30 Pieces of a Novel (68 page)

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number for. He also had to replace his driver's license, car registration certificate, school library card (which also serves as his ID there), and lots of other cards that were in his wallet: car and medical insurance cards, daughters' library cards he holds for them, Sears charge card his wife gave him when she sent him to buy something there and he'd never returned to her, Staples member card—but he didn't replace that one since he'd never saved any money with it—and check cashing cards for three supermarkets. He now keeps them in his checkbook and they periodically drop out, but he's never lost one. The money in the wallet isn't that important—he rarely keeps more than forty dollars in it. He searches the places he searched before in the car and house. Sometimes he's looked through his pants pockets for something, didn't find it, went through the same pockets fifteen minutes later, and it was there. How to explain it? Hands had gone inside each pocket, fingers had felt around. What did he do right the second time that he didn't the first, since he felt he was as thorough each time? No answers. Same with looking for something in a medicine chest or refrigerator, and this has happened countless times. Actually, those two can't be compared with looking for something in his pockets. He gets confused, or his eyes do—and the bright bathroom and kitchen lights make it worse—by all the things of various sizes, colors, and shapes and in different stationary positions in the refrigerator and medicine chest and sometimes several things on top of each other, and he'd also trust his fingers over his eyes any day. Photos. There are several of them in the wallet, of his wife, mother, and kids, and they're irreplaceable in a way. He and his wife have never systematically stored the negatives to all the pictures they've taken, and it'd be hard to go through so many of them to find the ones he was looking for. He has to have other wallet-size photos of his wife and kids that are just or almost as good, or he could have them made up for that size, but he only has a few individual photos of his mother, and two of the best are in the wallet and he has no negatives of them. Knew he should have got reproductions made of those photos. Opens the bedroom closet he shares with his wife. No, wallet couldn't be in any of his pants on hangers or on the floor below them if it had dropped out, since it was in the pants he has on. Feels all the pants pockets there anyway, and the jeans hanging upright on hooks, and then gets on his knees and canvases the floor with his hands and eyes. He has to leave for work in a few minutes but shouldn't without his driver's license. He can call his department's office and ask someone there to put a notice on his classroom door that he may be a half hour late: emergency. Won't cancel the class for a lost wallet if he doesn't find it in the next half hour. He'll drive to school without the license, go extra cautiously to avoid drawing attention from a patrol car. Or not extra cautiously or too slowly because that could draw attention. But stop when he sees the light turn amber rather than go through it as he usually does, and things like that. Same when he comes home. Then tomorrow drive to the MVA for a new license. But he thinks he'll find the wallet in the house in the next couple of days if he keeps looking and has the family look for it, so he'll hold off canceling his credit and ATM cards and changing his phone card
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. He goes over most of the places he's looked already: tub, counters, desk, dresser top, et cetera. Think: Did he put it in a drawer or kitchen cabinet or medicine chest by mistake? He's done things like that a few times without knowing it, but so far only an empty plate inside the refrigerator or a frozen food, when he wanted to defrost it, inside a kitchen cupboard or the oven. He's in the bedroom so he looks in his night table drawers, his wife's top dresser drawer, thinking he might have unconsciously whisked the wallet into it, then his two drawers in their dresser. It's in the bottom one on the right in front, on top of a sweater. He put it there when he was thinking of putting away something else? If he was trying to hide the wallet, and he doesn't see any reason he would since there are no workmen or strangers in the house, he would have stuck it in the back of the drawer under something. Mystery, though he's relieved to find it. He checks inside it. Of course everything's there, and it is. Checks his back pocket: memo book's there. His wrist: watch is on it. Shirt pocket: pen's there, and a couple of dollar bills from change this morning, and he puts them into his wallet. Should he fill his pen? Hasn't time and he can do it from the ink bottle in his office during his class break. Keys: on the hook by the kitchen door and he gets them, briefcase off the coat rack, makes sure his class-work and mail to be sent through his office and novel he's been reading are in it, and leaves. He thinks: My glasses. Always losing the damn things. Looks in all the places he usually puts them when he takes them off for some reason or mislays and later finds them: dining room table, side table near it that doesn't seem to have any purpose and he wishes they'd get rid of it to create more space in the small room, stove, counters, shelf above the stove, ledge below the kitchen window, stereo, chairs, typewriter, manuscript pile, dresser, desk, night table, window ledges, sinks and water tanks in the bathrooms when he took something there to read while he sat on the toilet, tub rim, temples sometimes straddling it. Bed: he's often thrown them there, even though he's told himself lots of times not to. Sat on them twice that way—different pairs—once cracking the frame around a lens and other time snapping off a temple. Can't read without them and after a while gets a headache and eyestrain if he doesn't have them on. “Where the freaking hell are they?” he shouts, looking in one of the bathrooms again. “Someone ought to invent an alarm to go off on eyeglasses if they're off your face for more than five minutes,” he says to his wife. “Why, you lose them again?” “You know me: glasses more than any one thing other than my temper and mind; I'm exaggerating somewhat about the latter,” and she says, “No, they're both true, especially when you're in a rush to get to school and can't find something like your wallet or glasses.” “Okay, but I am serious about the alarm. Here's where we make our meager fortune. Think of the millions of people who habitually lose their glasses. And from it I could then afford to buy several pairs of glasses and, if we really do well from this invention, maybe have my own live-in optician for those times when I lose all of them in one day. It shouldn't be too hard to get someone to design and make it. A little buzzer or beeper or blinking light hooked up to a timer and a watch battery in the frame. Or buzzer and blinking light combined, in the more expensive model, but where you can also use only the light if you're in some kind of situation, let's say, where you don't want the buzzer disturbing anyone,” and she says, “And where would that be: a theater, a courtroom? If you lost your glasses in a place like that, how far could they have gone?” “Someplace, then. I'll have to think of one, though, if it's to be one of that model's selling points. One's house late at night in the dark when you don't want to wake anyone with a regular light or the alarm sound. And this device could also be installed in key rings and wallets and pen caps, even, of valuable pens, though that might be more difficult because it'd seem the alarm would have to be installed when the pen was made, or maybe not. It could be like an adhesive tab and you just stick it on. All that for later after the initial planning. But to set the timer for your glasses, as an example: something like an alarm clock. Instead of for one o'clock, for instance, you set it to go off after one minute if your eyes are so bad you've been declared legally blind. Five to ten minutes if you have eyes like mine. An hour or five to ten hours if you only use your glasses occasionally—for the fine print on medicine bottles or because you have so many pairs you're not concerned if one's lost. And at night, when you go to sleep, you just turn off the alarm, as I said, unless you want to reset it to wake you up in the morning. Obviously, if you can set it for five to ten hours ahead, you can get it to do that too. In addition—something I just thought of—why wait for the alarm to go off in a minute or five to ten hours? Another invention can be a device like an electric lock—you know, the ones that people use to unlock the driver's door before they get to the car—that activates the other alarms for your glasses, wallet, key ring, pen, memo book … anything you want it to. A different button for each of these things on this one remote control unit, and which can work through walls—I don't know if the car one does—and from a hundred feet away. It can even be connected to a radio satellite, for the most expensive models, like the ones small sailboats have when they're crossing the ocean. If you lose this remote control you can have another less expensive one only to find it. And if you lose that one too, or if you only have one—and you wouldn't want to keep either of them on your key ring the way people do with the electronic lock if, like me, you're prone to losing the ring—then you fall back on just the original alarm device that starts beeping or buzzing or blinking in a minute to ten hours after one of those things is lost. So what do you think of my idea?” and she says, “What do you want me to say? Not bad. I wish, though, I could help you find your glasses now. You looked in all the—” and he says, “First thing after I realized I'd lost them and then the next thing and the next. Three times already,” and she says, “Then I'm sorry, I know how you need them, and I'll keep my eyes open.” He wants to read. Has this good novel he's half through with, and he'd planned to sit outside with it for an hour before the kids came home. Has a pair of old glasses but they're from a prescription of about five years ago, and whenever he's used them as a spare, when the newer glasses were lost or being repaired, they always hurt his eyes after five minutes. “Can you help me look for my eyeglasses?” he asks his older daughter when she gets home from school. “I'll give you a dollar if you find them,” and she says, “I don't need incentives to look. Where do you think you last had them?” and he says, “Really, sweetheart, if I knew that … anyway, I've covered many times all the places I normally leave them: tables, desk, phones, bathrooms, bed, and so on. You know I'm practically helpless after a while without them and I also can't start my work,” and she says, “I know. I've heard you yell plenty when they were missing,” and he says, “This time I'm not, right? I'm calm and optimistic, for one reason because I think I'll find them with your help. Your eyes are much younger and better than mine, even if you wear glasses, and you might either see them in the same places I looked or you're so smart you'll think of places I haven't.” His younger daughter comes home from school fifteen minutes later and the other says to her, “Daddy says he'll give a dollar to anybody—” “Two dollars now,” he says. “That's how much I need them.” “Two dollars to anybody who finds his glasses. I've looked everywhere I can think of, so I'm giving up.” “Damn,” he shouts, banging his fist on the kitchen counter. “How stupid can I be? I've wasted more than an hour already looking for them. When will I learn that when I put them down I should make a mental note of where I'm putting them? I should probably even write it in my memo book with the date and time I'm putting the glasses down. But that'd take too much trouble and I don't always have my pen and memo book on me. And if I temporarily lose the memo book after I put this mental note in it—well, then it's not a mental note, right?—then what? I'll be relying on the memo book for where the glasses are rather than my mind, and the mind's the thing I always have with me and should train and trust.” “You ought to get one of those string things that hang the glasses around your neck when you're not using them,” his younger daughter says, and he says, “I don't like the looks of them. They make you look like some stereotype of the prissy lips-all-pursed old-fashioned librarian or grade school teacher.” “But they help you, so why care how they look?” and he says, “I also don't want anything hanging around my neck and swinging and getting in my way, and I'm sure I'll also break them faster that way, which is worse than losing them temporarily.” “Then don't use one and don't take your glasses off your face. Just keep them on,” and he says, “I have to take them off if they've been on too long. That's the paradox: my eyes get tired if my glasses are off my face for ten minutes or on it for three hours,” and she says, “Then buy a bright red eyeglass case and always put the glasses in it when you take them off, even for a minute. With the red you can find them better,” and he says, “Good idea, but for later. That is if I could ever remember to have the case with me at all times and also to put the glasses in it every time they leave my hands. Though it'd only be one more thing to fill up my already stuffed pants pockets when I go out, or shirt pocket if the shirt I wear at the time has one. But now let's see if we can find my glasses.” She goes into the living room, that's the last he sees of her, and he spends the next half hour looking for the glasses. Comes across lots of things of his he's going to throw out or give away: old pair of sneakers, shoes, sport jacket; unmatched socks and two shirts in his dresser drawer; Jockey briefs he doesn't wear anymore; looked in the mirror with them on a year ago and thought, They're only for younger and slimmer men, and now only wears boxer shorts. Wants to clear the house of everything he never uses; that way it'll be easier finding things in all these storage spaces and also the things he loses. Pulls books out of the bookcases, dupes of copies he and his wife brought to the marriage. Then other books he knows they and the kids will never read, so that the ones lying on top of books can be inserted vertically into the shelves, though he won't tell his wife he's doing this. Old toothbrushes and medicines and a mattress cover from the linen closet, chipped mugs and saucers from a cupboard, a bent fork from the silverware tray, rusty or blackened aluminum pans and a pot from the stove drawer, goes back to his dresser for a pair of cutoff jeans that had become too frayed, and puts it all into the same box with the shirts, shoes, sport jacket, and mattress cover, and when the box and maybe another box are filled he'll call a charity group that sells these things to pick them up, might even get a tax deduction for the stuff if the IRS still gives it. The nonelectric drip coffeepot—hasn't used it for years—and, while he's getting it out of a top cupboard, several plastic glasses and cups the kids have picked up from fast food places over the years, and he puts these in the box too. Fork, briefs, sneakers, socks, toothbrushes, and medicines he drops into the garbage can. His wife would like him to save the briefs as rags because they're all cotton, but he doesn't want the cleaning woman to use them. He would, on his knees every three to four days to wash the kitchen floor and the Thursday after the one the cleaning woman comes the bathroom floors, commodes, and toilet bowls, but doesn't want to mix them in with the other rags. Several of his budget CDs whose pieces he's since bought better recordings of, and a couple of the nostalgic pop ones his wife got for the kids and they never showed any interest in, into the box—and then tapes it up so his wife won't see what's inside. She asks what's in it, he'll say … well, something that'll get him off the hook. He seems always to be emptying the house of things after he's looked for something for a while. “This place is too cluttered with unnecessary crap,” he tells his wife, and she says, “Then put some of it in the basement.” “Then that place will get cluttered with crap and it'll only encourage you to buy stuff to fill all the spaces I've created by getting rid of the clutter up here. We should throw a lot of it out,” and she says, “Before you throw away anything of mine and the kids, let us know. Probably a lot of what you call clutter and crap isn't, and some of it could also contain a certain sentimental value. Did you find your glasses?” and he says, “How can I with all the junk around? To clear away some of it I've packed a box of my things for Purple Heart,” and she says, “Let me know when they're coming. I might have a few things for them too.” He resumes looking, and on the guest closet floor in back under a snow boot of one of his daughters he finds a pen he must have lost three years ago, maybe four. Sheaffer, chrome, possibly the best American pen he ever owned—just the right weight and a larger-than-usual cartridge, and because it was metal it could never crack—so a great loss. When he went to a store to replace it he found it had tripled in price from when he'd bought