The Attic

 

With a heavy sigh, Heidi looked once more around the room.  Empty.  She walked to the front window and looked blankly at the yellow moving van parked out front.  Packed inside the van was her life.  The life she had shared with David.  The life that ended so abruptly a few months ago.  As she stared at the van, all she could see was the end of her world.  She willed herself not to cry. 

“Are you ready?” The voice was gentle yet coaxing.  Heidi turned from the window to stare blankly at her sister.  Megan looked intently into her younger sister’s face, searching.  She needed to know how Heidi was holding up, but she knew if she asked she’d only receive Heidi’s standard “I’m fine” in reply. 

“You’re doing the right thing in moving,” Megan began.  “You’ll never begin the healing process if you don’t move out of the house where he - where it happened.”

Numbly, Heidi could only nod.  Grabbing her purse from the kitchen counter, Heidi forced a smile.  “I’ve just double-checked all the rooms.  I have everything.”

“Good,” Megan replied as they headed toward the door.  “And you got everything out of the attic as well?”

The attic?  Heidi stopped.  She completely forgot about the attic.  In her grief, though, it had been easy to overlook.  She had never even been up there.  She was afraid of heights, and David had tried unsuccessfully many times to coax her up the ladder into the ‘room under the stars’ as he had called it.  It was his little hide-away, where he liked to go and think, or paint, or just get away.  And she never begrudged him his time alone.  Now she realized that she would have to go up there - to his sanctuary - and take it down.

Almost in a panic, she turned to Megan.  “The attic.  I can’t…I have to….David’s stuff….”. Heidi couldn’t finish her thought, but she didn’t need to.  Megan simply asked “do you want me to come with you?”

‘Do you want me to come with you?’  Subconsciously stalling, Heidi mentally repeated the question, formulated responses and summarily dismissed them all.  Helplessly, she looked up at her sister, silently begging her to make the decision.  Megan understood, perhaps more than Heidi, that Heidi needed to do this alone.  Gently, she took Heidi’s arm and walked her to the hallway, stopping underneath the attic door.  Reaching up, Megan grabbed the rope separating Heidi’s future from her past, and pulled.  Heidi watched in silence as a stairway unfolded from the ceiling.  Strangely, her fear of heights did not surface.  Perhaps it was merely hidden underneath all the other emotions swirling within her.  At any rate, that fear was farthest from her mind.  Not knowing what she would find up there, Heidi swallowed her apprehension and climbed the stairs.

Heidi was surprised to find that the attic looked pretty much just like any other room.  Two small windows on the far wall provided sufficient light, and the room was orderly and modestly furnished.  So much for her notion of a dark, dusty room crammed with boxes and knickknacks.  Everything in this room was brought up by David, everything had a reason or a story, and Heidi slowly took in everything, wanting to know…trying to listen.

She wistfully touched everything she passed, her fingers gently brushing items that were last touched by David.  Glancing up, she saw his easel in the center of the room.  On it, a painting that will never be finished.  But it was the item hanging from the corner of the easel that made her draw in her breath.  Of all his possessions in the room, this one thing brought David back most vividly.  It was a raccoon-tail hat, and it seemed to be calling to her.  Hesitantly, she walked over to the hat and picked it up.  A smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she recalled the first time she saw David wear it.  She was in the kitchen fixing dinner when he walked in - wearing only the hat - with the silly raccoon tail swishing about with every jaunty step until he was standing right in front of her.  Dumbfounded, Heidi looked up at him.    

“Where in the world did you find that?” she asked.

“I won it in a card game with the guys,” David had replied. 

“Really? That silly thing was the prize?”

“Hey, I fought tooth and nail for this silly thing,” said David with a grin.  Heidi looked from the hat to David’s face, and saw the mischief in his eyes.  Reaching up, she gently grabbed hold of the raccoon tail. 

“You seem to have lost your clothes in that card game,” she observed as she inched closer.

The mischief in David’ eyes soon gave way to something else as he realized Heidi was idly running her hand up and down the length of the tail. 

“Do you like it when I stroke it?” she murmured against his ear.  His reply was cut off as he buried his face in her neck; scooping her up, he carried her into the bedroom, dinner completely forgotten.

Poignantly returning to reality, Heidi clutched the raccoon-tailed hat tightly under her chin, as tightly as she was holding onto the very memories that were threatening to send her over the edge.

‘Oh, David, I never had a chance to say good-bye’ she sobbed, her tears falling on the soft fur, it’s color deepening as her anguish spilled out.  Shadows danced against the walls as the afternoon faded away. 

 

After a while both her tears and her mind were exhausted.  Heidi aimlessly wandered about the attic, still clutching the hat as a small child would a security blanket.  David was everywhere.  How could she leave this room he loved so much?  How would she ever leave him behind?  Almost as if on cue, her eyes fell on a small, wooden game board peering out from underneath a pile of books.  Curious, Heidi walked over to it.  With some amusement, she noticed it was a Ouija board.  David never fell for that sort of thing.  She wondered why he had one up here.  She picked up the small wooden triangle laying beside the board, absently turning it over in her hands as she continued to walk about the attic.  She had almost made it across the room when she turned with a start.  She thought maybe Megan had come up, but she hadn’t.  No one was there.  Heidi looked down at the wooden game piece still in her hand.  ‘No way’, she thought to herself.  She didn’t buy into that any more than David had.  ‘Still….’ she thought as she made her way over to the board.  Gingerly picking up the Ouija board, Heidi walked over to the edge of the bed and sat down with the board on her lap.  Questioningly, she stared at it.  She wasn’t even sure how to play, yet alone what she wanted to ask.  She tentatively placed her fingers on the triangle, then pulled them away.  Then placed them back on the triangle only to pull them away again.  Taking a deep breath, she returned her fingers to the playing piece, and kept them there.  “Will I ever be able to let go?” she quietly asked the empty room.  The triangle began gliding slowly across the board.  Mesmerized, Heidi watched as the letters gave her the answer she needed.  She remained sitting on the bed, absorbed in her thoughts, for some time.

As the last rays of light began to fade, Heidi felt a measure of peace wash over her.  She got up and placed the Ouija board back on the table, and gently returned the hat to the corner of the easel.  Heidi looked about the attic.  She found what she was looking for.  It wasn’t anything she could touch, but she could take it with her.  She had found closure.  With a faint sense of hope, Heidi walked over to the window and rested her head against the cool glass.  She saw the backward reflection of some words on the glass, and she turned to find the source.  On the wall behind her was a framed poster that she hadn’t noticed earlier.  It was a picture of a flower garden.  She walked closer to read the quotation at the bottom of the picture:

A life is like a garden.

Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved

except in memory

      
Heidi smiled through tears.  She saw that message as a final gift from David. They had had perfect moments, but she lost them somewhere between emptying the house and loading the moving van.  But she learned that she had to let go in order to find them again.  She realized that moving van now wasn’t the end of the world, and that letting go didn’t mean saying goodbye.  David would always live in her memory.  She knew she could take out those perfect moments whenever she wanted to revisit them, but that she also had her own garden to tend.        

Her eyes sought and rested on the raccoon-tail hat.  ‘Thank you, David’ she softly whispered as she turned and walked away.

© Dahlia Ramone: May 21, 2017

 

This was first written in December, 2006 for Loaded for Blog

LFB topic: “Your topic this week is a story. You're looking through an attic, and find something. Doesn't matter what, just...something. Include mention of a Ouija board and a raccoon-tail hat.”

And modified May 21, 2017 for Blogophilia Week 13.10

Topic: The End of the World

Bonus Prompts:

Hard (2 pts): Quote Leonard Nimoy *
Easy (1 pt): Include the phrase “tooth and nail”

*  “A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.”