His steps slowed as we approached the porch. “He’s still here,” he said. “That’s his ugly green car. He used to go home early, like right after dinner, and now they sit around watching TV and stuff.”
“You don’t like him?” I asked.
TJ shrugged as much as he could with his arms wrapped around three huge encyclopedias. “He’s okay. He’s always trying to get me to go and play ball with him. I keep telling him I hate playing ball, but he won’t listen. Plus, Mom’s always busy now—not like she used to be.”
I nodded, not pushing it any further. I knew how hard it was not feeling welcome in your own house.
The door was locked, so I rang the bell as TJ stood on the bottom step. His mom opened it with a glass of wine in her hand. “Oh hi, Lucy,” she said. “Was TJ with you? I thought he’d gone down to the Callans’ house to watch TV.”
“Well, he’s been helping me move some things around. He said you wouldn’t mind.”
“Of course not,” she said, smiling at me. “I just hope he wasn’t a bother.”
“No, he was fine,” I said. “But some books fell and hit him in the head. I think he might need some ice.” I grabbed TJ’s arm and guided him up the stairs.
His mom ruffled his hair and inspected the spot he showed her. “It looks okay, but you’re right, it probably does need ice.” She pulled back and looked into his face. “So what were you doing over there that caused books to fall on your head? I hope you weren’t running around and making trouble.”
“Oh no,” I said quickly, “it’s not his fault. The books . . . they were where they shouldn’t have been, and he was just walking by them. Really, he didn’t do anything wrong.”
“If you say so,” she said. “I’d hate to think of him over there making a mess.”
I looked at TJ, but he didn’t seem to think that was funny. Maybe it didn’t look all that weird to him. Kids were sometimes strange that way. “No, really,” I said. “He was great. I hope his head is okay.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine. TJ, say thanks to Lucy for putting up with you.”
“Thanks, Lucy,” he said. “Don’t forget about my stuff.” He held his books up to his mom. “They have so much cool stuff over there. Lucy gave me these encyclopses so I can learn about everything that begins with these letters.”
“Wow,” she said. “You got some real treasures.” She backed into the house. “Thanks again for having him.”
“No problem,” I said.
As the door closed, I could hear TJ talking a mile a minute. “They’ve got a whole box of these books, and Lucy said I could have them all. Can I keep them in my room?”
I stood on the porch for just a minute, looking through the filmy curtains at the colored lights twinkling on the Christmas tree branches, before I turned and walked down the steps to my house.
As I reached the end of TJ’s driveway, my heart started pounding, and I broke into a run. Our house was directly across the street from theirs, but it had never looked so far away. Especially with Sara’s car parked in our driveway.
chapter 13
6:30 p.m.
I stuck my foot out to stop the front door from shutting and tried not to look like I’d been running. Sara was still standing in the hallway, so I knew she hadn’t seen anything.
“Hey,” I said, hoping the panic I was feeling was well hidden. Unlike Phil, who had to be dragged back, Sara came over a couple of times a week—not because she cared about me, but because she wanted to make sure she was still Mom’s favorite. “What’re you doing here?”
“It’s still my house too, in case you forgot,” she said, sounding more like Mom every day. “Where were you? The door wasn’t even locked. Anybody could have walked right in.” As far as I was concerned, anybody did.
“Oh, I just had to run across the street for a minute. Babysitting stuff.”
Sara nodded slowly, like she was trying to decide if I was telling the truth. “Well, I called Mom at work to see if she wanted to meet up for dinner, but they said she was sick.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Some sort of nasty flu thing.” I coughed a little for emphasis. “You should probably get out of here before you catch it. I’m sure we’re contagious.”
She held up a shopping bag. “I brought over some Chinese to make her feel better.” Sara stepped back and looked into the living room, but Mom’s recliner was empty. “Where is she?”
I leaned to the side to block her access to the kitchen. I could feel the thoughts whirling through my head as I tried to come up with something that would get her out of here as quickly as possible. If Sara thought that something was going on, she’d call 911 in a second. Sara went along with Mom’s philosophy that there was nothing wrong with the house that a little straightening wouldn’t fix. Mom wasn’t one of those hoarders, she was a saver—saving the planet one stack of newspapers at a time. Now that everything was “eco” and “green,” they had even more backup. It was like she wasn’t even standing in the same house that I was.
“Uh, Mom’s in my room,” I heard myself say. “She was so sick I let her sleep in my room all day.”
“Well, I’ll just stick my head in and make sure she’s okay,” she said. She took a few steps toward the hallway.
“No, wait!” I said, almost shouting. She couldn’t get any farther or it would be over.
She turned around and stared at me. “What?”
“Uh, just be careful when you go in there,” I said, my words coming out just as the plan was forming in my head. “Because of all the puking, I mean.”
That stopped Sara cold. “Puking? You didn’t say anything about puking.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, feeling the idea take shape. “Puking on everything. You know, puking, fever—that’s what the flu is all about. I just now got her cleaned up.”
I could see Sara gag a little from the image. If there was one thing she couldn’t stand, it was other people’s bodily functions, and puking was pretty high on the list.
She turned back toward the front of the house and thrust the bag into my hands. It smelled like pot stickers, and my stomach suddenly started growling. Apparently the eggrolls from earlier were getting lonely down there. “Just tell her I came by, will you?” Sara pulled her coat tighter around her neck. “She is okay, right?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, starting to relax. “There’s really nothing for you to do.” True, in more ways than one.
“It’s freezing in here. Is the furnace out again?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Phil needs to come over and deal with it.”
“Want me to send Mark over tomorrow? He’s pretty good with that sort of thing.”
Sara and her boyfriend-fiancé-whatever, Mark, seemed to have worked out a pact to pretend our house was normal. He’d never spent any real time here, but he’d helped out a couple of times when things were broken, so he was more than aware of what he was dealing with. It made me wonder how she’d done it, because unless she was really good at hypnotism, he was a great actor. Or he was just stupid. “No,” I said. “The space heaters are working okay. I’ve got one in my room.”
“Be sure you keep it on so Mom doesn’t get too cold.”
I followed her to the front door, trying to ignore the irony of that last statement. “Yeah, I will. I’m sure she’ll be okay in a couple of days. Well, I’ll see you later.” I could feel relief flooding my body as she put her hand on the knob.
Sara’s eyes drifted around the big pile in the front hallway to the boxes I had sitting out on the floor by the recliner. “What’s all that about?”
I turned to look at the boxes and bags lined up on the only visible floor space. “Oh, I, uh, . . .”
Sara marched over to them and peeked inside. She raised her eyes to meet mine with her mouth hanging open in disbelief. “Are you throwing her stuff out?” she hissed, her voice barely louder than a whisper. She picked up a couple of the old photos and junk mail I’d tossed into the bag. “Is this for the trash?”
“Just a few things. I thought I’d—”
“Does Mom know?” She pulled the photos out of the bag. “You’re messing with Mom’s photos? Man, she’s going to kill you.” Sara smoothed the edges of the photos that had gotten crumpled in the bag. She waved them at me. “None of this stuff belongs to you,” she said, her voice getting a little bit louder. “You’re sitting here while Mom is sick and can’t defend herself, calmly tossing out her important things?”
After all I’d been through today I didn’t need one of her lectures. I grabbed the top photo from her and held it out to her face. I was so sick and tired of everything, I was starting to lose my fear. “These aren’t important,” I said. “These are junk. You can’t even tell what’s in this photo—it’s just a tangle of arms that are all out of focus.”
Sara looked closer. “No, that picture was taken on the Fourth of July a couple of years ago. See, right there, that’s the red, white, and blue shirt I always wear to the parade.” She poked at it with a manicured finger. “You can’t just get rid of Mom’s stuff whenever you want.”
I tossed the picture at her and it fell to the floor. “Fine, then,” I said. “You take it. Otherwise it’s going in the garbage with the rest of this useless crap.”
Sara glared at me and slowly bent down to pick it up. “Useless crap? What the hell do you know about useless crap? After all Mom’s done for you.” She snatched the trash bag off the floor. “I’d better take this too so you don’t throw away anything else important.”
I could feel the anger bubbling in my chest again. I was tired of pretending nothing was wrong—that every family lived surrounded by head-high piles of garbage. That we didn’t really want to have any friends over, and it didn’t bother us when Mom made it seem like everything was our fault. “Come on Sara, look around this dump! It’s full of nothing but moldy crap. We can’t even live here properly because it’s such a mess. You haven’t slept in your room in years, because Mom filled it with piles of junk the minute you moved out. Same with Phil’s room. Even Dad left this dump and never came back. I’m the one who has to live in it, and I’m sick of it!” I could feel angry tears welling up in my eyes. I hadn’t cried all day, and now a stupid argument with Sara was threatening to make me all weepy.
“Stop being so selfish,” she said. “It’s not always about you, you know. It’s not like I want to move back here or anything, so what do I care what she does with my room? And for your information, Dad didn’t leave on his own—Mom kicked him out because he was constantly nagging her.” Sara loved dropping little information bombs at the worst possible times. The fact that she was almost ten years older than me gave her lots of ammunition. She never let me forget that she was here long before me and that she never wanted to play the role of big sister.
“What are you talking about?” I asked cautiously. I never knew whether she was telling me the truth or not, because she often felt it was her duty to screw with me. “You know as well as I do Dad abandoned us to go live with what’s-her-name. That’s why Mom got stressed out about everything.”
Sara waved that away with a flick of her wrist. “That’s just what Mom says. I was almost your age when they got divorced, and it’s not like I couldn’t see or hear anything. Mom got tired of Dad not helping out. She said he made her life too difficult, so one day she just tossed him out on his ass. He didn’t even meet Tiffany until way after that.”
I stood staring at Sara, waiting for her to say more, but she seemed to have no idea this information completely contradicted everything I’d ever thought. She started filling the plastic bag with anything she could find.
“I can’t believe you’re taking advantage of Mom being sick by going through her stuff. Good thing I came by today, or God knows what you might have done.” She looked up at me from where she was crouched on the ground gathering junk mail. “Mom told me she was worried about you. Always trying to keep her out of your room. What are you hiding in there? Hmm? Probably stealing stuff from Mom and squirreling it away. She always says that she can never find her valuables. You’re probably taking them.”
“Mom can’t find anything because she lives like a pig!” I was practically shouting now, the image of late-night phone conversations between them feeding my frustration. “Are you blind? Look around! Stop defending her and look around. It’s not healthy.” I took a deep breath. “It’s not normal.”
“Well, then, maybe you should help more,” she said. “She’s getting older and can’t do everything for you. Now that she’s working longer hours, she can’t babysit you all day. When I was little, we helped out all the time, and this place was spotless. I’m sure that if you picked up after yourself every once in a while, it would get better.”
“Now you’re blaming me?” I didn’t know why I was surprised—I’d heard it from Mom often enough. How I didn’t help enough, and how if I were a better daughter, things would be okay. I shoved both arms at a teetering pile of clothes and bags until they toppled over onto the next pile.
“This is not my fault,” I said slowly. It was the first time I’d ever said those words out loud, and I liked the way they felt. Sara might want to be just like Mom, but I was going to do everything I could to be different from the two of them. If I had to go and live on a tiny boat with nothing but a toothbrush and a change of underwear, I’d do it—I’d gladly leave all this behind just to have a normal life.
Sara stood up and took a few steps toward the hallway. “I’m going to have to wake Mom up and tell her what you’ve been up to. No matter how sick she is, she’s going to want to know that she’s being betrayed by her own daughter. Real nice, Luce.”
As she began to work her way out of the room, I panicked, my resolve to stand up to them fading fast. Thank God it was too dark for her to see the growing pile of bags on the side of the house, but if she got down to the end of the hallway, she’d see Mom, for sure.
“No, don’t!” I said. “Don’t wake her up!” I flicked my hand and dumped a bunch of clothes on top of the other trash bags to cover them. Sara stopped walking and turned to me with her hand on her hip. There was just enough room in the pathway for her elbow to fit before it bumped the mounds of junk on either side. “I don’t see that I have much choice,” she said. She shook the bag at me. “Not after this.”
I had to think fast. I should have known Sara would do this. “Look, I’m sorry,” I said. I stared at the floor and tried to look as humble as possible. For once I was glad that I’d taken drama as an elective last year. I might not be able to deal with an audience of hundreds, but an audience of one I could handle. “I’m not tossing out Mom’s stuff; I just wanted to make a little more space for her. It’s getting so crowded around her chair, pretty soon she’s going to be sleeping outside.”
Sara looked over at Mom’s chair and at the piles that were growing around it. “This is it?” she asked. She looked skeptical. “You didn’t touch anything else?”
I could see her starting to change her mind. I had to keep talking. “No. Nothing. Only around the chair. I figured that when she was feeling better, it would be nice for her to be able to sleep without worrying that all of this was going to fall on her. You know . . . earthquakes and stuff.”
Sara hesitated, and I could see that half of her still wanted to go tell on me. Nothing made her happier than to be the good daughter in Mom’s eyes. She looked down at the bag in her hand. “Well, I’m still going to take this with me so you don’t throw it away.”
I followed her eyes as she looked around the rest of the room. Luckily, it was in such bad shape she couldn’t tell if I’d done any work in here or not. I just had to keep her out of the dining room and the kitchen—not to mention the hallway. “Go ahead, if you want to,” I said. Without knowing it, she could help me get at least one bag out of here.
“Oh, I want to.” She turned to walk out the front door. As she passed me, she grabbed the bag of food I’d forgotten I was holding. “I’m taking this too. Get yo
urself something else to eat.” Typical. If there was a way to fix things for me and Phil and leave her out of it, I would.
I followed her out the front door and down the walk toward the driveway. She thought I was just saying good-bye, but I was really making sure she was actually going. Sara had gotten a new car a couple of months ago, and even I was shocked to see what she’d done to it in such a short time.
The backseat was full of those cardboard file boxes I was sure she’d swiped from work. You couldn’t see the floor because of the pile of discarded clothes that reached as high as the seat. The front seat could still hold a passenger, as long as that person was willing to wait for her to clear the empty CD cases, tissue boxes, clothes, shoes, and fast-food bags that covered both the seat and the floor.
Sara didn’t seem to notice me staring. “I’ll be back tomorrow to see how Mom’s doing,” she said as she climbed into the relatively clear driver’s seat and grabbed at a water bottle that was rolling around by the brake pedal.
“Tomorrow?” I asked. I could feel the panic rising in my throat. I could never get it all done by tomorrow. Three days was bad enough. Tomorrow was impossible. “Aren’t you working tomorrow?”
She glared at me. “I have a personal day coming, not that it’s any of your business.”
“What time tomorrow?” I could tell I said it too fast, even as the words burst out of my mouth.
Sara turned the key in the ignition. “That’s for me to know,” she said. “Stay away from her stuff.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. I was sure I had enough worry growing in my stomach for both of us.
“Oh, but I do,” she said.
I watched her back out of the driveway and take off down the street. It seemed like I exhaled for the first time since I’d seen her car in the driveway.
As I turned back toward the house, I realized that even when the mess was all cleaned up, it wasn’t over. Mom was gone. But Sara was still very much around—and she was getting to be exactly like her.
Dirty Little Secrets Page 12
