Another short story written for my writing class. Enjoy.
For Cohen’s sixth birthday, his father bought him a guitar with a book of sheet music and an authentic leather case. It was given to him with a red bow wrapped around the neck, and a small card sticking out from beneath the ribbon. It read Love, Dad. The two of them stayed up past Cohen’s bedtime, practising chords and sharing songs. The next morning, he was gone.
At the time, he never understood why erasing his father was so important, but his mother wiped the windows and walls clean of his memory, scrubbing with tears and anger. All traces of his father had been effaced from the house, except for a wife, a son, and that guitar with the red bow. Cohen hid it beneath his bed, keeping it out of reach of his mother’s desperate grasp. He didn’t understand why his father didn’t return, or why he left in the first place. He just kept telling himself that tomorrow; he’d be back.
After ten years, the mantra grew weak and even though a part of him wanted to believe that his father would come home, he knew he wouldn’t. He hadn’t tried to contact them in years, and his mother had even stopped hounding him with lawyers. She said that they didn’t need his money or his pity. He left them behind for some selfish reason. They didn’t need to beg him for anything. His mother had been so desperate to cut him out of their lives that she ended up taking Cohen’s memories with her.
In the years following, Cohen’s recollection of his father began to decay and often he would remember things that he knew he had never experienced. Others’ stories of ballpark visits with their fathers would fill his head until he couldn’t remember what was real anymore. The only memory that he could hold onto rested in the hollowed shell of his guitar that lay dormant beneath his bed. His mother offered to sell it, but Cohen refused to let go of it.
Deep down, he believed that if he got rid of that guitar, he would forfeit his only concrete memory of his father. He had struggled with time to remember his face without photographs and his personality without stories. He never told his mother, but he believed that the last memory he would ever retain was attached to the guitar. He was afraid of losing it, of letting go of the last piece of him that he could say he knew was real. It may not have been his father, but it held onto pieces of him that Cohen didn’t want to let go of.
Sometimes he would catch his mother standing in his doorway, her eyes locked on the edge of the bed. She would stand there for a while, her legs locked and her movements minimal. Sometimes she would sniffle, as if disguising her tears, and sometimes she would just stare. He knew that she didn’t have the courage to take it herself, but he also knew that he didn’t have any either to open up that case.
They both convinced one another that time had healed all of their wounds, and life could return to normal. But Cohen knew, and his mother knew, that as long as that guitar was in the house, they wouldn’t be over it. He kept the guitar for selfish reasons, knowing that it would always be a barrier between the two of them. Yet, even though the guitar held onto remnants of the man that hadn’t contacted them in years, Cohen was beginning to think that it wasn’t just the guitar that reminded them of his father.
- - -
“Mom?” Cohen stirred his mother from her daze, the clothesbasket in her arms threatening to fall.
“Oh, sorry,” she muttered, moving farther into his room to gather the items off the floor. “Just trying to decide what’s clean, and what’s dirty.”
“Right,” he mumbled.
He squeezed past her into the room, pulling his sheets off of his bed to add to her basket. They moved in silence, the only sound the rustling of fabric as it passed from one hand to the other. To them, this was family time.
“Can you put two dryer sheets in this time,” Cohen asked, his eyes glued to the floor. “It makes them smell better, longer.”
She cracked a tight-lipped smile and nodded, “Of course.”
From the corner of his eye, he watched as her gaze travelled from the basket in her arms to the edge of the bed once more. Awkwardly, he cleared his throat and pulled on a sweater that was draped across his bed, “I’m going over to Jay’s, so I won’t be home until late.”
“You have brunch with your grandparents tomorrow morning, you can’t be out too late,” she answered, turning her back to his bed.
“Mom, I’ll be fine. We’re just going to play some video games,” he shrugged.
“Well, don’t forget the last time you did this. I want you home by ten o’clock.”
“Ten? Are you serious?” Cohen groaned. “Mom, ten is a child’s curfew. I’m sixteen, I’m not a child anymore.”
“Sometimes you don’t act like it,” she pointed out.
“Mom, come on.”
“Ten thirty, then.”
“You’re being so unfair. Eleven thirty.”
“Cohen, don’t try to negotiate. Ten thirty.”
“Eleven?”
She looked at him irately, her lips pursed tightly, “Fine, but not a minute over eleven. Do you hear me?”
Cohen let out a heavy sigh, “Yeah, yeah – I hear you.”
He grabbed his wallet and phone from his dresser, and squeezed past her out of his room. She stood in his doorway, watching as he hurried down the stairs, pausing only on the landing to fix his unruly hair in the mirror. As the front door swung open, he yelled a form of a farewell before it closed loudly behind him, echoing throughout the empty house.
- - -
Cohen decided to try and sneak through the garage door in hopes of muting his entry. He had easily lost track of time, as he knew he would. The house seemed to be in a deep sleep, and he found no traces of his mother as he passed through the kitchen, the dining room, and the foyer. He took the stairs slowly and quietly, holding his breath as he stepped around the noisy planks. He peered around the corner, and let loose his breath, as the space under his mother’s door was as dark as the rest of the house.
He shrugged out of his sweater and tossed it back onto his bed. Even if his mother did happen to catch him, the worst she had up her sleeve was a two-day grounding. She didn’t have the nerve to punish him, which resulted in his lack of respect for curfew and following orders. Her lack of strength was also why she couldn’t remove the guitar when Cohen was out, or asleep. But that wasn’t to say that Cohen had that courage, either.
He glanced down at his feet, and noticed that the top of the case was sticking out. Why shouldn’t he have the courage to uncover it? It was just a stupid guitar, as his mother would say. Why shouldn’t he open it?
He reached down and grasped the head, tugging it out from its tomb. There was a fine layer of dust across the surface that fell into the ridges of the leather and hugged the limp bow. He held his breath as he tugged at the ribbon and it away. The latches on the side moved easily, and in the silence they snapped sharply. He pushed the lid upwards, and his eyes grew wide as they fell upon the instrument that had cost their family so much pain. But it was also the keepsake that seemed to hold onto that happiness he had felt when his father had given it to him.
Automatically, he drew the guitar from its bed and placed it on his lap. He could imagine that the chords were still in perfect tune, and the strings were still taut and firm. The tips of his fingers grazed the contour of the guitar, tracing over each piece as if he had to commit it to memory. He wanted to remember the way his father had held it, and the way he laughed every time Cohen tried to pluck a single string. He searched for that memory of fulfilment he had once possessed, and he closed his eyes in attempts to find that feeling.
It had been far too long for his memory to do him justice, and as deep and far as he tried to reach for that sense, it was lost in the decay of time. He couldn’t see that smile that his mother now saw on him. He couldn’t remember the songs his father played or the look of concentration on his face when he tried. There was nothing but hollow images that were broken up by emptiness and loss. He had hoped for this instrument to hold the key to his memories, to keep them grounded forever. But here he was clutching an empty six-string that he defended at times when he should have given up.
“What are you doing?” His mother hissed at him from the doorway.
Her eyes were wide as she stared at the instrument in his lap, glazing over as she looked from her son to the guitar. He ignored her and moved his hand towards the six strings at the heart of it. She inhaled sharply as he did so, her gaze unmoving, and in unison, he brought him hand down and strummed the chords.
The sound should have brought back a wave of nostalgia, yet he didn’t receive the anticipated effect. He still felt that hole deep within that refused to seal itself. He couldn’t remember the chords his father struck, he couldn’t remember the songs, or even that moment that he swore he remembered. He had kept this piece of furnished firewood for years, in hopes of holding onto the one thing in his life that he couldn’t have.
In the end, it was just a stupid guitar. An instrument that he trusted with his most prized memory that let him down just like his father did. It didn’t hold his spirit, his love and affection that Cohen had expected. It was just a piece of wood and steel that meant less and less to him as he sat there, strumming the empty chords.
“You can have it,” Cohen said eventually, laying the guitar on his bed. “I don’t need it anymore.”
His mother continued to stand in the hall, her wide eyes staring at him. Her shoulders quivered with each sharp breath that passed by her pursed lips, yet she didn’t try to respond. She just stood there and stared.
“Did you hear me?” Cohen began to raise his voice. “You can have it. Junk it, while you’re at it.
He waited for her to respond, his eyebrows raised in anticipation. He waited for her to tell him to throw it out himself. He waited for her to finally explode with all of her resentment and conflicted feelings for him and that bloody guitar. But she stood there, and stared at him with a foreign look that he couldn’t decipher. He let go of his disappointment in a deep breath, and made his way over to her.
“Come on, Mom. I’ll get rid of it in the morning, I’m sorry,” he reached out to comfort her, but her body jerked away, and suddenly, it all fell into place.
“Oh,” she tried to smile, moving forward and wrapping her arms around him in a stiff hug. “Thanks, hon.”
He felt all too aware of her hollow words as she wrapped them around him. He should have noticed the reason why she stood at his door, the reason why she begged him to be rid of the guitar. As she let go of him, and went to remove the instrument from the room, he realised that to her, it was never about the guitar. It was all about him, and the man she saw stirring within his reflection.
