Objects of My Affection (7 page)

I've known Marva only a day and a half, but I have no doubt she'd eat one of those therapists alive.

I hold up a stained, smelly blanket. “Trash?”

“Keep.”

Ugh.

“Marva, I realize it's hard to let go of things that you once cherished, but think about how much you love this beautiful house! Isn't
your home—your ability to move freely through it—more important than this one blanket?”

“Keep.”

If I give in on an item this bad, I fear it'll give permission for her to keep all sorts of ratty things, which is why I'm fully prepared to fight the battle of the blanket. Even though my last attempt at introducing a tip from my book was met with derision, Marva leaves me no choice but to try another. “To decide if it's truly a keep,” I say, “let's apply what I call the N-Three test. Need—Now—No. If you're deciding whether to keep something, ask yourself, ‘Do I truly
need
this item? Do I use it
now
or will I in the near future? What's the worst that can happen if I say
no
to it and let it go?' So, on this blanket—”

“I choose to keep it.”

The woman is hopeless. “How about looking at it this way. The faster you let go and clear out things, the sooner I'm out of your hair.”

“Whatever gave you the impression I don't cherish our time together?”

I can't help but burst out in a laugh. Sure, she's treating me like something on the bottom of her shoe, but you've got to hand it to the gal. She's not going down without throwing a few punches on the way.

“Oh, go ahead,” she says. “Put that in your little sale.”

After that, I manage to press her to decide on everything in the mudroom, right down to the last tube of expired sunscreen. One whole room tagged or bagged for the guys to clear out tomorrow. Granted, the room is not much bigger than a hallway. But progress is progress.

After the mudroom, we move on to the living room, following my plan to designate larger items that can be cleared to free up space. Post-its dot the room like an office rainbow.

I'm starting to get that buzz that comes with digging in and getting a job done when Marva says, “I believe I'll take a nap.”

I'm disappointed, and I'm not ready to call it a day. “Is it all right if I stick around until you wake up? Maybe we can get more done today.”

“Suit yourself.”

While she's sleeping, I decide to speed up the process by presorting items in the living room. Grunting with effort, I shove around boxes and sculptures and furniture and endless piles, guessing what Marva might want to do with each item. I wish I'd asked Niko to come today. I could use some muscle, but I didn't dare risk another day of watching the crew sit around with nothing to do.

By the time Marva emerges from her nap, it's dark out, and I'm sweaty and sore.

“What's this?” she asks.

“What?” I say, hands on hips and breathing heavily. I need to work out more. I've let myself get seriously out of shape since I canceled my gym membership to save on expenses.

“You've moved things.”

“I've presorted. Thought I'd use my time wisely. Now don't worry. I haven't thrown anything away. It's all here, it's just—”

“Who said you could move things?”

“Well, I figured—”

“You
figured.
Isn't that terrific. Now how am I supposed to know what's what with nothing where it's supposed to be?”

The edge to her voice would've been sharp enough to cut through my diamond stud earrings if I hadn't already sold them on eBay.

“You and I are still going to sort through it,” I say. “There's no need to—”

“Remove the tags.”

“What? The Post-its?” A rush of panic surges through me. “But I only shifted things around.”

“I said remove the tags.”

“But—”

“Now! I want them off! All of them!”

It's as if she's swelled to five times her size and her eyes have taken on a deranged gleam. Frankly, she's terrifying, like an angry Macy's parade balloon.

“Okay, okay,” I say, pulling a green Post-it off a clock and holding
it up for her to see. Maybe watching me obey will calm her. “You don't understand. I didn't change any of the—”

“How am I supposed to trust you now? When you stomp through my home while I'm asleep and destroy order?”

Oh my God, she's completely off her rocker. There couldn't possibly have been any order in here.

“Off,” she says, as she uses her cane to climb partway up the stairs before sinking down onto one of the steps.

She stares coldly down at me like an emperor watching slaves toil, while I make my way through the living room, pulling off tags, one after another. I attempt again to explain, but she shushes me. After the living room detagging is complete, Marva frog-marches me to the mudroom, where I empty the trash bags I've filled. We're silent as I work, but it doesn't feel quiet. It's as if a sound track of misery is playing in the background, filling up the house so even the air is cluttered.

Two days and it's over. I've failed. I wanted to find a job where I could make money fast and stay in the area. Rebuild a home for Ash and me when he returns. What kept me going through it all—sending my son away, selling my home, and getting rid of all my possessions—was clinging to a picture in my mind of soon everything being normal again. That this period of having nothing was just a bump on the road map of my life. I thought for sure this job was going to set me back on course. Only now it's over before it's begun, and I don't have a plan B.

“There, done.” I dump out the last bag onto the floor. Tears are pooling, but if it takes every ounce of strength I have, I won't let them fall. “I'm sorry. I never meant to—”

“Save it,” Marva says. “I won't let you in the house tomorrow if I'm going to have to endure all that caterwauling.”

Tomorrow?

There's a tomorrow?

I definitely heard her say
tomorrow
.

It appears that I'm not fired—not yet anyway.

“All right then,” I say cautiously, backing up toward the door. “I'll
see you tomorrow?” I test out the word to see if Marva objects to hearing it roll off my tongue.

She doesn't answer, so I let myself out, grabbing only my purse and leaving my stack of Post-its behind.

I
call my mom on my way home, having stopped first at a convenience store to buy a box of Cheez-Its, which are serving as both dinner and emotional comfort. As my mom does nearly every time I call lately, the first thing she says after “Hello” is “You sound upset. Is there a problem with Ash?”

“Ash is fine. I, however, am about to throw myself from a building.”

“Why are you throwing yourself from a building, sweetie?”

In the background, I hear my dad say, “Who's throwing themselves from a building?”

“Lucy.”

That answer seems to satisfy him because he doesn't inquire further.

“It's this job I took,” I say.

“With the artist? Ooh, I looked her up on the Internet after you told me you're cleaning out her house. I couldn't believe it—the one painting of hers, oh, I can't describe it, but the famous one with the naked lady in it? Rosalyn Wozniak has that very painting above her downstairs toilet. Not the actual painting of course. A print. But isn't that funny?”

“Mom, you know you can't mention that I'm working for her, right? I've promised to keep it a secret.”

“Tick a lock,” she says. I picture her making the gesture of turning a lock on her lips and tossing the key. “So is it not going well?”

“It's the weirdest thing. She hired me, but now it seems she wants me to fail. I can't seem to get her to let go of anything.”

“I'm not surprised. The older you get, the more attached you get to what you have. It's because so many of your friends and family have
died off or moved away. You want to at least have a reminder of them. You're young—you'll understand someday. Personally, I can't believe how you were able to sell all your things. I still think you should have put more in storage.”

“Storage costs money. Besides, I don't miss any of it.”

“How can you possibly say that?”

“Because it's true.”

“But your pretty dishes! And that antique armoire you had in your bedroom—oh, you were so excited about refinishing it. Remember how you sent me all those pictures of it on the e-mail? It had to have broken your heart to let it go.”

An image of my old bedroom floats to my mind. I'd spent weeks picking just the right lavender color for the walls, one that set off the whitewash I'd lovingly given the armoire. But before I can think too long about how I handed over my cotton, eyelet bedspread in exchange for a $5 bill at my garage sale, I sweep the thought away. I did what I needed to do. “It's no big deal,” I say.

“I don't mean to bring up a sad subject.”

“It's not. I'm fine.” As long as I don't think about it, I'm fine.

Truth be told, in some ways, I'm actually
glad
to have it all gone. It couldn't get gone fast enough, in fact. I recall how the taxi carrying Ash and his interventionist had barely pulled away and I was already in Ash's room, eager to sweep through and throw away anything stashed there that was possibly drug-related. Going through every drawer, closet, and crevice, I chucked the obvious: pills and powders, baggies, pill containers, pill cutters—but then weird stuff, too, that had no place in a boy's bedroom, such as pen casings emptied of their insides and plastic two-liter pop bottles filled with murky water. A euphoria came with watching the trash bag fill up that had me buzzier and more energized than I'd been in months.

A week later at my garage sale I was still on a high—and against a deadline to move out before escrow closed. Heather, who was there helping, had to talk me out of selling some things. Just because Ash had duct-taped a hash pipe out of some of his LEGOs, she'd said—taking
a LEGO pirate ship set off the
FOR SALE
table and hiding it away from customers—didn't mean they all were bad. Ash had a right to his belongings.

And it wasn't only
his
stuff I was tossing. I also sold the dining room set that reminded me how we didn't eat dinners together anymore … the stereo that played far too many sad songs … the couch that my ex-boyfriend Daniel and I picked out back when we were together for the three of us to pile on to watch movies. Even things seemingly benign—a fondue pot, a corkboard—shouted at me their need to belong to someone who could give them a proper home, after I'd proved that I couldn't.

I turn my attention back to my mom, who has moved on to giving me the weather report for Sun City—hot and sunny! The poppies are already coming in! What I didn't realize was that it isn't conversation but, rather, a sales pitch.

“So if that job doesn't work out, you always have a place here with your father and me,” she says, causing me to choke on the Cheez-It I just popped into my mouth. “We've got that spare room. I don't understand why you didn't come here in the first place instead of being squeezed in at Heather's. It doesn't seem there's anything holding you to Chicago. You don't have a regular job. Ash is in Florida. I don't see a boyfriend in the picture … unless there's something you're not telling me. Wait,
is
there a new beau?”

“No. There isn't anyone.” It's embarrassing that I'm still nursing my wounds over Daniel's breaking up with me, though it's been months. It's not unreasonable for her to think I might have found someone else in this time. Yet to me, it's as if his side of the bed is still warm. Even though I sold the bed.

“So why not come here? Live rent-free!”

As I have every time she's brought up my moving to Arizona, I hold back the real answer:
Because if I had to live with my parents at thirty-nine years old, especially in the retirement community of Sun City, I
would
leap from a building.
Instead, I say, “Ash is going to want
to come back when he's done. He'll have an easier time getting on his feet if I'm settled here, too.”

“Either one of your brothers would also be glad to have you,” she presses.

My brothers, Tim and Mike, still live in Wisconsin, where I grew up. They're both married with kids. While I had no doubt they'd shove over one of their offspring to make room for me, I already have a similar arrangement conveniently right here in Chicago at Heather's house.

“Thanks, Mom, but I'm going to give this my best shot.” Then I quickly say my good-byes before my mother can come up with any more relatives to pawn me off on.

N
iko takes it in stride the following morning when I tell him I don't have anything ready to haul out. He asks me to hand him my phone. When I do, he punches his number into it. “Call me when you need me,” he says, tucking the phone into my front pants pocket with a wink.

Huh. If I didn't know better—that is, if he weren't barely out of diapers—I'd say the boy was flirting with me. Perhaps he has a thing for older women who are incompetent at the jobs they've been hired to do. If that's the case—with two days under my belt and only having made the house messier than when I arrived—I must be like a goddess to him.

Minutes later, I'm in the kitchen clearing a spot on the counter to set my lunch when I hear a man's laughter. It's coming from the direction of Marva's office.

Please don't let it be Will.
This is too soon for him to check up on me. My mind races with excuses I can feed him for why nothing is done yet. Although I did move things around. Maybe he'll buy the old “you have to make a mess to clean a mess” excuse.