Eighteen Years and a Third of a Suitcase

I’ve done my fair share of lying: I told my mom I’d gone to my physical for the Army, but really I never even called a recruiter.

There was nothing Will didn’t share with his best friend Andrew, whom he’d known since the second grade. Including that bit of news, which he’d included in an email he’d sent on Friday. Two very long days later, Will was still trying to figure out how he’d neglected to consider that his mother probably monitored his emails. But it was too late to kick himself anymore over that.

He kept the suitcase hidden under his bed for now, in case Mom barged in again. But he’d measured the dimensions and marked a space on the floor to determine how much he could fit in it. Mom didn’t need to know he wasn’t just organizing his closet – wasn’t that a sensible thing to do just before you joined the Army anyway? He’d already packed the vacuum bags, with five days’ worth of clothes inside, and they took up about two thirds of the suitcase.

A third of a suitcase for eighteen years of memories – Will had learned his lesson about trying to remember every line he wanted to use in his next song, and he sat down on his bed and wrote the line down in his pocket notebook.

The letters from Andrew – who had moved away halfway through high school – held the place of honor on the top of the mound of stuff in his closet, in a shoebox. No question they would be coming along, but the shoebox was awfully bulky. Will took the letters out and tied them up with a string, and set the bundle in the corner of the otherwise empty rectangle on the floor. Two years of delightfully palpable teenage angst, from the only person on earth Will trusted completely, took up an acceptably small share of the precious space.

The only person? What about Sue? Will told himself he’d have thought of that on his own, even if not for the fact that the pressed rose she’d given him for prom slipped out from between the pages of The Catcher in the Rye when he pulled that out of the closet to set alongside Andrew’s letters.

No, not even Sue. But Will did pick the flower up carefully and set it back in the book. His first girl, in every way that indicated. The only one who could ever have convinced him to go to the prom, and it had been a blast even before the night had ended with a bang in that very room. How could that be only seven months ago?

Will still felt pretty guilty about Sue. He felt even guiltier about the lie he’d told Andrew on the phone at Thanksgiving, two weeks and four days after Sue had dumped him by email. Yeah, I went to visit her for a weekend, her college is just about an hour from State. Her roommate was gone home, so we made love. Then I got out of bed and put my clothes on and told her I never wanted to see her again.

That last line was certainly true. But when the photo of them at the dance was next in the pile, Will paused to give it a long look. Seven months and about that many lifetimes ago. Before the summer of doing it anywhere they could get away with it. Before they’d argued again and again about their future once college started. Before she’d missed a period just as they were off for orientation. Before her mother had confronted her – they still didn’t know how she’d guessed – and Will had been forbidden from ever coming anywhere near her house again. The next day, she’d gotten it and all was right with the world…until that email in early November. She hadn’t even told him the guy’s name, only that they were in love but she hoped Will would still be her friend.

Last June when they were young and naïve – he sure looked happy in that photo. But Will didn’t put it in the rectangle. He placed it in the shoebox he’d just removed Andrew’s letters from, and followed suit with the rabbit’s foot she’d won for him at the school fair, and the homemade card she’d given him at graduation, and the pair of her panties he’d neglected to tell her she’d forgotten in his bed last spring.

His yearbook was too big for the shoebox. It would of course fit easily into the suitcase. Will flipped through the pages and read all the autographs one last time, careful to avoid Sue’s of course, and snapped it shut. After a moment’s consideration, he set it on the floor on the clean side of the closet. No need to rub his own nose in past glories when he didn’t even know where he’d be sleeping tomorrow night.

Mom knocked at the door, and as usual she came in without waiting for a response. “Oh good,” she said. “I was going to tell you to clean up that mess in there before we go tomorrow.”

“It’s not like I’ll be shipping out straight from the recruiters,” Will said without looking up at her as he pulled out a box of his mixtapes, which he’d mostly stopped listening to when he’d started writing his own songs.

“Don’t remind me, William. I want you to shave in the morning, understood? We don’t want you looking scruffy.”

“You really think they wouldn’t take me over a little stubble?” He shuffled through the tapes, trying to calculate how many of them he’d be willing to make room for in the suitcase.

“Don’t be fresh with me, William. Not on this. Do you – look at me!” Will reluctantly did look at her, and she went on. “Do you understand I could have thrown you out of the house after I saw what you wrote to Andrew? Or when I noticed that beer missing from the fridge last week? Or when Sue’s mother called me in August?”

“Yeah.”

“Someday you’ll thank me for not doing that. Don’t push your luck until then.” She turned to go, then looked back over her shoulder. “The recruiters open at nine, and I intend to be there and waiting for them, understood? We’re leaving at eight-thirty, and you’d better be looking presentable by then.”

“Yeah. Understood.”

“Good.” She was gone, and Will turned his attention back to the tapes. Most of them were oldies shows that he hadn’t listened to in ages, but they carried such great memories of listening with Andrew, waiting for their requests to play…but there was a reason why he hadn’t listened in so long. What about his own two tapes, of which he’d kept safety copies? He’d given Andrew and Sue the only other copies. Only now did it occur to him that he wouldn’t have a tape deck to play them on. But if he had any future that didn’t involve pushups and potatoes, it was in his music.

He put the two tapes in the rectangle, and set the box with the other ones next to his yearbook. At the last moment, he reconsidered and took one of the mixtapes out of the box at random, and set it aside his two.

The stack of scrap papers with the songs he and Andrew had written back to ninth grade was quite compacted when he unearthed it from a stack of paperbacks. He didn’t dare look at any of the lyrics, and reminded himself that the first draft of everything sucks, but he also didn’t give a second thought to setting them in the rectangle. Next came the comic books Mom had bought him at the supermarket back in grade school. Will gave some thought to keeping one of them, and just as quickly concluded he’d never be able to choose. They fit nicely under the box of tapes.

The next shoebox was marked, “Parkside.” Will put it next to the comic books without even opening it. Why had he ever thought he’d want to remember anything about middle school anyway? He was surprised to find his Dungeons and Dragons books under the Parkside box – had it really been that long since the school had banned D&D? Or had he felt the need to rip the scab off the memory of eighth grade more recently than he could recall? Either way, he set the books on top of the Parkside box.

The buried treasure was down to the dregs. Will looked over his shoulder at the rectangle. There was still a fair bit of space. He sifted through the remaining junk in the closet and was surprised to discover his teddy bear, Disty. Will didn’t remember the story behind that name, but the pug nosed pale blue bear had always been Disty. He also didn’t remember how long it had been since he’d stopped dragging Disty around everywhere. But tonight, he earned a spot in the rectangle. The rest of the rest remained right where Will had found it.

With the closet half-clean at least and nothing he wanted to keep remaining, Will turned his attention to the bookshelf. His two guitar books were a shoo-in for the rectangle. The framed photo of Sue was staying right where it was. He was tempted to take the Readers’ Digest book that contained the short story that had inspired his first decent song, “The Yankee”, but it was just too heavy and he knew the story by heart anyway. The knickknacks from summer camp that held court in front of the books? He’d never been able to bring himself to throw them away, but what would he do with them now? But he picked up the smooth rock he’d painted blue with a white sailboat and set it in the rectangle. Mom had always loved that one.

She had not cared for the photo of him and Andrew, taken on Andrew’s last day in his house in town before the move. Sue hadn’t liked it either. “Shouldn’t you let go of your childhood already?” she’d asked him once.

“Look, I don’t want to sound gay or anything, but I miss him, all right?” he’d replied.

“Nothing wrong with being gay, but we’re not kids anymore.”

“You’re jealous.”

“Pfft! If you’re not gay, why’d I be jealous of a guy friend?”

Will still didn’t know the answer to that. But he figured he’d struck a nerve all the same. He picked up the framed photo and tried to envision the room they were standing in on that day three years ago. Not the way it had looked that day – the way it had always looked before then. Jammed with books and records and a few old toys Andrew probably still played with now and then. Lived-in. Safe. The one place he always knew he could run to when things got too dicey with Mom or her latest boyfriend. He never had told Andrew just how much that had meant. Now he was fairly sure he never would.

Andrew had, for some crazy reason, decided to go off to college out in the Midwest, and was apparently doing pretty well out there. Not like Will, who’d flunked out of State after one semester. Will had to hand it to his old pal, he’d been really supportive on their phone call at Christmas, when Will had shared the unwelcome letter from State. “Really sorry to hear that, man,” was all Andrew had said. Will had waited for the unwelcome platitude about God shutting a door and opening a window or something, but there hadn’t been any. A real friend knew when to not bother sugarcoating anything.

There was certainly no sugarcoating what had happened yesterday morning, when Mom had knocked on his bedroom door with a printout of his email to Andrew. She had at least kept her temper as she’d glared at him and announced, “Monday morning, I’m driving you to the recruiters’ myself, William. No arguments.”

Will hadn’t bothered giving her an argument. He also hadn’t answered her many questions about what he had intended to do instead of enlisting. That was just as well, as he still hadn’t known when he’d emailed Andrew.

He knew now.

He had his guitar and a little money and plenty of friends he’d made at State when he should have been studying. Saturday afternoon, he’d snuck off to the strip mall up the road and called his friend Tim to ask for a lift back to campus on Monday morning.

“Heard you flunked out, dude,” Tim had said.

“I did. But I figure someone there’ll let me stay in their room while I figure out what to do next.”

“You’re gonna be homeless!”

“That beats the only alternative with my mom. You gonna help me or not, Tim?”

“Hell, yeah! It’s like the first chapter of some adventure novel! But I’m leaving pretty early.” It was a three-hour drive.

“That’s just what I want, so I can get out of town before my mom gets out of bed. How’s six-thirty sound?”

“I’ll be there, dude. If you’re not, should I assume your mom chained you to your bed?”

“Don’t even go there, Tim. She just might.”

Will felt panic rising in his chest as he gazed at the old photo and thought of what awaited him back on campus, where he wasn’t even supposed to be. He closed his eyes and enjoyed a precious moment back in Andrew’s room, with the radio on and the grown-ups a safe distance away and his old friend baring his soul about some girl at school.

Mom had left his door open. Was it more dangerous to leave it open and hope she would stick with what she was watching on TV next door (some sappy movie from the sounds he could make out), or to shut the door and maybe arouse her suspicions? Will decided on the former, but he left the door ajar so there was no risk of her hearing it click. Then he ceremoniously set the photo of himself and Andrew in the triangle along with a couple of his favorite war novels from the bookshelf, and pulled the suitcase out from under his bed.

Everything fit, more easily than he’d feared. Closing the suitcase and picking it up, he found it heavier than he’d have liked, especially when he’d also be carrying his guitar. But, he reasoned, it would be worse if his entire life was too easy to carry.

Once he had the suitcase hidden back under the bed, it was off to the bathroom to shower, so he wouldn’t have to do it in the morning. Remembering his mother’s directive, he also shaved. When he emerged, washed and coiffed, it was still too early to go to bed even if he stood any chance of getting any sleep. At least he might get a chance to show her he had followed her directive, he mused as he dared visit the kitchen to find a snack.

Sure enough, she spotted him from her perch on her bed. “Eight thirty, remember, William,” she said.

“I remember.”

“And don’t wake me up before then, understood?”

“I won’t. I promise.”