Unearthed : A Short Story
Clara was transfixed on her dressing table.
“It’s definitely here somewhere,” she mumbled.
The table top was a freshly organized space. In the last several minutes, strewn silver jewelry was replaced into trinket boxes. Cosmetics had found their way into mini cloth bags. Empty bottles of eau de toilette were discarded. Traces of old receipts and loose change were completely diminished; and not a single strand of hair prevailed on the glass surface. It was void of anything miscellaneous, and everything else on it had a reason for being there. The dressing table was the last place she had looked, but it wasn’t there.
Clara turned to her right, where the full-length mirror was. A pair of blue eyes stared back at her. Curling a strawberry blonde lock of hair on her index finger, she examined her figure; donned in a casual ensemble of a loose-fitting top, blue jeans, and sheepskin slippers with no jewelry. In the background, a chest of drawers was seen by an ivory wall.
It was a familiar part of the house, nothing extraordinary. The chest was a brilliant sheen of ebony and had four wide and vertically adjoined drawers with circular brass knobs. Its height was half the length of the mirror, probably reaching Clara’s hips. Not much sat on top of it – only a broken lamp with its shade detached, and a few decorative pieces. Dust peeked out from its edges.
There was no real need for it when she had bought it a year ago. Clara was content with having her things in plain sight, and there was not much that needed keeping anyway. It was Howard who insisted on getting it.
“You’d finally have a place to keep your things,” he had said in front of the glass display. “You’ll need it sooner or later.”
“I like finding my things where I leave them.”
“We could put on labels.”
“No,” Clara maintained.
“Well, I want it to keep my things.”
“Use your own place then,” she retorted.
It had not taken her long to realize why Howard was smirking. The chest of drawers moved into the house that afternoon.
Clara had to bend over when she rummaged the drawers. She had guessed it was there, since pretty much everything ended up in the chest. Howard never bothered with the labels since they had bought it, but he had set rules that were easy to remember. The drawers at the bottom were designated for hardware, mostly his things. The ones on top, however, kept everything else. She couldn’t care less though; these days a rubber hose inhabited the same drawer as a curling iron.
Clara wondered if she had overlooked anything inside. It couldn’t have been in the bottom ones. Most of it was still hardware, except for a bouquet of red plastic roses and a severed piece of candelabra. It could have been in the upper drawers, the second one perhaps, which contained handbags, purses and a steel safe but only a few pennies and loose thread fell out, though the bags had been flipped inside out and thoroughly shook. The safe took a bit of prying as its keys had been misplaced, but the steel clasp had no sooner given way to the crowbar, revealing twenty dollar notes and some high school memorabilia. She had gone through all the drawers again before she finally gave up, and she was not keen on probing the space for a third time.
Still in contemplation, Clara’s attention was diverted to a tall piece of furniture on the left. She had looked there, after the unfruitful search at the chest. The bookshelf was her favorite piece in the room. Unlike the chest, she had painstakingly handpicked, built and positioned the shelf all on her own. She even went through the trouble of polishing and painting it white, for aesthetic purposes. It had been, and still was her pride and joy.
The only thing she didn’t quite like was that it towered above her vertically which made it challenging for her to properly put into place – so it rested oddly on the floor in a horizontal orientation. She had figured she would attend to it another time, once she found some way to lift it. Nevertheless, for over a year, academic copies and literary paperbacks remained inadequately balanced in the narrow but tall spaces between each shelf divider. It was only when Howard had moved in, that the shelf received its rightful rotation.
“Looks great, doesn’t it?”
“I suppose,” she shrugged.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Well, it looks a lot better now but –
“But what?” he asked.
“I could have done it myself.”
“Clare, it’s okay to ask for help if you can’t handle it, y’know.”
“I swear I could have done it. It was just a matter of time,” argued Clara.
Howard pulled her close. “Well, if you could do everything,” he started.
“You wouldn’t need me now, would you?”
The pursuit of the missing item had been unproductive at the bookshelf as it had been with the chest. After it had been reverted into its correct orientation, she had settled for the shelf’s most accessible part for her things, the middle. That was the only place Clara had been compelled to look. She didn’t bother with the higher parts as it was considerably beyond her reach, nor did she care for the lower ones as they were unlikely to be there, holding only old hardbacks with covers faced downwards and several boxes of Howard’s paraphernalia. There was no way it could have surfaced anywhere else apart from the middle shelf, if it would.
Clara had assumed it was concealed somewhere by the right corner, where she usually kept her things within the room. The tiny clearance housed shopping coupons, newspaper cutouts, some cards, keys and a television remote, alternated by decorative pieces. Her purse had been there as well, sitting partially on a few bank notes. When it wasn’t there, she scrutinized the other end of the shelf occupying literary paperbacks. She was particularly fond of the collection, having almost read each piece of work more than once. It had little variety, mostly just books by Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, though she had preferred neither.
Her favorite was The Awakening by Kate Chopin, a novel that initially belonged to her late mother. Although she had read it countless times, it was her current read yet again, and she had suspected the missing article had been used as its bookmark. Having not found anything, she had skimmed through the rest of the books, to arrive at the same result. She had hoped it was there, given that her collection of books was off-limits to anyone. No one else was allowed to retrieve anything from her space without her direct permission, especially not Howard. She had become particularly defensive about it after that one night in bed, when he addressed the plot of her favorite novel.
“Unsensible.”
“Hmmm?”
“Why she’d even think of killing herself,” blurted Howard.
“What are you talking about?”
“Montpellier, I think.”
“Pontellier, Edna Pontellier. You’ve been reading my book!”
“Yeah I have. I don’t get it though.”
“What did you not get?”
“She could have gone back to her old life even if Robert was gone. It can’t be that hard to pick up where you left off.”
Clara sighed. “It’s not that simple, Howard. She would have lived a miserable life.”
“Well now the Chandeliers have a miserable life instead. Why couldn’t she think of the kids? Ungrateful little bitch.”
“Howard.”
“Sorry.”
Silence ensued.
“I hope you’re happy with me, Clare. I really do. I love you more than anything else in this world. You know that, don’t you?”
Not a word escaped her.
“I hope you sure as hell feel it. I don’t want you drowning cause’ I’m not giving you what you want.”
Once he fell asleep, she went into pieces.
The search had rendered Clara exhausted, but mostly thirsty. She stepped out of the room and paced towards the kitchen. It was not a conventional household space. Rightfully, it should have been called a kitchen counter, as it was all there was in the small, open space closely knitted to the living room. It did, however, have essential parts of a regular kitchen, such as an electric stovetop, an oven, a kettle and a refrigerator. There was a cabinet against the wall by the counter that stored kitchen utensils and dry food. A water cooler sat below the cabinet on the countertop. As she inched closer, she realized it was empty.
Clara reached out for the kettle, and found it easy to lift. She poured out the remainder of its contents into a mug and glugged it down. It barely quenched her thirst, but she figured she’d wait a few minutes for a sterilized batch of water. She lowered the kettle into the sink and turned on the water faucet. A few drops of water emerged, and then nothing.
“Goddamn it.”
She recalled the last time a utility bill went unpaid in the house. The electricity had gone out the day she entrusted Howard to settle the bills. He had attempted to get it back up with a few calls after he’d received a text from her, but he knew he had achieved nothing when he had to take the heat.
“I just told you Clare, I forgot!”
Clara was on the brink of tears. “Remind me not to ask, ever.”
“I’ve had a long day.”
“You said it was okay to ask for help! You swore to God you would!” she screamed.
Howard was devastated.
“Look Clare,” he pleaded. “It was a small mistake. I’m sorry and I’ll make sure I do it next time.”
“I hate it when people say that.”
“Say what? Oh, you mean sorry? The one thing I’ve chosen to say even though I could use a little less slack for a minor screw up? Well –
“Next time.” Her voice cracked. “Next time. It sounds as if the present is never as important as the future.”
“Well, what more do you want me to do? I’ve already phoned them, all we can do is wait,” he said impatiently.
“Okay." With that, Clara stormed into her room.
It’s gone.
Those words resonated within her, over and over again. She couldn’t decide if it had been misplaced outside the house, or stolen. It seemed improbable that it could have been anywhere else in the house, if not the room. She was sure she had hidden it there, somewhere safe, but she just couldn’t remember where it was. It wasn’t just the chest and the bookshelf that she had searched – every possible place in the room, including her closet and her study had been scouted out. She had not merely checked the open floor and underneath the furniture, she had even swept the place clean looking for it.
Clara was disappointed. She felt burdened even, now that she had to get a new one. Things weren’t cheap these days, and she certainly wasn’t making any more money. Reluctantly, she adjourned into the room to retrieve her cellphone. She gazed at the neat and orderly state of her room, finding it ironic. The frenzy had evoked some organization, on a positive note. She forced a smile on her face.
“Well,” she declared enthusiastically. “At least there’s no spring cleaning left to do!”
Clara scanned the room for her cellphone. She couldn’t see it in plain sight. She did, however, see her tote sprawled on the bed sheet, realizing it was probably there. She had not used her phone since she came home to a scavenger hunt. She unzipped the bag and dug her right hand into it. A smile formed on her lips, a genuine one. Clara removed her right hand from the bag and marveled at the items that she had just produced. She slipped the cellphone back into the tote, deciding that there was no longer a need for it.
Her eyes were fixed on the flight tickets she held.
She turned to the suitcase, next to the tote.
“And, moreover, to succeed,” she murmured. “The artist must possess the courageous soul.”