The Souvenir Read Online Free PDF

airport, was more practical. It was on the first floor, imperative for a heart patient. It was a rear unit, set back from the street, and didn’t get much light. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care. My mother pined for the sun.
    With each successive visit, the place felt gloomier. I grew increasingly glum emptying the contents of a kitchen drawer, my mother’sbureau, my father’s closet. What to do with my mother’s rolling pin, boxes of tiny kid gloves? My dad’s diploma from pharmacy school, his cuff links, some army medals? Faced with a hodgepodge of family snapshots, I entered a trance, fingering each one. Basically, I was useless. Lloyd labored to pack it all up, exasperated by my inefficiency. I found his workmanlike approach heartless.
    T HE DREAM OF my father did not occur until the following spring, after he’d been dead more than a year. Rain fell, splattering the windows of our upstairs apartment in a sharp staccato.
    In the dream I was sick and the weather was lousy. I put on a heavy loden coat my father had given me as a gift. The weight of it made it difficult to breathe or move. Bundled up, I drove my car through the dark city in the pouring rain, trying to find a pharmacy that stocked the cure for what ailed me. I tried a Sav-on, a Thrifty Drug. At each one, the on-duty pharmacist shook his head. Moving on, I saw a pharmacy I’d never noticed before. A storefront, like a relic from the fifties. I ran inside. There behind the counter, wearing his priestly white smock, stood my father.
    He was a small man, but in the dream he was huge. He was a gentle man but in the dream he raged. “You haven’t visited in months,” he hissed. “You’ve been
ignoring
me.” Anger darkened his face. I tried to protest. I’d sat with his corpse in the Garden of Eden mortuary. I’d been to his funeral. I’d seen his pine coffin shoved into the wall. I was
sure
he was dead. None of these excuses placated him. He was livid. He exploded once again: “You’ve been
ignoring
me. You haven’t been
listening
.” His rage broke against me like a wave.
    Before dawn, I woke up terrified, listening to the sound of pounding rain.
    T WO WEEKS AFTER the dream, Lloyd and I were finally close to finishing the seemingly interminable task of clearing out the condo. We taped some boxes shut and prepared to leave. Then I remembered the storage locker in the underground garage. We took the elevator down. An unmarked key on the key ring opened the padlock to the locker.
    In the dim light, I identified a collection of odds and ends. A motley box of my old theater props, a spare soup pot, Grandma’s everyday dishes, two frayed beach chairs, a bicycle missing a front tire. At the bottom was a rusted metal ammo box. I tried to pick it up, but it was too heavy. I tried to open it, but the hasp was stiff. We hauled the box toward the light and together pried it open. I had a vague memory of having seen this artifact once before. Inside the rusted box were stacks of yellowing airmail envelopes. These were all addressed to my mother in my father’s handwriting. Hundreds of them. The faded dates on the envelopes spanned 1941 to 1945.
    Under one bundle of letters was a manila envelope postmarked March 3, 1945, and stamped on the back with some kind of an official seal:
    Pursuant to provisions of War Dept. Memo W/ 370-3-43, 22 July 1943, and of Headquarters, USAFFE Circular No. 21, 5 March 1944, the bearer Norman Steinman PFC 32983436 of this certificate is entitled to retain in his possession or to mail the following: 1 Japanese flag.
    I opened it and found a slippery piece of white silk, folded in eighths. I held it up to the light. Pin pricks of daylight showed through the fragile fabric—tiny holes where the fine strands had given way. The orange-red disc in the center was faded. Brushed over the surface were Japanese characters, and speckled among them,