Keepsake

by Kristina Riggle

  Years of living on my own, keeping everything clean and just so, had eroded my resistance. So I pretended I didn’t notice the scurrying motions as I jabbed the broom at the corners, though a gasp snuck out of me before I could stop myself.

  The carpet was mottled and uneven. It seemed to be stained in spots, bright yellow in others where boxes had hidden the fibers from the fading effects of sun. The stains, the grime, were a mystery to me. Whatever Trish may have hoarded always seemed to be paper, objects, items. Never rotted food. No pet waste.

  It’s as if dirt floated through the air, looking for a place to settle, and hid itself in the places Trish would never be able to reach. Mindful, crafty, like the spiders.

  This thought set my skin to crawling. I feigned a need for the bathroom and fled the room.

  The bathroom was not much better. She’d started plopping her most recent papers in here, when she ran out of space on the kitchen table.

  Despite the chill air outside, I shoved open the window to let the cold rush in and surround me with its bracing reality.

  I stood in the vortex of the outside air and imagined the cold sanitizing me. Protecting me, as if I could wear it like armor back into the rest of the house.

  I wanted Seth. We needed more hands, and Seth wouldn’t be carrying all our Granger family baggage. I could pretend he was just a friend who had some time off and could lend us a hand. And maybe Seth could ask a pointed question now and then, or talk her down if she started having an attack. She wouldn’t even have to know he was a shrink.

  Seth was always so great at that: asking the most perfect question, the one you hated to answer but needed to hear. And that was just when we were college kids. Now he’s got an education and training. Maybe he could make a difference, battle back the hoarding demon, even in an unofficial capacity.

  Because Trish was motivated now, for Jack’s sake. Drew was right when he showed up at my house. This was a rare window of opportunity to save Trish. And my old friend is a shrink, and on sabbatical, too! I couldn’t waste the opportunity.

  I closed the window reluctantly and stepped into the hall, my feet already knowing where to pick a path through the mess. I was beginning to see how it could start to feel normal, how the sides of the piles could start to seem like mere walls, and maybe the hallway became a little narrower, but you could forget the stuff was stuff, and not part of your home itself.

  When I returned to Jack’s room, Trish’s face was wet, with sweat, or maybe tears, probably both. She was panting and beaming. She’d somehow scrubbed the walls almost entirely clean of the brownish film. We’d put the freshly cleaned sheets back on his bed. His own hoard we’d moved to a box on the couch next to the scrapbook supplies. The treasured Scruffy was on the center of the pillow.

  If you didn’t look too hard at the carpet, you’d never know anything had been amiss.

  “Wow,” was all I could manage. Then, “I’ll call Dad and tell him to bring Jack over.”

  “No,” Trish said, smiling. “Let me call.”

  She flounced from the room, radiating triumph and pleasure. I made note of her mood, to remind her of this moment when her willpower flagged, as of course it would.

  I had my own call to make, and this time I wouldn’t let my own bumbling mess it up.

  If Trish could clean, then I could be persuasive. Bold. Charming, even. Stranger things have happened, as Mom used to say.

  When Seth picked up the phone, he sounded warmer, less wary.

  “Hi, Mary,” he said, and then immediately, “I’m sorry I was so abrupt before. I tried to say something else, but you hung up.”

  I started to apologize and explain about my own stupidity but remembered my goal was to charm and cajole. “What was the ‘something else’ you wanted to say?” That came out more coquettish than I meant it to. I’d been going for charming. It came out as breathy Mae West.

  He chuckled before he answered, the sound producing a funny elevator-dropping feeling in my gut. “I wanted to direct you to some resources and give you a referral. I have the information right here, in fact.”

  “You didn’t call me back?”

  Seth explained how I sounded upset last time, and he didn’t think I wanted to talk right then. I told him he was right. He was always right about that kind of thing. About me.

  I took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “I’ve called to throw myself on you. Your mercy, I mean. Throw myself on your mercy.”

  I balled up my fist, thumping myself on my knee a few times as if I could beat the stupid out of me.

  “What makes you think I have any of that?”

  “Isn’t it a job requirement?”

  “You’d think.” There was that funny tone again, I noticed. A sour tinge.

  “I’ve called to ask you a favor.”

  I was perched on the couch next to Jack’s stuff. Trish ducked into my peripheral vision and gave me a double thumbs-up, smile wide. I relaxed my shoulders, not realizing I’d been tense. That meant that Dad was bringing Jack home without any fuss. Trish vanished toward the back bedrooms again.

  “What favor is that?”

  “We really need extra hands here. Can you come help us? We had my dad here, but it blew up in our faces. We don’t work together well, really.”

  “I can’t treat your sister. It’s called a ‘multiple relationship,’ and I could get fined and disciplined.”

  “I’m not asking you to do that. You said you were on sabbatical. And I got fired, so isn’t that a nice coincidence?”

  “You got fired? I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “That’s not really the point now. Will you help?”

  “She really should see a professional. In fact, I’m surprised the social worker hasn’t lined up an evaluation for her. I used to do that kind of work myself. I’ve got these resources—”

  “We have no time for resources! The social worker might take Jack away, and even if she doesn’t, my father will make sure of it, unless we make progress, like now. Right now. We can take her to a shrink later.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?” My attempts to be cool and charming were melting away. “Seth. Please.”

  “You might not want me there if you knew the whole story.”

  “I don’t care about the whole story. We need your help.”

  “Why me, specifically? If you don’t want me to treat your sister like a patient, then why does it have to be me? Ask someone else.”

  “There is no one else,” I said, letting the shame of it overtake me, my wretched loneliness. “There is literally no one else I can ask. My roommate’s boyfriend from twenty years ago is the only person I can turn to.”

  “No one at all?”

  “Is it all that shocking that stupid Mary Granger should end up alone?”

  “You sound like you think you deserve to be alone.”

  “If you’re not allowed to treat people outside the office, don’t do it to me on the phone.”

  I slumped on the couch and tipped my head back, letting the tears run into my ears. It felt funny and ticklish, and I almost laughed at how stupid it all was. Me, a jobless lonely hag in my crazy sister’s hoarded house, crying on the phone to my college roommate’s boyfriend I hadn’t seen in almost fifteen years. Who, if not for the coincidence of our shared birthday, would have drifted away like all the other college kids I knew. Every one of them forgot about me as soon as they turned their tassels.

  He said something, but I didn’t even hear him, treading water as I was in my own ridiculous life.

  He spoke up louder, and I finally heard, “Mary? I said I’ll come. Are you there? Are you okay? Mary?”

  Instead of answering Seth, I could only think of myself as an old, old woman, still sitting on a couch and crying, nothing around me ever changing.

  Chapter 19


  Jack froze in his doorway, his creamy yellow room looking nearly the same as it did when we moved in. I’d hoped for excitement and feared a freakout. But his statue act was unnerving.

  “Pal? Jack?”

  I’d asked Mary to wait in the living room. She looked wrecked herself, though I wasn’t sure why. I’d thought the call she made was something unimportant, some busywork part of life we all have. But when I came back to the living room, she was on the couch like a broken doll, limbs limp and face staring up, the phone loose in her upturned hand. Her eyes were all red and her face was shiny.

  So probably good she just stayed away for now. One emotional crisis at a time was all I could handle.

  Jack was still staring. “Is it all gone?” he asked, his good hand clutched around Cat, which he held up to his heart.

  “Of course not, pal. The things from under your bed we saved in a box and we’ll sort through it together. The rest of the stuff that we took out of here was all clothes you don’t wear anymore, broken toys, or things you never play with.”

  “Maybe I never played with them because I couldn’t see them anymore. Maybe I would play with them, now.”

  “Don’t think about that now, pal. Think about how great it looks in here. And you can sleep in your own bed like a big kid!”

  He glued himself to my side when he heard that, thrusting his good arm around my hip. He shook his head. “It’s too . . . big in here. Empty. It’s scary.”

  “Honey, this is what a room is supposed to look like. It’s not empty, it’s neat and clean.”

  “I don’t want to sleep alone. Why did you work on my room anyway? The kitchen is more important, so we can eat.” His voice sounded muffled. He’d turned his face away from his clean room, into my side.

  I was tempted to blurt out the ugly truth: because your grandfather was going to keep you away from me until I did your room. When Dad drove Jack home, he walked inside and raked his gaze over every part of the house he could see and then each corner of Jack’s room, like a soldier on patrol. He nodded and grunted at me by way of approval, in such a way that declared loud and clear: So far so good, but you’re on notice.

  I edited reality for my son, as I always had. “We wanted a safe place for you.”

  “I was safe in here.”

  “The pile of stuff fell on you in here, pal.”

  He shook his head.

  “Kiddo, it’s late. We should get you to bed.”

  “No!”

  I slumped with defeat. “You can sleep with me tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow about sleeping in your own room.”

  Jack’s face brightened at this, and he allowed me to help him put on his pajamas. He managed bathroom and teeth brushing with minimal help. I lay down with him in my bed and curled around him like a fortress. We didn’t speak. He seemed pale and frail. This had probably exhausted him. After the cleaning we tried back home, my mother was spent for about a week, dragging herself around the house.

  Lying there in the dark, I remembered Jack’s injury.

  I allowed myself to review it in my head. It hurt, but I deserved this hurt. In fact, I lingered over the details of it, soaking in the suffering I’d earned.

  I’d been in the basement, stuffing laundry in the machines. A sound came to me faintly, but I’d thought it was the television. I finished cramming the clothes into the machine, then I picked my way carefully over the mounds of clothes, through the winding path in the basement and then up the stairs, narrowed by things I’d meant to put away somewhere downstairs, but “away” turned out to be the steps themselves.

  How long had it been since the time I first heard that faint noise and the time I made it all the way up the stairs, through the kitchen where I finally heard the crying? Maybe as much as ten minutes. Everything seemed to be taking me longer lately. My energy level was poor on the best of days. And that day had not been the best, even before . . .

  In the kitchen I heard the crying, and it was alarming in its softness. It was the weak, thin crying of someone on the brink of a terrible fate. Resigned that no one is coming to help.

  At the time, I didn’t think exactly that. It was later, in one of the times I went over this in my head, that I realized why I ran like my hair was on fire to Jack’s room.

  I screamed, and at the same time Jack’s whimpering drew energy from my presence and he began to wail, “Mommy!”

  Now I squinted my eyes shut in the dark, inhaling Jack’s hair. In reality, the scene I came upon lasted only a split second before I dove forward and hauled things off him. But in my replaying of this incident, I had plenty of time to linger over the details captured in freeze-frame.

  His legs jutted out from a pile of things. One sock was half off. His legs were scrabbling uselessly, like he was trying to run sideways. I could not see his top half. I could only hear him crying, sounding distant, like he was in a deep cave.

  I fell on the pile and threw things to the side with both hands, excavating until I reached him. His head, arms, and torso had been buried by papers, and by then he was coughing and wheezing, hysterical screaming having worn out his lungs, combined with dust from all that junk. He shrieked as I lifted him up. I later learned his collarbone was broken there. He’d landed on his shoulder as the pile collapsed on him.

  He later said it was his own fault for trying to brace himself against that pile to reach a stuffed animal he’d glimpsed, a panda bear he’d forgotten about. He should’ve known it wouldn’t hold him, he told me later as I insisted again and again he not blame himself.

  As I held him, and he sucked on his inhaler, he asked between gasps, “Why didn’t you come? I was scared.”

  I told him I didn’t hear, and I apologized for so long he finally told me to stop saying it, once his breath had regulated. Then he said, “Mama, my arm really hurts.”

  Now, in the dark and safe under my protective arm, I realized Jack’s breath had slowed. He wasn’t shifting or fidgeting. I peeled my arm off him, pulled my body away. Yes, asleep.

  With my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see the piles now all around my bed, obscuring any moonlight from outside. It was truly like a cave in here. Did Jack want to sleep in here only to be with me? Or did he actually want the cave itself?

  “I’m sorry I did this to you,” I whispered, wishing suddenly Jack were more like Drew. I might have preferred a second angry, indignant son to the realization that I’d created another hoarder out of this innocent little boy.

  Mary had pulled herself together when I came back out.

  “I thought you fell asleep in there,” she said, not accusatory. She was pulling a brush through her hair. “So what’s the plan now?”

  “I have to work tomorrow,” I said with a groan.

  “Can’t you take any time off?”

  I shook my head. “My boss has a strict policy about notice for vacation time.”

  “Can you call in sick?”

  “That might work for a day, maybe two. Any more than that she’ll want a doctor’s note and preferably an amputated limb to show for my absence.”

  I gulped to think about the lies I’d have to tell to get to my government shrink appointment on Wednesday.

  “Well, then . . . Now what?”

  I shrugged. I felt empty. Withered. I was seized by a bizarre desire for my dad to stride in and start ordering us around. Not even an hour ago when he dropped off Jack, I’d had to resist the urge to push him out my front door so hard he’d fall down the steps.

  “You said spring break is coming.”

  I nodded. Speaking words aloud seemed to be too much now. I sank down into a chair that only this morning had been covered with papers. The chair smelled terrible, but I sat there anyway.

  “What if you do what you can in the evenings or whatever, and then I come back over spring break and we just . . . go crazy. Clean like dervi
shes. I’ve got a friend who says he can help.”

  “Who?” I said up to the ceiling. I closed my eyes.

  “His name is Seth. I used to know him in college. He happens to be on sabbatical now.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Okay.”

  Mary didn’t say anything, and I wished for the magical ability to poof her back home and myself into my bed with teeth brushed and face washed and finally write “The End” on this ridiculous day.

  “Should we read the diary again?” Mary asked, and I shrugged, all the caring about anything having been sucked right out of me.

  “Maybe I’ll read it out loud,” she said. I heard rustling of paper.

  April 10, 1961

  Reading King Henry IV in English, and it’s the most boring thing. Leave it to old Mrs. Schultz to skip over all the romance and blood and guts in Shakespeare plays and go for the dull political intrigue. Though Falstaff is funny.

  Mom came back from her first day visiting the migrant camps and said it’s the most pitiful thing she’s seen, some of those kids with ear infections so bad they have these huge lumps behind their ears. But the doctor is treating them nicely, and the farmer didn’t seem to mind or anything. But here’s the exciting part. Mom wants me to come help her! Apparently it’s pretty hard to keep the little ones entertained while they wait their turn, and sometimes Mom could use an extra hand to hold a vial or whatever. Daddy is skeptical, saying my schoolwork could be affected. I think he doesn’t want me mixing with “those” people. My mom gets away with it because it’s her job and her job brings in money (though she doesn’t get paid extra to do this and it’s after her normal hours; I think Daddy doesn’t want her to disappoint Doc). He says the Mexicans might whistle and jeer at me. Like I’ve never been whistled at before by a white guy. I survived the experience perfectly well, thank you.

  I hate how he thinks I’m so helpless. My boy cousins can do whatever they want, whenever they want, with whoever they want. Meantime it’s like Daddy thinks I’m walking around in a corset and waving a little fan in front of my face saying, “My stars!” With ruffians ready to ravage me at every corner.