There’s No Place Like Here

32

Bobby closed the door of Lost and Found quietly behind us, as though the sound would bring the stall owners outside to a stunned silence. I wasn’t sure if this behavior was just another part of his dramatics but I sensed with a mild panic that it wasn’t. Bobby let go of my clammy hand and scuttled off into an adjoining room without a word, closing the door behind him. Through the slit I could see his shadow flickering as he darted by the light, furiously rooting around; moving boxes, scraping furniture across the floor, clinking glasses, making every possible sound, each sound introducing a new conspiracy theory in my suspicious mind. Finally I averted my eyes from the doorway and looked around the room.

I was faced with walnut shelves floor to ceiling high, like in the old grocery stores of decades ago. Baskets were filled to the brim with knickknacks, tape, gloves, pens, markers, and lighters. Others were filled with socks with a handwritten sign excitedly announcing the sale of actual pairs. There were dozens of clothes racks lining the center of the shop, the men’s and women’s sections separated, everything color-coordinated, styles, eras labeled with dates from the fifties, sixties, seventies, and up. There were costumes, traditional clothing, and wedding dresses. (Who loses a wedding dress?) On the opposite wall there was a selection of books, and before that there was a counter displaying jewelry: backs of earrings, single earrings, some pairs Bobby had matched up despite the difference in their appearances.

There was a musty smell in the shop; everything was secondhand, used, had a history. Thin T-shirts had depth, had layers glazed upon them. There wasn’t the same atmosphere as in a shop of shiny new things. Nothing was squeaky clean and young and innocently ready to learn. There were no books unread, no hats not yet worn, no pens not yet held. The gloves had held the hand of an owner’s loved one, the shoes had walked distances, scarves had wrapped, umbrellas had protected. These objects knew things, knew what they were supposed to do. They had experience of life and lay in baskets, folded on shelves, and hung on racks ready to teach those who wore them. Like most of the people here, these objects had tasted life and then saw it slip away. And like most people here, they waited until they could taste it again.

I couldn’t help but wonder about who was looking for them now, who was tearing their hair out to find their favorite earrings. Who was grumbling and searching in the bottom of their bag for another lost pen? Who was on their cigarette break only to find their lighter was missing? Who was already late for work and couldn’t find their car keys that morning? Who was trying to hide from their spouse the fact that their wedding ring had disappeared? They could look and look till their eyes were sore, but they would never find. What a time for me to have such an epiphany. Here in Aladdin’s cave of lost possessions far away from home. There’s no place like home…the phrase taunted me again.

“Bobby,” I called, inching closer to the doorway and shutting out the voice in my head.

“Just a minute,” came his muffled reply, followed by a bang, followed by a profanity.

Despite my nerves, I smiled. I ran my finger along a walnut dish cabinet, like the kind you’d expect to contain the good silverware and crockery. Here it contained hundreds of photographs of smiling faces from all over the world, over the decades. I picked up one of a couple standing in front of Niagara Falls and studied it. It looked like it was taken in the seventies; it had the yellowy tint that could be obtained only by being dipped in time. Two fortysomethings in wide flares and raincoats, one second caught and contained among a lifetime of seconds. If they were alive now, they too would be in their seventies with grandchildren looking on and waiting patiently as they leafed through their photo albums, looking for the picture to recall their trip to Niagara. Secretly wondering if they had imagined it all, whether that second among a lifetime of seconds had been true at all, while grumbling to themselves, “I know I have it here somewhere…”

“Nice idea, isn’t it?”

I looked up to see Bobby watching me from the doorway. After all his rummaging in the next room, he had nothing in his hands.

“Last week, Mrs. Harper found a wedding photo of her cousin Nadine, whom she hadn’t seen for five years. You wouldn’t believe her reaction when she came across the photo. She sat there all day just staring at it. It was a group photo of everyone at the wedding, you see; her entire family was there. Imagine not seeing your family for five years and then suddenly coming across a recent photo of them? She only came in looking for socks,” he said with a shrug. “It’s times like that when I feel useful around here.”

I put the frame of the couple down. “You said you were expecting me.” I said it more harshly than I meant to, but I was scared.

He unfolded his arms and placed his hands in his pockets. I thought he was finally going to take something out of them and give it to me but instead he left them there. “I’ve been here for three years now.” He had the same haunted face as everyone else had when they recalled the memory of arriving here. “I was sixteen years old. Two years to go till I finished school, ten years to go till I planned on growing up. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I figured I’d still be at home annoying Mum until she forced me out and made me get a proper job. In the meantime I was happy being the joker at school and having my boxers washed and ironed. I didn’t take many things seriously.” He shrugged and then repeated, “I was only sixteen.”

I nodded, not knowing where this was going. Wondering why on earth he said he’d been expecting me.

“I didn’t know what to do when I first arrived here. I spent most of the time on the other side of the woods trying to find a way out. But there’s none.” He took his hands out of his pockets and made a clear signal. “I’ll tell you that now, Sandy, there’s no way out of here and I’ve seen people drive themselves demented trying to find a way.” He shook his head. “I soon realized I had to start life here. I had to, for once in my life, take something seriously.” He shifted uncomfortably in his stance. “It happened when I was looking for some clothes to wear. I was rummaging through all the gear outside, feeling like a homeless man at a junkyard. I came across a sock that was bright orange, glowing from under a business file I imagine someone was fired that morning for losing. It was so bright I couldn’t help but wonder how on earth someone had managed to lose something so luminous, something that so clearly stood out from the crowd. But the more I looked at it, the better it made me feel about myself turning up here, because before, I thought it was my fault. I thought it was my complacency that led me to wind up here. I thought that if I’d paid more attention in school and had stopped messing around so much, that I could have prevented myself from coming here.”

I nodded. I knew that very same feeling.

“The sock made me feel better because it was the brightest thing I’d ever seen.” He laughed. “It was even labeled for Christ’s sake, and I just knew that it was bad luck and only bad luck on both our parts for ending up here! There was nothing I could have done to avoid ending up here, no more than the sock could have done. I felt sorry for the person who’d labeled it, put their address on it, who’d basically done everything to prevent it from going missing. So I kept it to remind myself of that feeling, of that day I stopped blaming myself and everybody else. A sock made me feel better.” He smiled. “Follow me.” He went back into the adjoining room.

The next room was much the same as the shop, with walls lined with shelving units, though it was much smaller and was piled high with cardboard boxes, by the looks of it, used for storage.

“Here’s the sock.” He gave it to me and I held it in my hands. It was small, that of a child, and was of towel material. If Bobby thought the sock was going to have the same effect on me as it did on him, he was wrong. I still wanted out of here and blamed myself and everybody else for putting me here.

“After a few weeks of being here, I found myself helping newcomers to find clothes and anything else they needed when they arrived. So I eventually opened this place up. Mine is the only store in this village where you can get everything all under one roof,” he said proudly. My lack of enthusiasm caused his smile to disappear and he continued his story. “Anyway, as part of owning and running this place, I have to go out every day and collect as many useful things as possible. I pride myself on being the only place that sells actual pairs of shoes and socks, matching outfits, and such like. Other people just gather what they find and display them. I search for the other half-kind of like a matchmaker,” he added with a grin.

“Go on,” I urged, sitting on an old torn chair that reminded me of my first sessions with Mr. Burton.

“Anyway, the orange sock wasn’t much of a big deal at all until I found this.” He leaned over and took a T-shirt from a box beside him. Again, it appeared to be that of a child. “And that wasn’t even a big deal until I found this.” He placed another odd sock on the floor before me and studied my face.

“I don’t get it.” I shrugged, throwing the orange sock down to the floor.

He continued to take out the contents of the cardboard box in silence and laid them out on the floor before me while my mind worked overtime trying to decipher the code.

“I thought there was more in this one, but anyway, that’s the lot,” Bobby said finally.

The floor was almost covered in items of clothing and accessories and I was about to stand up and demand he start talking sense when I finally recognized a T-shirt. And then I recognized a sock, a pencil case…and then handwriting on a piece of paper.

Bobby stood by the empty box, excitement flashing in his eyes. “You get it now?”

I couldn’t speak.

“They’re all labeled. The name ‘Sandy Shortt’ is written on every single thing you see before you.”

I held my breath, looking furiously from one item to another.

“That’s just one box. They’re all yours, too,” he said excitedly, pointing to the corner of the room where five more boxes were stacked up. “Every time I saw your name I collected the item and stored it. The more things of yours I found, the more I became convinced that it was only a matter of time before you would come to collect them yourself. And here you are.”

“Here, I am,” I repeated looking at everything on the floor. I got down on my knees and ran my hand across the orange sock. Although I couldn’t remember it, I could imagine my frantic searches that night while my poor parents watched on. That was the beginning of it all. I took my T-shirt in my hands and saw my name written on the label in my mother’s handwriting. I felt the ink with my fingertips, hoping that in some way I was connecting with her. I moved on to the piece of paper with my messy teenage handwriting. Answers to questions on Romeo and Juliet from school. I remember doing that homework and being unable to find it in class the next day. The teacher hadn’t believed me when I couldn’t find it in my schoolbag; he’d stood over me in a silent classroom and watched me root in my schoolbag, my frustration clearly growing, and yet his failure to recognize that genuine frustration had meant punishment homework. I felt like grabbing the page and running back to Leitrim, bursting in on that teacher’s class and saying, “Here, look, I told you I had done it!”

I touched every item on the floor, the memory of wearing them, losing them, and searching for them coming to mind. After I’d seen every item from the first box, I raced over to the next on the top of the stacked pile in the corner. With shaking hands, I opened the box. Staring up at me with his one eye was my dear friend, Mr. Pobbs.

I took him out of the box and held him close to me, inhaling him, trying to get the familiar scent of home. He had long ago lost that and was musty like the rest of the belongings here, but I clung to him and squeezed him to my chest. My name and phone number were still visible on his tag, the blue felt pen of my mother’s writing blurred now.

“I told you I’d find you, Mr. Pobbs,” I whispered, and I heard the door behind me gently close as Bobby stepped out of the room, leaving me alone with a head and a room full of memories.