Scene and Not Scene

I was walking down Fourth Street yesterday in the rain and winter fog when I thought I saw something coming towards me. I was already disconcerted – fog and rain in the summer are manna, but in winter I’m not sure there’s anything I like less. So I’m walking, hands dug into pockets and head down as if that’ll keep the wind out, and worrying what this thing is coming closer. It’s big and dark, I know, and this is of course the part of Fourth with the trees and without the lights, so I can’t tell who it is. I think of London and Jack the Ripper, then try to laugh at myself. I’m not sure I can.

* * * * *

I never knew but now I do

The safe deposit box was always a mystery in our family. Dad kept the key on him at all times – clutched in the folds of his fist while he slept and on a chain around his neck the rest of the day.

He never told us what was in the safe deposit box, never in a million years.

They found the key around Dad’s neck yesterday when they fished him out of the East River, all bloated with water and all nibbled by minnows.

Today I opened the safe deposit box, and inside there was Dad’s old pair of glasses – the ones he wore in high school photos that always made him look like a frog.

I don’t know still what I had been expecting, but it wasn’t that. I want to make up a story for the glasses, like maybe he was a pirate and used the to spot full-loaded galleons, or maybe he was a scientist and wore them to fit in with his colleagues as they discovered a cure for AIDS-cancer-Alzheimer’s, or maybe he was Superman but in reverse. There must be something special to them, something important, something meaningful. Something we can all smile and nod at and fell better off because of. Something that makes this a story to make my life more interesting.

And I can’t stop thinking, no matter how much I try, I can’t stop thinking maybe Dad had to tell stories to himself, sometimes, maybe at the register he could secretly squeeze the key while making change and secretly smile.

And I can’t stop thinking sometimes glasses are just glasses.