Picasso's Owl

We arrived at Main Street Storage Complex on the first Saturday of June, ready to pick up the pieces of my father’s life.

My mother walked confidently into the front office, my sister Lara and I trailing behind. Though an electronic doorbell cut through the quiet morning to signal our entry, the hulking man behind the desk did not look up from his computer screen. He feigned concentration in his work, but the reflection in his glasses betrayed him: I could see as we approached that he was playing solitaire. Long term storage was the perfect industry for a man who prefers to be left alone, I thought.

“Name and unit number, please,” he said, his eyes still glued to the screen.

“James Hansen,” the three of us replied in unison.

“Unit 228,” my mother added.

At this, the man finally looked up to meet our gaze. He looked oddly startled. “Are you his wife?”

“Ex,” my mother quickly corrected. “But yes, we’re his family” she said more softly, offering him her driver’s license. “We’re here to clear out his belongings and close the account.”

“Your husband- sorry, ex-husband - hasn’t accessed the unit in ages,” the man mumbled, swiveling around in his chair to face the filing cabinet against the far wall. “I would have thought it had been abandoned, if not for the regular payments.”

He returned to the desk and slid several pieces of paper and a rusted key across to us. “Here’s the invoice. Your unit is in lot B, section two. My son Cole will meet you back there to help with the lifting. If you need it,” he added, noticing Lara had taken offence. “My name’s Ted. You can come back when you’ve finished to settle the remainder of the bill.”

Lara flipped through the pages of the invoice while we made our way through the seemingly endless array of padlocked structures. “Jane!” she suddenly shrieked, stopping in her tracks and pulling me back by the elbow. She pointed to a number circled and highlighted on the bottom of the last page. We balked at the figure. Ted had amassed a small fortune off my father’s storage unit, paid on time each month for two decades by my Grandmother, who never gave up faith that my father would return to this place and rebuild a life. Lara and I had made several attempts in our younger years to convince her otherwise, but they were always half-hearted. Though unwilling to admit it, we shared the same hope and were relieved that there was someone else to carry it for us.

Now, of course, there was no chance of new beginnings. My father had died after drunkenly stumbling into oncoming traffic outside an apartment he’d been renting in Frederick, Maryland. Lara, always more headstrong than I despite being the younger sibling, had briefly entertained the idea of pressing charges. In truth, we both knew the driver was just a match in the powder keg.

Two days after learning of my father’s last act, I left San Francisco and travelled home to my mother’s house in Upstate New York. Having requested a leave of absence from her job as a gallery curator in New York City, Lara joined us the following day. The three of us spent listless days on the screened-in porch where, as a child, I’d sat with my father on most summer nights, tracing constellations with our fingertips against the backdrop of the cicada orchestra and listening for signs of the myriad creatures that roamed our forest.

“Hear that?” he had whispered one night, interrupting me mid-sentence. I heard the distinctive hoot of an owl. “The barn owl’s call sounds like this,” he said, standing up and howling into the night, “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?”

He quickly held a finger up to his mouth to silence the laugh that had escaped my lips. We waited for several moments in silence. Suddenly, a response echoed through the night. The same 9-beat melody my father had imitated moments before rang out through the dark. He turned to me, his excited expression matching my own delight.

“They’re like us, don’t you think? If you need me, all you have to do is call out.”

This was a promise swiftly broken. Nights spent looking for signs of wildlife in our backyard quickly turned into nights spent looking for signs of my father, in whatever basement or bar he might have turned up in. First, there were heartfelt apologies and promises of redemption. But soon, we stopped believing those promises could be kept, and so did he. I resigned myself to a youth punctuated by only occasional communication from my father, often from unknown numbers with unfamiliar area codes.

As Cole helped us unveil storage unit 228, I was suddenly struck with a sense of urgency. After we’d buried so many unsaid things with the body, this felt like my father’s last opportunity to answer for himself. I needed to find something that would help me make sense of it all.

As light flooded into the space, I was immediately perplexed by the sheer amount of stuff he had accumulated. Lara and my mother seemed to share the same bewilderment. In my mind, I let myself travel back to his last rental home in our neighborhood before he left. I remembered a hardly furnished space, often with no food in the fridge. On weekends spent there, when Lara was still too young to be away from my mother, my father and I snacked on Domino sugar cubes, sweeter and more neatly packaged than anything else he had to offer me in life. How could this man be the owner of such a trove?

We began the process of opening and uncovering items in hopes of finding an explanation, though only more confusion ensued as I watched my mother cut open the top tab of an enormous cardboard box to reveal a collection of carefully wrapped art prints. One after another, we unwrapped ornately framed prints from celebrated artists: Matisse, Cézanne, O’Keefe, each identified in turn by Lara.

“Depending on the piece and time of printing, some of these could be very valuable,” she said to us in hushed tones, glancing over at Cole, who was occupied by something in a unit across the way. “Clearly these weren’t dad’s, and if they were I don’t want to know how he came by them. I think we should leave the rest alone, it doesn’t feel right.”

“Let’s just do one more,” my mom said with a sly smile, clearly intrigued with our newfound collection. I was charmed by her sudden streak of mischief. “There was so much your father didn’t tell me. Maybe this mysterious art collection was one of them!”

“I’m serious,” my sister hissed. “We need to figure out what’s going on before we mess with any-”

“Damn!” I had already moved on to the next piece, and it was one that even I recognized. I spun the frame around to show them the print of Picasso’s “Owl”. The simple sketch depicted the titular creature drawn in a beautifully rudimentary fashion against a white backdrop.

“Who cooks for you?” I called out, the melody echoing against the tin walls. My mother and sister looked at me quizzically. “That’s what a barn owl call sounds like,” I explained. “Dad taught me.”

“That’s actually a barred owl,” interjected Cole, who had suddenly reappeared in the entryway. The three of us spun around to look at him. “Sorry,” he added quickly, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans and rocking back and forth on his heels. “I shouldn’t interrupt,” he said, but pressed on. “I’m finishing my PhD in conservation biology. I help my dad out here on the side for some extra cash.”

“No need to apologize.” I smiled at him, though I had begun to think about all of the other things that had been lost in translation between my father and I. “So what does a Barn owl sound like anyways?”

“Well…they sort of just scream. That’s all.” He shrugged. “I’m guessing you don’t want a demonstration.”

“No, thank you,” Lara cut in, and at that we turned back to the task at hand.

It wasn’t long before it dawned on us. After noticing the name T. Fuller scrawled across the back of several boxes, we came to the conclusion that Bill had been doubling up on units, storing two individuals’ belongings in one place but charging both full price. A heated argument with Bill ensued, but in the end we agreed that forgetting about the scam altogether was in the best interest of all parties involved. We wouldn’t report him, and in exchange he wouldn’t tell T. Fuller that we’d rummaged through his prized collection.

Back at the storage unit, Cole helped us identify which items were in fact my father’s. With T. Fuller out of the equation, my father’s belongings amounted to only a stained coffee table and two medium-sized boxes. I tepidly flipped open the flap of the first cardboard box with my foot. It was filled with junk. My heart sank. He had left nothing for me to find.

I left two days later for San Francisco without touching the rest of my father’s belongings. Normally, I hated that the city made you wait until fall for some sunshine and warm weather, but now the belated Bay Area summer was a welcome guest, letting me pretend the first go-around hadn’t happened at all.

It wasn’t until I returned for Christmas that I thought again about my father's things. I arrived late one night and snuck quietly into the house. I was surprised that my mother hadn’t woken up until I noticed a pink post-it note on my bedroom door. When you’re ready, it read. I opened the bedroom door to find the two boxes waiting for me.

Months ago, when I took a look at my father’s belongings, I saw a man who let his life fall to pieces. This time, I saw someone trying desperately to keep it together. I pulled out each item piece by piece and took stock. When I opened a battered phone book in which he'd had circled names of hospitals and doctor’s offices where he might me able to score medication, a Valentine’s Day card I had written him in the first grade fell out. When I found a used fentanyl patch, it was stuck to a leaking bottle of green glittery nail polish. Each sign of him being torn apart was coupled with a sign of him trying his best to keep us together.

I stepped out onto the porch where we had spent those first days after my father was gone, and where I'd sat with him on so many nights long ago. Looking out into the freezing night, I thought of the owls, and how perhaps we more alike than I'd though. I had hoped for a beautiful melody in return when I called out for him, but sometimes just a scream into the night is enough.

I retreated back into the house and crawled into bed. It wasn't until the headlights of a passing car illuminated the walls of my bedroom that I saw Picasso's owl hanging above my door.