Objects of My Affection Page 4

  “I’m joking,” I say. “It was all right.” I turn to Mary Beth, eager to change the subject to something other than me. “So has Nicholas decided on a college yet?”

  And off they go—I’m free to sit back and enjoy my drink while the three of them go back and forth about SAT scores and graduation and college choices and the higher-education prep I didn’t get to go through with Ash. I’d always thought I would. Ash is smart, as in “I don’t have to study but I still ace the test” smart. Although he’s a year older than DJ, they used to hang out in the same crowd—nice kids with great grades that managed to sidestep being tagged as nerds. Of course, once my son got into drugs, the lifelong friends went by the wayside, along with the grades. His new crowd looked as if he’d pulled them out from under a collapsed building.

  From where I’m seated, I can see DJ and the others as they bowl. Samantha—whom Ash briefly dated in his junior year—throws a gutter ball. Then she skips to her seat, high-fiving as she goes. I take a bite of a tortilla chip from a basket on the table, wondering if it will ever stop hurting seeing normal kids having a normal time.

  I’m about to go for another handful of chips when Mary Beth clasps my reaching hand across the table. “Lucy. Dear Lucy. Tell me. How is Ash?”

  The question came out of nowhere—or maybe it didn’t. I wasn’t paying much attention to the conversation. She gets my stock answer. “He’s doing well.”

  “When I heard about, you know, I was so upset. I said to myself, not our Ash!”

  This is awkward, and I want my hand back. Plus, yech, her hand is moist.

  Janie says, “It’s fantastic that he’s doing what he’s doing. Good for him.”

  I try to ease my hand toward me, but Mary Beth has a death grip on it. “Thanks, Janie,” I say, and with that I make a pointing gesture at her that makes utterly no sense but provides the excuse for claiming my hand back.

  Heather smacks the table so hard it jostles the drinks. “What are we, a bunch of old ladies? Sitting here when there’s bowling to do? Shame on us! I’ve been practicing on the Wii all week—I’ve got some teenaged butt to kick on the lanes!”

  I tap her foot with mine under the table—nice save. No awards for subtlety, but nice.

  Mary Beth leans back. “Oh, let’s let those kids be kids for a while.” That even gets an eye roll from Janie—it’s common knowledge that no one is more involved in the minutiae of her children’s lives than Mary Beth Abernathy. “When’s the last time you talked to him?” Mary Beth asks, turning back to me.

  Ouch, straight shot to the kidneys. “I haven’t yet. That’s one of the rules. No outside contact for a while.”

  This is not entirely true, but that’s the cornerstone of good lying. Stay as close to the truth as possible. Ash wasn’t allowed calls his first two weeks, but he was encouraged to write to me. He never did. Not one measly letter. Not so much as a sentence, even though I sent him a nice letter full of well wishes and support and completely free of any hint of bitterness. Now he and I are allowed a ten-minute phone call. So far he’s declined. I have been able to talk to his therapist, but those conversations are mostly me asking how Ash is doing, and Dr. Paul saying, “I’m not legally allowed to say anything, he is an adult, but …” Then he divulges some crumb of Ash’s recovery that will have to sustain me until such time that my son is willing to talk to me.

  “That’s smart that they do that,” says Heather, who knows I’m lying. “Total immersion. That’ll make things go that much faster.”

  “How long will he be in … um … the place where he’s at?” Janie asks.

  “As long as he needs to be. That’s why I picked this particular rehab,” I say, using the word Janie was reluctant to say. “It’s called the Willows. They have a program they run them through, and they don’t release them until they’re finished. It can be anywhere from a couple months to a year, or more. Although four months is the average.”

  “So what was he into?” Mary Beth asks, slugging down the last of her margarita. “Pot? Meth? Crack?”

  Is she honestly asking that so casually? What’s next—my bra size? If I’ve ever engaged in a three-way?

  Heather says, “Oh, for goodness’ sake, Mary Beth.”

  “What? I’m only saying, there’s all kinds of drugs and temptations out there. If we as parents are afraid to dig in and find out what’s going on in our children’s lives, anything can happen. I don’t know what I’d do if my Nicholas or Katie started messing around with any of that.”

  “You’d do what any of us would do,” Heather says. “Whatever it takes. Now come on.” She stands up. “I came here to bowl, not to wag my jaw all night.”

  “Potato,” I say quietly to Heather as we gather our glasses to carry with us, which is code for “I love you.” I don’t even remember why.

  She squeezes my elbow. “Potato, too.”

  After that, there’s bowling and pizza eating and opening of presents and blowing out of candles. I do what I can to shut off my brain. The margarita helps, but since I’m driving, I can only have the one. Besides, there’s something wrong about drinking to forget that your son is in rehab.

  Later, I’m pushing a piece of cake around my plate to disguise that I’m not eating it—one word, coconut—when Samantha sits down next to me.

  “Hey, Mrs. Bloom.”

  “Hi, Samantha.” I’ve been exchanging barbs with the kids all evening—the usual trash talk about how I can bowl them under the table—but I haven’t actually talked to any of them. “It’s good to see you. Are you excited about graduating?”

  “Uh-huh. I got a summer internship at my aunt’s ad agency.”

  “That’s great! Where are you going to school?”

  “I got into State.”

  “That’s my alma mater. I can tell you anything you need to know—especially the best places to meet guys. Oh, wait … I mean the best places to study.”

  She laughs, but she’s wriggly in that way Ash was when he had something on his mind.

  “I just wanted to say …” Her voice trails off. I wait. Eventually she continues, “I’m sorry I haven’t written him back. Is he mad?”

  “Written him back?” I instantly know exactly what she means only I wish I didn’t. “You mean Ash.”

  “I feel so bad. I would’ve—only my mom? She saw the letter? And told me not to?” Her face is puffy—she’s trying not to cry.

  I suppose that means that my face is puffy, too. Ash wrote to Samantha. He hasn’t said so much as hello to me, his mother, who sold her house to pay for his rehab. But this girl that he dated for a few weeks, a couple months at most, she received a letter.

  This should make me happy. Ash is reaching out to a nice girl. He’s not writing letters to his drug dealer, at least so far as I know.

  That’s the problem: What do I know? Nothing.

  And what’s up with Samantha’s mother telling her not to write my son back? What—does he have drug cooties? Will her precious child catch something by mere association with Ash? He’s in recovery, for crying out loud! That seems to me an occasion to reach out. If she were here, I’d give her a piece of my mind. Not to get on a soapbox, but something is desperately wrong with a society in which we care only about our own without regard to others—especially others whose mothers have driven your daughter places and bought her Taco Bell and clapped for her in school plays, and those sorts of things you do for your child’s friends.

  It takes effort to smooth down my hackles before speaking. “He didn’t mention that he wrote to you.” I can’t figure out how to ask what the letter said without prying—and I don’t care if I do, I just don’t want her to shut me out. “Did he ask you in the letter to write him back?”

  She nods.

  “Do you want to?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  I can’t stand it anymore. “What did he say in the letter? If that’s too nosy, you don’t have to answer.”

  “Mostly hi. And he misses me. An
d he’s sorry.”

  “Sorry …” I say. “Did he do … um …” I’m asking if my son did something awful to this girl, and desperately hoping I don’t get an answer.

  “Sorry in general, I guess. For messing up his life so bad?”

  As much as I’m relieved, I’m also irritated. She gets a sorry? The boy once held an airsoft gun to my head! He stole money from me and punched holes through my walls and lied and … ugh … so much for me not showing any bitterness.

  “I’m glad he wrote you,” I say. “And I can’t tell you to write him back because it’s against the mom code for me to suggest that you disobey your mother.”

  Samantha picks at the polish on her nails. “But you want to.”

  “I want my son to get better. If I knew how to make that happen, he wouldn’t be where he is right now. If he wrote to you, I’m guessing he felt it was important to his recovery.”

  “Forget my mom. I’m writing him back.”

  I put my arm around her to give her a quick squeeze. “Look, sweetie, do what you think is right.”

  chapter three

  Marva is reclining in a chair that looks like a big, fuzzy question mark, having an afternoon smoke in the mudroom. After allowing her enough time to puff down to the filter, I walk in, only to see her lighting a second cigarette off the first.

  “Another one? I was hoping we could get started.”

  She blows a smoke ring. “Give a woman a break here. This is the only vice I’ve managed to hang on to. Let me enjoy it.”

  A break. Please. Her coffee breaks, lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, and now cigarette breaks have frittered away the entire morning. Instead of being busy throwing things out, all I was able to do was strategize a plan for how I’ll proceed, should I ever be allowed to actually do my job. At one point, bored—and in desperate need of a shot of motivation—I ran to the office supply store to buy a calendar. The first thing I did after posting it on the bungalow wall was circle the deadline date: May 15. I wrote the number of days left on each date square, counting backward to today. Then I drew a big, fat X through yesterday, Day 52. I’m starting to worry there may be another X on the calendar before I clear so much as a scrap of paper from the house.

  Still, I stay upbeat and don’t even wave away the waft of cigarette smoke coming at me so as not to insult Marva. “There’s lots to do today,” I say, “so we need to get to it!”

  “You sound just like my son,” she replies in a tone that makes it clear it’s not a compliment. The windows that flank the tiny room are open, and Marva is looking out over the backyard where a gardener is planting bulbs. “Life to Will is nothing but a checklist. He’s always in a hurry to get this or that done. If you ask me, none of it seems that interesting.”

  I’m not particularly thrilled to be compared to Will Meier. “You hired me to do a job. I’m trying to do it. Now, if there’s flexibility in the deadline …”

  “There isn’t,” she says, taking a long, leisurely pull on her cigarette. She was probably one of those people who in college wrote their term papers the day before and figures we can clear out this house if we pull an all-nighter.

  I attempt a different tack. “In my book,” I say, “I recommend that any organizing effort start with envisioning the result. So I’m going to ask you to close your eyes and picture your home a couple months from now. We’ve finished the job, and it’s exactly what you hoped it would be. What does it look like? How do you feel being in it? Can you describe that for me?”

  She flicks the ashes from her cigarette into an emptied coffee can that is serving as an ashtray. “You win. We can get started.”

  “Great!” I say. “But it really does help to—”

  “You know what I’d like to envision? Us not having this particular conversation right now.”

  “You got it,” I say, even though I’m stung. There was no need to be rude. I’m only trying to help. “We may as well start here in the mudroom.”

  I pause to assess what’s in the room. It’s filled mostly with the sort of things that straddle the outside and inside worlds: jackets, boots, magazines, beach towels, plastic stacking chairs, a patio table, a six-foot, flamingo-shaped umbrella holder.

  Climbing over stacks of boxes, I make my way to a heap of clothing that reaches the ceiling.

  “These clothes. Yard sale?”

  “You’ll need to hold them up so I can see.”

  “Each one?”

  “How else do you expect me to decide? Some of my clothing is very expensive.”

  I grab a damp corduroy jacket with ratty elbow pads. “Yard sale?”

  “Keep.”

  “But it’s in such poor condition.”

  “I often get a chill.”

  “Marva, surely you have other jackets that are much nicer than this one.”

  I stiffen as soon as I realize I’ve used her first name. It’s probably expected that I call her Ms. Meier Rios, or missus, or ma’am, or something demonstrating proper subservience.

  “Fine, then,” she says, not mentioning the faux pas. “You may sell it.”

  Hmm, Marva it is. I toss the jacket into a trash bag color-coded for yard sale. Then I hold up another piece of clothing for her inspection. And again. And again. She debates the merits of each item so thoroughly, it takes nearly an hour to fill one bag for the yard sale. My tiny victory is that I coaxed her into getting rid of most everything she’d at first said she wanted to keep.

  Still, I’ll never get anywhere at this rate.

  Some professional organizers are also trained therapists. Their strategy would be to get Marva to examine her psychological ties to her possessions. Take her back to her childhood, or a traumatic incident, to help her recognize why she places such importance on material things.

  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 disapp
ointed, 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?”