Imagery and Absence

I reach for the cool handle and press it down with my left hand as I push the door open.  It creaks and pops and separates from the doorframe to allow me access to the room. This room has been closed for some days, its usual occupant gone to college, leaving it much as I expected.  I’m struck simultaneously by the nearly overwhelming mess of it all and the distinctive, unmistakable smell of maleness—the scent of sweat and breath and too much cologne, burnt matches and spent candles. The ceiling fan whirs softly over head, left running, its chain tink tinking against the light globe, spinning a perpetual breeze trapped in the 10 x 10 space.  

I pick my way through clutter on the floor and lower myself to the chair where he sits, the place where he reads and writes and watches movies and laughs.  The worn purple brocade cushions of the chair give way to size and weight that must feel familiar, for he and I are nearly the same in both respects.   I survey the room:  Where to start?  The bed is a pile of pillows and blankets.  The floor is a pile of clothing, some inside out, some half folded, so that I decide it’s safer just to assume that everything needs to be washed.  The bookshelf is stuffed with books read, half-read, and unread, and folded notes, and guitar picks, and coins, and memorabilia with symbolic meaning for him, secrets I will never be asked to understand.  

Around my feet are strewn the remains of meals in the middle of the night.  Empty chip bags.  Candy wrappers.  The peanut butter jar I couldn't find this morning, with a table knife balanced on the top.  To the right, on the makeshift side table that is really a small, black, metal computer desk, stands an array of cups and glasses, their service done, and milk dried to the bottom that I'll have to scrub out with my usual inward and empty threats to leave the work to him.  And among the cups and glasses are empty Coke cans, some standing and some lying on their sides, all gape-mouthed, another sign of his odd, nocturnal nutrition.

I reason it out.  The milk goes with the peanut butter.  The Cokes go with the chips.  I could be angry at the mess he promised repeatedly to clean before he left.  But I decide, in the end, that perhaps it’s just a problem of definition.  After all, I have no idea what it looked like while he was there.  Perhaps it was much worse.  Perhaps this is what clean is to him.  I take it all in.  I breathe it in.  And I decide it’s too much work to begin at this hour.  But really, I’m simply reluctant to remove the evidence of his palpable presence there.  I’ll clean it before he comes home again.  For now, I can still feel him.