The Inheritance Paradox
Two (My Story)
THE FOLLOWING SUNDAY was bright and clear. It looked like the last vestiges of winter had gone and spring had finally arrived. Mom wanted us over for a big family dinner. Zach, Lisa, Brenda, and I all figured we’d be doing more packing after the meal.
“This is so much work, Mom,” Brenda said.
“We’ll need a good meal in order to have the energy to work this afternoon,” Mom replied.
“After a meal of your pot roast, we’ll probably all go to sleep,” I said.
“Oh, I just love to serve a family dinner,” Mom said. “I don’t think there’s really room to serve us all in the cottage. I’m going to enjoy doing it while I can.”
“If you really want to cook for the family, you can come to our house,” I said.
“Could she, Dad? I want to learn to make this pot roast thingy,” Lisa said.
I wasn’t sure how, at sixteen, she suddenly developed a domestic streak to go along with her scientific and business side. She was an excellent student, and I was sure she’d follow in Megan’s footsteps with some kind of super-scientific study of atomic medicine. I should be used to it by now. My daughter was a constant stream of surprises.
“Of course, honey,” I said. “Grandma and Grandpa are actually going to live two miles closer to us after they move. I’m sure they’ll be over all the time.”
“Don’t make it sound like we’ll have nothing else to do in our lives,” Dad said. “We already have friends who live over there. That’s one of the reasons we chose Liberty Manor. Independent living while we’ll still have staff to do things like the yard work and maintenance. Poor Zach won’t be drafted into mowing every week during the summer.”
“I don’t mind, Gramps,” my son chimed in. “I’m looking forward to tuning up the mower this afternoon and getting the first cutting done. I want to make sure the blade is sharp and the engine is clean.”
As intellectual as my daughter was, Zach was mechanically inclined. I wouldn’t argue with that.
“I don’t know where you get your mechanical ability,” Dad said. “God knows your father and grandfather don’t have a bit of it. Worthless college degrees and careers doing something completely different.”
“What was your degree in, anyway, Dad?” I asked.
He’d never mentioned his college life, and I thought this might be a place where I could start getting more information about his life.
“Basket weaving. Kept me out of the Army,” Dad said, evading the issue again.
“Grandma, how did you and Grandpa meet?” Lisa asked. “Did you meet in college?”
My kids must be just as curious about their grandparents as I was.
“He was my knight in shining armor. Here’s a lesson for you: Stay away from places you know aren’t safe!” Mom said. “It happened that both of us were in a place where neither one of us had any business being. That’s all I’ll say about that. The thing is, when I left, I was followed and those three men were going to make sure I didn’t get home. Sure enough, I was grabbed as soon as I was out of sight of the front door. All of a sudden, your grandfather came charging in and pushed them away, dragging me off before they could catch us. All that just so he could ask me out on a date.”
“Shining armor?” I chuckled.
“All right. My black knight. He always wore black back then,” Mom said.
Zach headed to the garage to get the lawn mower out. The women all shooed Dad and me away so they could talk ‘girl-talk’ while they cleaned up the dishes. A little sexist, I thought, but it was the way they worked. Dad and I went to the library.
Mom and Dad’s house was old—like more than a century—and had been added onto in different stages that gave it that quirky feeling of not all being on quite the same level. It wasn’t a mansion, but Dad had separated one room out as his book room. He had a writing desk in it where he sat to pay his bills. I’d set him up with a laptop computer and a tablet reader, but aside from checking his bank accounts each morning, he didn’t really use either one of the computers. The real focus of the room was the shelves and shelves of books. Dad just loved books of all kinds. When we were little, he’d call us into the library in the evening and read to us. I could still see Meg and me, sitting on the arms of his big chair as he read to us.
There was an overhead light fixture that we flipped on when we went in so we could see what we were doing, but usually there were just the desk lamp and reading lamp turned on. There were a few open boxes in the room, and I could see some bare spots on the shelves.
“Are you getting rid of all your books, Dad?” I asked. If he was, they’d go straight to my own little study. It wasn’t as big as his library, but I came naturally by my love for books.
“Heavens, no! But we won’t have room for all of them in the cottage. I’m sorting them out and you can help me.”
“Sure, Dad. Why so many boxes open at once?”
“First, there are books I’ve never read and really don’t care about. That’s the box by the door. You know, sometimes a book looks good in the bookstore, but you just never get around to cracking the cover. Then your interests change a little and that book no longer has the same appeal it had when you bought it.”
I looked in the box by the door. There were only half a dozen books in that box.
“If you decide you want some of those, you get first choice. The rest, we can give to the library. I doubt we’d get much for them in a sale. Most of them are brand new, even though they might be fifteen or twenty years old.”
“Okay. Just tell me when you have a book for this box and I check it out.” I knew already this box would go straight home with me.
“Right. Now, the box on my desk chair is for books I’ve never read, but I intend to. These are going to the cottage.”
I looked and in addition to the box on his chair, there was a full box on the floor next to it.
“We should inventory them as we’re sorting,” I suggested. “Just a spreadsheet with title and author. It would be sort of our own card catalog of the Holbrook Library.”
“You can do that. I know the books on my shelves. Which brings me to books I’ve read and doubt I’ll ever look at again. But I might. So, I’m getting them ready to go to storage. Maybe if they are out of my sight for a couple of years, I’ll forget about them,” Dad said. “I know it’s silly, but I’ll spend a little to have a storage room where I know some of the things I think are valuable are kept, even if I never go there.”
“I get it, Dad. You know, I still have all my writing and philosophy textbooks? I’ve never even thought about getting rid of them. It took me about two seconds to get rid of my calculus textbook,” I laughed.
“You’ve got a good start on a library of your own. Maybe someday you’ll want some of these books.” He turned to the box on his desk. “This box is for collector items.” He’d really only just begun pulling books off the shelves and seemed to have done it randomly so far. “I want these where I can enjoy just looking at them. I have several books signed by the authors. A few are first editions, back in the day when that meant something. And there are some that I happened on in sales or used bookstores. Take a look at this uncut edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It and several others were part of my father’s poetry collection.”
“What do you mean, uncut?”
“Look at the pages. Two deckle edges, but the top edge is a fold. The book was bound before the top of the pages was trimmed. It’s a nice gold-embossed leather binding, too. A fellow book lover was sitting with me one day and offered me $1,500 for it.”
“Why didn’t you sell it?”
“I figured if he was willing to snap off an offer like that, it was probably worth a lot more. I don’t really know, though,” Dad said.
“That makes sense. Any other boxes?”
“This one. I’m trying to be conservative about what goes into this one, but these are books I’ve read and I’m pretty sure I’ll read again. They just spoke to me. Maybe it’s been ten or twenty years since I read it, but I want it nearby. They will go with me to the new place,” he said.
The box he pointed to was already full and an empty sat beside it. Dad loved to read and if he only took half of his library with him to the new house, it would be more than most people have in their entire collections. I wasn’t about to argue about what he wanted to do with any of the books unless he said he was throwing one away. I’d snatch that up and read it just to find out why he hated it so much.
I began randomly pulling books off the shelf and handing them to him while he told me a story about each of them, then selected a box for it. It was a task he could have done alone, like he’d begun, but there was something special about sharing this task with him.
“When I retired, I didn’t really know what to do with my time. Lynn wanted to travel, but you can’t do that all the time—especially with the house to take care of. I spent a lot of time reading and looking for books related to some of the travel I’ve done.”
That was a well-known code for his belief that he was a time traveler. I’d heard stories before, but I determined that when he told another story like that now, I’d really pay attention and then write it down.
“I know I could get my whole library on my reader thing and carry it in my back pocket, but there’s nothing like the feel of paper between your fingers. It makes reading… more than the words. Reading is about the texture of the paper. It’s where the book falls open when you’ve been reading it. It’s the smell. I don’t think an author ever imagines that his book will never be more than a bunch of dots on a computer screen. I think when he writes the book, he imagines it on a bookshelf, being held in someone’s hands, being experienced in a physical medium. I think when I buy a book and sit to read it, I’m participating in the author’s vision. Yes, it’s more than the words or the story.”
“That’s profound, Dad,” I said.
I could relate. Nearly everything I wrote was only meant for electronic consumption. I didn’t much like reading on-screen if I was reading for pleasure. Of course, specifications, documentation, instructions… those weren’t pleasure reading. I was fine with reading them on screen. When I read for pleasure, I liked to sit in lamplight and hold the book, much as Dad had done when he read to us as children, and as I’d done with my own children.
I intentionally tried not to clear a shelf and leave it empty. I’d randomly pick a book and hand it to Dad to put in the right box. Occasionally, he’d set it aside to consider later. I was going to slate some time soon when I could go through all the boxes we packed and make that spreadsheet catalog. I wasn’t sure when I’d manage it. There were hundreds—maybe thousands—of books.
I pulled one off a high shelf to hand to him and it rattled.
“What’s this, Dad?” I asked. “Do you have secrets hidden away on the bookshelf? Old love letters?”
He took the book box from me and held it against his chest. His eyes got a glazed faraway look in them.
“It’s the stories, Nat. There are more stories in this box than in all the books on the shelves.”
He held it out to me and nodded for me to open it. I don’t know what I thought I’d find, but it looked like it was full of junk. There were ribbons, old coins, a button, a pocket watch, a ring, a torn corner of what looked like a map. It was almost like a kitchen junk drawer. My eye was drawn to the pocket watch, and I lifted it out of the box to examine.
“What’s this, Dad?”
He took the watch from me and opened it to look at the face, not showing it to me. He closed it and then closed his eyes as if he was communicating with it—or trying to.
“It’s the memory of Galahad. He controlled my travels back when. I used to imagine he lived in the watch. It was easier than thinking he lived in my head.”
Dad sank down in his chair and motioned me to sit in his desk chair. I could tell I was going to hear a story, and we were probably done packing for the day. I moved a box so I could sit and zeroed in on him. I’d promised myself I’d pay closer attention to everything he said.
“You know your mom remembers a beautiful and romantic version of how we met. It’s not exactly the whole story. You need to understand, son. I was not—maybe I’m still not—a particularly good man. That night was an example of me at the lowest point of my life.”
By the time Dad finished his story, I was stunned. It was more detailed and emotional than he’d ever told before. The sound of the lawnmower outside had died. I could hear the women coming toward the library and shook myself as if I’d been in a trance, listening to my father. Maybe I was. Maybe I’d never listened to one of his stories so intently. I looked at the watch in my hand and just nodded my head.
“I’m going to write this all down, Dad,” I said.
He smiled at me and nodded.
“Dad! Look at all the neat stuff Grandma is giving me!” Lisa called, bursting into the room. “Wow! You guys packed a lot of books! Look! Grandma gave me some cookbooks, too.”
“I’ve already taken two boxes of kitchen utensils to the car,” Brenda laughed. “I think we’re setting up a cooking school in our kitchen.”
“Well, I’m not taking any books with me yet,” I said. Dad closed the lid on the box he held and stood to put it back on the shelf. I offered him the watch.
“Keep it. It will help you remember,” he said.
We kissed my parents goodbye and headed out. Zach had cleaned the mower and had it back in the garage. He was wiping his hands on a rag. He hugged Mom and Dad and we all piled into the station wagon.
“What did you get from Dad?” Brenda asked.
“I’ll show you later. I need to get some stuff written down before I forget it. Do I have an empty journal?”
“I can’t imagine you without one. Do you ever write in them?”
“I don’t want to sit in front of a computer for this.”
I did a lot of fussing around when we got home. Lisa and Zach both had plans for the holiday on Monday. Zach was just three weeks from graduation. I planned to work as long as necessary on the story my father told me.
I had a fresh cup of coffee and had just settled down at the desk in my own version of ‘the library.’ It was actually shared by both Brenda and me. I didn’t think either of us spent as much time in it as Dad spent in his. She stepped into the room and gave me a kiss on the head before going to bed.
“What did Dad give you?” she asked.
I’d promised to show her when we got home and hadn’t gotten around to it. I pulled the watch out of my pocket.
“This is one strange little watch. There is no way to tell time with it,” I said. “Dad looked at it as if it held the secrets of the universe, though.”
“And he gave it to you?” she asked, opening the cover and staring at the bizarre face of the watch.
“Said he never needed to look at it anymore. I should keep it safe.”
“Is it in the story you’re going to write?”
“Yeah. I don’t quite understand the import of it, but it’s part of the story.”
“I won’t delay you. Just know I’m in bed to hold you anytime you need a break,” she said, giving me another kiss.
“I love you, Brenda. You are my anchor.”
She left the room and I stared at the blank journal in front of me. I checked my fountain pen and inserted a new ink cartridge. I wasn’t sure if I should put the date at the top of the page or a page number or a title of some sort.
When I was in college and for a while after, I used one of my half dozen fountain pens to write all my stories and a daily journal. The computer I had at the time was a desktop model with a monster screen. I used that for work, whether it was my college class work or at my first job as a technical writer. The thing is, I just always associated the computer with my job.
Over the years, story-writing became less and less frequent. The blank books I wrote my stories in were stacked in a closet somewhere. I never really had time to go back and edit them. I supposed I should clean them out sometime. No sense in exposing the kids to that mess. But I was getting ready to write another story and it felt right to use a pen and paper.
I was determined to be faithful to what Dad had told me, but I didn’t want to make him sound like a lunatic. He’d flat-out told me how he became a time traveler. There were a lot of things his story hadn’t covered, but I could make up details and change them later. The only way I could figure to record the story without sounding ridiculous but also be faithful to the story as much as possible was to approach it as if it was a new science fiction story that I was putting my father and mother in as characters.
My father. Eugene Wallace Holbrook…
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
