Us Objects

Later, much later, too late, I found objects I knew were ours, that is, were of the story we might have told had we chosen—us. A floral tin cannister from Denmark; a standing Lucite ashtray that wobbles; battered Edward Gorey postcards with floating cats; spine-broken first editions of Frankenstein and Naked Lunch; a blue velvet chair worn smooth at the armrests. I add to this haul every chance I get.

In Finnish, they say, Heittää lusikka nurkkaan when one dies, that is, They throw the spoon to the corner. In German, it is Den löffel abgeben—The dead hand over the spoon.

Why spoons, I do not know, for every object is thrown or handed over by the dead.

Our death, executed via phone one hot August afternoon, the rattle and clank of the garbage truck outside my window. Objections rolling in their grave.

My mother taught me to steer clear of such objects. She passes them by with a shiver of denial, married as she is to the first man she ever loved.

Not I.

Nor were you the first man I loved, but you are the one whose object-trail I am susceptible to following. Drawn irrevocably into what I might term in modern lingo a parallel timeline. A jean jacket we might have shared; a skipping first-press 45 of Steady Diet of Nothing; the mug with the weeping crack down one side but the glaze within the color of your sodalite eyes. I cherish these relics of our other-future, the life we are not living, and maybe you know, or maybe you don’t, because that’s not how parallel timelines work, I cherish you.

The cannister was first, at a tag sale, two weeks after our final phone call. The moment I saw the blue and yellow wildflower pattern, an uncanny sensation flooded my chest—not faintness but hotter, deeper; painful. I picked up the tin—light, empty—and our life unspooled before my eyes, the life I had made sure we would not have. I had chosen wrong.

Simplicity, functionality, and elegance are key elements in Danish design. Sustainability, too. Our tin can was made by the IRA company, a once-big-name in mid-century aesthetics that hired famous women enamel artists to head up their pieces, which were available across Scandinavia in department stores and via mail order catalog. Whatever life our elegant container once held, our death landed it on a card table in the New England suburbs and I could not pass it by.

Fifty cents for this piece of our other-future. The top edges are dinged, the white enamel giving way to raw metal beneath. I could not keep you—didn’t even want to for the longest time—but I keep this us not meant for us. I store coffee beans in the tin; coffee was our thing. Black coffee, strong as midnight. I taste you in every bitter sip.