Red Velvet Box

I was only three when my mom left us. Too young to remember much about what she was like. I often struggle to remember what she looked like, what she sounded like, and how it felt to have her hold me. I only remember two things about her clearly. One of those things was her smell. It was a memory hidden in the recesses of my mind that came to me occasionally when something happened to remind me of it. The first time it happened, I was twelve. I found some of her old clothes in my father’s closet. I didn’t know that they were hers until I smelled them. Then I remembered. Her smell brought back mixed feelings. Some were of joy and happiness. Others were of anger and loneliness. I was conflicted, yet I found myself returning to the closet every day as soon as my father left the house for work, sneaking up like a criminal to hide in his closet and smell her clothes. I did this for weeks.

         Sometimes as I sat there, smelling my mom’s old clothes, I wondered if my father ever did the same thing. If he did, I don’t know how he kept the smell of her so fresh on the clothing; it was as if she just died yesterday. But the thought of him holding her clothes close and inhaling their aroma connected me to him somehow, the closest connection we would ever have. As I sat there, smelling her clothes, I imagined we were there together, bonding over lost memories of a mother he refused to acknowledge existed.

         I had one other memory of my mom. It was my fifth birthday, and I was playing outside when she came to the house and picked me up. We went to the park and ate ice cream and rode on the carousel. Young as I was, I could tell she was desperately sad, and entirely too skinny. She pretended to be having fun with me, though, and I pretended to believe her. It was like a fairy tale to spend time with my mom, and I didn’t want anything to ruin it. After a few hours, she left me sitting on a bench in the park and went into the bathroom. She was gone for what seemed like a really long time, even though it was probably only about half an hour. I started to cry and became really scared. I wanted to go into the bathroom to see her, but she told me not to go in, no matter what. When she came back, she sat next to me on the bench and fell asleep. I sat there watching her, waiting for something to happen while I wondered why she was so tired. Just as it was starting to get dark, my father pulled into the park and ran over to us, yelling and crying. It turned out that she had not told him she was coming to get me, and he’d gone outside after making my birthday cake to look for me, only to find out I was gone. He told me he spent the whole day hysterically looking for me. He held me to him, crying into my hair while he stroked my back for a few minutes, and then we left. That was the most affection I ever received from my father, and I have treasured that memory as proof that he really loved me. My father never bothered to wake my mom up that evening, and we just left her there, sleeping on the bench. We found out she died a few years later at 3pm on a Tuesday in an abandoned warehouse. My father and I didn’t go to her funeral.

         These thoughts and memories ran through my head as they always did when I snuck across the river to go visit Katie at the old coal mine. She had been sent away from the town I now lived in 14 years ago when her dad was elected mayor. Elkwood was a tiny town where everyone knew everyone else’s secrets. Or at least they pretended to. Katie didn’t know exactly how old she’d been when she was sent away, but she must have been pretty young. We both felt as though we were around the same age, which was 27. Katie was a little eccentric, with a pet cat named Ducky and duck named Kitty, but I figured it was because she’d been living alone in a coal mine for the past 14 years. Poor girl must have been desperate for company. We really seemed to connect though, every time I went to see her I stayed for too long and we had tons of fun. We were like two survivors of a boat wreck who were destined to be companions. We both had our individual problems, but we hid them as well as we could under the appearance of normalcy.

         I often wondered if Katie held any memories of her past or her parents. She never spoke of them, and I never spoke with her about my past. We both knew we had crappy childhoods, but other than that, what it was like growing up was a topic that Katie and I avoided religiously. All I knew of her past was based on rumors that I heard while working at the town’s country club. Every once in a while, Katie would be seen working on something outside during the day and the town would erupt into gossip about her history. From what I could gather her father, Mayor Elkwood, slept with his cousin when she was 16 and he was 24. It was a huge scandal that the family tried desperately to cover up, but in a town as small as ours, everyone knows everything. According to the gossip, Katie’s mother tried to raise her, but when Katie was quite young she was sent away by the rest of the family in order for Mayor Elkwood to maintain the family legacy. Apparently one of Mayor Elkwood’s ancestors founded Elkwood and all the men in his family have held the position of Mayor ever since.

         The sickest part of the whole thing to me was that in spite of the rumors and the townspeople’s general dislike of the Mayor and what he’d done to Katie, he won by a landslide every time he came up for re-election. In fact, in the last election, Mayor Elkwood had three people vote for his opponent, while everyone else voted for him. I know I was one of those votes, and I have spent the past six months trying to figure out who the other two votes belonged to. I have also spent it seething with anger at the numbers of people who discuss Katie and what a shame it is that she was sent away like she was at such a young age, because I know most of them vote for Mayor Elkwood regardless. Unfortunately, it is not my place as the town’s tennis instructor to tell people how hypocritical they are. I really hate this town at times.

         “Nancy! You came! I’m so glad you came tonight!” Katie came bouncing up to me, glowing with excitement. “Hurry inside; Ducky, Kitty and I have prepared a surprise for you!”

         I followed Katie to her house. It wasn’t really a house, just a portion of the mine that she fortified with new materials to keep it from falling in like the rest of the mine had already done. She decorated the inside to make it as welcoming as possible. When she was little, she would dig old magazines out of the local landfills and use pictures in them to see what a house should look like. Over the years, Katie rescued old furniture from various places and refurbished each piece, creating a quaint but beautiful home for herself. She also learned to be an amazing cook, though I preferred not to know the source of her food, knowing her propensity for digging things out of landfills.

         Katie pushed aside the curtains she used as a door and I was immediately greeted with an array of delicate aromas that made my mouth water. I had eaten dinner just an hour previously, and yet the smells were so wonderful that my stomach started to growl.

         “Katie, you didn’t have to do this for me; you know I just like to spend time with you.”

         “I know, but I didn’t cook just for you tonight. Tonight is a special occasion! I have someone else who wants to see you. He has been coming to see me for a while, and he is very special. You probably already know him as a citizen of Elkwood, but tonight you are going to meet him away from there. Tonight you will meet him as my friend and we will have dinner together, like normal people.”

         Katie was absolutely glowing, and I smiled because I had never seen her happy like this before. I also got excited, wondering if maybe I would finally be able to figure out one of the other two mystery people who hadn’t voted for Mayor Elkwood in the last election.

         “I would love to meet this guy and join the two of you for dinner. When do you expect him?” Katie looked at her wrist. I suddenly noticed she was wearing a very expensive watch that she definitely didn’t find in a landfill.

         “He said he would be here around 9:30. That’s in ten minutes. See?” She put her hand towards mine and showed me the watch more closely. “He gave this to me and taught me how to tell time so I would always know when he was coming.”

         “That’s wonderful! He sounds like a great guy. What’s his name?”

         “Maxwell Heinz. He says he works with you. Did you know how wonderful he was?” Suddenly, Katie jumped and ran into her makeshift kitchen. “Give me a minute, I have to finish dinner before he gets here.”

         I stood by the entrance of Katie’s house, frozen. Maxwell Heinz. His name and images of his face flooded my thoughts uncontrollably. My body tensed up as I realized why he’d been so distant towards me lately. I thought of the dozens of love letters I had written him over the years that were never delivered. Maxwell Heinz. My memory was flooded with all the times he stood a little too close to me when we spoke, or looked at my breasts or my legs a little too long as I walked up to him. Yet all the glances and accidental touches ended recently, and I had been distraught trying to figure out what went wrong. And then I thought of Katie. Poor, sweet Katie who had been through so much more than me and yet never let it affect her sunny disposition and motivation to be normal. Maxwell Heinz was coming to have dinner with us and I didn’t know if my heart could stand to be broken like this again. At the same time, I knew I couldn’t let Katie down. What was I going to do?

         Suddenly, the door to Katie’s place was pulled aside and Maxwell poked his head in. “I see you beautiful ladies have started already without me.” He smiled and I tried to regain my composure. Luckily, the glance he sent my way was only one of brief acknowledgment. From the moment Maxwell entered the room, it was clear he had eyes only for Katie. “Hey good lookin,” he said huskily. “What’s cookin?”

         I was overcome by a wave of dizziness. Katie was my friend, but I wasn’t sure if I could actually handle this. I needed an excuse to get away, even if it was just for a minute. Luckily, the coal mine didn’t have indoor plumbing. “Hey, Katie, I’ve got to use the restroom. I’ll be right back.”

         “Okay, but don’t take too long. Dinner is almost ready, and it won’t taste right if it gets cold.”

         I burst through the door and began to pace outside, breathing in deep gulps of fresh air. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening to me, that I was here with the man that I loved and the best friend I ever had, who both deserved to find love far more than I did. I couldn’t believe that I was about to sit through dinner with these people and pretend to be happy for them. I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, Ducky came up to me and began rubbing against my leg, purring and mewling. I sat down on the ground and began to scratch her behind her ears.

         “Ducky, why didn’t you tell me? It would have been nice to be a little prepared for this, you know? At least then I could work through my emotions in private before I joined the two of them. What do you think I should do?” I spoke with the cat while scratching her ears and petting her, as if she understood what was going on. After a minute, she tired of my game and began to nip at my fingers. “Okay,” I sighed. “Go on. I obviously have to do this by myself.”

         I watched Ducky run off, then got up and steeled myself for what was to come. I went back into Katie’s house and sat down for dinner. The events of the rest of the evening flew by in a haze. I tried to smile and pretend everything was okay, but from the way Katie and Maxwell were staring at each other through dinner I don’t think they would have noticed anything was wrong anyway. It was clear that they were head over heels in love with each other, and nothing anyone did would make a difference.

         Seeing Maxwell look at Katie that way caused me to think of my father. He came home once while I was in his closet, smelling my mother’s clothes. He forgot his wallet and had come back to get it. I never fully closed the closet door behind me while I was in there, and he found me when he walked over to close it. I’ll never forget the way he angrily snatched the clothes from me and asked me what I was doing there. He didn’t even take a breath before he told me I was never to come into his room again. Surprised at his reaction, I backed out of the closet while holding my hands up, unsure of what he was going to do. As I walked off I saw a tenderness in his face and the way he folded her clothing back up that I had never seen in my father before. That day, I realized how much my father actually loved my mother, and I began to realize why he acted so cold and distant all the time.

         After dinner at Katie’s house, I excused myself and walked back home. I went upstairs to my room, and reached under the bed. I pulled out a red velvet box with a silver heart medallion plastered on the top. Every time I was distressed, I would open this box and read through the letters inside. They were love letters that I had written over the years to the various men I’d fallen in love with. There were several in there addressed to Maxwell Heinz. Each one was carefully folded and spritzed with perfume when I was done. I had been doing this since I was 11, and many of the letters were yellowed and falling apart. At 27, I had never once delivered a single letter to the intended recipient. The moment was never right, and I would put it off until I found out the man I was secretly writing found someone. I kept hoping that someday one of the men I adored would come sweep me off my feet, like they do in the movies. Part of me knew it would never happen, while the other part of me felt as though I didn’t deserve anything less. So I settled for writing love notes that would never get delivered.

         Once I read every note that I had ever written to Maxwell, I folded them all back up neatly and put them back in the box. I put the box back under the bed and pulled out another box. This one had my mom’s old clothes in it. I retrieved them from my father’s house after he died and sold everything else. After all these years, I imagined that they still smelled like her. I carefully pulled her old shirt over my pillow and placed my head upon it, imagining that she was there, holding me as I always felt a mother should. I told her about what happened to me that night, and imagined she was stroking my hair and telling me that everything was going to be okay. I cried, I laughed, and I hugged her close to me until I fell asleep, exhausted.

         The next day, Maxwell never came to work. In fact, he never returned to work. And when I went to visit Katie a few weeks later, she was gone. Her stuff was gone too, as if she was never there and all of my memories of her were a figment of my imagination. I knew what happened, knew that they had gone off together somewhere. And I was glad that Katie chose to share her secret with me before they left. Maxwell was her knight in shining armor, and I hoped he had taken her to a better place and a better life. In a strange way, it gave me hope that maybe; my knight in shining armor was still out there too. I went home that night to my red velvet box and dreamt of the future.