Objects of My Affection

by Jill Smolinski

  Oh my God, she’s completely off her rocker. There couldn’t possibly have been any order in here.

  “Off,” she says, as she uses her cane to climb partway up the stairs before sinking down onto one of the steps.

  She stares coldly down at me like an emperor watching slaves toil, while I make my way through the living room, pulling off tags, one after another. I attempt again to explain, but she shushes me. After the living room detagging is complete, Marva frog-marches me to the mudroom, where I empty the trash bags I’ve filled. We’re silent as I work, but it doesn’t feel quiet. It’s as if a sound track of misery is playing in the background, filling up the house so even the air is cluttered.

  Two days and it’s over. I’ve failed. I wanted to find a job where I could make money fast and stay in the area. Rebuild a home for Ash and me when he returns. What kept me going through it all—sending my son away, selling my home, and getting rid of all my possessions—was clinging to a picture in my mind of soon everything being normal again. That this period of having nothing was just a bump on the road map of my life. I thought for sure this job was going to set me back on course. Only now it’s over before it’s begun, and I don’t have a plan B.

  “There, done.” I dump out the last bag onto the floor. Tears are pooling, but if it takes every ounce of strength I have, I won’t let them fall. “I’m sorry. I never meant to—”

  “Save it,” Marva says. “I won’t let you in the house tomorrow if I’m going to have to endure all that caterwauling.”

  Tomorrow?

  There’s a tomorrow?

  I definitely heard her say tomorrow.

  It appears that I’m not fired—not yet anyway.

  “All right then,” I say cautiously, backing up toward the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” I test out the word to see if Marva objects to hearing it roll off my tongue.

  She doesn’t answer, so I let myself out, grabbing only my purse and leaving my stack of Post-its behind.

  I call my mom on my way home, having stopped first at a convenience store to buy a box of Cheez-Its, which are serving as both dinner and emotional comfort. As my mom does nearly every time I call lately, the first thing she says after “Hello” is “You sound upset. Is there a problem with Ash?”

  “Ash is fine. I, however, am about to throw myself from a building.”

  “Why are you throwing yourself from a building, sweetie?”

  In the background, I hear my dad say, “Who’s throwing themselves from a building?”

  “Lucy.”

  That answer seems to satisfy him because he doesn’t inquire further.

  “It’s this job I took,” I say.

  “With the artist? Ooh, I looked her up on the Internet after you told me you’re cleaning out her house. I couldn’t believe it—the one painting of hers, oh, I can’t describe it, but the famous one with the naked lady in it? Rosalyn Wozniak has that very painting above her downstairs toilet. Not the actual painting of course. A print. But isn’t that funny?”

  “Mom, you know you can’t mention that I’m working for her, right? I’ve promised to keep it a secret.”

  “Tick a lock,” she says. I picture her making the gesture of turning a lock on her lips and tossing the key. “So is it not going well?”

  “It’s the weirdest thing. She hired me, but now it seems she wants me to fail. I can’t seem to get her to let go of anything.”

  “I’m not surprised. The older you get, the more attached you get to what you have. It’s because so many of your friends and family have died off or moved away. You want to at least have a reminder of them. You’re young—you’ll understand someday. Personally, I can’t believe how you were able to sell all your things. I still think you should have put more in storage.”

  “Storage costs money. Besides, I don’t miss any of it.”

  “How can you possibly say that?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “But your pretty dishes! And that antique armoire you had in your bedroom—oh, you were so excited about refinishing it. Remember how you sent me all those pictures of it on the e-mail? It had to have broken your heart to let it go.”

  An image of my old bedroom floats to my mind. I’d spent weeks picking just the right lavender color for the walls, one that set off the whitewash I’d lovingly given the armoire. But before I can think too long about how I handed over my cotton, eyelet bedspread in exchange for a $5 bill at my garage sale, I sweep the thought away. I did what I needed to do. “It’s no big deal,” I say.

  “I don’t mean to bring up a sad subject.”

  “It’s not. I’m fine.” As long as I don’t think about it, I’m fine.

  Truth be told, in some ways, I’m actually glad to have it all gone. It couldn’t get gone fast enough, in fact. I recall how the taxi carrying Ash and his interventionist had barely pulled away and I was already in Ash’s room, eager to sweep through and throw away anything stashed there that was possibly drug-related. Going through every drawer, closet, and crevice, I chucked the obvious: pills and powders, baggies, pill containers, pill cutters—but then weird stuff, too, that had no place in a boy’s bedroom, such as pen casings emptied of their insides and plastic two-liter pop bottles filled with murky water. A euphoria came with watching the trash bag fill up that had me buzzier and more energized than I’d been in months.

  A week later at my garage sale I was still on a high—and against a deadline to move out before escrow closed. Heather, who was there helping, had to talk me out of selling some things. Just because Ash had duct-taped a hash pipe out of some of his LEGOs, she’d said—taking a LEGO pirate ship set off the FOR SALE table and hiding it away from customers—didn’t mean they all were bad. Ash had a right to his belongings.

  And it wasn’t only his stuff I was tossing. I also sold the dining room set that reminded me how we didn’t eat dinners together anymore … the stereo that played far too many sad songs … the couch that my ex-boyfriend Daniel and I picked out back when we were together for the three of us to pile on to watch movies. Even things seemingly benign—a fondue pot, a corkboard—shouted at me their need to belong to someone who could give them a proper home, after I’d proved that I couldn’t.

  I turn my attention back to my mom, who has moved on to giving me the weather report for Sun City—hot and sunny! The poppies are already coming in! What I didn’t realize was that it isn’t conversation but, rather, a sales pitch.

  “So if that job doesn’t work out, you always have a place here with your father and me,” she says, causing me to choke on the Cheez-It I just popped into my mouth. “We’ve got that spare room. I don’t understand why you didn’t come here in the first place instead of being squeezed in at Heather’s. It doesn’t seem there’s anything holding you to Chicago. You don’t have a regular job. Ash is in Florida. I don’t see a boyfriend in the picture … unless there’s something you’re not telling me. Wait, is there a new beau?”

  “No. There isn’t anyone.” It’s embarrassing that I’m still nursing my wounds over Daniel’s breaking up with me, though it’s been months. It’s not unreasonable for her to think I might have found someone else in this time. Yet to me, it’s as if his side of the bed is still warm. Even though I sold the bed.

  “So why not come here? Live rent-free!”

  As I have every time she’s brought up my moving to Arizona, I hold back the real answer: Because if I had to live with my parents at thirty-nine years old, especially in the retirement community of Sun City, I would leap from a building. Instead, I say, “Ash is going to want to come back when he’s done. He’ll have an easier time getting on his feet if I’m settled here, too.”

  “Either one of your brothers would also be glad to have you,” she presses.

  My brothers, Tim and Mike, still live in Wisconsin, where I grew up. They’re both married with kids. While I had no doubt they’d shove over one of their offspring to make room for me, I already have a similar arrangement conve
niently right here in Chicago at Heather’s house.

  “Thanks, Mom, but I’m going to give this my best shot.” Then I quickly say my good-byes before my mother can come up with any more relatives to pawn me off on.

  Niko takes it in stride the following morning when I tell him I don’t have anything ready to haul out. He asks me to hand him my phone. When I do, he punches his number into it. “Call me when you need me,” he says, tucking the phone into my front pants pocket with a wink.

  Huh. If I didn’t know better—that is, if he weren’t barely out of diapers—I’d say the boy was flirting with me. Perhaps he has a thing for older women who are incompetent at the jobs they’ve been hired to do. If that’s the case—with two days under my belt and only having made the house messier than when I arrived—I must be like a goddess to him.

  Minutes later, I’m in the kitchen clearing a spot on the counter to set my lunch when I hear a man’s laughter. It’s coming from the direction of Marva’s office.

  Please don’t let it be Will. This is too soon for him to check up on me. My mind races with excuses I can feed him for why nothing is done yet. Although I did move things around. Maybe he’ll buy the old “you have to make a mess to clean a mess” excuse.

  A bearded man bustles out to where I’m standing in the kitchen. “Miss Marva darling!” he calls out when he sees me. “You have company!”

  “I’m not company,” I say. “I’m here to help clean out the place.”

  He looks away from me and shouts, “The maid is here!”

  For crying out loud—my sweater is cashmere. “I’m not a maid.” That’s when I notice that he is wearing one of those scrubs shirts with the wacky patterns. I’m assuming medical profession—a nurse or medical technician (as I doubt a doctor would be wearing a cupcakes print). “I’m here to see Marva, but … is she okay?”

  “Yep. Give us a few more minutes. I’m fixing her up with an IV drip.” He pulls a face as he looks around him. “She says there’s bottled water in the fridge. I’m afraid to look in there if it’s anything like the rest of this place.”

  I find myself strangely defensive of Marva. “The refrigerator’s fine. The house only recently got this way, and that’s because we’re organizing. Sometimes you have to make a mess to clean a mess.”

  Maybe I will use the line on Will because this guy seems to accept it. He heads to the refrigerator and opens it. “You’re right, not bad. By the way, I’m Nelson.” He shuts the refrigerator door. “I’ll be popping in for the next few days.”

  “I’m Lucy, the professional organizer. Obviously, I’ll be here a while. So why does Marva need an IV?”

  “Sorry, that’s information for family only.”

  “I’m working closely with her. If she’s sick, I need to be aware of her limitations,” I say, hoping that whatever those might be, they don’t slow her pace even further. “I don’t want to strain her.”

  He regards me as a bouncer might a pimply teen proffering a shady-looking driver’s license, but eventually says, “It’s a mild infection, but a persistent one. Not uncommon in people with diabetes. We’ve got her hooked up with antibiotics. The good news is, she’ll be able to move about”—he gives another look around the house for effect—“or at least try to.” He screws the cap off the water and heads toward the hall that leads to Marva’s office. “Back in a jiffy!”

  When Marva and Nelson emerge a few minutes later, she’s walking with a cane in one hand and pulling an IV pole on wheels with the other. She’s wearing a silky poncho and slacks, full face of makeup as always. That astounds me. When I’m sick, I tend to look as lousy as I feel.

  Nelson gives Marva instructions on how and when to remove the IV, then he’s on his way. It seems overly intimate for me to be hearing her medical instructions. It occurs to me for the first time how exposed Marva must feel. Her house and her possessions and her hoarding habit and even her health problems are splayed open for me to see. Whereas I haven’t had to reveal anything, not that she’d care to know.

  “Are you up for getting started?” I ask. “We can do the mudroom first since there’s that nice big chair in there.”

  She harrumphs, which I interpret as a yes, not taking offense. I’d be cranky, too, if I had an IV port buried in my arm.

  The mudroom is a few steps from where we’re standing in the kitchen. With anyone else, I’d wheel the IV pole. I have a hunch I’ll find it skewered through my gut if I so much as offer.

  We walk over, and before she sits, Marva says, “You seem relatively intelligent. Think you can handle remembering what I’d said I wanted to keep or dispose of yesterday?”

  “Sure,” I say, giving her a pass on the relatively.

  “Take care of it. I have other things to do.”

  Yeehaw and hallelujah. I’m thrilled I’ll be able to work in peace. I don’t let it bother me that it’s a total waste of time that she’s now trusting me to redo what she made me undo because she didn’t trust me.

  Without having to wait for Marva to debate every decision, I’m finished so fast that I treat myself to a salad at a deli up the street. I can eat the peanut-butter sandwich I’d brought with me for dinner instead.

  When I get back, Marva is ready to work, which means I have to slow my pace to hers. It’s like that sound of a screeching halt they always play in TV shows—eeeeeeerch—as Marva says, “I wonder what’s in this drawer here.” Next thing I know, we’re sitting next to each other on dining room chairs I swept free of piles. She’s painstakingly taking out each item from the cabinet drawer and reflecting on it. “This kachina doll … I believe it’s from the Hopi tribe … or Zuni …” She’s talking to herself more than to me, but I “mmm-hmm” her and tease it from her hands as quickly as I can. The sun sets and then rises again, and then days turn into weeks, months into years, as we make our way through that one drawer.

  I’m getting antsy as I wait for her to thumb through a bound manuscript she’s found. When she closes it, I see it’s the screenplay for the movie Pulp Fiction. There’s an autograph scrawled across the front that appears to be Quentin Tarantino’s.

  “That was a great movie,” I say.

  She grimaces. “He’s so pompous, as if I’d want his signature. Do be a dear, will you, and put this in the theater room?” She says the word like theatah.

  “The theater room?” There’s only one room I haven’t yet seen, and that’s Marva’s bedroom—must be one and the same.

  “One door past the office.”

  Glad for the chance to stretch my legs, I head down the hall that leads to her office. There are only three doors: her office, a bathroom, and what I’d assumed was her bedroom but must be the mystery theater room.

  I struggle to push open the door. It’s catching on a life-size golden Oscar statue on the other side of it. Nudging it out of the way, I flick on the light.

  This is obviously the master bedroom. A bed shoved up against the far wall is cleared off enough to be currently in use, and clothes are strewn everywhere. But I can see why Marva refers to this as the theater room. It’s packed with movie posters and memorabilia and thousands of DVDs and VHS tapes. There’s a path from the bed to a large-screen TV in front of a bank of vintage red velvet theater chairs.

  He would love this room.

  He’d go absolutely nuts in here.

  Annoyed, I chase the thoughts from my head, but it’s too late. That’s the problem: Most of the time I’m braced for missing Ash. So I’m on constant heightened alert for anything that might remind me of him.

  But this isn’t about Ash.

  It’s about Daniel.

  Looking about the room, I find that the sadness isn’t hitting me so much head-on as it is creeping up my legs, tendrils spreading over me. It devours me slowly, lazily, like those evil plants in Invasion of the Body Snatchers—a movie that Daniel has made me watch about five thousand times because it’s his favorite.

  Seven months ago now Daniel dumped me. I once read that fo
r every year you’re in a relationship, it takes half a year to get over it. So it looks like I have a couple years to go.

  I met Daniel when I was working as a copywriter for McMillan Advertising and PR downtown. I’d been there two years when he was hired as a graphic designer. Only about forty of us were there. Normally there’d be quite a bit of speculation among the women about a new guy who was single and in his thirties. But we were all busy nursing wild crushes on the company vice president, Buck Henson. Buck had those sort of chiseled good looks that walked into a room before he did, and the charm that made it clear when he talked to you, you were the only woman in the world—even if five other flush-faced females next to you were feeling the exact same way. So in came Daniel Kapinski—kind of skinny, baby-faced, with a tendency to walk hands in pockets and slightly leaning back, as if always being blown by a strong wind.

  He wasn’t the sort you noticed.

  But I noticed him. Though not right away. Not until we were thrown together on a project. I remember sitting with him at his Mac, going over drafts of an annual report. He’d been at McMillan only a couple months, but he’d already amassed such a ridiculous collection of toys and figurines there wasn’t much desk space for anything else.

  “You want to move Malibu Barbie there so I can put my folder down?” I said.

  “That, I’ll have you know, is an action figure of Brandon Lee in his role in The Crow. He was killed during filming by a faulty popgun. It’s quite valuable. Great film.”

  “Never saw it. And this is lovely.” I picked up a bloody, knife-wielding baby doll perched on the edge of the desk.

  “Chucky, from Bride of Chucky. Sadly, not Chucky in Child’s Play 3, which are harder to come by.”

  He took the doll from me and set it back in its place. Then he picked up a felt bowler hat and set it on my head.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “The hat is from Mary Poppins.”

  “A Clockwork Orange. Just a replica though. Looks good on you.” He smiled at me. Not Buck Henson’s dazzling smile. More boyish. A sweet overbite.