"What about those?" I ask, pointing to the dozens of technical magazines and journals stacked in unstable piles that look like balancing tricks about to go wrong. The basement wall has somehow maintained the zigzag accumulation for years.
"I need those," Leo's voice is flat.
I roll my eyes. "They're old technical magazines. Why do you need them? Everything is online now."
He walks towards the boxes of toys we've packed up for Goodwill and lifts one up. "This one is still good." He pulls out an old pink Nerf gun that juts out of the top of a box and places it on the floor. He glances back toward me. "Don't throw them out, okay?"
"Not okay." I take a magazine off the top of the first pile. This one is dated May of 1997. 'How to Master Windows 97?' Come on Leo. Really? You need this?"
"Yes, I need it." He marches upstairs with the cardboard box full of toys.
I flip through the magazine and shake my head. "The paper is wrinkled from all the moisture down here."
"Don't throw it out!" He yells.
Leo is a hoarder, and I haven't the heart to throw out any of his things against his wishes because I would hate for him to do that to me. Yes, the Golden Rule. I live by it; I am cursed by it. Damn the Golden Rule!
So, I have to make room for his 20-year-old magazines and textbooks and t-shirts from high school and toys from his childhood and a ton of other knick-knacks from his youth. But now, we're emptying the basement for a remodeling project—to build a moisture-free office and family room. So everything down here is being donated, thrown out, or packed into a storage bin in the garage.
Everything.
From a basement corner that I've been neglecting for at least a decade, I lift a rusty metal lamp, possibly bronze, with fake diamond gems dangling from the square shade's corners. The electrical wire is wrapped around it as if it's holding it together in a protective embrace. Four bronze palm tree leaves stick out from the middle of the lamp's base and droop downward as if saddened by its own pathetic state. "What about this?" I raise my voice so Leo can hear from the first floor. "This lamp is garbage."
"Which one?" He shouts back towards the basement door.
Please don't tell me there are more lamps like this. "It's bronze. It looks like a Hawaiian theme lamp. It's atrocious."
He walks back down the stairs and stops cold when his eyes land on the lamp. "You can't throw that away."
"Why not?"
"I need it."
"I've been with you for twenty years, and you've never used this lamp."
"It's sentimental." He picks it up and inspects the wires and fake diamonds.
"It's a broken lamp that probably doesn't even work. I mean, look at it. It's garbage."
"It doesn't matter."
"Honey, you can't keep every single thing you've owned in your life. Look at all of this." I wave at what must be six to eight large cardboard boxes of vases and frames and statues. "Are we really going to use up garage space for this junk?"
"It's not junk; it's sentimental."
Before I say anything else, Leo takes an empty plastic storage box and begins filling it with his junkyard treasures. With unprecedented care, Leo wraps each object in packing paper and places them gently in the box. Several bronze vases with dents and cracks, some unable to stand on their own due to missing or cracked bases, find a home in the first storage box.
I watch with curiosity as he prepares a second plastic storage box for the various award statues he has collected over the years. Leo wipes each trophy down with a damp towel and places them in the box, where they perch on their marble or wooden bases.
"Okay," I say as I hand him a third plastic container. "I get the trophies, and the old clothing, and the old picture frames, but you have to admit that some of this stuff is just junk. Used-up junk that you would throw away if it wasn't yours. I mean, look at this." I pick up a white ceramic lamp covered in black and brown water stains wrapped in stiff electrical cord. The shade is covered in a dark, earth-toned desert motif pattern. The edges of the lampshade are trimmed with a thick brown plastic that resembles braided hair. I unravel the rigid wire, and white ceramic flakes trickle down like snowflakes to the floor. "What the hell was the designer thinking when he made this?"
Leo glares up at me and says flatly, "My aunt, who made these lamps, thought she was creating something pretty. Something that would light a living room in someone's home."
"But look at it, Leo. I know your aunt didn't mean for it to be in this condition. This is a distant shadow of what your aunt created."
Leo turns to me with eyebrows arched in preparation to state an indisputable fact. "I'm not throwing them out. My aunt supported us, me and my brothers and sisters, and her own three kids, by working at this lamp store. These lamps are the only things I have of hers, and I'm not throwing them out."
In a sharp motion, he snatches the lamp from my hands, then wraps it and stuffs it in the first box. He avoids looking at me as he reaches for another lamp with a black metal base and a stain-glass octagonal shade in dark red and blue tones depicting swimming dolphins. There is a dolphin sculpture at the base, right under several dents and scratches on the pillar. The electrical wire is missing.
"Wait, Leo."
"I'm not throwing them away or giving them to Goodwill. I'll find room in the garage. Stop insisting."
"I'm not going to insist on throwing them out."
He huffs and shakes his head as he pulls the damp cloth from his shoulder and swipes at the dust.
"What if we fixed them up? We could give them away so that her lamps can light up someone else's home. I think she would have wanted that more than for you to stuff them in a box to be forgotten until who knows when."
His shoulders slump when he sits down on the stool and stares at the black metal dolphin. "I can't give these away. I . . . I just can't. She was like a mother to me."
"We don't have to give them away to people we don't know. We can give them to your cousins, or my parents. Everyone needs lamps. We just have to fix them up. Your aunt would have loved that." I put my hand on his shoulder. "I'll find someone to fix them up. I promise."
"I want to keep this one."
I roll my eyes but switch to a smile before he looks up at me. "Sure . . . I like dolphins."
"This one was in our bedroom. I remember when my brother broke it. He knocked it over while whipping me with a wet towel."
I can see I am going to be living with this dolphin lamp for a long, long time. With Leo's brother living halfway around the world, anything that conjures a childhood memory is sacred. This entire renovation endeavor has trapped Leo between melancholy and nostalgia for over two weeks now, and we are only halfway done!
He rises, black metal lamp in hand. "You swear you won't throw out a single one?"
With my right hand over my heart, I raise my left and promise. "If any of the lamps are beyond repair, we'll put them in storage. But, if they're reparable, we're gifting them. Except for the dolphin one. Deal?"
A playful smirk appears on his face as he studies the dolphin sculpture. "It really is pretty gaudy."
I chuckle. "This one isn't so bad. That one," I point to two pink ceramic balls balanced on top of one another, covered in painted blue and green spots, topped off with a dark purple shade and a square glass base. "That one is special."
He huffs and shakes his head. "She really did have horrible taste. Maybe it was the seventies style, you know, retro, disco themes. But, she always had customers."
"So we're good with this junk – we've reached a compromise, right?" I say.
He nods and narrows his eyes at me.
"Now, about those magazines . . ."
He whips the towel at my thigh. I yelp. He laughs.
"Those magazines are gone!" I make a run for the stairs as he whips it at me again.
"Don't touch them!" He yells.
"They're sleeping with the fishes!" I shout as I poke my head back to look down the staircase and stick my tongue out. Before I can see what Leo has in his hands, I hear a swoosh and something hits me right between my eyes. My arms bang wildly against the frame of the basement door as I tumble backward to the ground.
I groan. "What the hell!"
"Oh my God! I'm so sorry." Leo rushes up the stairs. "I didn't think it was going to hit your face." He chuckles as he helps me sit up.
"Was that a freaking Nerf bullet?" I rub my forehead with one hand, the other reaches for my tailbone.
He kisses my forehead. "I'm so sorry." He chuckles more.
"Your giggles aren't helping."
"No, seriously. I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to hit your between the eyes. Though, it was really funny."
"You know, I could have fallen down the stairs. That wouldn't have been so funny."
"No, that would have been hysterical. But seriously. I'm sorry."
Still lying on the floor with my right hand rubbing the sore spot on my forehead, and my left hand on my lower back, I say, "About those magazines . . ."
He purses his lips and pouts. "You can throw them out."
"I thought so."