J-Patt's Blog

The boy sits with his grandfather in a room that used to have red rugs hiding hardwood floors damaged by tables now residing dismantled in his father’s attic. The dragging depressions still scar the floor, but his grandfather explains that he has come to respect them as he does his own father’s pocket watch whose gears rusted from saltwater in the June of ’44. The sofa they lounge on smells like the sweaters with chewed sleeves in the boy’s dresser.  The cushions sag under him.

They do not speak for a long time. Not out of awkwardness or generation gaps or inauthenticity, but out of the grandfather’s love of the deaf air around him and the boy’s love of whatever his grandfather loves, except pulpous orange juice.

When Art bought the house in 1946 this room had a salmon carpet that went from end to end, stopping at the entrance of the hallway and was punctuated by a brass carpet stopper.  His wife commented that the carpet did not match the tan painted walls or oak frame windows.  Art did not want to spend the money to replace the carpeting because they had just bought the house and a brown couch to go flush against the wall.  They could not afford it.  The sofa covered half the wall’s length and could seat four people comfortably.  He turned it into his work study so that his wife would not have to see it as often. He built an oak desk and bookcase from extra lumber and set them up next to each other on the side wall of the room. Later he purchased a glass encasing to house his father’s rusted pocket watch and placed it on the top of the bookshelf. Art propped a framed picture of his father inside the case soon after. After his youngest son, Daniel’s father, turned six, he put a second television and a bureau opposite to the sofa so his sons could watch it when he did not need to work.

The boy’s name is Daniel and he does not like how the worn sofa forces him toward the edges of the cushions until he has to reposition himself to slide again, though this time he is surprised to find a creased and square paper between the cracks that reads, “ALLIED MILITANCE CURRENCY.” The rest is too faded to read. He shows it to his grandfather who says it is called Lira and it is a souvenir from when he was eighteen and travelled the world with a canteen and a Browning. Daniel hands over the Lira and his grandfather makes his way toward an oak bookcase. A row of individually labeled off-white binders are arranged along the top shelf. He places his finger on each label until he reaches a binder just-left-of-center.  Art brings it to the sofa. He squints at the Lira and shakes his head, then turns to Daniel.

“Can you read this number here?” His grandfather points to a smudge near the bottom-right of the Lira.

“SERIES 1943,” Daniel guesses. He is sure of the last number, but four looks like it could be a nine, too. He chooses ’43 because it looks too worn to be his age. He wonders how long the Lira resided between the cushions before he discovered it, and if his father ever tried to read its date just like him.  He repositions himself on the cushion.

“That sounds about right.” His grandfather thumbs labeled dividers until he hit “1943,” and opens the binder from that page. A four-by-six grid of plastic pockets holds different types of money, all with 1943 as their production date. They remind Daniel of his card collections, but it feels different to look at Art’s binder—mint condition does not seem to matter anymore. The idea of any being holographic suddenly sounds gaudy and unwarranted. His grandfather packs the Lira in an empty pocket and lets Daniel leaf through the pages.  Circular stickers on the hole-punches reinforce them after time and interest ripped them apart. Daniel notices his grandfather looking beyond the pages—focusing on something in the Lira’s direction but much farther away.

When Art’s oldest son, Daniel’s uncle, turned ten in 1955, his wife wanted to work as a secretary for a railroad company down the road.  They hired a nanny to watch over the boys when they came home in the afternoon.  She doubled as housekeep.  In the December of 1957 while vacuuming his work study, the suction tore the carpet from the brass stopper.  Art had tried to fix it but the ends were too frayed to repair.  He assured her that it was an honest mistake, and that his wife did not care for the carpet anyway.  That night he and his sons moved the furniture and threw the carpeting away. It took all three of them to properly move the sofa back.  Returning the tables and office furniture, Art admired how good the hardwood floor looked next to the oak décor. While he rested on the sofa his sons ran outside to play cowboys and Indians with the neighbors down the street before the episode Adventures of Superman aired.  Art liked Alfred Hitchcock Presents but thought it was too frightening for his children so he established its airtime as their bedtime, at nine o’clock.  His wife tucked them in while he turned the volume dial down and listened to Hitchcock explain the elements of horror he would utilize tonight.  He positioned himself on the center cushion of the sofa.

Art leans against the arm of the sofa so he does not sink like Daniel. He is too tired to be repositioning himself every few minutes. Seeing the sheets of printed money in Daniel’s hands reminds him of when his son, Daniel’s father, brought his brother’s triangular folded flag along with a sheet of 1966 đồng and fastened it inside the last binder on the oak shelf before moving his tables and putting in red rugs to cover their imprints. Daniel repositions himself on the cushion.