We work for an hour and then take a break before deciding what to do with the shelves, chairs, three dressers, and two small tables.
Patrick goes into the kitchen and Birdie and me sit in the middle of the bags and boxes looking around. Birdie notices a box of old magazine clippings and rushes over to it. I try to decide what to open first.
For just a moment, I feel like I’m drowning, which seems so stupid because all I’ve been wishing for is to have a piece of home and now I have it. I have it times a thousand.
Patrick comes back into the living room with two cups of coffee and looks around at all the stuff with a tired face. He says, “I’ll leave you guys to it,” and then goes upstairs.
Last night he had asked us if we wanted to look through the silo shed right then, but it was dark and cold and windy, and we were tired. And I couldn’t help thinking of ghosts even though I don’t believe in them, but mostly I didn’t want to go through everything with Patrick standing over us.
Birdie kneels down beside me, holding a Ziploc bag and a picture of him and Mama and me from when he was a toddler. The bag has a bunch of magnets, along with more pictures and old flyers, and a sketch of a Breakfast at Tiffany’s Audrey Hepburn that Birdie did when he was seven. There’s also an A+ book report I wrote in fifth grade on a book called The One and Only Ivan. My teacher had written: You have a very special eye! Keep looking, keep watching, keep listening. It’s a gift. Mama teared up when she read that and I didn’t understand it at the time, but I think it was because she was proud.
“This is the stuff from our fridge,” says Birdie. “I can’t believe Patrick kept all of it.”
I put everything back inside the bag to sort through later, but keep the picture of us three out on the coffee table.
After picking through three boxes, I find a bunch of my books and there, at the bottom, sits The Complete Poems 1927–1979 by Elizabeth Bishop. The light orange cover is battered, and inside, in pencil, it says $4.75, which is what Mama must have paid at some used bookstore.
Below that, she wrote on a sticky note: To Jack, Find your favorite! Love, Mama.
• • •
Birdie and me comb through the stuff for another hour and a half and then Uncle Carl and Patrick come downstairs.
“Holy smokes, Patty, you weren’t kidding,” Uncle Carl says.
Patrick brings Uncle Carl a fresh mug of coffee and a cup of water and then says he’ll get started on breakfast. Uncle Carl asks if he needs help, but Patrick just waves his hand and says to hang out with us.
Uncle Carl’s eyes roam all around, still in shock, until they stop on the couch.
“Miss Luck Duck!” he shouts.
“You know Miss Luck Duck?” Birdie asks.
Uncle Carl walks over to our favorite lamp and picks her up. “Of course. Dad—your grandpa—gave it to our mama as a Valentine’s Day gift. Oh, must have been fifty years ago now.”
“That is fifty years old?” I ask.
“At least. She used to sit in this window right here, on a little table.” He points to a small window by the front door.
And it turns out that isn’t the only thing of Mama’s that used to belong in this house. The painting of the fat cat in a tuxedo and the banana clock and even Mama’s favorite vintage Nestlé mug all came from here. But there were also lots of things that Uncle Carl didn’t recognize, like our cheeseburger pillows and Tokyo Tower hat rack, and we told him how good Mama was at sewing and hunting for treasures at thrift shops and garage sales. I said that she always tried to be smart with her money, and only buy the most special and unique things, but that it was sometimes hard for her to hold back when she was really excited about something.
“But she always made everything seem magical, even some stained old jacket from the secondhand store.” I hold up a black jacket of Mama’s that has a giant embroidered tiger head on the back.
“I should have done more to help her, especially since she had the two of you to look after,” says Uncle Carl. He picks up a basket of pinecones, which we’d collected from our old backyard two winters ago. “Patrick used to send her money for you guys. I knew he did that and I never offered to contribute.” He sets the basket down and takes a couple long drinks of water. He sniffs and says, “I’m sorry, guys.”
“It’s okay, Uncle Carl. At least you visited us on your motorcycle,” I say. “And then you let us live with you.”
“Yeah, and all those Honey Bunny Buns,” says Birdie.
Uncle Carl tries to smile and shrugs. Then he goes into the bathroom.
For breakfast, Patrick makes eggs and cheese, bacon and sausage, apple slices, and grilled buttered bread. There is hot chocolate for us and more coffee for him and Uncle Carl.
We don’t talk a lot, but as Patrick sets up Mama’s old record player, he tells Uncle Carl that he really needs to plug his phone in or charge his cell because Rosie has been trying to get ahold of him.
“Other than these kids,” Patrick says, “that woman is the absolute best thing to ever have happened to you. You’re a plain idiot if you let her go.”
Uncle Carl pushes his eggs around and mumbles that he doesn’t think he deserves Rosie. Patrick just shakes his head and says, “So you really are an idiot.” And then he clicks the speaker on.
We all go quiet as we listen to the crackling piano music playing from one of Mama’s thrift-store jazz records.
