Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes

by Mary E. Lambert

  I’m the one to break our quiet. “You’re right,” I tell Dad. “Something has to change. We have to change. You and me and Chad. We have to stop running away. We have to stop keeping everything secret. We have to get help.”

  “For Mom?” asks Chad.

  “Help for all of us.”

  Dad nods. “I didn’t mean to hurt you kids, but the time away did give me some clarity.”

  His voice is suddenly stronger, and I wonder if Amanda was right about people needing to run away sometimes. It’s a bad habit, and it’s no way to live. I can say that from experience. But this time, Dad ran away, and he came back different.

  Dad stands up and offers me a hand. “Shall we?” he asks with a nod toward the front door. I wipe my cheeks and eyes one last time. Leslie stands. Chad joins her. And I place my hand in Dad’s.

  He pulls me up from the bench, and the four of us go in search of Mom.

  We find Mom and Grandma Nora in the linens room.

  “Is that you, kids?” Grandma Nora says without looking up from the pile of old towels she’s digging through. “I thought I heard the truck pull up.”

  “Yeah, it’s us,” Chad says.

  “And me, too,” says Dad.

  Mom whirls around, scattering a pile of washcloths as she does so, but no one really notices. Then she’s in Dad’s arms, and there are more tears and sobs and partial questions and hiccups and unfinished exclamations. It’s uncomfortably like watching my own breakdown. One by one, starting with Grandma Nora, we slip from the room and leave Mom and Dad to talk.

  I head for Leslie’s room, but my feet carry me to my own room instead. Grandma Nora is sitting on the floor. Both her suitcases are wide-open in the middle of the room. There is a heap of clothes on the bed, and her toiletry bags are out on the desk.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Packing.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  She nods.

  “Alone?”

  Grandma Nora pauses her folding. “What does that mean?”

  “Last night you threatened to take me and Leslie away.”

  She scrunches her forehead. “How could you say that? It wasn’t a threat. I only want to help.”

  “Well, I don’t want to move in with Aunt Jill.”

  She gives a dry laugh. “I got that impression when you ran from the kitchen like your pants were on fire.” She places the folded shirt in her suitcase and starts on the next piece of clothing.

  “I want to stay here and keep trying to make things better.”

  She’s silent. So I try again.

  “You could stay, too,” I hear myself offer. “Why are you leaving so fast?” I don’t know why I’m asking. I want my room back, but Grandma Nora looks … defeated.

  She shakes her head and starts smoothing out the clothes already in her suitcase. “I’m clearly not the right person to help your mother, and, well, I convinced your dad to—”

  “I know,” I say. “Dad told us.”

  “Oh,” says Grandma Nora. “Then I’m surprised you had to ask why I’m leaving. I just figured—after your mom finds out what I did, it’s probably best if I go.”

  I slide down the doorframe and sit sideways across the entrance, putting my feet up on the door. Grandma Nora goes back to her packing. I gnaw on my bottom lip, silently asking a question. Grandma Nora is blissfully unaware that I am trying to say something and the longer I sit there, the harder it is to speak. Finally, I just force the words out. “Why do you think I’m like my mom?”

  “Hmm?” She looks up from the pants she’s smoothing the wrinkles from.

  “On the stairs, when you said that you’re broken, you said that I’m like my mom. What did you mean?”

  Grandma Nora drops the pants and scoots over to my spot in the doorframe. “I didn’t mean to upset you when I said that.” I don’t answer her, just wait to hear what she’ll say. “It’s just that you’re both so intense.”

  “Intense?” I ask.

  “Yes, you both have such strong opinions, and you both want things to be a certain way.”

  “Uh, Grandma Nora, have you seen the way my mom keeps our house?”

  “Exactly,” says Grandma Nora, as if I’ve just proven her point. “It’s a disgusting mess, but there’s a system.”

  I think about it. Alphabetized Beanie Babies. Newspapers ordered by weather report. The toy piles. The brands of canned food. Even the milk jugs and egg cartons were sorted by expiration dates.

  “But Mom won’t get rid of anything, and I get rid of everything.”

  Grandma Nora shrugs. “It’s the same trait, only expressed in different ways.” My head feels like it’s spinning. I can see what she’s saying; I just don’t want to see it. And Grandma Nora’s not done. “It’s two sides of the same coin. You’re both proud. You don’t want others to know how you’re really feeling. You both try to cover it up until you can’t hide it anymore. You love deeply, but have a hard time expressing it. You’re independent, too. They’re really wonderful traits, but they can be dangerous when neither of you is willing to ask for help or to admit when you’ve been hurt.”

  There’s a part of me that wants to plug my ears and stamp my feet and scream. But if I did that, I’d probably turn around to find Drew standing in our hallway. And anyway, there’s an even bigger part of me that wants Grandma Nora to keep talking to me like this. Like I’m a grown-up. So instead of throwing a tantrum, I ask a question: “Grandma, what do you mean ‘when you’ve been hurt’? What’s hurt my mom?”

  She doesn’t answer right away, and I think Grandma Nora is deciding what to say and how much to say. “Your mother’s had a lot of loss in her life, you know. And sometimes the more a person loses, the tighter they hold on to things. Sometimes they start holding on to the wrong things.”

  “What losses?” I ask. “Grandpa George?”

  “Yes. Grandpa George. But he was the second father she lost. Jill was too young to remember their father, but your mother was old enough. She remembers losing her real dad. And then George and then … ” Grandma Nora trails off, like she doesn’t know if she should continue.

  “And then what?”

  Grandma Nora starts running her finger through the carpet. She doesn’t look at me. “We’ve had some disagreements over the years. It’s caused a lot of stress, and she blames that for … Did you know your mother was pregnant after Leslie?”

  “What?” I ask, sitting up, pulling away from the doorframe. “She was? What happened?”

  Grandma Nora licks her lips, still looking at the carpet. She opens her mouth. Shuts it. Opens it again. Finally, I can see her come to a decision. “I’m sorry, Annabelle. It’s not my story to tell. You’ll have to ask your mom, if you want to know more.”

  I feel my shoulders slump, but I don’t argue with her. She’s right. If I’m going to have this conversation, it should be with my mom. I’ve never tried to understand her before. I never wanted to.

  But it’s kind of a funny thing. I’m starting to realize that sometimes, with the people who love you, when you need something, all you have to do is ask. It’s not always that simple. Except that sometimes it is.

  “When does your plane leave?”

  “I thought I’d go standby. There are a few flights out tonight. I’ll leave as soon as I’m done packing.” She scoots back over to her suitcase and finishes folding the pants.

  I lean back on my doorframe and twirl a strand of hair around one finger.

  “Can I sit here while you finish packing?”

  She nods. “I’d like that.”

  The room is quiet, punctuated only with Grandma Nora’s muttering about where she left this or that. A few times she sends me on errands to various parts of the house. I get the feeling she’s avoiding my parents, that now she’s the one who’s running away. I don’t try to stop her. This is something we have to fix from the inside out, and even though Grandma Nora is family, this isn’t her house.

  By t
he time Grandma Nora is done, my room is as spotless as when she arrived. She summons Chad to carry her bags downstairs when her taxi pulls up. Before climbing in the yellow car, she hugs me goodbye and whispers in my ear: “Whether you want it or not, I need you to know there’s always a bed for you or Leslie at my house.” This time it doesn’t sound like a threat. It’s comforting.

  After she’s gone, I go back to my room. It feels strangely hollow without her.

  It takes me a while to track them down—one is still in Chad’s truck, and the other is in Leslie’s room—but eventually I find Jolly and Miss Ears. I place them on my freshly made bed. My room looks a little less empty. It looks good.

  I’m lying on my bed with Miss Ears and Jolly, staring at the ceiling and trying to figure out what has happened in the last week or so. We’re so far out of our usual routine that I’m not exactly sure what to think. We’ve had Big Family Kerfuffles before and ended up just as crazy afterward. But this time the family holding pattern is as smashed as my Five-Mile Radius. The way things were has gone out the window, and now we’re all just waiting to see where the dust will land, what new pattern will form.

  It feels like Mom and Dad have been locked in the den forever.

  When I last saw Chad, he was out in the garage. Leslie was in her room, poring over the directions to her Easy-Bake Oven. There were a lot of cautions about operating safety, and they were starting to stress me out, so I came in here, where I could wait without worrying that Leslie will end up burning down our house while trying to make a pan of lightbulb brownies. Although if she does burn down the house, we won’t have to deal with Mom’s collections anymore. Problem solved.

  I turn onto my side, and my eyes land on the little framed picture on my wall. It’s been there so long that I don’t usually see it, but today I do. I study it: the field of tulips, yellow and gold and red. Mom said she copied it from a photo taken in Holland. I’m probably biased, but I think it’s really good, and it’s been there all along.

  My phone buzzes. It’s Drew. He’s inviting me and Leslie to a movie tomorrow night with him and Dylan and some of their other cousins. Dylan’s mom has offered to drive us into town. I consider it. Since they live just down the road, Leslie and I can walk over to their place and leave from there. I might be ready to meet our neighbors, but I’m not quite ready to let them meet our house.

  Then I notice Amanda has also texted me. She wants to know if we can hang out one day next week. I write back: “Chad’s working at The Exploding Hoagie. Wanna get together there on Monday?” Next I send little messages to the other girls, even Rae. Just quick hellos with smiley faces.

  Finally, I call for Leslie. I shout for her without bothering to get up from the bed. She appears in my room a minute later. “Wanna go to a movie with me and Dylan and Drew and some other people tomorrow night?”

  “Sure,” she says. “But have you asked Chad’s permission?”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  I let Drew know that we’re in, and Leslie curls up next to me on my bed. I tell her she can sleep in here tonight if she wants, but she says with Dad and me home and her room mostly clean, she’s not sure she’ll need to. We’re still lying like that when Dad appears. He smells faintly of pipe smoke and the deerstalker is on his head, but the earflaps aren’t tied down. I’ll take it as a good sign. Also, he’s smiling.

  “Family Meeting in the living room. Five minutes,” he says. “Now, where’s Chad?”

  “The garage,” Leslie says.

  “Okey-dokey.” And Dad strolls down the hall, whistling.

  “Smoking is bad for you!” I yell after him. He just whistles more loudly.

  Five or ten minutes later, we’re all seated in a loose circle. Mom and Dad and a bunch of towels are on the couch. Chad is on a kitchen chair. Leslie and I sit in piles of sheets. Dad starts the meeting by announcing that Mom has something she wants to tell us. Mom doesn’t say anything at first, and we wait in silence while she plays with the frayed edge of a couch towel. She won’t make eye contact, and I start to worry. I was feeling more than half-hopeful when we came down, but now I’m uncertain again. Partly because Mom is not wearing a muumuu.

  For the first time in weeks, months, maybe years—I’m really not sure how long it’s been—she’s wearing a pair of faded black pants and a baggy gray T-shirt, and now I’m not sure how to read her mood. The clothes seem like they should be a good sign, but Mom looks so serious that I don’t know what’s about to happen.

  Dad takes her hand and squeezes it. Mom looks up at him, and she gives him a teeny smile. He doesn’t let go. Still clutching his hand, Mom faces us. She licks her lips, presses them together tightly. Then she speaks.

  “I’m a hoarder.”

  Understatement of the century. This is like calling a Family Meeting to announce: “The universe is big” or “Dad likes Sherlock Holmes.” I’m mildly annoyed … until I realize that I’ve never heard her use that word. By some unspoken agreement, no one in our family uses that word. Ever.

  There’s another uncomfortable silence.

  Then Chad winks. “We kinda noticed, Mom.”

  As usual, he says it in a way I couldn’t. He says it in the perfect way. He breaks all the tension in the room, and even Mom chuckles.

  “That was hard. I don’t know why that was so hard to say.” Mom twists the frayed towel threads with her free hand.

  “It’s because we don’t like to admit when we have a problem,” I say. I don’t mean to say it out loud, but the confession just sort of pops out.

  Everyone looks at me.

  “It’s something Grandma Nora told me,” I say. I gather my courage and look straight at my mom. “It’s one of the ways we’re alike.”

  Mom gives another shaky laugh, but she still looks a little worried. Dad takes over.

  “Your mother and I have talked, and we’ve agreed that Annabelle is right. It’s time to get professional help.”

  “Like a counselor?” Leslie asks.

  Dad nods. “We need advice from someone we’re not related to. I believe your grandma Nora and even Aunt Jill truly want to help, but sometimes it’s easier to accept help from someone outside the family. Someone who won’t be as … emotionally involved.”

  I think of Leslie and her nightmares and her anxiety. I think of the way I’ve been boxing up all my worries and ignoring them. I think of the way Chad has hidden from all our problems at home with parties and buddies and a dozen different girlfriends, and I say: “We should all go.”

  Dad nods again. “You think we should see a family counselor?”

  “Yeah,” I say, feeling a sense of rightness. This is something we all need to be part of.

  “I do want things to change,” Mom says. “It’s just really, really hard.” She drops Dad’s hand and gets to her feet. “Come on, there’s something I want to show you all.” She walks from the room, and the rest of us sit there for a moment. Even Dad looks puzzled. I guess this next part of the meeting wasn’t on his agenda.

  Leslie is the first to follow Mom. Dad’s next. Then Chad and I glance at each other. He raises his eyebrows, and I shrug. We stand at the same time. When we catch up to the others, Mom is pulling the family portrait in the downstairs hallway off the wall. It was taken just before Grandpa George died, just before things started piling up. It’s been hanging there for years. The wall is a slightly different color behind the portrait.

  “What are you—” Dad starts to ask, but he cuts himself off as Mom pulls a key from the back of the frame.

  She removes the tape and walks over to the Forbidden Room. That’s when I understand what’s happening. I think of all the fights they’ve had over these doors, of all the times Dad threatened to knock them down or to call a locksmith, of all the times Mom fought back and begged him to leave it alone. I think of all the endless guesses I’ve made, trying to figure out what she’s keeping in there.

  And now she’s going to open the ex–dining room. That’s when I finally
believe Mom is serious. She’s not just telling Dad what he wants to hear. She’s not just going through the motions. She really does want to be different.

  I should have known when she handed me Jolly.

  But the trust between us has been so broken for so long that believing her is a habit I will have to relearn.

  The key sticks and doesn’t want to turn. Mom fiddles with the knob, and I run through my litany of guesses about what we’ll find on the other side—cat skeletons, used tea bags and coffee grounds, cash from a lottery she won but never told us about—I feel like nothing could possibly surprise me.

  The door to the Forbidden Room clicks open.

  And I am astonished.

  Because when I see inside, it’s our dining room. Not an ex–dining room. Not a Forbidden Room. It’s just our dining room, and it’s immaculate. It’s neater than it was before Mom started hoarding. Our house, even before Grandpa George’s funeral, was always messy. Cleanliness was never one of Mom’s issues. But the dining room is perfect. No mess anywhere. No papers scattered on the table, no toys on the floor, no wadded-up, used napkins waiting to be discarded. It’s musty in the room, and it could definitely use a good dusting, but still …

  “Wh-where’s all the stuff?” Chad is the first to find his tongue.

  Mom shakes her head. “This is it.”

  “I thought it would be full of old tires,” says Chad.

  “Or decorative pillows,” Dad says.

  “Or rocks,” says Leslie.

  They look at me.

  “Anything. Everything. Just not this.”

  Mom is holding her hands together so tightly that her knuckles are turning white. “When I saw that the house was getting to be … more than I could handle and I couldn’t stop myself from making it worse, I closed up this room. I wanted to save something. I know it doesn’t make sense, but it felt like, like everything would be okay if there was just one thing I couldn’t ruin.”

  “You know, Mom,” I say, “most things can be fixed even after they’re broken.”

  Dad pats me on the shoulder once in reply as he passes by. He is the first to enter the room. He crosses the threshold, strolls over to the china cabinet, and starts pulling out the wineglasses we haven’t seen in years.