The Attic

A Story by James Wallace

The Attic

by James Wallace

All of his things were in the attic. That was where she had told her husband to take them after he had been killed. She had tried to convince herself, all that time ago, out of the sheer terror of loss, that it hadn’t all been a waste of time, that somehow her boy was still with her, that he had simply just stepped into the next room. But every time she had seen the things that had been his, the memories embroiled within them would violently yank her back to reality. So she had told her husband to take it all up there, padlock the door and put away the key where she would never find it. She needed to fool herself, to hide from the pain; to just make it all go away. It hadn’t. It had just lurked instead.

Much time had passed since those things had been hidden up here, and in that stretch, the husband too had gone away. For many years after that, the woman grew older and more alone, still trying to duck memories that floated above her head. At last, she finally understood why she could no longer hide. So a man had come over in this late, sun-drenched morning to open the lock on the attic door, but he had said that it was too old and rusty, so he had just cut it off instead. The moment had finally come, she decided. It was time to stand up and look back.

Oddly enough, when the war the country was now embroiled in had first started, the one plastered it seemed on every channel every day, she had not initially made any connection. She, like pretty much everyone else, was full of patriotic indignation. Her country had been attacked and we deserved retribution – we needed to fight and at first, the war had gone well. We had chased the evil-doers and run them into holes. Everywhere our forces stepped, our enemies had scattered like so many vermin. Enthusiasm was ripe and the flag flew proudly everywhere. The ships were steaming out of port, the planes and helicopters, with their silk-gray paint around the star, were flying out. They were not yet burning; they were not yet twisted pieces on the ground. The soldiers in their crisp uniforms and battle flags were marching out; they were not yet mangled or dead. The war in the beginning was going so well and almost everyone was convinced that it was the right and proper thing to do; our inalienable right.

Time went on, but the war did not end. Depending on who you cared to listen to, it was still very much on target (with unforeseeable mitigating circumstances), or now nothing short of a complete disaster. The old woman’s mind began to change. Now, unlike before, the war did not make as much sense; the justification a lot less clear. By the same token, a new thing became clearer in her head and she wondered why it had not been there before. Why she, of all people, had not made that connection between her own past and the daily count of terminated lives. Another boy or girl and to her they were just that, children, killed in the line of duty. So recently grown, so recently off the playground and until they had met that bullet or that bomb, their eyes so recently bright. And those daily tallies of innocents meant another plane load of flag-draped coffins (the ones the government no longer wanted anyone to see), all identical, all looking as her son’s had, all robbing their occupants of their individuality. When all this had become clear to her, so too did the anger rise and it was identical to how she had felt when that other war had taken her son. She did not need to see those coffins hidden away because she knew only too well what a shallow gesture it was, a far too late show of reverence. It was the tired way the old had always used to justify their willingness to kill off the bright-eyed youth.

So it was this realization, this act of remembrance, that had finally convinced her that putting the things away had been wrong; something like this just could not be hidden in a room.

The short climb up the steps that lay behind the door that had been locked for so long was difficult. Not because she was old, but because she had never seen where her husband had put all the things. How had he arranged it; piled with disregard or stacked with reverence? It made her nervous to approach the top of the steps. She almost felt that somehow her son would be there waiting and smiling, still there with his things. But it was just the boxes, neatly stacked in the middle of an empty room. She stood still for a long time at the top of the stairs, looking down at her son’s possessions that were all covered by the years of dust, the smell of forgetfulness. They were so alone. She took her first tentative step forward and in her head, his voice sang out. She could hear it as she approached; it came out of every object that had used to be his. He had touched it all. All of it had, at one time or another, meant something to him. Each object held the same voice of different times of a life so dear, so short. So meaningless.

She sat all day with the things in the warm, somewhat stuffy attic. The setting sun clipped red through the single dirty and smeared window on the far side of the room. Spiders built webs on top of cobwebs. The light glinted off a dulled metal trophy laying on its side in one box. Her son had won that just before he had gone away. There was his name, on the side. Underneath was a cradle of baby clothes, the ones that had been her favorites, the ones she had wanted to keep even though they no longer fit. On one tiny shirt, an old food stain she must have missed. She sighed: it wasn’t like her to do that. Two rattles beautifully crafted from wood; even now they kept their shine. All the joyful banging by her son and still they radiated. The first book he had read by himself, a favorite stuffed animal he had always slept with, even when he had grown big and strong. His baby book. Why had she bothered with that?

Deep down, she found another box, the box that had put a period on all her effort, all her indescribable love. A bronze star, a note: “we regret to inform you...”. Yes, the country had been in need and her son, just barely eighteen, had answered the call. He had been proud and eager and he was called a hero, but it wasn’t right. She had not gone through all the suffering and unbelievable joy of raising a child just to have him slaughtered for a need. Wrapped up in all our heroes is someone’s baby.

Now her country had said again that it had a need and today’s heroes, today’s babies had answered that call. War – the ultimate folly of men. And the rush to war, under the pretence of a last resort, was only so much rhetoric by those old men spoiling for a fight. It was just a game to them and they played it with the enthusiasm of over-zealous boys in a backyard. After all, to them, the ships and planes were just models and more could be easily bought. Soldiers were only plastic and easily replaced after they were broken and stuffed into line after line of anonymous, flag-draped boxes.

Without control then, a long overdue tear came down the old woman’s weathered cheek, but it was not for her. As she laid her hands on the boxes, as she physically tried to wrap her arms around all that was left of her son, so hard raised for nothing, the tear was for all the young mothers of today, that many years from now, will have attics of their own.