Adam rummaged through the desk drawers thinking his father might have put his draft essay in one by mistake. He liked to edit his work on paper, making notes and scrawling his changes on each page to use later when he would create the next version on the computer. It was the same way his father worked, filling each printed page with crosses and arrows, new phrases and paragraphs, and in Adam’s case not a few doodles from daydreaming pauses. The essay was one of many Adam had to write in his first year at university and as usual he had left it to the last moment relying too much on the skill he believed he had inherited, hoping to finish just on time in a mad rush of inspiration. This was not the way his father worked.
He didn’t expect the essay would be in the filing cabinet next to the desk where his father kept his own drafts and manuscripts, but he looked there anyway. His father might have picked Adam’s up and put it away by mistake. He didn’t see it in the top drawer among his father’s most recent papers, making him think he might have to go through the whole cabinet searching everything, which he wasn’t going to do because it would be easier and faster now to edit it on the computer, remembering his changes as best he could. He looked in the second drawer just to be sure and saw a pile of journals stacked there. His father always wrote in his journal, almost never missing a day, sitting in the evening at his desk to write down what Adam presumed to be ideas for his work. He had opened this drawer many times and had never seen these ones before.
Adam and his father trusted each other about their writing, never prying into each other’s work. There were no locked drawers. When he was little he would imitate his father by making lines of squiggles on blank paper before he knew words and began to learn how to string them together in a way that pleased him. His parents encouraged him and promised that they would never read anything of his without his permission so that he would be free to write even his most personal thoughts. They had always kept that promise, and although it was unsaid, he felt he had made the same promise to them. For some reason he thought these journals were very old although their appearance gave no indication, being the same Moleskine types that his father used all the time. He knew that he shouldn’t, but he picked one out of the drawer to check. Sure enough it was from 1970 by the date on the first page, forty years ago, when his father was twenty two, just four years older than Adam was now. He was about to put it back, wondering why something so old was here now rather than in a box in the basement, when he remembered that his father had brought some up a few weeks ago and had been reading them. He hesitated with a journal in his hand and for the first time he broke his promise. He knew this was private but he couldn’t help himself and began to read it, curious about so long ago, hungry for insight into maybe how his father started as a writer, hoping to discover some of himself in it from when his father was close to his own age, yearning to find out that they were alike, that he had a chance of being as good as he thought his father was.
Recently a lot what he was thinking overwhelmed him, taking control and impelling him into actions that mostly meant trouble for him and for others. He didn’t know why, because until the last year he had strange thoughts sometimes, but they never took control of him. He sat down on the floor next to the cabinet, crossed his legs with the journal in his lap and began to read, much as he had done for as long as he could remember in this room. He was in the library, not built as such, but made so by the floor to ceiling bookshelves his father had installed in what was before a ground floor guest bedroom. Books made up the walls everywhere, even above the door and inside the room’s closet, its door having been removed, the only exception being the window onto the back yard and the space left below it for the dark oak desk and next to that, the filing cabinet beside which Adam sat.
This was his familiar and comfortable spot, his place in the library from his first readings of picture books that he would take from the bottom shelf now almost touching his right hand. Some of them were still there because this section about an arm’s length wide and up to the ceiling belonged to him, just like a similar section was for his sister in the opposite corner of the room. While the rest of the library was conventionally organized by subject and authors, these two sections were, as their father put it, life shelves for Adam and Allison. He wanted them to have more than height marks of their years on the frame of the kitchen door, so he set aside their own sections of the library to put and keep their favourite books as they grew up. The bottom shelf contained Adam’s favorites from when his father and mother would read to him. He would come into the library to sit just as he was now and look at their pictures, remembering the stories until he began to read himself. In the shelves above, the titles ascended with his age, each containing those he liked most from the time he was tall enough to reach them easily.
His collection ended at about the height of his shoulder still less than half way up to the thirteen-foot ceiling of the old house. Above that were some of his father’s books, which would be moved to another place as he used more space. A few of his favorite books kept moving up the shelves along with his reach such as “The House at Pooh Corner” which he still took down and read occasionally because it tethered him to when he was little and made him feel happy and safe. If anyone asked, he said he admired how it was written. It was here in his special spot that he held his father’s journal.
He didn’t mean to read much, but once he started he couldn’t stop, the journals swallowing him up into time. Two hours passed. Adam didn’t notice the library door opening. His father saw Adam sitting on the floor staring down at one of the journals in his lap quietly crying, some of his tears making droplet blue splotches on the journal page. Somehow, he knew his son would read his journals eventually, he almost hoped he would. He wondered if maybe he had forgotten to take them back to the basement on purpose. He cleared his throat to be noticed and Adam startled, looked up to his father’s face, in it saw not the anger he expected but concern and sadness. His father spoke, not loud, not angry, not an expected rebuke, but a quiet matter of fact statement.” I guess we need to have a long talk son.”
“I’m so sorry Dad, I didn’t mean to.” Adam said.
“I know son, but you did. It is all right though, perhaps a good thing. Let’s talk about it.”
“No you don’t understand… Well yes you do, about the journals I mean. But I really didn’t mean to.”
This was incoherent to his father. Adam now began to cry more as he closed the journal and hugged it to his chest. His father now deeply concerned quickly sat down beside him pulling his head onto his shoulder. Adam laid it there and put his arms around his father like he was a little boy again.