A Clean Sweep

by Tymber Dalton

  “Well, they usually film scenes of the family talking with their counselors for the show.”

  “If Mom’s okay with them cleaning it out, why do we even need to do that?”

  He knew they were putting the cart before the horse. “They have a formula they follow for the show, but nothing’s set in stone. I’ll let the producer know we need him down here ASAP to talk with him. I’m not going to push you into doing the show if you’re not comfortable with it. We can say no to the filming, and if the expense is an issue, we’ll work with you to get the costs down as low as possible and work out something.”

  “I want to do the filming,” Corrine said.

  “I’ll do whatever Mom wants to do,” Essie said, the set to her shoulders telegraphing to him that she wasn’t happy with that idea at all. “If she wants to film, I guess we’re filming.”

  He wasn’t the counselor, though. That was Ted. And he suspected he needed to get Ted here sooner rather than later.

  He went through some more things with them before shutting down his iPad. “Let’s go take a look at the house then,” he said. “I need to see what we’re dealing with before we go any farther.”

  Chapter Six

  Ross led the way, Mark following, Essie behind him, and Loren and Corrine bringing up the rear. Mark’s memory had been right—the outside didn’t look too bad.

  “Can I walk around and take a look at the backyard real fast?” Mark asked Corrine.

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “It’s not the greatest, though.”

  He opened the gate on the wooden stockade fence and breathed a sigh of relief. The expanse of backyard, while knee-high in weeds in some places, was clear of debris and garbage except for a tiny pile of branches in one far corner.

  From behind him, Corrine spoke up. “I told him if he put anything outside, it would disappear,” she said.

  He looked at her, catching her firm nod. “The first few times he tried it, I did it. He stopped doing it. I don’t know if that ended up being good or not, because then all that crap came inside. But at least outside we didn’t totally look like white trash.”

  The screened-in porch sat empty except for a cheap set of plastic chairs and a table. “On nice nights, I come out here and eat at the table, or read,” she said.

  The sliding glass doors leading to it from the house were covered by vertical blinds that were pressed against the glass in an unusual way.

  “You can’t get to the sliders from inside,” Corrine said. “He has too much crap piled in the way. I’d have to walk out and around from the side garage door.”

  Corrine crossed her arms over her chest, Essie draping an arm around her mom’s shoulders and pulling her close. “I want my life back,” Corrine softly said, sounding close to tears. “I loved him, and I paid my dues. I was a good wife. I never cheated on him, I didn’t leave him, and I tried to take as good of care of him as I could. But dammit, it’s my life now.”

  Then her tears flowed. Mark realized Loren was holding a small box of tissues. She pulled one from it and pressed it into Corrine’s hand.

  “Who does your yard work?” he asked.

  “I’ve been paying the son of our neighbors next door to mow the front when he mows theirs. Once a month, I have him come back here and mow.”

  “We can use the backyard for one of the staging areas,” Mark said. “We can bring things out through the back sliders and have one of the waste containers placed close to the gate if we can move the vehicles. That will speed things up, being able to move stuff out of the front and back doors.”

  Corrine nodded even as she sniffled. “Good. The faster, the better.”

  “I’ll bring my mower over here this afternoon,” Ross offered. I’ll get it cleaned up.”

  “Perfect,” Mark said.

  “I’ll help,” Essie said.

  “Ross, can you get the house unlocked?” Mark asked. “I need to make a quick call.”

  “Sure.” He led the women through the gate while Mark pulled out his phone and hit the speed-dial number for Ted.

  His older brother answered on the third ring. “Where are you?” Ted asked by way of greeting.

  “Listen, I’m at the Barrone house.” He quickly detailed what was going on. “I need you out here today. We need to expedite this case.”

  Ted paused. “Expedite it because you still have a thing for her? Josh and I already talked this morning.”

  Dammit.

  He was going to beat the snot out of Josh. “Expedited because Essie lives in Spokane, and because Corrine Barrone wants it expedited. This isn’t the typical case of having to fight a hoarder to clean it out. She’s the surviving spouse, and she wants it cleaned out as soon as possible. Can you please call Purson and see if we can get him down here today to talk to them? And have Josh arrange for trash containers to be delivered ASAP. The biggest ones.”

  Ted let out one of those aggravated grunts Mark knew all too well. “Is this going to be a problem for you?” he asked. “I remember what you were like over her.”

  “Dammit, I’m not in high school anymore.”

  “Just remember that. We’ll be there at two.” Then Ted hung up on him.

  Asshole. For a counselor, sometimes Ted could be too much of an annoying older brother to him and Josh.

  He pocketed his phone and followed Ross and the women.

  When he reached the garage side door, he tried to keep his mind firmly rooted in the professional end of things, but it was difficult. He could hear them talking from somewhere inside the narrow canyon running from the doorway into the dark recesses of the choked garage.

  Fortunately, he didn’t smell any rotting food or animal waste odors.

  He hated the cases where animals were involved. He loved animals, and hated to see what happened in many cases of hoarders who had pets. Or, worse, who were animal hoarders. Or even cases where hoarders ended up with rodent and insect infestations.

  Picking his way carefully toward the sounds of the voices, he finally found himself in the kitchen area. Carefully schooling his expression, he took a moment to look around with a professional eye to details. Poor Essie appeared close to tears, while Corrine just looked angry.

  “Gone,” Corrine said, waving her hands around. “I want. It. Gone. A clean sweep.”

  The kitchen, at least, was marginally functional, so that was a good sign. “May I?” he asked Corrine as he pointed at the fridge.

  She nodded and waved her hands again. “Whatever you need to do, do it. I don’t care.”

  He noticed a wedge-shaped area in front of the fridge door that was free of stacks of magazines and newspapers. Holding his breath as he opened the fridge, he was again relieved to see that not only did it work, it was relatively clean and not packed with old and expired food.

  This was the first time in months that he’d opened a fridge in a hoarder’s house and not gagged at the smell, or a cloud of flies escaped when he did.

  “I clean it out every week,” she said. “Another of the small battles I won. The first time I caught him trying to bring garbage back into the house, I told him he’d come home from work to find an empty house.”

  The inevitable tears. Loren pressed another tissue into Corrine’s hand. “I hate that I had to be like that, but I didn’t have the energy to fight him any other way. I wish I could have been stronger. I finally gave in and only fought the battles I knew I could win.”

  From what he was seeing, it was definitely what they would consider a Stage 4 situation, even a borderline Stage 5. Working in their favor was the fact that the house, like so many in their area, had a concrete slab, no basement, and was a single-story home, meaning little likelihood of structural damage from the sheer weight of the accumulated hoard.

  “There’s a roof leak?” he asked.

  Corrine nodded and headed down what looked like it might have been a hallway. He followed her, and she squeezed into a doorway of a room and finally found the light switch. What was probably
a full-size bed was only half-usable, the other side piled high with clothes.

  “Over there,” she said, pointing.

  On the ceiling were water stains, but the lack of mold and their relatively light color told him they were fresh.

  “The roof is over thirty years old,” she said. “If you can recommend someone to fix it, I’d be grateful. I don’t know who to call.”

  Ross had followed them down the path. “I’ll call Seth,” he said, meeting Mark’s gaze. “He’ll know who to recommend.”

  Seth was another of their “mutual friends.” He’d been a contractor in a former life.

  Now, he was married to Leah, who was also his slave.

  “Your husband slept in here?” Mark asked.

  “Yes. I slept on the couch. Trying to clean the bed off was a nightly war I got tired of fighting. I figured if I was more important to him than the stuff, he’d do it.” She blew her nose. “Obviously, I wasn’t.”

  “How many bathrooms do you have?”

  “Two and a half. The master bathroom isn’t accessible because of all his stuff, but it used to work.” She turned off the light and eased her way past them, her agility making her way around the mountains of stuff a sad result of her being forced to live like this.

  She led the way back down the hall, through the kitchen where Essie and Loren stood waiting. He noted that Loren now had her arm draped around Essie’s shoulder. Essie looked like she’d been crying.

  He wanted to stop, pull her into his arms, and hold her, but knew he had work to do to get this process started.

  He and Ross followed Corrine down another path that led through what likely had been the dining room. Rabbit trails branched off in a couple of places, and then they were at a bathroom.

  She turned on a light. Again, relief. While lots of things cluttered the space, the tub itself was clean, as was the toilet, and the sink. “My other victory,” she quietly said. “I told him if I was going to be forced to live with this stuff, then he would help me keep at least one bathroom usable.”

  “But one of the other bathrooms doesn’t actually work?”

  “The powder room,” she said. “The toilet stopped working and he never fixed it.”

  She then led them to the living room. She had what they called in their line of work a “cockpit” area, containing the TV, the couch, and a small coffee table doubling as a desk with a laptop on it. The TV sat on top of a two-drawer filing cabinet.

  “That cabinet,” she said, “is where I have our papers. That has to be saved.”

  “Of course,” he said. “We’ll come in and get that out first thing so there’s no worries.”

  “I need to take stuff out of it now, I suppose,” she said, sounding close to tears again. “I need to find out about the life insurance policy. How to collect it. And the truck title is in there.”

  He looked at Ross. “If you want to help me, we can probably move it.”

  Ross nodded. “Might be easier to grab it now.”

  “Can we get some of my clothes, too?” She pointed at four large, clear plastic storage tubs. Inside appeared to be neatly folded clothing.

  “Of course we can,” Mark told her. “Did you want your computer?”

  “Yes, I guess I need that.” She unplugged it from an extension cord and closed the lid, picking it up and hugging it and the charger cord to her. “This feels so…strange,” she whispered. “I’m sorry if I look like I’m being heartless, but you have no idea how many times I woke up wishing this mess was a nightmare, and that I had the house I wanted to have.”

  “I understand.”

  He’d started to ask Ross if he wanted them to stash her file cabinet in his garage when he realized something.

  The garage was where Ross usually kept their play equipment stored. When they had parties, they folded up the Murphy beds in their two spare bedrooms and moved in the play equipment to there, and to their living room area.

  “Um, where do you want to put the file cabinet?” Mark asked.

  “We can move it into the guest room she’s in,” he said without missing a beat, his gaze squarely on Mark’s. “And her clothes.”

  “All right.”

  Corrine rejoined the women in the kitchen while the men worked to excavate the file cabinet and the tubs of clothing. It took them the better part of half an hour, and they moved it all out to the driveway, close to the house, as a temporary staging area.

  “How are you keeping them out of your garage?” Mark mumbled to Ross while outside.

  “A damn good lock,” he said with a smile. I’ve got tarps over the stuff, so I’ll be able to get the mower out while Loren keeps them distracted, but I don’t want them in there.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  They returned to the kitchen. “Okay,” Mark said. “My brother, Ted, will be here at two to talk with you. I need to make a couple of phone calls, and then I can draw up a contract giving us permission to get started.”

  “But can I sign it today?” Corrine asked, desperation threaded through her tone.

  He smiled. “Yes, it’ll be on my iPad. We’ll print you out a copy for your records.”

  “Oh, no. Just e-mail it to me.”

  Essie let out a laugh before she clapped her hand over her mouth. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “What?” Corrine asked her.

  She finally lowered her hand. “I have all my stuff done paperless whenever I can,” she admitted. “I have an app on my iPad. I can scan stuff and then get rid of the paper copies. I hate paperwork.”

  Her mom hugged her. “I’m so sorry you have to go through this,” she said. “But can you show me how to do that? I want one of those iPads. I don’t want to bring anything else into this house once it’s cleaned out except groceries. I want a fresh start without any junk.”

  Mark was ready to head back to Ross and Loren’s house. He’d assessed what they needed to do, which would be first clearing a path through the living room to the back sliders so they could then make enough of a dent to work their way to the front door. Corrine had given him a good idea of what was keepable—fortunately not much—and what could be gotten rid of—most of it.

  The garage would be tricky. One of his guys was good at climbing, and could probably scale the mountain of stuff in there to get to the front door. If they could pry it open, they could easily start cleaning it out. Corrine had assured him there was nothing in the garage she wanted to keep unless they located documents, family photos, and lawn and garden implements.

  Ross would help Corrine arrange for a roofing contractor to come give an estimate, with Seth’s input.

  Now Mark had to draw up their contract.

  “Can I talk with you for a minute?” Essie quietly asked him outside his mom’s earshot.

  “Sure.”

  They let Ross and Loren take her mom back outside to wait. When they were alone in the house, Essie seemed to take a moment to gather her thoughts. She clasped her hands in front of her and stared at the messy floor.

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry,” she softly said.

  “Sorry?”

  “For…before. In high school.” Her gaze darted up just long enough to meet his before dropping to the floor again. “I really liked you,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry I cut you off like that.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “Dad insisted that if I wanted to go out with you again, I had to bring you here to meet them.”

  Elation that his instinct was correct warred with his common sense to try to stay objective. He didn’t interrupt her.

  “I panicked. I couldn’t let anyone know about my dad. It wasn’t nearly this bad when I was in high school, but it was still pretty bad. I was terrified that if anyone knew they might put me in foster care, or if they didn’t do that, life would be hell for me with people picking on me.”

  “I wouldn’t have told anyone.” He realized how wrong that sounded before the words even hit the air. “I mean—”

  “No, it’s okay.
I really meant it when I said it wasn’t about you back then. I’m so sorry I had to do it. I just didn’t know of any other way to handle it.”

  Fuck this, fuck objectivity, and fuck Josh’s and Ted’s opinions.

  He stepped close and pulled her into his arms, holding her through her initial resistance, until he felt her sobbing and melting against him.

  “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I’m here for you now. You won’t be doing this alone, I promise.”

  He felt her fingers tighten against his shoulders as another wave of sobs hit her. “I loved my dad, but I hated him so much for all of this, what he did to Mom for all these years. I hate him!”

  “Shh, it’s okay.” He didn’t know what kind of shampoo she used, but he wanted to so he could start using it, too. He wanted to stand there in the middle of that disaster and hold her until she felt better again.

  Even if that meant forever.

  * * * *

  Essie hated herself for breaking down, but she’d deal with any fallout from that later. For now, she needed to cry, wanted to scream and rage, and if Mark was willing to let her slobber and snot all over his shoulder, she’d take it.

  “I feel like a horrible daughter for running away.”

  “You’re not horrible,” he insisted, his tone gently firm, much the way Ross had sounded. “You did what you had to do.”

  “You must think I’m a coward.”

  “I don’t. I think you were in survival mode. You aren’t the first child of a hoarder to leave home. You can’t fix someone else if they don’t want to be fixed. They have to want it. It’s even harder to deal with when it’s a parent.”

  After a few minutes she realized she was growing uncomfortably comfortable in his arms. Like if she stayed there too dang long, she’d never want to leave. With great reluctance, she finally stepped back, wiping at her face with her hands.

  “Sorry,” she quietly said. “I guess your wife probably wouldn’t like this. Me hanging off you.”