A year ago, I learned that Dad had a safe-deposit box.  I finally have it, but I need time to prepare myself for the contents, because no matter what I find inside—comic pages or a fortune in bonds—I know I will find more disappointment in Dad.

The last time I saw my parents, I was just a young boy. 

I was outside, playing Rocketman by myself, in the shade, with a few long, tapered rocks I’d found in the woods.

Rocks and sticks were my toys, and my friends were imagined.  We lived in a tiny, falling-apart, one-bedroom shack.  I slept on the floor in the kitchen where the woodstove kept me warm in the winter.

Dad came home from the store early that day, and took me inside with him.  Mom got me cleaned up and packed a duffel bag for me.  They took me across town to Auntie Jane’s. 

Dad enjoyed being with his sister—honest smiles as they chatted—and Jane always doted on me.  My cousin, Stella, and I would play until the grownups told us it was time to stop. 

Dad told me to be good and obey Auntie Jane and that they would be back in a couple of days.  He and Mom had something to do.

I was six years old when my parents abandoned me.

Auntie Jane and Uncle Jack made me feel at home.  I got my own bedroom upstairs and it was always warm.  Stella, now my sister-cousin, same age as me, had the corner room next door.    Uncle Jack treated me like his own boy; we played catch every evening and he took me fishing most Saturday mornings.

I had a model rocket ship, and a regular playmate. 

I’m now thirty-seven years old, sitting in my home, downtown, in a high-rise apartment, far away from that 6-year-old boy. 

From my dressing table, I retrieve the key for the box.  From my wet bar, I retrieve a glass and a bottle of scotch, and I sit before our large bay windows and watch the boats navigate the winter swells.  I turn the box over in my hands, and put it on the floor again.

Nebetia thought I should be alone with my father’s final possessions; she left after we ate breakfast together. She’s my wife of nine years.  A talented musician, smart and loving, frequently mysterious in her whereabouts.  She’s always wrapped up in something—studio sessions, charity work, or long afternoons with her friends,.  Sometimes I think she’s mysteriously absent because of something I do. 

I pour my first glass.

I inhale the aromas of the amber liquid.  I appreciate the craft of a fine distilled spirit.  I tell myself I drink scotch for the complex flavors.  The velvety mouth.

Today is the day that I open this damned box. 

I call Stella.  “I have my dad’s box.”

“I’m happy for you, Alek.  What’s in it?”

“I haven’t opened it yet.  I will today.”

“Why are you waiting?  I would have ripped it open as soon as my hands were on it.”

“That’s only what you think.  You don’t have the family angst that I have.”

“Yeah.  I never understood that.”

We say our goodbyes.

We were close growing up, but we went to different colleges and started running around with different types of characters, learning different types of things. 

Jane and Jack died suddenly in our junior year of college.  I received a small amount of money to get me through college, with a little extra.  Stella received everything else.  After college, I moved to New York to earn my fortune; she moved to California to spend hers.

I’ve never forgotten that Stella is my only remaining family, but after moving out of her parents’ house, she’s never been a big part of my life. 

I pour another glass.

Over the years, Auntie Jane would swear that she never heard from him again, and never knew where they were going or what they thought they had to do. 

But she knew something. 

A few months after Jane’s death, going through boxes of her stuff, Stella found an envelope with my name on it.  She sent it to me, still sealed.  Inside was a stray key.  I’ve kept the key all these years, never knowing what it was for.  It’s always bothered me.  It was the only thing Dad ever sent home and I didn’t know what the hell it was.

One day, an attorney contacted me.  He represented a struggling bank, and was returning physical assets to rightful owners.  There was a safe-deposit box under my father’s name.  Could I prove I was who the attorney thought I was?  I sent him my birth certificate and a photo of the key, clearly tagged 86B.

The attorney said the key’s tag matched Dad’s safe-deposit box number, 86B, and he agreed to send me the box.

I sit down again in front of our bay windows.

I pour another glass. 

Turning the key, the spring-loaded lid pops open, and I instantly recognize the Panama hat.  “That damned hat,” I say aloud.  I toss the hat to the floor.  It will go out in the garbage tonight.  The remaining contents of the box is a slim envelope.

I place the box on the floor, and consider the unmarked envelope.

I receive a text from Nebetia.  “What’s in the box?”

I do not respond, but order takeout food to be delivered for the two of us.

And I pour another glass. 

Nebetia will probably put the bottle away when she gets home.  She won’t understand that the scotch is a tool in today’s task, as essential as the key to the lock. 

I drain the glass and pour another.

The envelope contains a map of the very tip of South America: the Strait of Magellan, Tierra del Fuego, and a few of the other islands.  It shows sailing routes and seaports.  And on the Chilean side of the Argentinian border, a hand-drawn star, north of Punta Arenas.

On the other side of the paper, is a hand-sketched plat map for a piece of property, and, in Spanish, a brief inscription of some kind.  It’s dated and has a couple of signatures.  I think it could be a document of ownership, but my high school Spanish has never been useful. 

I try to imagine my father owning a piece of property at the bottom of the world. 

“I’m home,” Nebetia calls out.  I turn to see her unwrapping herself from her enormous scarf.  She’s smiling for me.

She pours herself a scotch, very unlike her, refills my glass, also very unlike her, and sits beside me.  The setting sun makes the river below glisten in purple hues.

“What’s that?”  Nebetia points at the hat on the floor. 

“That’s the hat Dad stole from the dead man.  It was in the box.”

“I don’t know that story.”

“When I was a kid, I found a man lying in the woods behind our house.  I yelled at him, ‘Hey mister!’ and poked him with a stick, but he didn’t stir.  I ran back to the house and got Dad.

“Dad inspected the old man and declared him dead.  He took the man’s hat, and put it on his head.  Told me not to tell anyone where he got the hat.

“He and Mom disappeared a few months later.”

“You didn’t just leave the body lying there?”

“No.  Dad called the police, but I couldn’t go outside the rest of the day, so I don’t know the rest of the story.  The man’s body was gone the next time I went back there.”

“What else was in the box?”

I show her the envelope and its contents.

“We have to go to Chile,” she says.

“I’m not sure I want to do that.”

Despite my hesitation, Nebetia makes travel arrangements and packs a bag for each of us.  Typically, I am the adventurous one, and Nebetia is hesitant, never wanting to leave her obligations, but she also has a way of helping me make correct decisions for myself. 

The following week, we fly to Santiago, and from Santiago, it’s a direct flight to Punta Arenas.  Exhausted, we sleep for almost a complete day, and then, starving, we feast at a neighborhood bistro.

We hire a local travel guide, Isabella, to be our driver and interpreter. 

As I guessed, the strange map is a property deed, and we are able to confirm that I now own the property.  About 2 acres on a llano; barren, except a few, stray livestock wandering around in search of choice weeds.  Towards the back corner, away from the country road, is a two-story, abandoned house.  Inside, all I can find is another box.  Rusting and aged.

It contains four Chilean gold coins, and a picture of Mom and Dad outside the house I was born in.  I am not in the picture.  Dad is wearing his damned hat.

I tell Nebetia, “I need to get rid of this property.”

“I love it here.”

“It’s beautiful property and was a lovely house, but are we moving here?”

“No.”

“I have no reason to keep this property.”

“You’re right, we should sell it.”

“It’s not worth my time.  Let’s give it to Isabella.”

“Give it to her?  We don’t know her.”

“We can help another family.  Dad could, finally, do something for somebody else.  It’ll be nice of us.”

Nebetia smiles.  “She’ll think we’re eccentric.  Coming all this way to give away a house.”

“Isabella will tell a story about those eccentric Americans.  A story her family can retell for ages.  We’ll be immortal.”  I love making Nebetia laugh at me.

We work with Isabella to transfer the property into her name.  An unexpectedly large tip for a tour guide, she is delighted.  She tells us she and her brothers can refurbish the house. 

I don’t want the gold coins, either.  Now, solving the mystery of the key, I can live the rest of my life possessing nothing of my father’s.

“I want to keep them,” says Nebetia.  “They’re beautiful.”

“I think your Egyptian heritage draws you to gold.”

“Gold draws me to gold.”

They are beautiful coins.  Hand-stamped, 19th century, 100-peso gold coins.  “republica de chile” arced across the top.  I rattle them in my hand, making a pleasant, solid, clunking sound.  We inspect them a few times.  I appreciate beautiful things. 

We give unusual tips to the bellhop, our maid, and an attentive waiter.  I have one coin left, and when Nebetia befriends an artist in Santiago, she gives it to her.

I feel better.

Nebetia wants to buy them back.  That would make them hers.  I guess that would be OK, but we leave for home. 

I am relieved.  Happy.

On the plane ride, I tell Nebetia, “I was better off growing up without my parents.  They’ve demonstrated that.

“That key was always a mystery, and it was a burden not knowing what it was for.  Now I feel contented that I’ll never know anything more about my parents.”

“How did they end up in Chile?  And owning property?”

“I don’t know.  I can’t piece together the entire story, but the story’s closed.  I’ve decided I can accept that.”

“You could have had family there.”

“You’re my family now.”

She holds my hand.  “I’m closer, finally, to understanding your pain.”

“I feel good.”

A few mornings after we got home, Nebetia said she was leaving for a recording session, and then had a planning meeting for a charitable auction.  I was glad to know where she would be.

“Will you be home for dinner?”

“Yes.  I’ll bring something home for us to eat.”

I asked a friend to clean out my wet bar.  I don’t drink anymore.