The Stationers

Divine Ink: A Stationer’s Tale

Dad decided to buy the stationery store when my brother John, cycling home from elementary school, was struck twice by an absent-minded driver. In a panic, the dingbat drove over him, backed up, and ran over him again. Dad said she was too drunk to ride a tricycle, much less drive a car, and he knew a financial settlement would be the miracle he’d been waiting for. Dad had been dreaming about breaking from the tedium of low paying accounting work and believed in his soul that owning his own business was something he was called to do. Capitalizing on this misfortunate moment was simply too much to resist, so he took the settlement money and put a substantial down payment on North Shore Stationers, a small family business that seemed buoyed in 1950s nostalgia. Dad was excited to be free of a boss, and he imagined that his whole family would live better lives by being together constantly in the world of stationery and typewriter repair.

The store was one of six retail row shops on the corner of Capitol Drive and Maryland Avenue, across from Saint Roberts Parish, in Milwaukee. The shops’ large windows allow for carefree window shopping under the pointed shadow of the gnomon-shaped parish steeple. It was a storied place to buy an oddly shaped envelope, cheap pencil, or typewriter ribbon while hearing a dysfunctional family scream guttural vulgarities at one another. It was like a free show, but the only thing worth buying was earplugs.

Inside our store, a small jeweler’s workbench for quick intricate repairs sat behind mismatched glass counters. Atop sat a cash register garishly bespeckled with colorful clusters of impulse items. Everywhere else, tall shelves loomed packed high with all things office and paper-related, narrowly running along awkwardly concealing aisles. It was a museum of outdated office supplies and unhappy people; a shoplifter’s ideal mark, or a perverts paradise to exploit unattended children.

Toward the back, a wall of shelves divided the merchandise from my parents’ desks, where they sat back-to-back and didn’t have to look each other in the eye. Mom did bookkeeping, and Dad ran his tax business. On the opposite side of this small office nook was a stairwell turning into the basement. When the store was dead, we pretended to repair typewriters; the entire catacomb was packed with old garbage machines. NPR frequently played for the customers, peppered with the repeated nostalgia of the 1950s and 60s, playing ballads from –The Brothers Four, Kingston Trio, and — “anything Irish.”

Customers were usually fond of the interactive pen display. We’d watch the aged customers from behind the counter practicing their warbily signatures with great care before purchasing. Most customers were older and looking for pretty stationery and old fountain pens. Many could write in calligraphy and took great pride in scripting a perfect thank you note, place card, or love letter. Practicing our own fancy John Hancock signatures was a fun diversion.

All types of withering writers came in to spend pennies like dollar bills, they seemed locked in some Depression Era price system that had tainted their mental health. They were like time travelers who had come to our store by mistake. We were pretty sure they were looking for a general store from the 1800s, but we didn’t have the heart to tell them that their freak out about an 11-cent purchase was simply a sign of the times.

Listening to their lonely archaic stories about someone you’ll never meet or care about was a mixed bag, and we were like the therapist they never asked for, the bartender they never ordered a drink from, and the stationery store they stumbled upon by accident. Alone, knowing that the human interaction they needed to stay alive was being supplied by an unhappy child that’s only dreaming of an escape. My life was no different with or without this situation, yet I knew deep down the sad reality was that this would be me one day.

Daunting for a kid, but I learned to think about other things while interacting with them. Whether the person was a complete human garbage can or the nicest person on the planet, this harsh lesson regularly hammer rang like a bell in my head.

Dad often sat on the typewriter repair stand in the front window. From there, he’d bark orders and joke with the customers, perching on another plastic throne that blinds him to our fear.

Mom tolerated his authority, but frequently returned to the office to work on the books. Dad was her hero; she would willfully deny obvious warning signs everywhere to cope.

My sister sat on the furnace vent sneaking her thumb into her mouth and gently pissed herself. A musty tinge wafted into the air, and sadness spread everywhere. The customers thought the smell was Ebba, the elderly clerk, but I knew it was the fragile little girl who belonged at a friend’s house playing with dolls, not trapped in this odd cauldron that substituted for needed warmth.

My ever-self-defeating Father dreamed of the store’s expansion; his “Big Move” was changing the name to North Shore Office Services. Unfortunately, he never changed the name above the window, often confusing customers who came into a stationery store and left with unsolicited tax advice.

Dad wanted to be the king of office supplies, the sultan of staplers, and the totalitarian of typewriter tinkering. In a few years, we became a store that couldn’t decide what it wanted to be when it grew up, so it became everything. It was like a buffet, but instead of food, we had tax advice, staplers, and typewriters. We later learned that Dad incorporated the store to declare the family as a business expense. Surely, he thought, being together constantly was the best way to raise a family. It would be everything he needed growing up and he and mom committed themselves wholeheartedly to doing everything together: going to the rowing club, working at the store, and attending mass every Saturday night.

One common trait was telling one another precisely what we were thinking. Being raised in a family business meant your parents could scream at one another without fear of being fired.

The same abusive behavior fell onto my siblings, as we’d fight in the aisles before the customers and never feared reprisal. We could even kick customers out of the store for being rude; a rare, yet ironic pleasure of a family business means we did not have to take anyone else’s shit. None of it helped us in any way. It was an impossible exercise of learning the futility of coping with primary caregiver mental illness, while trying to absorb the intricacies of life for the first time.

We were never allowed to “try” in my father’s mind, “trying” was a weakness. We just “did” and would get in trouble if we used trying as an excuse for anything. God forbid if we asked for help.

Perhaps the store’s existence was a reminder that happiness is not found in the things we buy, but in the connections we make with others. As my siblings and I struggled to navigate our tumultuous family life, we often felt isolated and alone. But in the quiet moments between customers, we found solace in each other’s company. We learned that true happiness comes not from material possessions, but from the love and support of those around us.