matchbook

     When I was five, the Empire State Building appeared on TV. My father pointed at the screen. “I built that.”

           I was in awe. “Really?”

           "Yeah. Me and your uncle Bobby put it together in an afternoon. We hauled the beams and windows on the backs of our bikes, set the foundation, and drilled it all together. Secured the spire on top with a big wrench.”

           I ran into the kitchen to ask my mother if she knew about his architectural feat. She lit a Virginia Slim on the stove and sat at the table.

           “Oh, honey.”

           Throughout my childhood, their arguments shook my bedroom floor. I never asked, they never told.

 

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           During my first trip to Manhattan, I stood on the observation deck and smiled, remembering that afternoon years ago.

           I called my father from the hostel that evening.

           “Dad, I visited the Empire State Building today. Do you remember what you told me when I was a kid?”

           “Is the foundation still stable?”

           I laughed.

           “What’s so funny?”

 

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           He died two years later. As my mother and I made funeral arrangements at the kitchen table, she reached into her pocket and handed me a key to the spare room in the basement.

           Along with food wrappers and empty bottles, the space was filled with hundreds of Empire State Building models on the desk, the floor, the closet, the bookshelves. They were made of toothpicks, popsicle sticks, Q-tips, matches, pipe cleaners, twist ties. A wastebasket was filled with empty glue bottles. Hundreds of sheets of graph paper had been affixed to the walls. On each page, outlines in various sizes, with shorthand notes, all showed the shape of the famous building. Ceramic models of the skyscraper lined the baseboards. In the corner, I saw a rusted wrench, taller than myself, adorned with years of cobwebs.