—L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
Every day since my seventh birthday, that first shock of reality followed me into my apartment. Covered windows transformed the room into a black-and-white movie. The smells struck hard—cardboard and plastic, the tangy rubber of new sneakers. Throat-itching dust I could never clean fast enough. I smelled something new since this morning when I left for school. Dry dog food? A bag must’ve ripped open, one of maybe five stacked against the wall. They’d been on sale last week at a huge markdown, so naturally, she had to buy them.
Except...we didn’t have a dog.
Somewhere, inside this den of unspeakable clutter, I would find a hoarder. My mother.
I flipped the lights, stepping around the newest pile of shipping boxes into what psychologists referred to as a goat tunnel. A few goat tunnels ran through our home—uncluttered passages chronic hoarders often left clear, where you could actually walk. This particular passage led from the front door through the living room, stopping at our tiny kitchen.
* * *
Mom owned dozens of baskets and vases for flowers she never picked. We hardly used tin cans, but we had eight can openers. Enough sheets and linens waited for twenty beds, when we only had two bedrooms. Cases of CDs and bargain bin movies lined the apartment. Dated VCR tapes and speakers, all in a silent home.
But wouldn’t they make great gifts someday? One day, someone might need them.
I passed crates containing enough brushes, hair dryers, and curling irons to service the entire Miss America pageant. Bundles of unread magazines, with recipes she couldn’t wait to make, if only she cooked. I inched by the blue tweed sofa, where she’d carved enough room for one, maybe two people. Mismatched pillows and knitted throws blanketed the rest of the space. We had one working TV you could watch, but only if you angled your head just so around the piles of piles. Six Bubble-Wrapped TVs stood like sentries along one wall. Shelves jumbled with cables and cords and boxes heaped with office supplies. Dozens of picture frames held no photos.
My stomach clenched when I finally found my mother—one Andrea Wells—bent over the kitchen counter, her elbows perched on the blue Formica. She rested her chin in both hands. A vodka bottle lay on its side, contents drip-dripping from its long neck onto the beige tiled floor. Near my mother’s forearm, a glass was stained with red lipstick.
My eyes trailed to the cause of the crash and commotion: two dining room chairs had toppled over, and the mass of plates, stacked head-high on the counter this morning, lay in shattered pieces across the floor.
The loss of the plates was nothing, really. After all, Mom had collected at least thirty full sets of china, enough to service a grand dinner party for guests who would never come. Still, the loss would mean everything to her.
“Darcy. I... I’m sorry.” Her voice wobbled and sloshed, like the alcohol she’d emptied from the glass. But how many times over? How much had she had to drink?
I couldn’t bring myself to speak yet, so I focused on getting her settled. I pulled one of the fallen chairs to the counter through shards of broken china and folded her into it with some difficulty. She was long and thin like me, but moving her was akin to uprooting a statue. I stared into her brown, unfocused eyes; she’d drunk her expertly applied makeup into a clown face of raccoon eyeliner, feathered lipstick, and runny mascara.
Although my mother drank sometimes, she wasn’t an alcoholic. Enough counseling and professional analysis had concluded that Mom didn’t need the alcohol itself. She didn’t need the routine oblivion of the drink. She overdosed on things. Our home was wasted with them.
“So sorry. Darcy, you know, baby.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Read to me,” she said while I picked up the vodka bottle. “Just a little.”
She always asked me to read aloud when she was drunk. Only when she was drunk. For years, she’d only tolerate books—the sight of them, the melody of their narrative—when her mind was clouded and delirious. This, from an English major who’d taught me to read at three years old.
There were no books nearby, none anywhere in this part of our house. She had her reasons for that. But I didn’t need to hold a book to read to her. I had enough literature inside me to recite it by heart: a storehouse full of pages and passages.
“What do you want today?” I asked her.
“Something from Emma.” Mom usually asked for Jane Austen until she woke the next day, hungover and remembering she hated books.
But I loved them. I could see the text of Emma in my mind, clear as a photo. I closed my eyes and zoomed in on the novel like a lens, in a way no one has ever been able to explain. Least of all, me.
Since kindergarten, my mind has been a story bank. I read and read, and I remember.
After a deep sigh, I recited one of my favorite passages from Emma.
“While they talked, they were advancing towards the carriage; it was ready; and, before she could speak again, he had handed her in. He had misinterpreted the feelings which had kept her face averted, and her tongue motionless.”
I stepped around my mother and picked up the other chair. “‘They were combined only of anger against herself, mortification, and deep concern,’” I continued as I poured the remaining vodka into the sink, stopping before I threw the empty bottle away. She’d remember and ask for it, would freak out over its absence. Instead, I placed it under the sink, where twenty other liquor bottles stood, hearing her voice inside my head: They’ll make such nice vases one day.
Where to even start with the broken plate disaster? I hauled out the trash can and began with the largest pieces. I recited;
“He had turned away, and the horses were in motion. She continued to look back, but in vain; and soon, with what appeared unusual speed, they were half way down the hill, and everything left far behind. She was vexed beyond what could have been expressed—almost beyond what she could conceal.”
My mother’s head lolled, eyelids sinking. I rushed to catch her before she hit the ground and cut herself. Unshed tears stung my eyes. “‘Never had she felt so agitated, mortified, grieved, at any circumstance in her life.’”
I pushed damp strands of hair off her face. Not only the same body type, we also shared the same light pink undertoned skin and warm brown hair with a hint of mahogany. Not so much that you’d call us redheads, but enough that Marisol called it super special; she said only “straight-up colorist wizardry” could make just that shade. Mom wore hers grazing her chin, one length. Mine fell to my shoulders in long layers.
I never grasped for ways to be like this woman, but I was all she had. The only one to get her into bed, where she’d sleep until dawn.
I managed to lift her from the chair and hook my arm around one side. She felt so heavy, like I was supporting more than just a person.
I closed my eyes and whispered the rest. “‘She was most forcibly struck. The truth of this representation there was no denying. She felt it at her heart.’”
As I spoke the final words, the load in my arms lightened. My eyes flew open, my chin crumpling at the sight and feel of Marisol supporting the other side of my mother.
* * *
“We should’ve taken off her makeup,” Marisol said while we lounged, on my bed. Her breath smelled of watermelon gum. After tucking Mom in, we’d finished sweeping the kitchen and made the apartment as clean as any hoarder’s home ever could be. “No one should overlook proper skin care,” she added.
“She needs sleep more. And she’ll live one night without her Clean and Restore Cleanser,” I said.
Marisol opened her mouth, then let it fall closed.
“What?”
My friend hitched a shoulder. “It still surprises me. About her appearance. Her job.”
“You mean how she shops our house into a junkyard but doesn’t look like a slob herself?”
“Pretty much.”
Marisol had a point. Some hoarders let themselves go, even ignoring basic hygiene. My mother
did hoarding with style—no animal collecting or leaving rotting food on the counter. But constantly spending money required making some. So every day Andrea Wells left in current, clean clothes and went to her job at Macy’s as the head sales rep for Elisa B. cosmetics. Hair conditioned, face perfectly enhanced with Peony Passion Blush and smoky eye shadow. Her work friends and freelance clients didn’t know and would probably never guess her secret.
“At least she never forgets to bring makeup home for me,” I said dryly.
“Having doesn’t mean using.” In Marisol’s mind, my customary swipes of Elisa B. lip gloss and mascara were only the first thirty seconds of makeup. She slid halfway off the bed to the floor, digging into her tote. “We need chocolate. We needed it an hour ago.” She found two chocolate, caramel, and nut snacks she called granola bars. But I gladly took one, tearing at the wrapper.
Before her first bite, Marisol removed her glob of watermelon gum and stuck it onto the fitted gold bangle around her wrist. She originally bought it because of some trend, never took it off, and often used it for this purpose. Which I loathed.
“You’d think by now I’d get used to...to...” I pointed to the pink lump on the bracelet. “That.”
Marisol countered, “I unwrapped that gum maybe one minute before I decided we were hungry. Plenty of chew left.”
I bit off some of the caramel goodness. “May I remind you of how your gum-conservation habit cost you one deliciously blond football star? Sophomore year?”
A slow-moving grin stretched across Marisol’s face. She flopped backward onto my pillows, dreamy eyes to the heavens. “Brody Roberts. Oh, but he was a fine specimen, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Her voice smoothed into a purr, and I could almost see into her memory as she said, “Right before practice, behind the racquetball courts, where no one goes because—”
“No one plays racquetball anymore,” we said in unison, then laughed.
“Anyway,” she continued, “his eyes were icy blue and his hands were raking through my hair. It was stupid hot out, like today, and he was leaning in, and I was distracted. Dios mío. Can you blame me for forgetting I was chewing two pieces of that Cherry Slush flavor?”
“Which you quickly removed by pretending to push your bangs off your face, as I recall?” I laughed. “Talk about a first-class maneuver—one-handed hair swipe, stealth transfer of Cherry Slush from mouth to bracelet.”
“One of my finer performances.”
“Only, hon, you didn’t do what 99 percent of other girls with hot guys trying to kiss them would’ve done. Like throw it on the ground?”
Sheepishly, Marisol said, “Habit. I wasn’t thinking. A boy that beautiful makes you forget stuff while he’s trying to climb down your throat. Man, he was a good kisser. Your mind kinda goes to jelly, you know?” She guffawed and dragged one of my knitted throw pillows over her face.
Truthfully, I didn’t know. About kissing, or throat climbing, or mind jelly, or any of it. Marisol knew I didn’t know, and I knew she didn’t mean to make me feel bad, but the words still pinched. My friend had kissed a fair number of guys; I’d heard about all of them. I’d also kissed dozens of guys—on paper. I’d fallen hopelessly in love, too—in books—with strong, flawed heroes. I had plenty of clock-striking paperback midnights.
But no real ones yet. Too many boxes blocked the view into my castle gates.
Brown eyes rimmed with winged liner emerged from behind the pillow. “Couldn’t have been the gum.”
“He never texted you again,” I said.
“Which had more to do with Chloe Clark than my gum.”
“It’s like a beacon. You can’t miss red gum where red gum doesn’t belong. I love you, but he got weirded out.”
“Fine, it might have been a factor.” She bolted upright. “Time for some real food.” Chocolate bar demolished, she popped the saved gum back into her mouth and grabbed her phone. “I can text Bryn to meet us at the Asian bowl place? It’s her night off from practice. Math homework can wait.”
I shrugged. We hung out with Bryn Humboldt, too, but never here. I considered the upside of going out and ending the day in any place but this one.
Marisol looked me over. “Now for your outfit.”
I tugged my black tee and tan shorts. “I’m already wearing an outfit.”
“No,” Marisol said with a slow head shake. “There’s a big difference between wearing clothes and wearing an outfit.” She pointed at my closet. “Get that denim shirt I made you buy and layer it on top, opened, sleeves rolled. Your tee has a little rip.”
I glanced down. Grimaced.
“Then the necklace with the dangling blue stone that’s hanging in your jewelry caddy, by your black jacket. And swap the flip-flops for sandals. The black ones with silver buckles.”
“How in the—”
“After all this time, you’re actually questioning it?”
I conceded with a hand flip and moved toward the closet Marisol freakishly knew by heart. One hand on the knob, I circled my eyes around my organized, tidy room. My mother’s hoarding halted at my bedroom door. Despite the counselor’s guidelines to define my own space in our apartment, I suspected there was another reason my room remained clutter-free.
Other than my bed and a white wooden desk, tall bookcases completely covered my walls. The ivory paint barely showed. And packed onto those shelves were countless volumes of my mother’s old books. Books I rescued when I was eight years old, when my mom’s hoarding worsened. After too many years of longing and waiting, she’d finally acknowledged that my father—avid reader and English teacher—was never coming back.
When Grandma Wells brought me home from school that day, and I saw my mother crating books, I begged to keep them, clutching my favorite copy of Anne of Green Gables. Mom relented with one condition: the books would remain in my room. Now she rarely entered my bedroom, where I slept in the middle of a thousand stories. I could trust the words in those books to remain the same, unlike the contents of our apartment.
I left the closet without the denim shirt or the blue stone necklace. The books drew me close, a stronger pull than my clothes, a comfort softer than wool or cotton. I approached the nearest shelf and grabbed that same copy of Anne of Green Gables with its faded mint cover.
Marisol said, “You’re not going out with me and Bryn, are you?”
“Marisol...” I sat on the edge of my bed. I thought of the gray paint outside and worried about how I was going to continue to hide my life and save my mother’s. It wasn’t like I could just run up to Mom and tell her to clean up and quit buying stuff. Her disorder didn’t work that way. Even mentioning the hoard at the wrong time could drive her into buying more. When Mom felt threatened, she crammed and collected, then forgot to buy milk and bread. Neglected to pay the racked-up bills. Stress made my mother need more to soothe the shame of what she’d created—from shame.
The circle never broke. We lived in a home strung across tightropes.
I’d gotten used to my tightrope, but now a clock was ticking against my skull. The new apartment manager and our looming lease renewal meant I had to look deeper for new solutions. The month remaining before my eighteenth birthday was plenty of time for Mrs. Newsome or Thomas to see too much and call Child Protective Services. The story of Mom and me could not end that way. Investigated. Maybe separated.
Tonight, the books around me held all the clear endings my life could never promise. Some of them were even happy.
“Next time I’ll go, I promise,” I said. “But after today, I just...”
“I get it.” Marisol crawled over next to me. She pulled her legs around, dangling them from my bed. “You need some Anne.”
I sighed. “But I’ll always love you best of all.”
“Always, always.” My friend smiled. “Darcy with a heart-shaped face.” She tapped one finger on my chest. “And a book-shaped heart.”
Three
The Beginning of the Middle
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
—Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
The next day after school, I stepped into work through the metal alley door. Not like I was late, but when a parking space opens up around the corner from Yellow Feather Books, you pounce. Eerie quiet and a faint musty smell followed my steps through the storage bay under thinning afternoon light. I peeked into Mr. Winston’s paneled office and found it empty. No sounds of customers pacing the shop floor or children’s gleeful voices as they explored the picture book section. I shoved my card into the time clock, ancient, like the owner preferred most things. Mr. Winston only had one employee—me—but still insisted I punch in every shift.
Whenever I hit the showroom at Yellow Feather Books, I felt like I was stepping back in time. Warm and familiar, it was a shop you’d expect to find on a cobblestoned Parisian street, rather than the urban San Diego neighborhood of North Park. A meticulously curated jumble of volumes packed with ink and words. A perfect opposite to the Dumpster chaos of my apartment.
My boss was the only splinter, but I knew how to handle his quirks and fastidious ways. He’d put on his favorite Tony Bennett album, keeping the volume soft through overhead speakers. A wooden cashier counter flanked the back, for transactions and homework, which I was free to work on between customers. Weathered oak floors carried mismatched Persian rugs. Italian glass chandeliers twinkled instead of fluorescent tube lighting. Chunky, claw-footed tables, scratched with years and use, showcased new releases. Two burgundy wingback chairs and a travel-trunk coffee table created a front sitting area, but I didn’t know what for. Mr. Winston secretly preferred his customers to scram as quickly as possible after paying.
I glanced down at the computer, one of the few modern conveniences Mr. Winston allowed, though I was generally the only one who used it. He usually left a Darcy-Do list for me, like: (1) Print more flyers. (2) Organize YA section. (3) Order twenty copies of new fad diet book. (4) Find out the name of new fad diet book.
The Library of Lost Things Page 2