a little bit of hard work can’t solve.”

Monica looked up at the ceiling again. “I don’t think you’ll be able to fix this one, dad, especially in your state. It’ll take weeks with a full crew. I don’t know that any of us have that kind of time, money, and energy to put into this. Besides, mom said she’s giving up her rights to this house. If you sell, the money will go to you.”

“Your mother said that?” His voice cracked. He exhaled deeply. “So that’s it then, huh? She just washes her hands of me? Fine. Is that a good enough reason to sell to some nitwit who wouldn’t be able to recreate a third of the good work that your mom and I put into that house? No. I’m not selling.”

“I can’t make you sell your house, dad,” Monica said with a shrug. “I’m not even going to try. What I will say is that it would be better for you if you let go. We all need to let go of things from the past. Leave them where they can still be admired and remembered fondly.  I’m tired of waiting in the wreckage, so I’m going home. Call if you need anything.” Monica hung up the phone. She stood up and wiped the dirt and dust off her jeans. She straightened her blouse, then turned her attention to the notebook in her hands.

It was time to let go. There was nothing for her in this house, nor in this notebook. Let the demolition crew do their job. Monica tossed the notebook over her shoulder and headed to the hole in the wall for her exit. She noticed that she did not hear the notebook hit the floor. She turned and walked over to where it would have landed. It was nowhere to be seen.