Set in stone

When I was twenty, I inherited an old stone chess set from my Grandpa. At first I didn’t notice the missing pieces or the false bottom. I noticed the cold, grey, stone it was made of. He taught me how to play with a worn wooden set. I didn’t know he had a nice stone one. I had only a few days left of my break before I had to head back for the rest of semester. That was when I slid the heavy lid off the top and noticed the missing pieces. I set the rooks, and pawns to the side, but as I moved the box there was still a slight rattling sound. Curiosity led to me ripping out the silk lining and finding the hunting knife and polaroids. 

            The knife was rusted. The polaroids were of some woman I didn’t know. Or at least didn’t recognize. 

She looked to be in her twenties with long blonde hair. Three of the pictures were of her smiling, posed with a hand on hip in front of a gas station or at some scenic overlook on the coast. But in the others she wasn’t smiling. She had a serious look on her face. In two of them her cheeks shined and her stance was tight, with her arms wrapped around herself. These seven pictures were in the woods. Her clothes were the same in all of the pictures: a red, hooded rain jacket and wide legged pants. 

“Hey, do you know who this is?” I asked my mom after dinner the following day.

Mom pulled her hands out of the sink. A cluster of bubbles stuck to her arm. She dried her hands looking at the picture I held of the woman smiling at a gas station pump, leaning against a 1970’s Cadillac.

“No,” she replied as she picked up a wet plate. “But grandpa had a car just like that.” She tore her eyes away from the picture for a second to dry the plate. She paused and turned back to me. “Where’d you get that?”

“It was in the chess set I got from grandpa” 

“Really?” She shook her head and put down the plate. “It wasn’t just pieces?”

“I guess not, there was a false bottom,” I fanned out the other ten pictures in my hands. “Ten polaroids of this lady and a rusted hunting knife.”

Mom shook her head again looking at the polaroids, twisting her mouth into a sour expression. I felt a surge of worry about showing her these pictures. Maybe she wasn’t a distant cousin.

She picked one polaroid from the middle and held close to her face, inspecting it. After a moment she reached for another from my hands. 

Looking behind her I saw the stack of plates and cups from dinner now air drying. I handed the whole stack to my mom and walked past her to the counter. I dipped my hands into hot water and began scrubbing. 

Mom stood leaning against the opposite wall of the kitchen tutting and shaking her head with each new polaroid she looked at. Finally she stacked them behind her and crossed her arms looking down at the linoleum.

“What’s the matter, mom?” I said after a few minutes of drying the cups.

She sighed and lifted her eyes to meet mine. “Nothing.”

“It must be something,” I chewed my lip for a second. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I just…” she stepped forward and began to put away the dishes in the cabinets. “Grandma and Grandpa used to fight over him going out to dentistry conventions all the time.”

“So you think these pictures are from one of these outings,” I tried to make my voice as casual as I could. I knew their divorce was really hard on my mom.

“Yep” she said, pushing a serving bowl a little too hard onto a shelf. “That must have been what he was up to. I always thought he might have been…” her voice was calm and level. She ripped open the drawer for the silverware and began to toss the forks and spoons in. “He promised me that it wasn’t like that. That he really was where he said he was, meeting investors to open his own practice. That mom was just being paranoid.”

I pulled the plug on the drain and turned to the other side of the kitchen. My eyes drifted back to the photos that were stacked neatly on the other counter. 

“Why was she crying, then?” I said without thinking. 

She paused and stared at the drawer. “He probably broke it off with her.” Her voice was angry now. Even angrier than the time I played with the toothpaste samples and got it all over the waiting room wall and chairs before her first day.

Why take a picture of her when she’s crying? I thought but managed to catch the words before I blurted them out. 

That night when I closed my eyes all I could see was the woman. Her eyes wet with tears looking at the photographer. I rolled over to my side and closed my eyes again. Just think of something else.

Grandpa’s boat. Grandpa and I sat in that boat almost everyday in the summer. The creak of the boat and splash of the water as it bobbed in the lake. 

“Do we have to?” I whined, staring at the fish in his hands. “It’s gross!” 

“It’s grosser to eat poop,” he grabbed the knife next to him. “That’s what you’re doing if you don't clean a fish properly." He sliced into the scaly white underbelly, revealing the organs beneath. There was a ripping sound as he pulled the insides away. 

I stared disgusted for a moment before turning to look at the water shimmering. “I don’t like fishing,” I whispered.

“Sure, you do Davey. It’s part of being a man,” He paused as tossed the guts into the lake. “Hey, what’s the difference between a guitar and a fish?”

I looked back at him, confused. He smiled as he scraped the last of the debris from the inside of the ribs. 

“You can't tuna a fish!” He laughed, and I couldn’t help the edges of my lips pulling up, even as I met the dead fish’s yellow eyes.

I smiled to myself in bed. I glanced over to the hunting knife and the chess set I left on the floor next to my suitcase. There had to be a reason to take those pictures and hide them. I had two days until I had to head back. That could be enough time to figure it out if I could talk to those who knew him before I did.

“I’m going to visit Mr. Murphy,” I told mom at breakfast. 

She was delighted at first but then got serious and said: “Please don’t bring up grandpa’s…” she paused, searching for the right word. “Mistakes. You shouldn’t bring out people’s dirty laundry, after they pass.”

Mr. Murphy was one of grandpa’s fishing buddies. A friend, I guess you could say. The guy he would get beers with when the lake froze over in the winter. He was always around whenever grandpa and I would fish together. He’d stop his boat next to ours and talk to grandpa while I played with the fishing pole and stuck my fingers in the water.

I parked in a spot close to the entrance of the retirement home. There was only one other car in the entire lot. My hand drifted to the hard plastic edges of polaroids in my jacket pocket.

A nurse led me down a beige hall. I could hear muffled coughing. The smell of cleaning supplies was constant. She stopped at a door marked 201. 

Knocking hard on the door she yelled: “Mr. Murphy! Someone is here to see you!”

“Come in!” a raspy voice answered.

She opened the door revealing a small simple room. The same short blue and grey carpet of the halls continued. The walls were white. A hospital bed with a weathered quilt sat at one end. Opposite of it was a set of wooden drawers with a tv playing the third hour of Today. Frames with children and a woman with shoulder length black hair smiled back at me from the left side of the tv. On the right side was a gift basket from girl scout troop 310. In a green recliner beneath a window sat Mr. Murphy. 

“Davey!” he said as I walked in. The nurse shut the door behind me. “How are you?”

“Good,” I said out of habit. I opened my mouth to ask him the same question but I stopped as I saw the oxygen tube under his nose.

“Take a seat,” he gestured to his bed. I walked over and sat at the foot of it, the thick quilt making me sit leaning to one side. He angled up the remote in his hand and muted the tv. “Sorry I couldn’t make it.”

“No worries.” I paused but then saw worry on his face. “Mom loved the flowers you sent.”

He smiled at my words and we began to chat. I talked about the cold weather. He asked how school was going and what the hell I was going to do with a degree in history. Through every topic my hands moved to the polaroids. Eventually, I took them out and straightened the stack in my hands.

“Whacha you got there?” Mr. Murphy asked.

“Oh,” I felt sweaty all of the sudden. “Just some pictures I found in grandpa’s old chess set.” I handed them over to him. He flipped through them, tilting his head to look through his bifocals. His bottom lip stuck out more with each picture.

Halfway through he asked “You show these to your mom?”

“Yes”

“What did she have to say,” he flipped to the next picture. 

“Just something about the trips he would take.” I paused a beat. “And that he broke it off.” 

“She does know then.” He smacked his lips together. He held out the polaroids.

“Yes” I said leaning forward on the bed taking the photos back.

“Samatha deserved better than some man nearly twice her age. And your Grandma didn’t deserve having that behind her back.” He looked me right in the eyes as he said it. “I told him to never get involved with politicians."

“Politians?” I pressed. Mr. Murphy stared at the door I came in.

“She was the daughter of the mayor of San Francisco," He said after a minute. “I told him to end it after I met her when Grandma was in hospital having your mom. He never mentioned her again.” He looked back at the pictures in my hand.

I looked down at them, too. The woman’s eyes were wide and her mouth was part way open like she was saying something. 

“I guess he really did love her if kept pictures of her.” His worried look returned. “Hey, don’t tell your mom about this, okay? She doesn’t need to know about this right now.”

I got to my car and pulled out my phone immediately. I pulled up a browser and typed “San Francisco mayor’s daughter.” The first few links were about modern mayors and their daughters. I scrolled until one headline caught my eye: “A Forty Year Cold Case: The Missing Mayor’s Daughter.” 

I clicked on it. The photo loaded in of a blonde woman with a bright smile and blonde hair.  In one photo she had a red jacket tied around her waist.  Her name was Samantha. She was an up and coming newspaper reporter. She was an animal lover. She was Miss California. She went missing with thousands of dollars she stole from her parents.

My heart pounded in my chest. I sat in the parking lot for what felt like hours, maybe it was. Nothing was the way I knew it to be. Why would time be any different?

The sun was setting when I got home. Mom was in the kitchen peeling potatoes.

“Mom, I got to tell you something.”

She turned, placing the peeler and half done potato on the edge of the sink.

“Okay” 

“Grandpa was…” I started. “He…”

“Stop right there,” mom walked toward me, her face serious. “Everything Grandpa did after dad died was for us. Everything before that doesn’t matter.”

“But what about-” 

“Don’t ruin this!” She was yelling now. “He did so much for us! I wouldn’t have a business without him! You wouldn’t be in school!” 

Her eyes glistened with tears as she continued, “We owe him the decency to be mourned well!” 

She breathed in, shakily. Then out. “Dad got his turn. Now it’s Grandpa’s. Someday it will be mine or yours.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I just hugged her. 

My mind raced as I patted mom’s back. What about Samantha? Did she get her turn?

I burned the pictures the next day while my mom was at work.  

I poured charcoal from the paper bag into the grill. I placed the pictures on top. Samatha’s eyes staring up at me as I sprayed lighter fluid on top. Her cheeks were now wet even in the ones where she was smiling and laughing. 

“I’m sorry,” I told her and struck a match. Smoke rose. The white edges of the polaroids turned black and curled. The smoke was dark and smelled of chemicals. I put the lid on top of it and sat down in a plastic lawn chair.

She had already been mourned. Her parents were probably already dead. But grandpa had just died. It was his turn to be remembered well.

            I closed my eyes and saw Grandpa laughing after his joke. He pushed his fishing hat up to wipe the sweat from his brow. His laugh drifted away as he placed hollow fish back into the cooler. My smile faded. The wind blew through the pines.

            “Just because you’re the man of the house now doesn’t mean you can’t laugh,” His smiling eyes met mine. “Even when doing gross stuff like this.”

            He wiped the knife on his shirt, smudging it.

            “As a man, there are some things you don’t want to do, but you have to.” He grabbed the next fish, the last one we caught. It struggled in his hands. “For your family.”