Chapter_15_Boxes_and_

Mom’s wood-paneled basement is always freezing and smells like pine potpourri that she keeps in little glass bowls in every corner. In full Wallace form, my mom’s neatly organized shelves of bulk foods and paper products are as impressive as ever. I make a mental note to create a coffee-table book out of her stack of real estate lawn signs, showing off years of outdated outfits and hairstyles.

“We had so many tournaments here,” I say, sliding my finger across the dusty old Ping-Pong table my brother and I used to bond over.

The boxes Mom wants me to sort through are dozens of blue Rubbermaid containers.

“Oh. My. God,” I say upon seeing the containers piled high to the ceiling. My boxes to the right. Alex’s boxes to the left.

“You’re going to have to come back to sort through all these,” Biz says, handing me a glass of wine. We spend the next hour poring through containers to find my baby clothes, yearbooks, school report cards, more hockey medals and, if anyone had questioned whether I was actually gay, one box containing dozens of People magazines that I made my mom subscribe to. “I read it for the articles about movies,” I joke to Biz.

“Just admit you got it for the annual Sexiest Man Alive,” Biz teases. We both crack up at the truth.

I throw lots of stuff away that I don’t want and memory lane starts to become memory long stretch of highway.

“This is such a treasure trove,” I say. “I want to keep all of this kind of stuff for our own kid one day.” I look up to see Biz down the last of his wine.

“I can’t look at any more of your childhood macaroni sculptures,” Biz says.

“Why don’t you ever want to talk about the future of our kid?” I ask as I pack up a box.

“What do you mean? Why don’t you ever want to talk about our present? And that’s not true. I do want to talk about the future of our kid.”

“You don’t though. There’s no planning ahead. Thinking about schools and activities and college,” I say.

“Wyatt, we’ve been planning this for years,” Biz says, slightly in shock.

“The baby isn’t going to be a baby forever. We have to think about what’s after that.”

“I’m trying. I’m not the biggest planner like you,” Biz admits, which is fair.

The furnace interrupts us with a knock, knock. It startles us both. My heart pounds. It sounds like a ghost trapped inside the walls, begging to escape.

Before letting our imagination get the best of us, we mentally regroup. One by one, we stack the containers back to their original formation. Biz seems annoyed. Then something catches my eye.

“What’s that?” I ask.

Biz turns, trying to make out what I see.

In the corner of the basement is another stack of blue containers.

“Probably all of your mom’s holiday stuff,” Biz says.

I step closer for a better look. A couple boxes read, “Alex and Wyatt’s Father.” I blink, wondering what it could be.

“What’s in them?” Biz asks.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen any of my father’s stuff before. I didn’t even know she had anything.”

“You think she doesn’t want you to see it?”

“No. The opposite,” I say. “I think she does want me to see these.”

“What is with you people and not communicating?!” Biz says, dumbfounded. He has a good point.

Like a giant game of reverse Jenga, I dismantle the boxes. Biz watches as we both sit cross-legged on the rust-colored carpet with one box.

I carefully pop off the container’s lid and pull out a large photo album. I look at Biz, suggesting the album looks unfamiliar to me.

“Looks like a wedding album,” he says.

“I wonder if Alex knows about this,” I say.

The brown leather-bound cover with gold trim creaks open to laminated pages of my parents’ wedding. My mom looks luminous and impossibly young as ever, perfect in her white wedding dress, eyes that telegraph happiness, youth and hope.

Nothing could prepare me for what I see next.

“Is that...”

“My father,” I say as I focus in on the groom in the photo.

He’s ruggedly handsome with a taller frame than my memory of him. I’ve seen five, maybe six photos of him in my entire life but never this album. Flipping through the delicate photographs, a crinkly sound with every turn, I’m in awe. My mom had always downplayed their wedding through the years. I certainly never knew there was an ornate photo album.

Oh, it was a small affair, she’d always said. My mind’s image of my father has faded over time. Now here are actual photos of him. Never-seen-before footage.

I want to pinch and zoom in on every feature of his face. To study the lines and memorize each contour. Chills creep up my spine, seeing a photo of my father laughing, so alive, caught in a rare candid moment where he isn’t posing.

“He looks exactly like you,” Biz says before I can even think it.

“You think?” I ask even though I can see it now. It’s uncanny.

We both study the last photo of my mother and father standing in an embrace. Their expressions seem indifferent. Almost disconnected from each other.

A flood of life experiences comes to mind that I wish I could’ve shared with him. Everything about my life. Biz. The baby on the way. Moving to New York, my dream city. Getting into the Directors Guild. That one time I worked with Lady Gaga. All of it. “Of course my mom wanted me to find this bin. Why else would she keep asking me to organize my boxes? They were organized to perfection.”

“Maybe that’s why she wanted you to come home so badly. I don’t even think it was about Alex,” Biz says. I look up at him, knowing he’s probably right.

“I’ve always wondered why there were no photos,” I say. “We never saw trips they took. Birthdays. Photos of my father haphazardly holding me as a baby. None of it.”

“That’s so sad,” Biz says. “We have more photos and home movies than we know what to do with.”

As I place the wedding album back in its home, in the box I promise myself to visit in the future, I open the next container. Brown packing paper fills the top of the container.

I lift the endless amount of brown paper, like tearing off never-ending wrapping paper on a Christmas present.

I stare at what I find for a few seconds.

“What is it?” Biz asks, fully invested in this treasure hunt of family secrets.

It’s a letter still sealed in its envelope. I pick it up and see it’s addressed to me in care of Mom. Curious shock flickers onto Biz’s face when we both look inside the container at the same time.

We see dozens and dozens of letters neatly stacked on top of one another.

All from my father, Richard Wallace, addressed to me.