“We don’t use that room,” I said, by way of explanation.
“Clearly.”
“It’s a storage room.”
“So it seems.”
“Storage rooms can be messy.”
“So what do you store in here, then?” she asked, reaching out and pulling a shoebox off the top of the pile. She lost her grip on it and it tumbled to the floor, spilling postcards, letters, and an old composition book down onto the carpet. She made to pick up the book.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her away from the door, turning her so her back was against the hallway wall. “Don’t you ever, ever! Touch anything in that room.”
Mary squirmed in my grip, but I wasn’t done. “You have no right to come charging in here telling me how crazy I am and touching things that don’t belong to you.”
She pushed back against my shoulders with surprising force, until my back slammed into the opposite hallway wall. “For God’s sake, Trish! Maybe you are crazy!”
I slapped her snotty little face.
She was already striding away from me, but I pushed her from behind, speeding her down the hall, giving her a final push into the living room, which made her stumble forward into a pile of things, causing that pile to slide down and cover a good chunk of carpet we’d spent the day clearing.
Mary grabbed her purse again off the floor and ran out, not bothering to close the front door behind her. I slammed the door hard as she hopped into her car and sped away. I could hear the gravel spraying out from under her tires. I figured she’d drive all the way back to Ypsilanti and I’d probably never see her again. Not until Dad died or something.
For a few exhilarated moments I felt victorious. I’d expelled an intruder. I’d saved the sanctity of my home.
Then I thought of the things in the hallway and knew I had to get them off the floor. They didn’t belong there; they could be ruined.
I scrambled back to the hallway and put the letters and book back in the box as a highlight reel in my head played back what just happened. Had I really slammed my sister against a wall? And slapped her? It seemed unreal, like something from a movie I’d watched. I’d never raised my hand to her before. Not to anyone, in fact. I don’t even like violent movies.
My hands were shaking so hard I could barely keep my grip on the box. I replaced the lid with trembling hands, watching the cursive name written on the front of the notebook disappear under the cardboard: Frances Van Linden.
The furnace was running, I could hear its whoosh, but right then a cold bubble of air settled around me.
“Mom?” I whispered, then felt foolish. It was a draft, that’s all. Houses have drafts all the time.
I pictured our mother, and what she would think of me hitting Mary. She’d have been horrified. She never once raised a hand to us. To my great irritation she was always defending Mary, though now that I have both an older and a younger child I understand why. And Mary, though only two years younger than me, seemed leagues behind in knowing how to navigate the messy, confusing world.
Not only have I failed to protect my baby sister, I just attacked her and forced her out of my home, for the great crime of touching a box. A box of mementoes that she had as much right to as I did.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I whispered, not feeling foolish this time. “I’m sorry I did that.”
I sat in the hall with the box in my lap. Whether I truly felt her presence or was making it up in my sick little head, I sat there anyway, saying “sorry” in rhythm with a ticking clock, the only other sound in my house.
Chapter 14
I’d intended to drive all the way back to my town house and leave her to rot with her garbage. Jack was with our dad, Drew had made other arrangements, and whatever happened to Trish, she’d chosen for herself.
I didn’t like hotels. Especially not cheap hotels by the side of the highway advertising their rates in red lights.
But I couldn’t even focus on the road and kept seeing vague outlines of deer along the highway, which might dash out and cause me to swerve and die in a fiery wreck.
I steeled myself for the inevitable and pulled into the parking lot of someplace advertising rooms for $55.
I rushed into the lobby, blinking in the inhumanely bright light, my cheek still stinging.
If the hotel clerk thought anything about my pink cheek and zombielike demeanor on a Saturday night, she didn’t show it. As we walked through the mechanics of getting a room, I tried not to look at the peeling wallpaper on the wall behind the desk.
At the room door, I sucked in a breath and shoved in quickly, eyes closed tight.
I opened them and surveyed the room. It was standard-issue highway motel stuff. I hadn’t been in a place like this since our last family vacation as a kid. A rush of sensation hit me as I pondered all the people who’d been in here, what they would have been doing in here. I imagined maids rushing through their work, onto the next room, paid too little to care about being thorough.
I walked to the bed and yanked back the never-washed comforter and sank onto the scratchy sheets, which at least would have been washed before me.
I gazed at the popcorn ceiling and put one hand over my heart, trying to will it to slow down before I had a heart attack and died all alone in an EconoLodge.
It hurt when Trish slapped me, no mistake. But worse was the surge of fear. My sister never would have done that to me, no matter what our differences. It’s true that for our whole lives I’ve shrunk down in the face of her temper, her sneering dismissal of me. It’s true that even as I was charging down the hall, propelled by frustration, part of me wanted to reel myself in and revert to cowering and deflecting.
But I never dreamed she’d hit me.
So this wasn’t my sister in that house. Hoarding had taken her over, possessed her.
I imagined Trish still in there somewhere, fighting the demon, sometimes emerging for a few minutes to clear a path in the hoard, then the demon would surge up again, turning her into someone who could attack her little sister.
It occurred to me, what if Jack hadn’t been injured by stuff? What if . . . ?
No, not her little boy. Never.
But then, I never thought she’d hit me, either.
I pulled myself off the bed and squinted into the mirror in the bathroom. The unforgiving light put my cheek in spotlight. The red had faded. I saw no signs of a bruise. It was, after all, an openhanded slap. Not a punch. I pushed up my sleeve to inspect my upper arm. I could, in fact, see some bruising there, where she’d grabbed me and slammed me against the wall so hard my teeth clacked together.
I returned to the bed and lay down, curled on my side.
I was no exorcist. I could sort her things and I could carry bags of trash, but I couldn’t drive out this demon. She’d need the mental health version of a priest with holy water. She’d need a shrink.
I sprung upright on the bed. A shrink! Seth! Maybe he could help her.
I sank back down to the mattress as quickly as I’d been inspired. Trish would never stand for such a thing. The demon wouldn’t let her. The horrific catch-22 of mental illness.
My eyes popped open to the jarring metallic blare of my cell phone. I scrabbled around the bedsheets for it, finally springing up and grabbing it from my purse on the nightstand. The curtains had not been closed all the way, and a knife of bright sun slashed across the dim gray of the hotel room.
I’d barely assembled the previous day’s events in my head when I answered sleepily. “Hello.”
“It’s Trish.”
“Oh.”
“Look, I wasn’t myself yesterday.”
“True.”
I bit my lip in an effort to keep myself from blurting out apologies.
Sorry, I said to the woman in the parking lot who banged her cart into my car, leaving a scrape in the
paint. Sorry, I said to a date when I happened to glance at his cell phone as a text from his ex-girlfriend came in. Sorry, I said to a coworker at the store when she reneged on her promise to cover a shift for me.
I could hear Trish swallow hard. I did not relish her discomfort, and every old habit was primed to launch a “sorry” out of me, first.
“I need you to come back,” Trish finally said. I closed my eyes and sagged with disappointment. Of course she needed me. That’s what prompted the call, not true remorse.
I remembered the demon and struggled to forgive the real Trish.
“I don’t know,” I managed.
“There’s something I need to show you,” she continued. “Something that belonged to Mom that you need to see.”
This piqued my interest at last. We’d given up hope of finding many of Mom’s possessions intact after the fire; the ring’s survival in a box in her underwear drawer had seemed like a miracle. She’d had a storage unit, but her most special things she kept close to her at home: her wedding dress, family photos, childhood mementoes. The storage unit was filled with old broken toys and flea market “finds” and at one point had flooded. Mother still hadn’t wanted us to clean it out; Dad had thrown away the molded, warped junk over her protests, and she’d sulked for days.
Indignation surged on the heels of my curiosity. “You’ve had something of Mom’s all this time? And you never told me?”
“It never seemed to be a good time.”
I said, “True,” because it was. “Fine. I need a shower and then I’ll come back.”
“Where are you?”
“At an EconoLodge. I didn’t get very far.” I opened my mouth to say good-bye and hang up when I heard Trish say, “Oh, Mary? I’m sorry.”
She hung up first. I could imagine her gearing up to say the words, and then spitting them out fast, like ripping off a bandage.
While I was letting my hair dry—and if I were being honest with myself, stalling—I thumbed through my cell-phone contacts until I landed on the only person listed who was not a relative or coworker.
Once a year, on our joint birthday, my cell-phone display would light up with his name. We’d share a memory or two of college and give each other the highlight reel of our past year. Seth would tell me about the conferences he attended and where he’d moved this time. He told me when he found a business partner and set up his own practice, when he got married, the birth of his daughter. I’d tell him I was still working at the store and then, for lack of anything else to say, would talk about my latest favorite book.
Occasionally he would send me a postcard from one of his professional conferences. Once, as a joke, I sent him one from Lansing. “Wish you were here,” I’d written, intending for him to read it with an ironic smirk, though as I dropped the card in the mailbox I realized I’d written in earnest.
The only time we’d violated this pattern of our strange and ongoing friendship was the death of my mother. Seth came to the funeral, and said, “Call if you need anything.”
That was fourteen years ago, and I’d never called. Hadn’t needed anything. Correction: hadn’t thought I needed anything. Hadn’t wanted to need anything.
It would be bizarre to call now, wouldn’t it? To violate the pattern? He’d said to call if I needed anything, but that was years ago, an offer he made when I was in the throes of my grief. What if his wife got angry? What if she barely tolerated our birthday calls as it was? What if she’d gotten the “wish you were here” postcard and torn it up? Our traditions made sense to the two of us, but I had just enough awareness to know this habit of ours was odd.
He probably wouldn’t answer, I told myself. I could just leave a voice mail and see what happens.
I almost hung up in a panic when I got a human voice.
“Hello?”
“Seth?”
“Mary?” His voice was questioning, and I gulped hard.
“It’s Mary Granger.”
“Yes, I see that on my caller ID. Wow, I didn’t expect to hear from you this morning.”
“I didn’t expect you to pick up.”
“So you called to flirt with my voice mail?” Despite the banter, something about his voice sounded robotic and forced.
“No, I just . . . I was going to leave a message. I didn’t expect to get you in person.”
“It is Sunday morning and I’m a heathen.”
“Oh, right. I mean, that it’s Sunday, not that you’re a heathen. I mean, I know you’re not religious but I wouldn’t say—”
“Breathe, Mary.”
“Right. Hi.”
“So let’s start over and pretend you got a machine. OK, ready?” He cleared his throat. “Hello, you have reached the voice mail of Seth Davis. I’m either on the other line or away from my phone. Please leave a message after the tone.” Then he performed an uncanny imitation of a voice-mail beep.
“Hello, Seth; it’s Mary Granger,” I said, smiling into the hotel room mirror across from me. “I know it’s not our birthday or anything, but I’ve got a problem and I hope you can help me. Call me back when you can.”
I almost hung up right then, as if I’d really been leaving a message.
“What problem?” he asked, his voice guarded again.
“It’s my sister. You remember what happened to our mother?”
“Yes, I do.”
“It’s happening to her.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry. But what can I possibly do?”
“You’re a psychologist, Seth. You gave me your card, remember? If I needed anything?” Maybe he didn’t expect his offer would last for fourteen years. Or maybe it was never a genuine offer at all, more like an expected gesture, part of the unwritten funeral rites performed by us all.
“Well, I’m kind of . . . I’m on a sabbatical of sorts.”
“Well, it’s not like you put your clinical brain on the shelf, right? You still know what you know.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“What’s going on?”
“I can’t talk about it.” All the larkiness was gone. I could picture his jaw tightening and his hands drumming the table, just like during exam week. I could almost hear it, in the background, in fact, a rhythmic light hammering.
“Seth, are you OK?”
“I’m fine.”
“If I call you a liar, will you be offended?”
“Why don’t you try it and see what happens?”
“I’m sorry I bothered you,” I said, just then detecting a slight hurried tone to his voice, betraying impatience. I could feel a pink flush creep up my face, at my presumption for having called him at all. Irretrievably weird: that’s Mary, all right. He dated my roommate. We shared coffee in college diners. He came to my mother’s funeral. He owed me nothing, least of all free mental health advice for my crazy hoarding sister. He probably got this kind of demand all the time. I was no doubt only the latest in a parade of freeloaders asking him to psychoanalyze for free while he wrote massive checks to pay off student loans.
“You weren’t bothering me,” he said unconvincingly.
“Sorry, talk to you later, bye,” I blurted in a rush, punching the cell button but missing it at first, so that I heard his voice saying “Mary?” before I managed to actually hang up.
It occurred to me I was running low on people to turn to for help. I’d already summoned my father. George, whom I’d thought of as a close friend, and potential romance, was gone with a poof along with my job. Seth was busy living his life.
I steeled myself to venture back into Trish’s house. I might have chosen to live with my father, but my heart never left her. Even if Trish and my mother both refused to believe it.
Chapter 15
Mary and I were on the couch again, our mother’s diary on the table in front of us. My sister, as I could have pr
edicted, was angry. In her muted, Mary kind of way.
“This is incredible. You’ve had this for fifteen years?”
Mary pressed her mouth into a thin line, waiting for me to justify myself.
The diary was a composition book, actually, with a marbled black-and-white cover on which was lettered in the precise, careful cursive my mother used for her entire life: Frances Van Linden.
I couldn’t look at the diary without thinking of the day it ended up in my possession, though I didn’t even know I had it, at first. Mother had just handed me a box of old clothes, saying, “You might want some of these. I wore this stuff in high school. Maybe you could wear it to a costume party or something.” I’d rolled my eyes and she replied, “Look through the box. You never know, there might be something in there you like.”
I was living in the trailer with Ron and Drew by that point and didn’t want more stuff, not then. So I crammed it in a closet and forgot about it. I assumed this was one of her attempts to cut down on her clutter by passing it off on us. It wasn’t really “gone” if it was still in the family, she figured.
Then she died. And we began moving into the house Ron built for me. She’d been gone a year, and in a fit of grief I yanked open the top and sobbed into the musty cardigans and skirts. It was in that process I saw something on the bottom of the box that wasn’t clothing.
I opened the front cover expecting to find some homework assignment or other. Dear Diary, the first line had read, and I’d tossed it away from me, gasping.
This was the story I’d told Mary just now. This was what made her so angry.
“When she was first gone,” I began, trying to explain myself, “. . . I couldn’t read it. Andy was so young, Ron and I were just married, and I was grieving so hard. It was a terrible time.”
“Granted, but maybe I could have read it.”
“Things between us were so . . .” I pedaled my hands in the air, trying to grab the right word.
“. . . fraught.”
“Sure, that.”
“But all those years, Trish.”
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