As soon as the buyer entered the home Carter shared with his elderly father, the buyer’s demeanor changed. Her businesslike friendliness was supplanted by an identity centered upon her roving eyes, magnified by her thick glasses and flitting between every item within her view. The buyer said “hmm” again and again though the humidifier she was ostensibly there to purchase was not visible, was in another room. Her hair was cut short, but not for ease of care. She did not give the impression of someone for whom convenience factored into any decision. Carter was sure the buyer was younger than he was, but he felt a deference to her that he had not felt since he had taken violin lessons from Mrs. Clapse between the ages of ten and fourteen.

               “The humidifier is this way,” said Carter, attempting to steer the buyer toward the hallway. “It’s in the guest room. Which we use for an office. Well, I use it for an office. Dad doesn’t.”

               “Hmm,” said the buyer. Instead of looking at Carter, her eyes landed on an analog clock resting on the mantle above the living room’s little-used fireplace. Then her eyes pounced on Carter’s little-used acoustic guitar on its almost-constantly-used stand in the corner.

               Norris, Carter’s father, was taking his customary late-morning nap in his bedroom. He had moved into Carter’s house after Trudy, his second wife, died. His first wife, Carter’s mother, had died when Carter, now fifty-nine, had been thirty-eight. Norris had brought little with him to Carter’s house. Just his clothes and a few things that Carter felt were less worthy of retaining than many of the things his dad had chosen to get rid of. Norris’s lawnmower, for example. It was much nicer than Carter’s, but Norris had given it to his neighbor because Carter “already had one.” So instead of a lawnmower upgrade, Carter now had a desk lamp sitting next to a regular lamp on his side table. The desk lamp’s too-short cord was unplugged and dangling. Carter didn’t know why his dad had put the desk lamp there nor why he had objected when Carter had suggested moving it to the office.

               “Hmm,” said the buyer, moving toward the desk lamp as if Carter’s thoughts had brought it to her attention. She reached for the desk lamp, stopping just short of touching it. Carter noted that her ring finger, bearing a heavy silver ring, was longer than her middle finger. Or maybe it was an optical illusion caused by the position of her hand, Carter’s angle of view, and some peculiarity of the light in the room. “How much for this?” asked the buyer, the first, second, third, and fourth words other than “hmm” that Carter had heard her speak aloud. Not that he considered “hmm” a word. Not really.

               “That’s not for sale,” said Carter. “That belongs to my father.”

               “I’ll give you ten dollars for it,” said the buyer. She did something with her face to make it seem like she was about to smile, but did not follow through.

               “It belongs to my father,” said Carter. “It’s not for sale.” Maybe putting these two concepts in reverse order would get through to the buyer.

               “Twelve dollars,” said the buyer.

               “I thought you were here for the humidifier,” said Carter. “The humidifier is in the office. Do you want me to just go get it for you?”

               “I’m no longer interested in buying your humidifier,” said the buyer. “Or any humidifier. I want this desk lamp. Look how short its cord is. How charmingly unsuitable!”

               “You don’t even want to see the humidifier?” asked Carter.

               “Not at all,” said the buyer. She pulled a stack of crisp one-dollar bills out of the pocket of her half-buttoned hip-length military-green coat. She counted out fourteen of them. “For the desk lamp,” she said. She held the money at a distance from Carter that would require him to either fully extend his arm or take a step toward her to accept it.

               The back of Carter’s neck was becoming wet and hot, a sure sign of the activation of his fight-or-flight response. The buyer was forcing him into a confrontation, which was one of the things into which Carter least liked to be forced. He didn’t like witnessing other people forced into confrontations, either. Nor did he like it when confrontations occurred naturally or spontaneously. Furthermore, a deep-seated instinct was telling Carter that a confrontation with the buyer would go especially badly for him. He was, Carter sensed, the exact kind of adversary that the buyer knew she could just absolutely shred. Carter did not want to be absolutely shredded.

To forestall the confrontation, Carter rationalized. The desk lamp had not been used since Norris brought it to the house. There had been no discussion of using it. There had been no mention of it at all since the day Norris had brought it in, set it down, and rejected Carter’s proposal to relocate it. It served only to clutter the living room. And Norris’s memory had been getting worse. He sometimes said things that made no sense. Sometimes he seemed like the same man Carter had known since birth, sometimes he was vague and spacey and semi-coherent. So would he even notice if the desk lamp was gone? And even if he did – which Carter now abruptly believed he would not – but even if he did notice the desk lamp was gone, what if Carter just played dumb? What if he just shrugged and said he didn’t know where it was, which would technically be true since he did not know for sure where the buyer would take it once she bought it? The desk lamp and its mysterious fate would soon fade from Norris’s thoughts. And, again, it probably already had. And Carter could give the fourteen dollars to his dad, or use it to buy something his dad would find more useful or enjoyable than the desk lamp, which was of no use to him and brought him no joy, from what Carter could tell.

               As the rationalization did its blessed work, Carter felt the back of his neck begin to reverse course, drying off and cooling down. He would not be forced into a confrontation after all. He would sidestep it. The buyer would have no reason to absolutely shred him. “All right,” said Carter. He opted to reach for the money instead of stepping closer to the buyer, but just as his fingers were about grasp the small stack of bills, the buyer withdrew it six inches, and Carter was obliged to take a small step toward her after all.

Finally releasing the payment to Carter with one hand, the buyer snatched up the desk lamp with her other hand. She locked eyes with Carter, then, and her glasses now magnified not only the size of her eyes, but also the intensity of their gaze. “This sale is final,” she said.

“Of…of course,” said Carter. He was shrinking. Was he literally shrinking? He wasn’t, but the fact that he even had to ask himself such a question was terrifying.

“And if you ever want this desk lamp back,” said the buyer, “then you’ll have to come to my house, get inside, get all the way to my trophy room in the back, and take it from me.” She concluded this declaration by forming and holding the coldest, hardest, sharpest facial expression Carter had ever seen, and seeing it, he gasped, he clutched at his neck with his left hand and his chest with his right hand, he staggered backward and grabbed the couch to keep the buckling of his knees from resulting in a complete collapse.

When Carter had recovered in part, his awareness again capable of extending beyond the boundaries of his own panic, he realized that the buyer and the desk lamp were gone. Trembling and whimpering, he went to the hallway bathroom and vomited in the toilet.

 

Later, when Norris emerged from his bedroom post-nap and came into the living room to find Carter sprawled on the couch with his forearm over his eyes, he said, “Where’s your mother’s desk lamp?”

Carter took his arm from his face and looked at his father. The old man looked back at him with lank, dull-white hair hanging in his red-rimmed eyes. Lankness and dull-whiteness aside, he still had a better hairline than Carter. Maybe that’s why he’d managed to have two attractive wives who had both remained devoted to him until their deaths, whereas the most Carter had managed was one unfaithful fiancée.

“Mom’s desk lamp?” asked Carter.

“It was right here,” said Norris. He pointed at the side table which now held only one lamp. “Before my nap, it was right here, but now it’s gone. Did you put it in your office? I told you not to. Bring it back out here.”

Carter considered his options. His dad sounded pretty lucid, which would make it tough to mislead or distract him. Another confrontation was brewing. Not just brewing, but it was here, it was upon him. Carter loved his dad and hated having confrontations with him, but he was certainly less afraid of confrontations with his father than he had been of a confrontation with the buyer. Still, his neck was warming and dampening. It was once again time to stall. “The desk lamp with the short cord?” he asked. “That was Mom’s? I don’t remember it.”

“She got it after you moved out,” said Norris. He wore a button-up pajama top with unbelted, baggy jeans. “You moved out of the house at age twenty. Your mom died when you were thirty-eight. So that was eighteen years we were together without you living with us. We got lots of stuff in those eighteen years. Lots of stuff you didn’t know about.”

“I don’t remember seeing that desk lamp when I visited, though,” said Carter. “I don’t remember seeing it around.”

“So you think I’m lying?” asked Norris. “You don’t think that lamp really belonged to your mother?”

“No, no,” said Carter. “I just don’t remember it.”

“Great, fine,” said Norris. “You don’t remember it. Who cares? So where is it now? Bring it back out here.”

Carter swallowed the excess saliva that had begun to fill his mouth. It was like swallowing a wad of pillow stuffing. “I don’t know exactly where it is,” he said.

“You misplaced it?” asked Norris, his voice gaining several degrees of concern. He came around the end of the couch to stand over Carter, who sat up to indicate that he was not taking the situation too casually.

“I didn’t misplace it,” said Carter. “I, uh, you know that lady who was going to come over to buy the humidifier?”

“No,” said Norris. “What lady? What humidifier?”

Carter lunged for these beside-the-point questions in desperation. “The humidifier in the office,” he said. “I’ve had it for a while, but just don’t use it that much anymore. I guess I just don’t feel like the air is ever dry enough for me to really feel like I need-”

“Where’s your mom’s desk lamp?” asked Norris. Carter hadn’t seen him stick to a notion with this tenacity in over a decade. It was an encouraging sign for his overall mental acuity, but a bad time for it. Was it too much to ask for Norris’s senility to be convenient just one time?

“The cord was so short,” said Carter. “It was impractical.”

“That’s why your mother loved it,” said Norris. “She hated extraneous cord. She had a specific spot on her desk for that lamp, and the outlet was very close to that spot, so she looked and looked for a lamp with a cord of the perfect length so there wouldn’t be this surplus of cord all bunched up between the lamp and the outlet, and I told her she wasn’t going to find such a lamp, that no lamp-making company would ever bother to make a lamp with such a short cord because most people would have no use for a lamp with such a short cord, but she was determined, she wouldn’t settle for a lamp with a long cord, or a medium-length cord, or even just a relatively short cord, it had to be a very short cord.”

He paused for a few moments, and Carter was about to ask a question to extend the narrative when Norris began speaking again.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Carter, but my mind isn’t what it used to be. I’m forgetting more and more. I’ve lived this long, eventful life, and I think that if I could just sit and recall it clearly, I could be happy living the rest of my years doing that. Just sitting and recalling. But I can’t, because my memory is betraying me. My life is being reduced to vague impressions. I can’t remember the names of my childhood friends. I can’t remember much of your childhood. I need help, Carter. I need help to remember what I want to remember. I need clues, I need hints, I need associations. And that’s what that desk lamp is, Carter, it’s the only thing of your mother’s that I have left, and it holds all of my clear memories of her. When I see the desk lamp, and I see that short cord, I remember your mother’s hatred of extraneous cord, and then, by association, I remember other things about her. Associated traits, associated opinions, associated tastes, associated characteristics. And then I make associations to those associations, and I re-construct a complete memory of your mother, of our years together, of our best and worst moments, everything that mattered. But without that desk lamp, I have no starting point. I walk into this room and all I see are things that have no connection to your mother. Nothing sparks a specific memory about her, so there’s no way to stack associations until I have a full image of her, or even a partial memory of her. If that desk lamp is gone, then she’s gone, Carter. She’s gone from my mind forever.”

“I’m her son,” said Carter, his voice scooped hollow. “Doesn’t seeing me trigger some good associations for you?”

“No,” said Norris. “Maybe if you still looked like you did when you were a kid. But you don’t. You’re tubby, you’re balding, you never wear those expensive shoes we got you anymore.”

“I was fourteen when you got me those shoes, Dad,” said Carter. “They wouldn’t fit me now even if I hadn’t worn them until they literally split open and fell off of my feet. But if you can still remember those shoes, maybe your memory isn’t as bad as you think.”

“What shoes?” asked Norris.

Carter couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “The expensive ones you and Mom got me when I was fourteen.”

“Oh,” said Norris. “So where’s your mom’s desk lamp?”

“I sold it,” said Carter, surprising himself with how frankly the truth popped out of him. Maybe it was the only way.

“No,” said Norris.

“I did,” said Carter, words tumbling after his revelation in an attempt to veil its starkness. “I didn’t know it meant that much to you, Dad. But I got…I got…a lot for it. Here, see, here’s fourteen of what I got for it. I haven’t quite gotten all of the cash into my wallet yet. I was in the middle of that when you came out. Because, see, here’s the rest of what she gave me here in my wallet, here’s the other, uh, thirty-seven dollars. So, yeah, that’s what she paid for that lamp, thirty-seven plus this other fourteen, so that’s, uh…”

“Fifty-one dollars,” said Norris.

“Yeah,” said Carter. “Well, actually, it was fifty, one of these one-dollar bills was already in my wallet. She paid an even fifty. Paying fifty-one would be weird. But anyway, yeah, the money’s yours, Dad. The lamp was yours, so the money’s yours. Here you go.”

“The lamp wasn’t mine,” said Norris, not taking the money. “The lamp belonged to your mom.”

“But it was yours once she died,” said Carter. “So the fifty dollars is yours. I’ll even throw in the other one dollar. You can have all fifty-one. It’s yours.”

“I don’t want the money,” said Norris. “I want your mom’s lamp. Get your mom’s lamp back, Carter.”

“I can’t, Dad,” said Carter. “I wish I could, but I can’t. It’s gone.”

Norris groaned. His eyes went cloudy and he crumpled onto the other end of the couch, his left hand pawing at the arm rest.

“Dad!” said Carter. He stood and bent over his father, taking him by the shoulder. “Dad, what happened?”

“I need it,” said Norris, all of the indignant strength of a few moments before now drained from him. “I need that lamp, Carter. If I don’t have that lamp, then I’ll forget your mother, and the last days of my life will be worth less than nothing. They’ll be an empty agony. Memories of your mother are the only thing I live for. They sustain me. And without her desk lamp, I can’t access them. They’re too far. They’re hidden. They’re obscured. They’re occluded. But I can still sense them, so they torture me. I long for the memories, but I can never have them. Not without your mom’s desk lamp. Her desk lamp is my bridge. It’s my key. I need it. I need it. I need your mother’s desk lamp. You have to get it back, Carter. You have to get it back. If you don’t get it back, then you’ll condemn me to a fate worse than death. Worse than death. If you killed me, then I’d be with your mother again in heaven, but if I’m alive without her desk lamp, then we’re so far apart. So separate. She’s never been so absent. And absence will make the heart – my heart – grow fonder, but with no hope of channeling that fondness into-”

“What about Trudy?” asked Carter. The back of his neck was so wet and so hot that he was surprised there wasn’t visible steam rising from it.

“Who?” asked Norris.

“Your second wife,” said Carter.

“Oh, yes,” said Norris. “I associate her with the lawnmower.”

“You gave your lawnmower to your neighbor,” said Carter.

“Well, all right,” said Norris. “That’s that, then. That’s another thing entirely.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “You must get that desk lamp back, Carter.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Carter. Even this concession set his hands to trembling. Feeling his knees weakening, he sat down on the couch next to his father again.

“You must,” said Norris. “You must. You have to.”

“I’ll look into it,” said Carter.

“Soon,” said Norris. “If I go too many days in a row without associating my way into complete memories of your mother, I might never be able to do so in the same way again. Not to the same degree. Not with the same clarity.”

Carter tried to clench his hands into fists, but he could feel the feebleness of his grip strength, the way his fingertips exerted such little pressure on his slickened palms. “I’ll…I’ll…”

“Are you going to throw up?” asked Norris.

“Yes,” said Carter. This time, he didn’t make it all the way to the bathroom. Not even close.

 

Carter couldn’t sleep. His stomach was in such distress that he stopped trying to leave the bathroom. Instead, he sat slumped against the side of the bathtub with his palms pressed hard against his temples as if trying to keep his headache from escaping to wreak havoc upon the rest of Multioak. Carter’s headache was the result of his brain pinging back and forth between two dreadful options.

He could attempt to get the desk lamp back from the buyer, forcing a confrontation on her own turf, a proposal to which every fiber of his being screamed its unconditional rejection, and which, if carried out, would also almost certainly not end with Carter retrieving his mother’s desk lamp.

On the other hand, he could not attempt to get the desk lamp back from the buyer, thereby ruining the remainder of his father’s life, an act for which his father would most likely never forgive him, and then his father would die and Carter would live the rest of his life wracked with guilt, never truly capable of enjoying another moment without recalling the devastation wrought by his cowardice. And, unfortunately, every fiber of his being also screamed its unconditional rejection of this option, too.

And when one has reached a branching path with only two available choices – doing something or not doing that thing – and every fiber of one’s being screams its unconditional rejection of both options, the natural outcome is for one to get a pounding headache and throw up a lot, and then, when one’s stomach has been puked dry, one dry heaves and retches a lot. Or maybe that’s not the universal response, but that was Carter’s response, and he could not have been more miserable.

How had making his little-used humidifier available for purchase at “any reasonable offer” led to such a nightmare scenario? It wasn’t right. It shouldn’t be possible for innocuous decisions to lead to calamitous fallout. Innocuous decisions should lead to, at worst, inconvenience. Like, if the buyer had come into Carter’s home and accidentally spilled coffee on the carpet in the office. That would have been annoying, yes, but within the range of acceptable outcomes. The ruin of his and his father’s lives should not have even been on the table, should not have been anywhere near the table.

What Carter needed was a third option. Something slightly less bad than either trying to get the desk lamp back or not trying to get the desk lamp back. But the lack of an immediately obvious third option was directly responsible for the mental, emotional, and physical torment that made thinking of a less obvious third option impossible. If Carter could stop panicking, then maybe he’d be able to think of a reason to stop panicking, but without a reason to stop panicking, he couldn’t stop panicking.

From his position seated on the floor, Carter reached for his beige bath towel and pulled it from the rack, pressing it against his face so he could cry out wordlessly without waking his father. The towel was still damp from Carter’s morning shower. The bathroom was not well ventilated, so the towel never fully dried unless Carter skipped a shower or the towel got laundered. The musty smell of the towel, comforting in its familiarity, soothed Carter just long enough for his mind to spit out one paltry idea.

What if he could find a replacement desk lamp? It didn’t seem like his mother’s desk lamp had been custom-made. It didn’t sound like it was one-of-a-kind. It was rare, certainly. Carter had never seen another desk lamp like it. And from his dad’s telling, it had taken Carter’s mom a long time to find the exact desk lamp she wanted. But she also hadn’t had the advantage of the internet. If the desk lamp was super rare, then maybe it was a collector’s item, maybe Carter would have to pay a lot for it, but that was infinitely preferable to trying to get the original desk lamp back or doing nothing. He was willing to pay any amount to no longer feel how he currently felt. And who knows? A similar – hopefully identical – desk lamp might not even be that expensive. Maybe the short cord would keep the price reasonable. Maybe it would even be cheap. Maybe even less than the fourteen dollars the buyer had paid Carter. Maybe, even with shipping costs, Carter would actually turn a profit! The idea made him laugh. Well, not laugh, but exhale through his nose with wry amusement. Very wry. So wry that it almost overwhelmed the amusement. Maybe it was more of an exhale of pure wryness, if such a thing was possible.

Through this sliver-wide crack of relief, sleep slipped, and Carter passed out on the bathroom floor in a manner no drunken stupor had ever precipitated.

 

The following morning, Carter’s internet hunt for a lamp identical, nearly identical, or very similar to his mother’s former desk lamp was fruitless. He didn’t know the brand of the lamp, and neither did Norris. Neither man knew what year it was from. Norris couldn’t remember where Carter’s mother had found it. Had she purchased it new? Had she gotten it from an antique store? A garage sale? Norris had no idea. He said that if he could see the lamp, then maybe he’d be able to pile up enough associations to reach the answers to these questions, but then, if he could see the lamp, these questions would no longer need answers. And with each picture of a desk lamp Carter found, their cords of universally average, slightly above average, or slightly below average length, the returning darkness of the night before further filled him.

“How were you communicating with that woman before?” asked Norris.

“What woman?” asked Carter, knowing what woman.

“The one who took your mom’s desk lamp,” said Norris. He sat across from Carter at the kitchen table wearing striped pajama bottoms with a mis-buttoned flannel shirt, his mug of coffee two-thirds consumed, which was as far as he ever drank it.

Carter, trying not to vomit on his laptop keyboard, said, “We were emailing.”

“Email her again,” said Norris. “Tell her you want your mom’s desk lamp back. Tell her it wasn’t yours to sell. Tell her your failing father depends on it to stave off desolation.”

The mere suggestion of re-establishing contact with the buyer made Carter heave, spasm, shiver, and produce a new layer of sweat beneath the many layers of stale sweat already coating his body. “That won’t work,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I just know it won’t,” said Carter. He could picture the buyer’s smile as she read such an email. He could not allow such a smile to ever come into existence.

“All right,” said Norris. “Well, if you’re so afraid of her, just give me her email address and I’ll reach out to her and explain everything.”

Carter pondered his father in silence. Was this a way out for him? Was his father, though elderly, a batter match for the buyer, more able to withstand a confrontation with her? Could he really get the desk lamp back? Carter didn’t know. But even if Norris could not get the desk lamp back, perhaps experiencing a confrontation with the buyer would make him more sympathetic to Carter’s fear. Maybe he’d be more willing to forgive Carter’s situational uselessness.

But what good would that ultimately do? He’d still be without the desk lamp, and his memories of Carter’s mother would still be remote, and his last days would still be too depressing to bear. In some ways, his forgiveness might almost make things worse. A sustained resentment might actually give him something else to focus on other than the barrenness of the time remaining to him.

Carter felt his headache striving for new levels of intensity. “I’ll do it,” he said. “I’ll email her. I’m not making any promises, but I’ll email her.”

He was barely conscious of what he wrote. When he had finished the email, he tried to read back over it, but he found the effort so repulsive that he hit “send” after forcing his way through only two non-consecutive sentences. Within less than a minute, he felt the smile he had hoped to avert blossom somewhere in Multioak. The buyer’s responding email came closely on the heels of that feeling, and it contained only one piece of information: an address.

 

Even as Carter stood on the sidewalk facing the buyer’s house, he was still telling himself he was not going to cross the lawn, was not going to mount the porch, was not going to ring the doorbell or knock or in any other way alert the buyer to his presence. He had to tell himself these things to keep from fainting or having a heart attack or having a stroke or losing control of his bladder or losing control of his bowels.

“Hi, there.”

The greeting startled Carter, but his body was not functioning properly enough to produce any of the common startled reactions. “Hello,” he said in a high-pitched croak, trying to focus his eyes on the person approaching him on the sidewalk.

“I’m Kimmy,” said the person, a young woman in a white coat. She wore purple earmuffs. The red tip of her nose indicated a low outdoor temperature that Carter could not feel. “Do you know the woman who lives here?”

“I’ve met her,” said Carter. “Once.”

Kimmy nodded. “She’s pretty intimidating. Are you trying to work up the courage to talk to her?”

               “I don’t know,” said Carter. It was the most committal he could allow himself to be, although he was willing to acknowledge that most would consider his answer completely non-committal.

               “I’m not gonna try to talk you out of it,” said Kimmy, “but if you’re not sure, then you’re definitely not ready to try to talk to her.”

               “What do you mean?” asked Carter.

               “I live next door to her,” said Kimmy. “That’s my house.” She pointed with a glove-clad hand, the glove the same shade of purple as her earmuffs. The house she identified as her own was not noteworthy, or Carter was just incapable of noting anything about it. “One day,” Kimmy continued, “she stopped by to introduce herself. That’s why she said she stopped by, but I had my six-foot step-ladder in the living room because I’d been dusting my ceiling fans – I have nine-foot ceilings – and she asked if she could borrow my ladder. I didn’t really want to loan it to her because it’s a little unsteady and I didn’t want her to fall and blame me, but she was very insistent, and it was hard to say no to her. She was just…well, you probably know. Anyway, she took the ladder to her house, and that was the last I’ve seen of it. This was close to a year ago. I haven’t seen her since. I’ve made a few attempts to talk to her, and I’ve gotten as far as the third receptionist, but even that felt like a miracle. I doubt I could get that far again, and I’m sure I’ll never get past her. So I’ve resigned myself to never seeing my ladder again. In fact, I replaced my ladder after my first failed attempt to speak to my neighbor about it, but I kept trying every month or so on principle. But after that last time, no, I’m done. The ladder’s gone. I don’t know why she wants it so bad, but it’s hers now. I suppose it’s actually been hers since the moment she carried it out my front door, maybe even before then, but I didn’t accept that until recently.”

               “Did that ladder mean a lot to you?” asked Carter. “Was it a family ladder? Passed down from generation to generation? Or did something important happen on that ladder? Did you have your first kiss on that ladder?”

               “No,” said Kimmy. “And the one I got to replace it is way better. I should have replaced it years ago. I only kept trying to get the old one back on principle.”

               “Yeah, on principle,” said Carter. “What principle is that?”

               “The principle that people shouldn’t just be able to borrow your stuff and never give it back,” said Kimmy. “It shows they think you’re inferior. You aren’t worthy of respect. You can’t just let that happen to you. Except in rare cases, I guess, and I guess this ended up being one of those rare cases for me. Not that I let it happen to me, exactly. I tried to stop it from happening to me, but I couldn’t. Maybe you’ll do better. But your lack of confidence makes me think you won’t. And no offense, but you just don’t look like a very, uh, forceful person. Maybe you’ll surprise me, I don’t know, but I’ll be shocked if you manage to get past even the first receptionist. Shocked.”

               Carter returned his attention to the buyer’s house. He felt squeezed, compacted. Her house was neither tall nor wide, but it was long. If it had been oriented vertically, but sunken in the earth with its door at ground-level, it would have made sense to describe the house as very deep. Maybe that made sense anyway. “Depth of field.” That was something, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that a term that didn’t necessarily have to do with vertical distance? Carter knew this line of thinking was an act of self-preservation by his mind, a ploy to keep him from instead having thoughts that might lead to actions. Mightn’t it be better to stand here thinking about the word “deep” until he starved to death?

               “Anyway,” said Kimmy.

               “Wait,” said Carter. “What about the receptionists? There’s three or something?”

               “Yeah,” said Kimmy. “At least three. You have to get past all of them to speak to my neighbor. The first receptionist is the receptionist for the second receptionist, the second receptionist is the receptionist for the third receptionist, and the third receptionist is, I think, the receptionist for my neighbor. But don’t let their titles fool you. They only exist to stop you. Their only job is to prevent you from getting into the next office. So if you want to have any hope of progress, you have to be ready for three extremely intense confrontations before you get to my neighbor and whatever she might have prepared for you.”

               “I can’t do that,” said Carter. “I hate confrontation. I can’t stand it.”

               “Oh, yeah,” said Kimmy. “Then there’s no way. I don’t mind confrontation. I mean, I’ll stand up for myself when I need to. I’ll get feisty when it’s called for. But challenging the receptionists is grueling.

“The first receptionist is a man of impenetrable politeness. At first, you almost think he’s being accommodating. It seems like he wants to help you. He’s almost obsequious. But it’s a deception. He’s not accommodating you at all. He’s leading you in long, long conversational loops. An hour passes and you’re right back where you started. And his tone never changes. It’s reasonable. It’s hypnotic. It lures you into adopting a tone that will never accomplish anything. Not in there, not anywhere. And he sympathizes, only not really, but then again, maybe he does? Being the first receptionist, I’ve confronted him the most times. Ten times, I think. You probably want to know how I got past him. It only happened twice, and if you want to know the truth, I think he only did it to demonstrate the impossibility of getting past the second receptionist.

“The second receptionist is as rude as the first receptionist is polite. She won’t let you finish your sentences. She’s a vicious interrupter, and she will not hesitate to shout over you. How does she know so much about me? How does she know so much about my personal life? How does she time her disdainful snorts to wound with such precision? It’s uncanny, but then I guess it’s all uncanny. She won’t let you sit down even though there are plenty of chairs. She says it’s because you aren’t staying, so there’s no reason to sit down. Why would you sit down if you’re leaving? She doesn’t cover her mouth when she coughs. The first time I encountered her, she gave me a cold. I could already feel the congestion forming in my chest as I walked back through the first receptionist’s office with my proverbial tail between my legs, and do you know what he said to me? He told me to feel better soon. The second time I encountered the second receptionist, she let me into the third receptionist’s office after a protracted battle, the single most intense confrontation of my life, but again, I think it was only to demonstrate the impossibility of persuading the third receptionist to let me speak to my neighbor.

“Perhaps you think, based on my accounts of the characteristics of the first and second receptionists, that the third receptionist is neither polite nor rude, but neutral. Blank-faced, dispassionate, machine-like. A wall against which to beat your head. But no. I actually knew her before she got the job as the third receptionist. I actually went to high school with her. I actually went to her birthday party during sophomore year. Her name is Lillian. When I walked into the third receptionist’s office and saw Lillian sitting behind that desk, I felt a brief surge of hope. But that only made the reality of the situation feel worse. Because, in the end, I couldn’t make her understand what I wanted. She is not stupid. She was on the honor roll every semester except for the semester her parents got divorced! But there in that office, there was a complete communication breakdown. I don’t know who or what was at fault. I don’t know why I couldn’t get through to her. Maybe she felt the same way. Maybe she went home and complained about how dense I was to her husband. She married another guy I knew, Dax Colly. He was two grades ahead of us. But I tried to explain to her what I wanted for hours. Several hours. And I was already exhausted from my previous ordeals with the first and second receptionists, but I felt like I was so close to getting my ladder back. I could see the door to my neighbor’s office right there. But I know now that I was no closer to getting my ladder back than I had been during any of my other attempts. No closer than I am right now as I stand here on the sidewalk with you, even.”

Carter tried to swallow his saliva. It tasted like blood and he gagged and spat it in the grass. It definitely had a reddish hue. “Does her house have a back door?” he asked.

“No,” said Kimmy.

“I can’t do it,” said Carter. “I cannot.”

“No,” said Kimmy. “I don’t know if anyone can. I know I can’t. And if I can’t, then you definitely can’t. The receptionists would just absolutely shred you, not to mention my neighbor.”

“I couldn’t do it if I tried every day for a million years,” said Carter.

“You’re right about that,” said Kimmy. “I can feel the truth of that.”

“But I also can’t not do it,” said Carter.

“Huh?” said Kimmy. “How’s that?”

“Because if I don’t do it, then I have to live out the rest of my days knowing that I laid waste to the end of my father’s life. I’ll have to exist with that knowledge bubbling inside of me at every moment. Even sleep won’t be a relief, because I guarantee I’ll dream about it. I will never have peace.”

“Wow,” said Kimmy.

“And if I turn away now, if I get in my car and I go home, it will be with full knowledge of what I’ll be facing from here on out. And I can’t do that. Not because I’m too noble, but because I’m too afraid of that outcome, too. Do I seem like someone who could willingly direct myself into a future of unrelenting self-reproach?”

“No,” said Kimmy. “You definitely can’t do that, either. That would require something you do not possess. Anyone could see that.”

“So I can’t confront the receptionists and your neighbor and I can’t not confront them,” said Carter. “But those two options encompass every possible option.”

“Have you tried looking for a replacement for whatever she took from you online?” asked Kimmy.

“Yes,” said Carter, and as he arrived at the “s” sound that concluded this word, he felt himself begin to shred absolutely. His world had been reduced to only the two unchoosable options, exactly equal in their unchoosability. Being who he was, Carter was not torn between these two options. He was not pulled in two directions at once. He instead remained motionless, the options closed the distance between themselves and him, met in the center with only a Carter’s-width of Carter between them, and mutually shredded him. Like two cheese-graters. From the outside, this looked like Carter standing with every joint locked saying “I can’t” through a clenched jaw. But on the inside, even the shreds of his shreds were getting shredded.

When nothing of himself that was shreddable remained, Carter’s joints relaxed and he noticed that Kimmy was gone. The options – to confront or not to confront – having done their worst to him, receded. Not knowing what else to do, Carter decided to walk around behind the buyer’s house to see if Kimmy was right about there being no back door. It took a few minutes to get there. The house really was quite long, deep, whatever you wanted to call it.

Upon his arrival at the back of the house, Carter saw that there was no back door. Kimmy was right about that. But one thing she had failed to mention was the tiny hole drilled through the wall at exactly the level of his eyes. Maybe she didn’t know about it. Maybe she didn’t think it was worth mentioning. Or maybe it was new. As Carter stepped up to the hole, he noticed a few curly wood shavings in the grass at his feet. The hole smelled freshly drilled. He closed his left eye and used his right eye to peer through the hole.

It took him only a moment to realize that he was seeing the back side of his mother’s short-corded desk lamp displayed inside of a glass trophy case. Why, there was the short cord itself! And it took him only one more moment to realize that this portion of the wall was illusory, that it had no substance, that it was only there to make him believe that he could not reach right through it, grab the lamp, carry it back to his car, and drive it home to his dad, but he could, in fact, do all of those things if he so desired, and he did so desire to do them, so he did them.

 

When Norris emerged from his bedroom post-nap, the first thing he said to Carter was: “We should hire a hitman to get the lamp back. We’ve got the address now, let’s just get someone tougher to handle it. You said you’d spare no expense on the replacement lamp. Well, that didn’t work out, but let’s bring that ‘spare-no-expense’ attitude to the arena of hired hitmen.”

“No need,” said Carter, smiling at his father from the couch. “Look there, Dad. On the side table.”

“The lamp!” cried Norris. “You got it back!”

“Yes,” said Carter.

“How did you do it?” asked Norris, marveling at the lamp with his thumbs hooked in the waist band of a pair of Carter’s sweatpants he had borrowed without asking.

“I refused to decide anything, was not resourceful, avoided all confrontation, and was rewarded with insight,” said Carter.

“That’s great,” said Norris, uninterested in the answer to his own question.

“So,” said Carter. “You’re looking at the lamp. Tell me something you remember about Mom.”

“She owned several shoes,” said Norris.

“OK,” said Carter. “What else?”

“What else do you need?” asked Norris, and he limped around the couch to sit down, fold his hands on his stomach, and smile softly in consideration of the known fact of his first wife’s ownership of several shoes.