by Carrie Mac
“Juniper Rawley? Daughter of Marla Rawley?” He thrust the microphone in her face. “I’m Jerrod Campbell, KELB News Eleven. How do you feel about the world’s most famous talk show host coming to your house to fix your mother’s hoarding addiction?”
Junie stared at him, and then at the cameraman behind him, and then at the station’s news van behind him, and then at the three other news vans that were pulling up from three other channels, two of which Junie had never heard of. She opened her mouth to tell him to piss off, but before she could, Tabitha yanked her away from the door.
“No comment.” She slammed the door shut.
The two girls stood in the hallway as Jerrod Campbell from KELB News Eleven banged on the door with his fist.
“A few questions, that’s all.”
And then there were several more reporters banging on the door.
“What do we do?” Junie wanted to crawl into the closet and not come out until it was all over.
“We call our lawyer, that’s what.” Tabitha grabbed the phone and called her mother, who was already on her way.
“How did she know?” Junie asked, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.
“Everyone is talking about it downtown,” Tabitha said with a grimace. “It’s all over the place.”
“Not good.” Every drop of Junie’s blood flooded to her feet and she swayed, suddenly light-headed. “Not good.”
“Come sit down.” Tabitha steered her into the kitchen, as far away as they could get from the pounding on the front door. She sat Junie at the table and then dug in the freezer until she found cookie dough ice cream. She brought it and two spoons back to the table, but Junie couldn’t even look at it. She was so close to throwing up that she was keeping her eye on the door to the bathroom in case she had to beeline.
The phone rang.
“You think they have my number?” Tabitha stared at the phone as it rang. “Can they get it even if it’s unlisted?”
Junie was only able to shrug. All of this was way out of her depth. She honestly had no idea.
“I’ll go see if we know the number.” Tabitha picked up the phone and checked the number on the call display. “It’s Wade!” Before Junie could tell her not to, Tabitha answered the phone. “Hi! Wade! We’re so glad it’s you! It’s insanity over—” Tabitha stopped talking, her face falling into a frown. “Of course,” she said during a pause. “I understand,” she said during another. “Totally.”
From Tabitha’s expression, Junie knew it wasn’t good.
“Let me talk to him.” Junie held out her hand for the phone, but Tabitha was shaking her head.
“I’ll tell her.”
Junie waved her hand. “Give me the phone, Tab.”
“I’m sorry, Wade,” Tabitha said. She paused while he said something on the other end. “But it is partly my fault too, for going along with it.” Another pause. “I’ll tell her. She’s right here. She wants to talk to you.”
All of the blood surged up from her feet and flooded straight to Junie’s head. She was dizzy in a whole different way. What would she say to him? How could she make it better? But she wasn’t going to have the chance. Tabitha said goodbye to Wade and hung up the phone. She bit her bottom lip. “You were right. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”
Junie’s heart bucked against her chest. Of course he didn’t want to talk to her. If she’d been him, she wouldn’t have wanted to either. She was a liar. And her lies were big ones. Nothing little, like padding her bra or smoking the odd cigarette in secret, but great big lies that cast shadows the size of mountains. She was a fraud. And her house smelled like shit. And her mother was so screwed up that she was going to be on The Kendra Show. These were not little white lies. Not in the least.
“What did he want you to tell me?”
Tabitha stared at the floor.
“Go ahead,” Junie said. “Whatever it is, I deserve it.”
Tabitha was just about to tell her, but the front door was flung open, and there was Mrs. D., backing into the house while telling off the reporters. Junie and Tabitha ran to the front hall to watch.
“If you are not off my property within the next sixty seconds, I will sue all of you for trespassing, and you can be sure that I mean it!”
Jerrod Campbell was not deterred. “And your relationship to the hoarder is—?”
“You’re wasting precious time,” Mrs. D. growled. “I’d get moving if I were you.”
“We’re not intimidated by empty threats, lady.”
“She’s not just any lady,” a reporter from a local station said as he gave up and turned away. “That’s Georgia Dillard, Crown prosecutor. Keep talking and you’ll end up in court, still talking. And then you’ll lose. Like everyone else who goes up against her.”
Jerrod smiled at her, but lowered his mic. “Hey, it’s a free world.”
“You Americans. Those of us from here know better.”
Jerrod tipped an imaginary hat to her. “See you next time.”
He was the last to go, sauntering casually down the sidewalk. Mrs. D. called after him, “Your sixty seconds are long gone, sir. You can expect the litigation papers within the week.”
He kept walking, not turning back, and just lifted a hand and gave her a careless wave before getting into his van.
The scrum gone, Mrs. D. turned to her daughter and Junie. “Now. Tell me exactly what is going on here.”
Tabitha and Junie explained everything, and when they were done, Mrs. D. put a hand on Junie’s shoulder, her eyes moist.
“Why didn’t you tell me, sweetheart?”
“You would’ve called a social worker.” Junie felt tears dampen her own eyes. “You would’ve had to, right?”
Mrs. D. paused before she eventually nodded. “You’re probably right. I almost did that one time, but you managed to explain it away enough that I guess I was content to ignore it then. I wish I’d persisted. I wish I’d checked up on you. I wish I’d known. We could’ve helped. I’m sorry.”
This made Junie cry all the harder. Mrs. D. pulled her into a tight hug. “From this minute on, it’s going to get better. I promise. Okay?”
Junie nodded, hoping that she was right. And then Mrs. D. pulled away and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Tabitha asked.
“I’m going to Junie’s house to see Marla,” she said. “I’m not sure if this is the most ridiculous thing she’s ever done, or the smartest, but either way, she’s going to need me. Either as a lawyer or a friend. Come on, Junie.” Mrs. D. waggled a hand at her as if she was a toddler. “You come too. It’s time to face the music.”
But Tabitha held Junie back. “We’ll come in a minute, Mom.”
Mrs. D. angled a severe look at the two girls. “See that you do. Promptly.”
“We will,” Tabitha promised her.
So Mrs. D. left without them. Tabitha turned to Junie. “I’ll tell you what Wade said.”
Junie groaned. “I don’t know if I want to know.”
“He asked me to tell you and I told him I would, so I’m going to tell you. You can plug your ears and sing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ as loud as you want to if that’ll make it any easier.”
“Speak.” Junie hung her head, preparing for the onslaught. “I can take it.”
“He said that your date tomorrow is off, and that he’s going to start the filming by himself. And that he doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”
“He’s breaking up with me.” Junie’s stomach lurched up into her throat. She was sure she was going to vomit. She put a hand to her mouth. “Isn’t he?”
“He didn’t say that.”
“He might as well have.”
Tabitha repeated what he’d said. “That doesn’t mean that he won’t want to talk to you when things cool down.”
“Cool down? When is that going to happen?” Junie stalked to the living room window, yanked the curtain, and pointed down the street to the circus in front of her
house. There had to be at least five hundred fans gathered now. There were two more police cars and three more media vans, from international stations by the looks of it. One van’s signage was in Spanish.
“When, exactly, will things cool down?” Junie backed away from the window as a cameraman waiting in the street—off the property—turned his camera on her. She pulled the drapes closed. This was her life crumbling into ruins, and it was going to be televised. Nationally and internationally televised.
SIXTEEN
Junie and Tabitha took the back way to Junie’s house and found Mrs. D. talking with Marla, the cameras nowhere nearby.
“Only your mother could accomplish that,” Junie said. She could tell by the expression on Mrs. D.’s face that the house had taken her by surprise.
“You have choices, Marla,” Mrs. D. continued as Junie and Tabitha joined them. “You can do this if you want, but you can also change your mind and not do it this way. I can help. If only you’d let me know how bad it had gotten.”
“I do want to do it this way,” Junie’s mother said. “I do. I really do. I think this is the way that will work for me. Nothing else has.”
Kendra approached the small group. “Marla? Junie? You girls ready to tackle this?”
“Kendra, pleased to meet you. Georgia Dillard. Could I have a word? I’m Marla’s attorney.” Mrs. D. ushered Kendra to one side, and both Junie and Tabitha were impressed that Kendra actually went with her.
While Mrs. D. conferred with Kendra, Junie’s mother went back to what she’d been doing before Mrs. D. had arrived: showing Bob how her “system” worked.
“See, I can find pretty much anything I’m looking for. Try me.”
“Can opener,” he suggested.
Junie watched as her mother beelined for two heaps of dirty, mouldy dishes balancing precariously on the counter. She reached between them and pulled out the can opener.
“See?” Junie’s mother held it up like a trophy. “Not so bad, eh?”
Behind the camera, Bob gave her a thumbs-up. Then he turned the camera to Junie, who was feeling so embarrassed for her mother that she wanted to bury her in her pile of Shopping Channel purchases and tell everyone that the intervention was off.
The front door slammed, and a minute later a tiny woman barged into the kitchen, holding her hands up to keep them from touching any of the garbage.
“Oh my God, my flight was so late I thought it was going to be next year before I landed!” She spoke with a nasally New York accent and didn’t make eye contact with anyone except Kendra, who gave her a big hug. Beside her, the woman looked even smaller, birdlike. But her voice was bigger than anyone’s in the room. “Where do you need me, what can I do, where do we start, hopefully with the awful shit smell if we’re going to be here for the week.”
A week? Junie grabbed Tabitha’s sleeve and eyeballed her.
Kendra, not missing a thing, patted her shoulder. “Deep breaths, hon.”
The small woman spun and thrust out her hand. “Your hands clean?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll shake.” The woman grabbed Junie’s hand and pumped it. “Charlotte Falconetti. Call me Charlie. Assistant producer.”
“In other words,” Kendra explained, “this is me when I’m not able to be me, only with an A cup rather than a double-D, and not black, and considerably younger.”
“B cup, I’ll thank you very much.” Charlie gave Kendra a friendly smack on the arm. Junie couldn’t imagine being so familiar with Kendra that you could slap her. “I’ll be here for the week. Miss Thang here will come back to shoot some more on the last couple of days.” She gave Kendra a stern look. “But you’re getting footage now, right? From the storyboard we worked on back in L.A.?”
“Of course, Charlie.” Kendra introduced Junie’s mother, and Tabitha and Mrs. D. “Our key players. There’s a boy, too. What’s his name, hon?”
Junie opened her mouth, but nothing came out. “Wade,” Tabitha said.
“Who very well may not be interested in participating in this adventure,” added Mrs. D. “And the same might be said for Junie, and Tabitha, too.”
“I sense drama here.” Charlie churned her hands in front of her. “We like drama. Drama makes great television.”
But Junie didn’t want her drama televised. She didn’t want her drama at all, and she certainly didn’t want to offer it to the millions of people who were devoted fans of The Kendra Show. “So what if I say I don’t want to do this?”
Junie’s mother blanched. “But they want you in the show, Junie.”
Mrs. D. put a protective arm across Junie’s shoulders. “Marla, Junie is going to have to make that choice for herself. She has to want to do this. You can’t force her.”
“But I don’t have to force you, do I, Junie?”
Junie glanced at Mrs. D. At Kendra. At her mother. Her mother was the odd one out, of course. She was wearing another one of her colour-coordinated sweatsuits, red this time, with tartan Scotty dogs marching down the sleeves. What was Junie supposed to say? She glanced at Bob, too. He had the camera pointed right at her.
“I don’t know.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Charlie waved her hands. “No kid, no deal, Kendra. Come on. That’s the heartstringtugger, and you know it.”
“Give them a minute,” Kendra said with a confident nod. “Let Junie make up her mind. We can go. We can clear out right now if that’s what she wants. This is her home too.”
Mrs. D. let out a scoff. “So, in essence, you’re blackmailing her to be involved.”
“No, no.” Kendra shook her head. “Not at all. But we do want Junie in the show. She’s the reason why we picked Marla’s story over the other ones. Because she has a child. Who is old enough to understand the impact. The daily impact. Of all of this.” She swept an arm, indicating everything in the room.
As much as Junie didn’t want her very private mess aired on international television, she also didn’t want them to just leave. Her mother would never forgive her. And she might not forgive herself. What if this was her mom’s only chance?
“I’ll do it.” Junie felt the familiar pressure of tears pushing behind her eyes.
“Good to hear, honey.” Kendra patted her arm. “Good to hear.”
Junie’s skin crawled and her eyes pounded. She pressed her fingers against them and tried to stop it, but it was no use. Junie choked back a sob and fled, heading for the sanctuary of her bedroom.
“Where you going?” Charlie hollered after her. “You better not think you can just agree and then disappear, kid!”
Behind her, she heard Mrs. D. growl, “Don’t push it, Ms. Falconetti.”
And then Charlie replied with a barking laugh, “Give me a few more minutes and you’ll see that I’m all push all the time!”
Junie locked the door, flung herself on her bed and wept until she heard someone on the stairs. Tabitha knocked their secret knock and Junie let her in. Without a word, the two girls lay side by side on Junie’s bed as it grew dark and Junie cried, with her stereo on a classic rock station so that The Beatles and The Rolling Stones drowned out the commotion downstairs. When Junie stopped crying, they still didn’t talk. They just lay there with their arms behind their heads, staring at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers they’d put up in the shape of constellations ages ago.
“I think we were ten,” Tabitha finally said. “When we put up those stars. Remember?”
Junie did. They’d bought six packages of star stickers at the Science World gift shop after spending a Saturday morning there with Mrs. D. Junie’s father had brought up the step-ladder from the garage, and she and Tabitha had carefully stuck each one up there, checking the astronomy books they’d gotten out of the library. And then they’d carried the ladder down the street and done the same to Tabitha’s ceiling. But that’s where the similarities between the two girls’ bedrooms ended. While Junie’s was always as neat as it could possibly be, Tabitha’s was more like a normal teenage
r’s room, with laundry on the floor and sometimes a few dirty dishes perched on her desk, her bed strewn with the sheets and duvet she hadn’t bothered to straighten.
“Let’s trade,” Junie said. “I’ll be you and you be me. Just one week.”
Tabitha pushed herself up onto her elbows. “It won’t be as bad as you think. It can’t be.”
“In this case, I’m not so sure about that.”
“Well, you and your mom got into this mess. Now’s your chance to get out.”
“Me? What did I ever do?”
“What did you ever do?” Tabitha stared at her, eyes wide. “It’s what you didn’t do. You didn’t let anyone in. You didn’t tell anyone what was really going on. You kept all those secrets. You lied. And sure, this mess is mostly your mom’s fault, but some of it is your dad’s fault for giving up, and your fault, too.”
“Ouch.”
“You’ve been letting her get away with it! Keeping secrets. Covering for her.” Tabitha sat upright now, pointing at Junie. “You, and me, and my mom, and your dad and even That Woman have been enabling her. Making it worse. We all should’ve put a stop to it sooner. Gotten her real help.”
“But now we’ve got Kendra.” Junie pulled a pillow over her head and groaned. “And now my mother will be world famous as a compulsive hoarder whose house smells like shit.”
“Junie.” Tabitha tapped the pillow. “Just think. When this is all over, your mother will be normal. And your house will be normal.”
“But everyone will know me as the daughter of the compulsive hoarder whose house smelled like shit. Tell me I’m wrong. Am I wrong?”
There was a long pause before Tabitha answered. “That won’t last forever.”
“See?” Junie flung the pillow to the floor. “You agree! That’s how everyone will see me!”
“I’ll admit it’s possible,” Tabitha allowed. “And that that part will suck. But it’s going to be better in the long run. And that’s what’s important, right?”