In the basement of our house, my father had positioned his huge metal desk just outside my bedroom. I never saw him sit there. I have no idea where it came from. Grey and cold, it looked like something rescued from an office building's dumpster, though we never had a vehicle big enough to transport such a monstrosity home.
With a child's disregard for privacy, I sometimes rifled through the drawers. Nothing I found made much sense. A cheap plastic magnifying glass...a charm bracelet...a log book chronicling a short list of parachute jumps...none of these things had any obvious-to-me connection to the man who spent more time driving to and from his IT job in Philadelphia than he did with his family. And it never occurred to me to ask him to tell me his stories of the past.
The top of the desk was covered by a large piece of tempered glass, bordered along two edges with black and silver checkered tape. Underneath the glass - the thickest glass I'd ever seen - were photos and bits of paper. My memory has dismissed the recollection of all but two of those mementos.
Upstairs, in the stylish living room with the picture window, hung family and school portraits. But here, in the basement, where living was allowed to occur, were the images I assume my father held to be more precious. Younger versions of my brother and me, dressed in plastic Halloween costumes, stared at me from behind the glass. He was the cuter sibling. I was tousled, gap-toothed. We both looked startled by the camera.
Oh, and believe me when I say that describing what we wore as "costumes" is my being generous. This was the era of boxed Halloween outfits made of vinyl tunics and plastic masks. We were Mickey Mouse and Frankenstein; we were a princess and a cowboy. Heavy winter jackets hide the travesties of "costumes," perhaps helping to inspire those vaguely dismayed expressions.
These images of a discontinued life were the ones I looked at the most as a child. I've gotten better at hiding the layers of warm clothing under October's festive garb, and my father wouldn't recognize me as I prowl through haunted halls. And the secret I've never told anyone is that I think of those photographs a lot this time of year.
Halloween, horror, and my father comingle in my memories, and in those three little words...
"Trick or treat."
(eta: photographic evidence
here.)
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