Objects of My Affection

by Jill Smolinski

  “It’s been so rainy lately.”

  When there’s no reaction from her, I say, “I’m Lucy. I’m here to—”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Okay, great then.”

  Not certain how to proceed, I make a show of noticing a bush off to the side of her porch. “Does that flower?”

  “Please don’t feel that you need to make chitchat. I quite enjoy the morning quiet.”

  “It is nice, isn’t it? So peaceful. I remember once when I lived right off a busy street and I’d wake up every morning to—”

  Marva is barely suppressing her irritation as she looks away.

  Oh. Right.

  Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I say, “Do you mind if I show myself inside and take another look around? You can let me know when you’re ready to get started.”

  She waves her cigarette in the direction of the front door, which I take to mean go on in, so I do.

  Squeezed into the living room, I’m startled all over again by the squalor. How does anyone get used to this?

  For the next hour, I poke in any closets, drawers, and cupboards I can manage to wriggle into. It’s funny what you can learn about people by what they keep. For example, I am learning that Marva might be a pack rat, but she’s not a slob. There is a difference. Although there’s a ton of stuff here, it isn’t garbage. No food or dirty bowls or snuffed-out cigarettes, at least that I’ve seen. Then again, anything could pop up. My toes scrunch at the idea of mice scurrying across them.

  At one point I am wedged beneath the dining table—butt in the air reaching for what I thought might be a huge diamond ring but turned out to be a broken piece of a chandelier—when I hear Marva: “May as well get this show on the road. What’s your plan, Princess?”

  “I have one!” I say, overeagerly I realize as soon as the words are out of my mouth. I drag myself from beneath the table and face Marva, who is seated in the one cleared chair in the kitchen. “I have one,” I say again, calmly this time, choosing to ignore the sarcasm in her little nickname for me. “A plan on how to proceed. I believe you’re going to be very happy with it.”

  I pull the organizational system I spent much of last night devising from my bag, setting it on a tiny cleared space on the kitchen counter. I feel like an advertising exec giving a pitch to a client—but that’s fine. Marva needs to be on board or it’s not going to work. So I need to sell, sell, sell. The lucky news: I’m using Post-its. Who doesn’t love an organizational system with Post-its?

  “To start, I’d like to free up space, so that means clearing out some of the larger items first. I have these”—I hold up a handful of Post-its in a variety of colors—“so we can tag where each item is to go.” Then I hold up the chart I designed on the computer—a pie chart, because who doesn’t love pie charts? “As you see here, pink is for anything that’s trash, yellow is recycling, blue is charity, purple is yard sale, orange is auction—”

  “Charity should be orange,” Marva says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Charity. I’ve always thought of it more as orange, not blue. Blue is for recycling. Everyone knows that.”

  “Um … okay … we can switch that.” I start rifling through my bag. If I learned anything from my years in advertising and PR, it’s to placate the client. “I’m sure I have a Sharpie in here. We can make any changes you’d like. After all, you’re the artist!”

  “And why isn’t there green?”

  “Green? I just—”

  “Green is a very calming color. I can’t imagine going through this process, using these tags of yours, and not one of them being green.”

  “No problem. I can get green. For now we can substitute a different color that’s close to green—like we could use blue and yellow together, right? That makes green.” I find the Sharpie pen and wait with it poised at the chart. “What category is green to you?”

  Marva grabs for her cane and uses it to hoist herself to standing. “I can’t see this working as it is. Tell you what: You run get those green tabs and make the changes to your chart. In the meantime, I have other things I need to handle. Perhaps we can reconvene later this afternoon.”

  Perhaps? This afternoon? It’s not as if I can get started without her. She has to approve everything I do. “We don’t have to bother with the tags right now,” I say. “You could point to things, and I can—”

  “I’ll be in my office. I don’t want to be disturbed.”

  She goes to the refrigerator and pulls out what appears to be a boxed lunch.

  Oh, no, she’s bringing provisions. I could lose the whole day. “How will I know when you’re ready?” My voice is a desperate squeak. I can’t help myself. If day one sets a tone for how this project is going to go, it’s looking grim.

  “If I’m ready later today, I’ll come find you,” she says as she disappears down the hall. I hear a door shut.

  I flop down into the chair Marva vacated. So much for diving right in.

  Two o’clock. Marva has yet to emerge. I’ve been checking at regular intervals, peeking down the hall for signs of life. In the meantime, I bought those stupid green Post-its (and a bunch of other colors and patterns, too, just in case) and grabbed lunch.

  Then to kill time, I decide to rearrange what Will called the bungalow so I can use it as an office. It’s a converted one-car garage—tiny, with thankfully no car squeezed inside. I guess if you don’t go anywhere, you don’t need one. The bungalow is separated from the main house by two enormous oaks and accessible by a side driveway. What was once the garage door is now a wall, and there are curtained windows and a bathroom. It is potentially quite cozy. More important, it’ll make a nice place to hide from Marva.

  And based on the empty pop cans and fast-food wrappers I see stuffed in a trash can, I’m not the first to have this idea.

  I sustain only minor injuries as I shove things around to make room, even managing to single-handedly drag down a couch that was standing on end.

  Mmm, a couch.

  I could use a break. It’s been such a frustrating day so far. Couldn’t hurt to lie down and relax. Rest my weary bones. Take a few moments to contemplate my next move …

  The dream bubble pops above my head.

  Eerf. I must’ve fallen asleep. My face is smashed into a couch pillow. I feel sticky and muddled and … ugh. What is that smell?

  I attempt to tug my eyes open and drag myself up.

  “Hey, lookit here, Sleeping Beauty is waking up.” At the sound of a male voice, my eyes fly open like a window shade with a haywire spring. I’m trying to yank myself upright, only my legs keep tangling up against the guy, who is sitting on the end of the couch, eating beef jerky from a bag.

  “Move already!” I snap, pushing at him with my feet.

  Another man’s voice: “Gee, somebody’s cranky when she wakes up.”

  “What the—” I practically fly to a standing position. My hands feel around on my body to see if I can tell if I’ve been groped. My clothes appear to be intact. “What are you doing in here?”

  The owner of the second voice is sitting with his back propped up against the wall, gnawing on a giant pita sandwich (which explains the smell). They’re both youngish, midtwenties I’d guess, tatted up—one of them sporting muttonchops and the other that weird strip of chin hair as if he missed a spot shaving.

  Muttonchops says, “You that chick they hired?”

  I glare at him. “You have no right to be here. This happens to be my office now.”

  “So I’ll take that as a yes.”

  A toilet flushes and a third guy walks out of the bungalow’s small bathroom. I whip around to him. “You didn’t wash your hands?”

  He gives me that deer-in-the-headlights look. “Uh … yes, I did.”

  “You did not! I didn’t hear water running!”

  “Um, okay, well, I can—”

  “No,” I say, sensing my hysteria rising. “It’s too late now. All of you get out. In fact, even b
etter, where is your supervisor? He ought to hear how”—I narrow my eyes at the guy on the couch, who is chuckling—“his workers find it so funny to sneak up on innocent women while they’re resting and do God knows what.”

  “Whoa, hey, babe, chill.”

  As if I’m going to take that from a guy with filthy hands. “I will not chill. I—”

  The bungalow door opens, and another guy walks in, this one scribbling on a clipboard he’s holding. He must be the one in charge. “Oh, hey, you’re awake, cool,” he says when he glances up.

  “No, it is not,” I say. “It is not the slightest bit cool to wake up surrounded by a bunch of … of …”

  He looks at the others while I search for a word besides hooligans. “You were in here while she was sleeping?” They don’t answer, and he says to me, “I’m sorry. Sometimes they’re idiots. Unfortunately, they’re also my cousins and they work for me. By the way, I’m Niko Pavlopoulos—and you must be Lucy.”

  He extends a hand for me to shake, which I reluctantly accept. Niko is about the same age as the others, but at least he doesn’t sport that fresh-from-prison look that they do. In fact, he has a nice face … good brows, and the kind of lashes that make the ladies grumble what a waste they are on a man.

  “They scared me half to death,” I say, not entirely ready to let go of my fight.

  Niko tips his head toward the door. “Guys … out. I picked up the pipes for the basement. Start on that.” Surprisingly, they gather up their food and cheerfully file out.

  After they’re gone, I drop back down onto the couch. “Basement,” I say, groaning, “I forgot about the basement. I’ll bet it’s a nightmare down there.”

  “You’re in luck. Pipes busted—that’s why Will brought us on in the first place. Water damage was so bad, we had to haul everything straight to a Dumpster. Even then, Marva was trying to stop us, tell my guys it wasn’t wrecked that bad.” Niko settles onto the arm of the couch. “That’s why I’m so glad you’re here. Somebody needs to get this project moving.”

  I don’t sense sarcasm from him, even though moments ago I’d been caught drooling into a couch cushion. “I’m usually more a woman of action than you saw here today,” I say, sheepish.

  “No worries. So how’s it going so far?”

  “With Marva?”

  “Yeah. I brought all three guys with me today figuring by now you’d have stuff for us to haul out.”

  I look at my watch—it’s almost six o’clock. There’s no point in lying. I’ve blown the whole day. “I didn’t get anywhere. Marva sent me out to buy Post-its, and then she locked herself in her office.”

  “Post-its?”

  I explain to him my organizational system, and how Marva thought the colors should be different, and green should be represented, and you know these artists, how temperamental they can be, and the best thing is to humor them so they believe they’re getting their way and … and …

  Niko is laughing.

  “What is so funny?” I ask.

  “Man, she saw you coming.”

  “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means she played you.”

  “She did not!”

  “You spent your day buying office supplies.”

  “Those Post-its happen to be an integral part of my organizational system.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  I’d like to hit him with a snappy comeback, but I’m haunted by the image of Marva walking away this morning as I was too cowed to say a thing, and I slump in defeat. “You’re right. I let her totally manipulate me.”

  I want to cry—it’s Ash all over again. It’s Ash, telling me some elaborate story about how it wasn’t his pipe or his stash or his pills—he was only holding them for this guy he hardly knows. And me being a sucker and believing it, time and time again, because I didn’t want to think about what the truth would mean.

  Niko slides down so he’s on the couch, facing me. “Don’t feel bad. None of us have been able to get her to do anything for weeks now. Her own son couldn’t do it. That’s why he had to bring you in.” He pauses. “This was only one day. You’ll get the hang of it.”

  “There’s just so much.”

  “We could wipe out everything in that house in less than a week if it weren’t for her. It’s only a big job because she’s making it that way. As much as she wants it done, she doesn’t want to do it.”

  “Well then,” I say, putting on my brave-girl face, “I’ll have to use my awesome powers of persuasion.”

  His mouth pulls up in a smile. “I look forward to seeing that.”

  Niko leaves to join the crew in the basement. Out of sheer stubbornness, I’m tempted to stay and wait Marva out—even if it takes all night—but I have to be at Heather’s son’s birthday party in half an hour. Instead of skulking out defeated, I screw up the courage to go to Marva’s office, where on the door is taped a note: Do not disturb. The blocky forward-slant of her handwriting seems aggressive enough that I hesitate. When it dawns on me that I’m such a pushover that I’m even intimidated by this woman’s writing, I make myself knock.

  I hear Marva call for me to come in. As soon as I open the door, it’s as if I’m walloped by a cyclone of color. The walls are covered with paintings of every size, and canvases are stacked up against them, pulsing with such intensity that it’s overwhelming. “Wow, are these yours?”

  “What is it you need?” Marva asks. She’s sitting in front of a desk, making some sort of notes in a book that’s set on top of a pile of papers. “Are you finally ready to get back to work?”

  Me? Finally ready? I want to pull one of those paintings off the wall and clobber her over the head with it.

  “I thought you didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  She doesn’t glance up. “That being the case, why are you willing to disturb me now?”

  A red painting with orange and yellow swirls exudes a sense of violence, plus it looks real heavy. That’s the one I’ll hit her with.

  “I wanted to say good night.”

  “Good night.”

  This is where I should leave, but I find myself lingering. A portrait of a morose young girl who vaguely resembles Marva stares at me. It’s done in the style I recognize as hers: realistic, yet exaggerated, as if she purposely colored outside the lines.

  Marva stops writing. “Yes?” Although typically a positive word—yes!—the way she says it is better translated as “Why are you still here?” Or, more accurately, “Don’t be here.”

  I turn to go but then stop myself. “The painting behind you, is that a self-portrait?”

  “Only egotists do self-portraits.”

  “So, then I take that as a no?”

  She graces me with what could almost be called a smile—it’s achieved mostly through a lift of the eyebrows rather than a curve of the lips. “Touché. Now good night.”

  This time I take the hint and leave, although not without first telling Marva that we’ll start tomorrow morning at ten o’clock sharp. She’d better be ready to roll up her caftan sleeves and get work done because I’ll be cracking the whip something fierce. Okay, maybe I only confirmed the time and stopped there, but I believe the rest was implied.

  I get to the bowling alley in time to help Heather’s husband, Hank, carry pitchers of pop from the concession stand. It’s one of those new, glossy bowling alleys with the high-tech video screens and pulsing music. Tonight is eighties night, and Cyndi Lauper is reminding us how girls just want to have fun.

  “I can’t believe DJ is eighteen. I’m the father of an adult,” Hank says, setting the pitchers down on a table next to a cake and a pile of gifts. “I’m barely an adult myself.”

  “They grow so fast when you feed them,” I say. “So where is everybody?”

  “The kids are bowling. The moms are hanging by the bar.”

  “Who’s here?” I keep my voice nonchalant, but Hank picks up on my tension. Or more likely, Heather has prepped him, remi
nding him of how I’ve been avoiding people for a reason. She must have told me a dozen times I didn’t have to come tonight, but that’s like when people invite you to Tupperware parties and say you don’t have to buy anything. They never mean it.

  “Don’t worry, we kept it small. Let’s see … DJ invited Zac, Nicholas, Samantha, and of course Crystal. So that means mom-wise we have—”

  “My worst nightmare?”

  “Nah, merely a few of your dearest, closest friends.” He chucks me under the chin. Hank is an ex–college football player, gone soft over the years, and the master of the gentle gesture, having one too many times not known his own strength. “You’ll be fine. Nobody’s going to say anything about it.”

  It being Ash. It being rehab. It being the talk of our suburb for a while, although never to my face.

  Hank excuses himself to go drag little Abigail away from the teenagers before she picks up any new words. I mentally dress myself in armor and head to the bar area.

  As I approach, Mary Beth Abernathy gives a wave from the booth where they’re sitting. She’s in her uniform of mom jeans, sneakers, and a sweatshirt advertising one of her kids’ sports teams—her bangs a tad too short, as if she cut them herself. “Why, look, Heather, here comes your roommate now!”

  Impressive. She didn’t even give me time to get a drink before she managed to embarrass me about having to bunk with Heather’s family.

  Heather rolls her eyes. She doesn’t like Mary Beth any more than I do, but their sons have been best friends since grade school. They’re practically in-laws.

  Janie—who is the mom of DJ’s girlfriend, Crystal—pours a margarita from a pitcher on the table and hands it to me. “I hear today was your first day on a new job. I’m guessing you need this.”

  “Straight tequila might be more appropriate.”

  “That bad?” Heather asks, scooting over to make room for me. Heather has been my best friend since we met in college, and I swear she hasn’t aged ten minutes since then. She still has that sleek, coltish, coed look—as if she spends her days playing tennis and lunching with the gals, instead of what she really does, which is take care of everybody and everything.