A Safe Deposit

Three co-lessors enter a bank’s strongroom to open a mysterious, recently-inherited safe deposit box.

Photo by Alsu Vershinina on Unsplash

Co-lessors – that’s what my father thought I needed. As if a woman surpassing middle age isn’t capable of owning her own safe deposit box.

My daughter touches my elbow – she has taken to doing that lately, as if in preparation for my senility. “You remembered the key?”

“Yes, Colleen, I remembered the key.”

Colleen recoils her hand and tightens her mouth. She trails behind me, pulling along eight-year-old Louie, through the thick steel doors of the bank’s strongroom.

Seven years. For seven years I carted my father from doctor to doctor and cajoled him into taking his meds and dressed him and bathed him and fed him and dealt with his mood swings as his mind deteriorated – his brain tangled with plaques, bleached and shrunken and cracked like the mineral-starved coral on a dying reef. Seven years, with nothing but an occasional I don’t know how you do it from my brother. And this is my father’s gratitude, the same measly fraction of his estate that my useless brother received, aside from this box of which I’m a co-lessor.

Inside the strongroom are packed rows upon rows of orderly rectangular boxes, a brickwork of secrets. The bank manager approaches number 434 and pulls out a tiny silver key.

I fumble through my keychain, and together the manager and I insert our keys.

A crackling overhead – lights flicker.

The manager frowns at the ceiling, then shrugs and opens the door onto a sturdy black box. Pulling it out, he sets it on a table.

“I’ll give you three a few minutes alone,” he says. “If you need me, I’ll be just outside.”

Though he leaves the massive door propped open while he hovers unobtrusively outside, there is a strange stillness in the room, the latent knowledge that, were he to shut that door, the three of us would have mere hours’ worth of air to breathe before we suffocated.

Louie peeks around Colleen’s elbow and eyes the safe deposit box. “It’s not very big.”

“Don’t touch anything. I wouldn’t expect much; your great-grandpa wasn’t particularly generous,” I say, though in spite of myself a surge of anticipation thrums through my fingers. Maybe – just maybe – he’d thought of me.

Colleen tucks her arms around herself. “It’s cold in here.”

The hair on my arms stands on end, and I shiver. This drafty old building is over air-conditioned, as so many banks are.

I lay my hands on the lid of the heavy black box, and the lights seem to brighten, casting an uncomfortable glare. I lift the lid, and the glare intensifies with a sudden hum.

A crack – a flicker –

The lights go out, dropping darkness like a thick cloth over the room.

A jarring thump, a clatter –

Colleen screams.

The lights flick back on, exposing Colleen’s round, frightened mouth and Louie’s wide eyes. I compose my face, all signs of momentary fear vanishing like a beetle scuttling away from the sunlight.

The manager rushes into the strongroom. “Everyone alright?”

My eyes drop to the floor. The box is upside down on the worn red carpet.

Colleen puts a hand to her heart. “That was eerie. It’s almost as if someone –”

“We must have knocked over the box when the lights went off,” I say, cutting her off.

“These power outages, we get them all the time.” The bank manager reaches for the fallen box, but I shoo him away. With assurances and apologies, he slips out of the room again.

Colleen clutches Louie to her.

I crouch down to pick up the safe deposit box. “Get a grip, Colleen. It was a power surge.”

“I have a grip,” she snaps.

I lift up the box to put it back on the table, and a bundle of polaroids scatters across the floor.

I stoop and pick one up.

It’s blank. They’re all blank – pitch black nothingness where there ought to be photos. I flip it over.

There’s a date on the back. Dec. 24, 1963.

A date. But no photograph.

Colleen lets out a breath. “Wow.” She crouches and gently fans out the pile of blank photos.

A safe deposit box full of empty polaroids. My father’s last gift to me.

Typical.

I throw the polaroid onto the table in disgust and open my mouth to call for the manager, but suddenly my voice freezes in my throat.

My father is standing in a corner – threadbare cardigan, baggy pants on his thin legs. Bloodshot, staring eyes.

I stumble backwards against the table.

My father is in the strongroom.

White hot and painful as a jolt of electricity, an image flashes before me – My father in a crisp suit, talking business over the phone, tossing me a piece of toast by way of breakfast. No Good morning. No Happy Birthday. No Ten years old, when did you get so big? Just burnt toast for breakfast.

“Mom?” Colleen’s voice shatters the image, and I’m back in the strongroom. “Did you take a look at these?”

My father is still there, lurking in a corner. Watching me.

I point with a trembling hand. “Do you see that?”

She squints into the corner. “See what?”

“You don’t see it?”

“What are you pointing at?”

My breath comes hard and fast. On shaking legs, I rush out of the strongroom.

“Mom?”

I don’t stop.

Behind me, I catch Colleen’s voice addressing the bank manager. “Can I get an envelope for these, please?”

I hurtle through the bank lobby, out the door, and to the car. My fingers fumbling, I punch in the code on Colleen’s car door and collapse into the driver’s seat.

But I’m not alone.

He’s in the passenger’s seat, a red spiderweb of broken capillaries across his nose.

Another flash – Bone-shaking booms rattling the house. My father’s irritated voice. Get a grip. It’s just thunder.

With a wordless shriek, I tumble backward onto the asphalt.

“Mom, what is your deal?” Angry fear laces Colleen’s voice as she barrels across the parking lot toward me, tugging Louie behind her.

“There! Right there!” I scramble to my feet, pointing at her car.

The passenger’s seat is empty.

I turn, and my father stands beside a tree, his unblinking eyes on me.

“There! Do you see him?”

“See who? There’s nobody there.”

“Mom?” Louie’s brown eyes glimmer with the threat of tears.

“You can’t just storm out of the bank –”

“Tell me you see him!” I stagger behind the car, trying to put something between myself and my silent, stony-eyed father.

“Mom, I’m scared.” Louie tugs insistently on Colleen’s sleeve.

Colleen’s hushed voice is steeped with fury. “Mom, I don’t know what your issue is with grandpa, but –”

“I wanna go home.” Louie grabs Colleen’s arm.

“Louie,” Colleen snaps, “just get a grip. Give Mommy a minute to talk to grandma, and then we can go.”

That’s when I see it. Like wall of mirrors, reflecting me and only me back at myself, on and on to infinity. Then the mirror shatters, revealing not a wall but a window, and I see us.

My father, myself, Colleen, Louie – connected as if by a line of fishing wire, yanking us one by one, generation by generation.

In Colleen’s face, I see the fear she covers with anger. I see the hunch of Louie’s shoulders as he turns inward at his mother’s words.

I see my father, a silent specter with grieving eyes.

I see them.

And I see myself, my knee-jerk anger from a deep, bitter well.

The jittering panic in my head quiets.

My movements are jerky and awkward, my legs weak, as I circle the car. Colleen braces herself. For a nasty remark, for an argument – for me.

My hand on the car for balance, I lean down to Louie. “I’m – sorry.” I glance up at Colleen, whose head is cocked to one side, her eyebrows furrowed. “I’m sorry I scared you, Louie. Grandma’s okay now.”

He’s still there, my father. I can sense him, though I have to force myself to look up to where he stands beside the tree.

The agony in his eyes has softened.

He raises one hand to his heart – his skin looks younger now, the age spots faded – and nods, just once. Then, he turns toward the bank, his slow, weary shuffle growing stronger with each step. He glances behind him once more, then rounds the corner of the building.

Breathless, I follow him.

Around the corner, I see only an empty sidewalk and a patch of bright pink peonies jostling in the wind.

---

We’re waiting at a stop light when Colleen pulls an envelope from her purse. “You didn’t really take a good look at these back there.”

Fatigue runs through my body like the calm after a storm, but I find the strength in my fingers to open the envelope, to pull out one of the blank polaroids.

But there are no blank polaroids in the envelope, no black, empty squares. Not anymore.

Little scenes, like vignettes in black and white. Me, smiling on roller skates under a hot, gleaming sun. My brother bounding down the stairs in little plaid pajamas. A picnic in the park, beside a patch of peonies, grey in the photo but a luscious pink in my memory. My mother, still young and lithe and healthy.

My breath catches. How did I not see?

I slide one of the polaroids out of the envelope, gingerly pinching its faded edges between my fingers.

Dec. 24^th, 1963.

I flip it over to the picture that I couldn’t see before.

It’s a Christmas tree, somehow beautiful even in shades of black and white and grey. My chubby childhood arms, reaching up to place the angel. My father beneath me, hoisting me on his shoulders. There is no crisp suit in this photo, no briefcase, no always-ringing telephone. Just the Christmas tree, and me, and my father, smiling.

Merry Christmas! I hope that this time of year finds you well and that you enjoyed this little piece of flash fiction. What are your formative Christmas memories from your childhood? Although I had so many lovely Christmases, some of my most vivid memories are the many Christmases on which I woke up with strep throat ( So fun. Much merry.). Please share your memories in the comments!