The Coat Rack (Complete)

Against Bare Walls

Dad's leather coat always hung on the peg closest to the door. He never used it, so it just hung there. At the end of the day, when I had brought all my drawings home to mom, I would hang up my coat right next to dad's.

Sometimes I would draw pictures of the metal plaque hanging against the bare walls of our apartment, and I would show them to my friends.

I don't think they ever saw the significance of those pictures.

Mom hated them. I could see it in my small childlike eyes when I ran up to her at the bustop and shouted "Mommy!! Look! It's Dad's coat on the rack!"

Sometimes I never saw the pictures again after I brought them home. As I got older, I realized why dad never never came to get his coat from the rack. I knew why Mom would bury her face in it and cry, letting the tears dry in the leather.

The few memories I had of Dad were old. They were almost as faded as the ones I had of Mom telling me Dad slipped away early in the morning before I woke for school.

"Even earlier than when I get up?" I would ask.
"Yes darling. Even earlier than you."

When I turned ten, Mom told me she wanted to take the coat rack down and get rid of it. I wouldn't let her.

That coat rack was like my life. There was no chance I would let Mom take my last memory of Dad. For the next year, Mom looked at the coat rack with defeat in her eyes. She never said anything about it, and she never again asked me if she could get rid of it.

One night I decided I would make Mom smile again. I quietly took the coat rack down from the bare walls, making them even more bare, and dragged it off to my room, laying it against the back wall.

I dusted off Dad's coat and hung it on my tiny coat rack, making sure it was on the peg closest to door.

When Mom came in the next morning, she looked at the coat with a regret in her eyes, and walked away without saying anything. It was obvious that my plan didn't work.

As I walked out to the table in the dining room for breakfast, Mom was hunched over, with her head in her hands, crying.

That morning, I made Mom's favorite breakfast, waffles. She cracked a small smile and ate silently, stealing short glances at me.

At one point, she sighed, and set down her fork. Tear stains shone on her face, and her movements were stiff. She had intertwined her fingers and said to me slowly,

"We need to speak about your father."

My lips had slowly turned downward, but I kept the look hidden by nodding slowly. We spent the morning crying and talking together, remembering things about Dad.

I told her, "My fondest memory of Dad... is the coat rack. Whatever you said to me, I never stopped linking the rack with Dad. I think it gave me hope. When you had told me Dad had never come to get his coat, I hoped he would come back to get it one day."

Mom just swallowed, and cracked a small smile. That's when I knew, there was nothing I could do to get him back. There was no hope in the coat rack anymore.

The coat rack was just... a coat rack. Nothing more.

Now, I still have that coat rack. I've scratched Dad's name into the front of it, right underneath the peg closest to my front door. Mom still has his coat, but I have the rack. And it's all I need.

It doesn't matter that David Carter, the father I never knew, was dead. It doesn't matter that I didn't have anything to know him by.

I had the coat rack.

And that's all I ever needed.