A Collection of Chaos

The small box tilted to the left and I jumped to catch it before it fell. But I was too late and the pristine small cardboard box was now lying, crumpled on its side. Fifty AA batteries (for all of my remotes and electronics), six pink and yellow stacks of sticky notes, a set of Liquid Accent highlighters (one pink, one blue, one yellow, one green and one orange), a box of Top Flight security envelopes (the kind with three black lines in the top left corner for those of us who can't find the right place to write the return address), forty two Top Flight security envelopes that had broken free from the box, a box of fine color pencils, twelve Eagle pencils (the kind with the whitish pink wood and slightly spongy lead), and forty Pilot G2 gel pens of varying pt size and color were now chaotically strewn across the floor musty living room floor.
She frowned. “Nice packing skills,” my cheeks reddened, realizing that I had been careless with her things, I felt like an ass. I kneeled on the cold wood floor and reached out across it, pulling all the scattered desk implements into a pile in front of me. She was walking around the room, stopping occasionally to pick up a .05 pen and place it into it’s corresponding mug. I continued moving handfuls of batteries and pens onto the pile I had made on her white oak desk. I felt her eyes on me and stopped. Now standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by office supply shrapnel, she cocked her head and grinned when I met her gaze.
"What?" I smiled and threw up my hands, knowing she didn't approve with my cleaning up method. "What am I gonna do with you?" She had kind patient eyes that gleamed in the natural light of the room. She reminded me of my grandmother on occasion, the one on my Jewish side. The all knowing, all loving, understanding, grandmother - so perfect at the art of guilt, that you didn't even know when you were under it's spell. I smiled and shrugged, taking her cue to unpack somewhere else for a while. I made my way down the lilac painted hallway and into the bedroom.
The bed frame and mattresses were stacked upright against the far wall and I rummaged around the small lavender smelling room for my toolbox to begin its construction. I walked past the dresser and stubbed my big toe on a large metal box haphazardly stuck beneath it, causing me to mutter violent exclamations to myself for a moment before realizing that it was my toolbox and I had been the jerk who put it in a stupid place like that. I pulled out the toolbox and retrieved my Phillips screwdrivers before shoving it back under the dresser and tossed the queen mattress and matching box spring into the back corner of the room. After squaring the Maplewood frame down on the floor where Jane wanted the bed to be, I quickly fastened it together and clumsily attached it to the headboard and placed the mattresses on top. Stood back and admired my handy work before jumping into the air and planting myself onto it as hard as I could. Well done, that deserves a brake. I lay there watching the dust dance in the sunlight above the bed.
Crunch! I jumped up. “What was that?” Jane called from the other end of the house. Good question, “What was what?”
“That noise.” Killian, my 30lb black mammoth of a cat had found the perfect resting spot. On top of a box marked ‘VERY fragile,’ at the foot of the bed. “What noise?”
I picked him up and threw him into the hall before returning to the U-shaped box, muttering under my breath. “Never mind, I thought I heard something…”
I ripped the box open and carefully lifted its newspaper wrapped contents and placed each peace next to me on the floor, gently pressing each one, looking for the culprit of that awful sound. I picked up a slender square package of newspaper and heard a distinct jingle as I turned it on its side. Broken glass, nice one Sal.
I looked about the bedroom and peaked my large orange frosted head out into the hall. The only light was from the kitchen window where Jane was unpacking dishes. Screwing up my face I tore off the newspaper to reveal a black wooden picture frame. The glass had shattered and now lay at the bottom of the box. I turned it over and uncovered a black and white photo taken in the late 30’s early 40’s that I had never seen before.
A white man, around 60 years old is standing on the slab of concrete in front of the door. He’s dressed from head to toe in what seems to be army fatigues. A Soldier! What war could that have been? WW…I, II? He wore a loose fitting billed cap cocked to the right with some sort of insignia on it and two large cargo pockets were on each side of his unbuttoned and wrinkled, collared long sleeve shirt. His right breast pocket sagged slightly from the weight of its square shaped contents and his sleeves were rolled up and neatly cuffed above the elbow. A smoker? Screwdrivers? Was he an Airplane mechanic? He had a white undershirt beneath it, tucked uniformly under his black leather belt and wrinkled cargo pants. The bottoms of his pants were tucked into his black leather lace up boots; the length of the pants caused them to spill over the top of his dirt-smudged boots and cuff around the ankle.
It was hard to tell the detail of the trailer behind him, as the picture was quite overexposed, making the aluminum frame merge seamlessly with the white photo paper. A discarded bottle lay on the shaded muddy ground, three feet below the trailer, and two half circles of concrete were on the concrete slab that lined up with the trailers edge. The concrete step on top was half the length and depth of the one it rested upon and left a two-inch gap between it and the plywood door. Four rusty metal hinges down the right side of the door, attaching it firmly to the long rectangular hole carved into the trailers windowless aluminum siding.
He stood confidently in front of the trailer and was leaning slightly to his right, thumbs casually hooked in the front pockets of his pants. The only jewelry he wears are the rings of his left pinky and right wedding finger and the watch on the wrist of his right hand. Squinting against the glare of the sun, his large pointed ears stick out from his short hair and sit directly in line with his deep-seated eyes and protruding brow.
Both sides of his face droop at an even forty-five-degree angle from the vertical line down the middle of his face. He has little expression on his face, the hint of a smirk, or is it a grimace? Who is he? I rummaged through the box to find another frame and swapped the photos out. I wonder how late Walgreens is open…is there even a Walgreens around here? I stood up and brushed the chunks of glass off of my grey sweat pants and onto the white carpet floor. “Remind me to vacuum that later…” I asked the empty room.
“What did you say?” How does she do that?
“Nothing Hun…”

Grabbing the newly framed photo, I left the sun filled white room and stumbled my way down the ill lit hall towards the kitchen. The orange shag carpet felt like a dirty worn teddy bear under my bare feet. The L-shaped yellow linoleum floor was carpeted with boxes and Jane stood knee deep amongst them, unpacking our mugs into the cupboard above the sink. The afternoon sun poured in from the small window beside her and illuminated her blonde curly hair. She had it pulled back into a bun and occasionally blew the loose strands of bangs from her face as she worked, carefully unwrapping the mugs from a box to her left and throwing the left over newspaper into a smaller box to her left. The fabric of her red flannel pajama bottoms scraped across the open boxes as she turned from side to side, swoosh, swoosh and she was wearing the rainbow colored wool socks my mother had made for her the month before. The cold wood floor of the dining room creaked quietly beneath my feet as I sat down on the round wooden stool across from her.
Seeing me, she placed the mug in her hand (the one with the oddly shaped cow on it and chipped handle that I got from Goodwill for 10¢) into the cupboard, pushed up the sleeves of her blue cotton long-sleeved shirt, and plunged her freckled ivory hand into the tall paper bag on the kitchen counter near the fridge. My eyes widened as she leaned over the counter and placed an honest to gosh real salt bagel into my empty hand. “Wow!” I exclaimed, “Where the heck did you find these in West Michigan?” Not that it mattered, it’d been so long since I’d had a real bagel, all that really mattered was that it was in my hand and would soon be in my grey alpaca covered belly. She locked her large brown eyes on my green, glass covered ones for a second, “A bagel shop,” she smirked and took a large bite from her egg bagel. I narrowed my eyes. Cute.
“Whatcha got there?” She asked, gesturing with the egg bagel to the framed photo in my hand. “Funny, I was about to ask you the same thing…”
“Oh?”
“Well sorta…if you replace the ‘what’ with a ‘who,’ then - yes.”
“I see…” She sat on the stool on the other side of the island from me and clapped her hand and bagel together in mock excitement. “Lemme see!” I held the frame like a frisbee and motioned it towards her. She laughed, placed her bagel into her mouth, and clapped her hands. Shaking my head I gently passed her the frame and began peeling the skin off of my bagel and eating it. I wrinkled my nose and watched her place her bagel on the white, germ infested, countertop. There was a ring of red lipstick residue on the bagel where her mouth had been. She flipped the frame over and stared at it for a while. “So who is he?” She smiled, revealing the small chip in her right front tooth and gave the picture back to me, “That’s my illegitimate Great Uncle Bill.” I paused and took that information in for a moment. “He’s your illegitimate Great Uncle Bill? What now?”
“Yea,” she said laughing, “He and my Great Aunt Marty were madly in love or whatever, neither wanted to get married.”
“Because…”
“He considered himself some rogue or something, and she didn’t want to give up control of her life to a man. No matter how much she loved him.”
“Oh, okay. So…they were crazy?” I said jokingly.
“Maybe…but being that my grandpa died when I was three he became the only guy left on that side of the family…and was like a grandfather to me.”
“So…let me get this straight. He’s your illegitimate Great Uncle Bill / Grandfather?”
“Yea, something like that.”
“Okay, cool.” I shrugged, “Fair enough!”
“Yup. “
“So, what’s with the army get up? Was he a Sergeant or Navy Seal or something?” I stuffed the large doughy cube I’d made of my bagel into my mouth and chewed it heartedly, hoping to cover up my complete ignorance of the military.
“It was Halloween.”
“…Oh.”