The Back Room

When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time at my grandma’s house. All of the decorations there were floral patterned and smelled like an old book and cigarettes. Scattered throughout the living room and hallways were pictures of my grandma with my mom, dad, and myself. It was as if nobody existed outside of us four. Her life was a simple bundle of four, but she was always alone. The house didn’t change as the years went by, and I can even now picture the layout so perfectly that I could walk it blindfolded. It’s strange how much you understand a person by the rooms they inhabit and those they ignore. Her house had a long hallway that ran away from the living room. Next to the living room was the pale-yellow kitchen with the wood cabinets that would creak when you would walk by them. Down the hallway was a series of four alternating wooden doors with hardware of gold and handles made of yellowing plastic that was meant to look like glass. The doors barely fit into their places and would scrape the carpet with a semicircle when opened. The first room on the left was the laundry room that stunk like soap and stale water, even from the outside. The two doors on the right were her bedroom and her bathroom with the green toilet, green tiles, and green sink. At the far back of the house, down the long hallway was a door that I never saw a soul go into, not even my grandma. A phantom room with no occupant and no apparent purpose.

Now and again after I stayed the night, my mom would pick me up and talk to grandma in the kitchen while I would watch cartoons. One time I heard them talking about Tommy. This was a name that I never heard before. An apparition who didn’t live in any pictures. Whoever he was, whenever his name was brought up, grandma would angrily go to her bedroom and mom would take me home. Whenever I would stay the night at grandma’s, she would have me sleep on the couch, never offering the spare room in the back to me. She would pull the pillows and blankets from the laundry room, leaving me to lie on her floral couch with the stale stench all night. I asked if I could sleep in the room at the end of the hall, all she said was, “Goodnight.” I remember laying on the couch one night, waiting as long as I could for her to start snoring, so I could try to get into the secret room. I took my time, slowly walking towards the kitchen and taking an eternity to open the drawer by the fridge without letting the creaking wood give me away. I stood there like a statue as the drawer opened. I grabbed an old flashlight that had a flickering light.

I got down on all fours and tucked the flashlight into my long sock. If I crawled too fast down the hall, the floorboards under the old carpet would squeak and the flashlight would slip out of its holster. Once I reached the door, the whole of my torso was pounding and my ears were hot. I twisted the plastic handle and pushed the door open. Still on all fours, the carpet in here was much harder and tough against my knees. I stood up and flashed the flickering light into the blackness. The front half of this room was riddled with water-stained boxes of keepsakes and Christmas decorations. Things labeled with care barricading in front of a hidden and leftover bedroom. Shoved into the corner was a bed with piles of clothes sticking out of black trash bags and things that used to hang on the bare walls. I crept my way through the maze of storage and sat at the end of the footboard. Sticking out from under the bed was a long rectangle. I pulled it out slowly only to see a painting of a young man’s face. The pigments were swirled washes of peach and brown, dried, and cracking. Dust had begun to settle into the corners where a frame had been built around it. As I stared into the eyes of this man, I heard loud and fumbling footsteps closing in on the door I was not supposed to enter. Grandma stood in her robe, without glasses, screaming my name into the darkness. She grabbed my arm and blindly escorted me to the couch without saying another word.

For years after that moment, whenever I visited her, I never strayed too deep into that hallway. Even as a teenager, her green bathroom was as far as I dared to venture. As the summer before college was coming to an end, I visited grandma still. Her floral couch yellowing with time, and photos of my younger self still eternally present on the walls – the little boy who dared to venture into the room. On one particular visit in July, I told her I was moving upstate for college, and I wouldn’t be able to visit again until winter break. I sat on the couch as she began making us some lunch in the kitchen. As I sat there, I began to think of the painting I saw ten years ago. I pictured the dust on his face, collecting for all that time. Without a moment to waste, I made my way past the kitchen and walked confidently to the green bathroom. Turning the bathroom sink on, I closed the door from the outside and crawled on all fours down the hallway. My torso was pounding, and my ears were hot. I quickly opened the door and crept through the maze where the face was still staring up at the ceiling, right where I had left it. I slid the picture out from under the bed, ripping the paper attached to the back. I heard something sliding around in the frame. I tucked the painting in my arms and shuffled quickly to the front door and out to the back seat of my car. In a moment, I was back to the bathroom, turning off the faucet and walking towards the kitchen. Grandma was in the backyard at the table with sandwiches. We talked about college, winter break, and my route upstate. She walked me to my car and gave me a big hug. When she made her way back to the porch she said, “A life worth living is something you have to find, it’s never guaranteed or given.” She walked inside as I got in my car, her eyes looked red and teary as she waved to me from behind the living room window. Thinking of what she said, I drove a few blocks down the road and pulled over. Pulling the painting to the front seat, the colors glistened under the dust with more vibrancy than I expected. As I put the man’s face up to mine, a little black book fell out onto the floorboard.

I flipped through the pages, trying to make sense of the copious and unintelligible notes. Every other page was filled with names, dates, and dollar amounts. I tucked the book back into the painting and drove home. My room looked reminiscent of the back room, as my belongings were stowed in labeled boxes ready to be moved upstate. I laid on my bed in the corner of the room and tried to transcribe what I saw on the pages. Some pages were stained with water or oil, something that bled through most of the book. On one of the back pages, the handwriting was indented from a page previously ripped out: 5501 Brookshire Ave. The next day, at dawn, I packed my boxes into my car and began the long drive upstate. Hours into the drive, I pulled off to get gas in a little town. As I pulled onto the on-ramp, I noticed a beat-down motel with big neon letters “Brookshire Avenue”. I immediately whipped the wheel around and began my way down the decaying side street towards the decrepit building. Driving down the block, assorted old houses and businesses with cardboard blocking the windows came into view at the 4700 block. Traveling west, my car bumped and sank on the cracked roads. On the corner of the first housing block, 5501 was an unremarkable home. A corner lot with varieties of different fence post colors surrounding the backyard. I sat idling in the front of the house, worried that the longer I stayed, the more I would want to turn around. I began my way up the porch and rang the bell. As I saw the silhouette of a woman approaching from behind the microgranite glass, I realized I didn’t even know what to say.

Her welcoming smile was strewn across her face before she even saw who I was. She was maybe the age of my mother. “Can I help you?” Yeah, but I’m not sure how. I should’ve thought ahead. “Yes, ma’am. I have this notebook...” I began fishing into my pocket as I realized how absurd this moment was. “I have this notebook… maybe it doesn’t mean anything, but could you take a look at it? Your address in the back. I found it at my grandmother’s house.” After a few moments of standing with the door open, her fingers flipping through the book, under her breath she said, “Would you like to come inside?” Her eyes never broke from the pages. Unsure of what prompted this invitation, I walked in behind her. We sat apart in the living room, wind chimes clinking outside. I scanned the photos on the wall, I saw her at various ages with a daughter who seemed to be close to my age with a man I recognized but couldn’t place. A large unframed painting of a little girl’s face was hanging above the mantle. The woman’s face had yet to move from the pages, studying the archaic handwriting, it was clear that it meant something to her. Breaking the silence, I pointed to a family photo and asked who the man was. “That was my husband, Tommy.”

“This was his handwriting,” she said with a laugh, recognizing the unintelligibility of it. “Did you know him?” Not sure where to begin, I asked if I could run to my car. Walking outside again, I felt out of place. I stepped back into the house with the painting under my arm. I held it up on my lap and the woman had a tear in her eye. “When I was younger, I found this at my grandma’s house in the back bedroom. Something about him was familiar, but I never understood...” “It looks just like him when we met.” She interjected, “I met Tommy many years ago, he said he was looking for his father. About four years ago, we found his father’s grave a few miles south of here… and two years ago Tommy passed away.” All at once, I placed him. He had the same eyes and my mother and grandma, but darker hair. “You know,” she said blinking to keep her eyes dry, “He always mentioned that somebody might come looking for him someday. I thought somebody was after him.” She stepped away and down the hallway. I sat there for a few moments, studying the paintings together, the artist was the same. She returned with a lockbox. “He always told me if somebody comes looking, give them this.” Opening the box, I felt my torso pounding and my ears grow hot. Inside, wrapped in brown paper were two stacks of $10,000 in one-hundred-dollar bills sat beneath a note in Tommy’s handwriting that read, “A life worth living is something you have to find, it’s never guaranteed or given.”