The Opposite Of Tidy

by Carrie Mac

  Junie had to admit that Tabitha had a point. “I guess that’s possible.”

  “He probably just really wants extra people for his bottle drive thing. Nothing more, nothing less. He probably isn’t interested in either of us. Maybe he’s gay.”

  “I doubt it.” Junie glanced down at her math worksheet. The numbers shimmered like hot pavement. She hated math. She hated crazy-making boy encounters. Well, maybe she didn’t exactly hate them . . . perhaps she even liked them. But that didn’t make them any less confusing.

  “You know what?” Tabitha handed Junie her own sheet with the answers filled in. “Either way, we’ll be okay. Right? If he likes you, I’ll be cool. And if he likes me, you’ll be cool. And if he likes Ollie, we’ll both be cool.”

  They laughed at the thought.

  The phone rang, but neither of them dove for it. They both knew it would be Junie’s mom. Sure enough, they heard Mrs. D.’s reassuring murmurs trickle down from upstairs. Then silence. Then footsteps. Mrs. D. appeared on the stairs, a small plate in each hand.

  “Juniper Rawley. Your mom had no idea where you were!”

  “I’m always here. She knows that. Where else would I be?”

  “But you hadn’t told her. And you told me you had.”

  “I told you she wouldn’t mind. And she didn’t, right?”

  “I’m not so sure about that.” Mrs. D. tried to look full of lawyerly discipline, but Junie had a point. Her mother could have called earlier, but she hadn’t. And they all knew why. First she’d been busy making a scene with Junie’s father in the driveway, and then she hadn’t bothered because she knew exactly where Junie was. “It would have been much better had you been clear.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. D.,” Junie said. “I was flustered and messed up.”

  “Apology accepted.” Mrs. D. set the plates in front of them. A little quenelle of vanilla ice cream rested in the centre, with a fan of roasted pear slices tucked beside it. “She said you could have dessert first, but then you are to go straight home. To your real home.” Again, she tried to sound firm, but she didn’t really. She set her hand on Junie’s shoulder and gave her a tender squeeze. And her tone was more gentle than stern. “I am sorry you’re going through this, Junie. You know you’re welcome here any time.”

  Going through this. Which “this” did she mean? The divorce?

  “Or the usual ‘this’?” Junie asked Tabitha as she walked her home.

  “Both.”

  Junie stopped at the end of her driveway, Tabitha beside her. Inside, the only light was the blue flicker from the TV in the living room. In the houses on the rest of the block, a warm orange glow emanated from various rooms. A couple of porch lights were on, beckoning. Each one of those homes looked more inviting than her own.

  “I wish the moms would let me sleep over on weeknights,” Junie said. “Even just once in a while.” It was a rule, though, and there was no breaking it. Junie was sure it was a rule not because they’d never get any sleep, but because it would hurt her mother’s feelings if she chose to sleep at Tabitha’s every night. And she didn’t want to sleep there every night. But after a day like this, she would. For sure, she would. After a day like this, she didn’t really want to go home at all.

  “You’ll be okay.” Again, Tabitha read her mind. “You’ll go in, say goodnight and hide out in your room until morning. You don’t have to listen to her go on about your dad. And you don’t have to hang out in all that—”

  “I know. All that crap.”

  “Yeah.” Junie could hear the awkwardness in Tabitha’s voice. “Well, not crap, really. But—”

  “Call a spade a spade, right?”

  “I guess so. Night, Junie.” Tabitha hugged her. “Sweet dreams of Wade Jaffre.”

  “You too, Tab.” She backed up the driveway, slowly. “And congratulations on your stellar piano performance!”

  The front door had a creak, so it announced her arrival, no matter how stealthy she wanted to be.

  “Junie?” her mom called, from what was called the living room in most houses. But in Junie’s house, it was not livable at all. She and Tabitha called it the unliving room. “I’m home.”

  There was a pause. Her mother turned down the volume on the TV, but she could still hear some shrill lady pleading with her to buy a set of cubic zirconium earrings for only $29.99, including shipping.

  “Come on in here for a minute.”

  This was easier said than done. Junie hated going into the living room. It was the worst place in the whole house. And only because it was where her mother dwelt amongst her accumulated junk, like a foul queen amongst her wretched legions. Her mother was a hoarder—there was no better way to describe it. No stronger word. No more accurate word to describe the mountainous squalor. The front entrance was cluttered with boxes and padded envelopes from couriers and the mailman and delivery trucks, stuff she’d bought off the Shopping Channel and the Internet, stuff she hadn’t even bothered to open. The closet was jammed open with jackets and boots and hats. The hall leading to the living room was stacked with plastic bins and crates and boxes full of more crap she didn’t need: MiracleMan Hair Rejuvenator from when Junie’s father started to go bald, the Fabio Fab Abs Machine from when her mother finally realized she’d gotten very fat, the Number Whiz Kid Genius Kit (Success Guaranteed!!!), another “system” that she’d ordered when it had become clear that Junie was seriously numerically challenged. And amongst all that, plain old garbage. Bags of old shopping bags, teetering stacks of washed out tin cans she “might need one day for a craft project” she had in mind. Leaning towers of old newspapers. Black garbage bags bursting with clothes that didn’t fit any of them any more but that might have “one or two good wears in them yet.” Shoeboxes jammed with pencil stubs and twist-ties and paper clips, margarine tubs bursting with old elastics.

  The entire house had been overtaken by her mother’s stuff. Her crap, her doodads, her compulsive purchases, the detritus of her extreme and out-of-control hoarding. Junie couldn’t blame her father for leaving them, considering the mess he’d had to live with.

  It took three times as long as it should have to make her way from the front door to the small patch in the living room that wasn’t occupied by stuff, stuff and more stuff. Broken lamps, rolled up carpeting from the old house they’d lived in (“In case we decide to use it in the basement . . .”), pillars of phone books, catalogues, takeout menus, yearbooks, old bills and receipts, entire sets of dishes still in the boxes (“But don’t you LOVE the pattern? You can have them when you go to college!”). The only free space was the short distance between her mother’s armchair and the TV. A very small expanse of nothing. So as not to obscure her view. Sometimes Junie did her homework there, sitting on the floor with her books spread out around her while her mother watched the Shopping Channel. She only did this when she was feeling guilty about not hanging out with her mother enough. But that was rare. Increasingly rare. Mostly, Junie stayed in her room.

  “My errant child,” her mother said drolly. “Returned to the hideous home front.”

  “Don’t say that.” Junie hated it when her mom made jokes about the state of their home. It was so terrible; there was nothing funny about it. It was no laughing matter. Not at all.

  “Why didn’t you come home after school?”

  Junie didn’t answer. She looked at the TV. The Amazing Closet Butler! Organizes up to sixty-three items! Indispensable. Her mother wrote something in the notebook she kept by her chair.

  “We don’t need that, Mom.”

  “We could organize the front closet.”

  “I did organize the front closet. Last year. And the year before that. It always goes back to being your stuff-it place for the mail and packages you never even bother to open.”

  “There are coats and boots and such in there too.”

  “Mom!”

  “Junie!” Her mother held up her hands in a truce. “I get it, okay?” She paused. “Did you do your
homework at Tabitha’s or do you still need to get it done?”

  Apparently, she was not going to mention that Junie’s father had been there. Apparently she was not going to mention the very public fight they’d had in the driveway. Apparently she was going to pretend that everything was business as usual. As usual as it could be in this mess.

  “Did it at Tabitha’s.”

  “You should get to bed, then.”

  “So you can buy three Closet Butlers?” Junie couldn’t help the sarcasm. She was sorry for it the moment she’d said the words. But it was true. Junie’s mother would pick up the phone the minute Junie was out of sight. Her mother couldn’t help it. It was an addiction. As bad as a crack addict jonesing for a fix. That’s what her father told her. That was his explanation for it. That—along with the hoarding and the filth and every other problem her mother seemed to have—was why he wanted Junie to come live with him and That Woman.

  Her mother looked at her, eyes damp. She knew how bad it was. She knew she needed to stop. She’d finally admitted that she was a hoarder—had actually used that very word herself—only about a year before. Right before everything had gone downhill between her and Junie’s dad. In fact, it was after she’d seen a segment on Kendra about it. That was the night she’d started looking for a professional organizer. What a mistake that had been.

  Junie’s mom knew that if Social Services saw the state of things, they’d remove Junie and make her go live with her father and That Woman. She knew that the only reason Junie stayed with her was because she worried about her. Junie worried that her mother would stick her head in the oven and turn the gas on just to get away from the mess once and for all without actually having to deal with it. She worried that one of the candles would tip over and the house would burn so hot and so fiercely that no one would be able to rescue her amongst all the junk. Sometimes Junie worried that one day her mother would pack a bag, walk out the front door and never come back, because to fix it was too hard, and to stay was even harder. But mostly, she worried that her mother was just going to get worse. That she’d hoard even more. And that one day Junie would come home from school and find her dead under a pile of rubbish that had fallen on her and crushed her to death. This happened for real. A man in New Jersey reported his wife missing only to find her three days later in their basement, where she’d perished under a pile of Christmas ornaments still in their original, unopened packages.

  Junie left her mother with her guilt and went up to her bedroom. Her oasis of uncluttered calm. Her bed, a desk, a bureau, two shelves of books. That was it. Nothing else. Tabitha said her room looked like a monk’s quarters. And that suited Junie just fine. She changed into her pyjamas and went down the hall to the bathroom to brush her teeth. Things were slightly better on this floor, with only one side of the wall stacked with archive boxes from when her father had tried to “apply some order to the chaos.” Junie’s mother wouldn’t let them get rid of anything, but occasionally she let them sort it. The floor-to-ceiling stack of archive boxes had twenty years’ of papers in it. Not just the papers produced from a normal household, but every single paper that her mother had ever come in contact with: notes, parking receipts, old gum wrappers, bills, used envelopes . . . you name it.

  When Junie headed back to her bedroom she heard the telltale sound of her mother dialling the phone. She knew the different beeps of the different numbers. This was one of the 1-800 numbers she often dialled to buy off the TV. A few days from then, several Closet Butlers would show up via courier. Junie glanced at her watch. Eleven minutes. Her mother had tried to resist. Junie knew this because if she hadn’t been trying, she would have dialled while Junie still stood there laying on the guilt. She’d made it eleven minutes before she’d caved and given in to her addiction.

  Never mind if Wade liked her, or Tabitha, or neither of them. Junie was just glad that Wade Jaffre thought she lived at what was really Tabitha’s house. Never mind the scene in the driveway—imagine if he ever actually wanted to come in! The only person—other than her mom, dad or herself—who had ever been in this house on a regular basis was Tabitha. She was the only one who knew her big secret. And Tabitha’s mother. She’d come into the house once, and only once. She couldn’t find Tabitha, and it was past the time that she and Junie were supposed to be home. After looking around the neighbourhood for the girls, she’d knocked on the front door, and when there was a muffled answer from deep in the house, she’d opened the door and stepped inside. She’d only stood in the front hall for the time it took Junie’s mother to make her way to her, to tell her that the girls had called and were on their way home from the corner store, where she’d sent them on an errand. But from there Mrs. D. could see enough. Smell enough. After that, the girls almost only ever hung out at Tabitha’s house.

  Mrs. D. had asked Junie if she felt safe. Junie said yes. Then Mrs. D. asked if she was bothered by the “state of things” at her house. Junie said no. She said that it was worse right then because they were finally clearing things out. Junie said that everything was just fine. Junie lied, over and over again, worried that Mrs. D. might turn her parents in.

  Maybe it was better if Wade liked Tabitha. Junie couldn’t imagine having a boyfriend. Not when her house—and her life—was such a huge, unsalvageable mess.

  THREE

  Her mother had slept in her chair again. This was a secret that no one else knew. Not Junie’s father, not even Tabitha. That chair. How Junie hated that chair. Recently, her mother had gotten stuck in it when a pile of junk had been teetering for weeks slid onto her lap, topped with an ottoman and broken coffee table that Junie had said were a hazard but had refused to deal with on her own. Junie wondered if her mom could’ve helped herself out and hadn’t bothered. Either way, she’d sat there, underneath it all, until Junie had come home from school and helped dig her out. And was that a big enough deal to have inspired her to reach out for help? Apparently not. Junie had begged her mother to make things better, even as she dragged off the table and set aside bundles of old clothes, dirty empty food containers with ants and maggots in them, a box of musty old textbooks.

  “You’ll die under all of this crap, Mom. Is that what you want? You want me to come home and find you dead? It could’ve been today! What if I wasn’t here? What if no one came for days and days? What if you starved to death here? Died from lack of water? It doesn’t take that long, Mom.”

  “I’m not going to die anytime soon,” her mother said in very small voice.

  Junie replied in an equally small voice, “But when will it end, Mom?”

  “I don’t know,” her mother said. “I wrote to Kendra about it.”

  “Who?”

  “Kendra. On TV. Kendra, Kendra.”

  Junie had said nothing. Her face flushed red. As if a world-famous talk show host would be able to help. Junie could only imagine the mailroom at the Kendra studios, full of desperate letters written by desperate people about their desperate situations. Her mother was now deluded as well.

  Junie had thought that the burying scare might kick her mother into gear, but it hadn’t. Other than rearranging and steadying the detritus around her so that none of it was so tall that it would overwhelm her again, her mother had not only gone on hanging out in that horrible chair, but she’d taken to sleeping in it, too. Junie genuinely believed that one day she’d come home to find that her mother had purchased a commode and mini-fridge online and wouldn’t have any reason to leave the living room ever again.

  Junie’s mother was still sleeping when Junie left for school. The chair was one of those armchairs that leaned back, with a footrest that went up. She was in it fully reclined, and was sleeping hard with her mouth open and one of her legs dangling off the footrest. One arm was splayed out to her side, and she was still clutching the remote with the other. An old afghan covered her lap; her computer teetered precariously on her thighs. She hated that her mother slept in that gross old recliner.

  She stood at the edge of th
e living room and shook her head. It was a disgusting sight: the room, with all its squalor, and her mother in the middle like she was queen of the garbage heap. It was all so embarrassing and awful. Even more so now that her mother couldn’t even be bothered to take herself up to bed at night. Junie had glanced in her mother’s room before she’d come down. Even if her mother had wanted to go to bed, there was no easy way she could. The bed was covered with the contents of a series of plastic bins that her mother had started to organize. She’d started that project eleven days ago, and hadn’t slept in her bed since. Not that it had been very sleepable before that. Up until her father had left, her mother had managed to keep a narrow moat around the bed, and the bed itself clear, even though the room was a mountain range of laundry, both clean and dirty. There’d been an avalanche on one side, the heap tilting and tilting until it had given. Now musty old clothes were piled around the bed and spilled onto it, mixing with the contents of the bins. The mattress itself was dingy and stained, because her mother had not bothered to put a sheet on it since her dad had left. When Junie had asked her why, her mother had explained that there was no point, because she was alone, and slept in her clothes, so what did it matter?

  It mattered. Greatly. Maybe Junie would tell Tabitha today. That her mother had been sleeping in her chair. Or maybe she wouldn’t. She felt as though she’d passed a threshold: the border between simple omission and a real secret.

  Junie opened the door as quietly as possible. She didn’t want her mother to wake up and catch her leaving, because she wasn’t sure what she’d say to her. She could imagine all kinds of rude things about how fat she’d gotten and how lazy she was and what a slob she’d become. Junie hated that her mother made her have thoughts like that. But it was her mother’s fault. She was the one who was living this ruined life. Junie just wanted to get out of there, so that she wouldn’t say anything mean.