Pages of Sin (3 page)

She never would have made it onto the
Hoarders
show. Her home was way too pretty and dust-free. Wanda may have had her problems, but dirt wasn’t one of them.

Mom went straight into the kitchen and a few seconds later, I heard the refrigerator door open. I figured she was tucking the taco casserole into the freezer.

“It’s spotless in here, too,” she announced.

“Good.” I’d remained several yards behind her, fearing what we might find in the kitchen. What could I say? Mom was made of tougher stuff than me. But with her announcement, I let go of the uneasy breath I’d been holding and stepped around the corner to take a peek.

The kitchen counters were indeed clean and free of the sorts of crap I’d seen on the show. There were no animals anywhere, thank God, unlike that one
Hoarders
couple who’d kept hundreds of rabbits inside their house. The little critters had multiplied to such an extent that they’d taken over the couple’s kitchen, turning it into a hideous sea of dirt and rabbit feces.

Now, that was one nasty episode. It left me with the sad awareness that bunnies are just not that cute.

I shook off the visual and turned back to take a better look at the beautiful things Wanda had been hoarding—er, collecting, all these years.

“I can’t believe Byron will leave all this stuff as it is,” I said.

“Probably not.” Mom slid past me to check out one of the armoires. It looked old and French and very froufrou. She turned the old-fashioned key and pulled the wooden door open. Hanging inside was a full row of dresses. She pulled one out at random. “They still have their tags.”

“Wow.” So Wanda collected clothing, too. “Do you think her sisters will want those?”

“I have no idea.” Mom hung up the dress and closed the armoire door. “Byron’s got a cleaning service coming out next week to appraise and categorize everything he doesn’t want to keep. It will either be sold or thrown away or given to charity.”

“He can’t throw this stuff away. Why not have a garage sale?”

She made a face. “Not likely.”

“Right,” I said, reminding myself that Byron’s wife had killed herself. Would he really want to draw attention to that fact? Having a yard sale would bring everyone in town over to rummage through the detritus of his wife’s sad life. “Probably not a good idea.”

Mom pulled a small notepad and pen from her purse and began jotting something down.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I told Robson I would make a list of things we could use at the town hall. It’s all up to Byron, of course.” She pointed to the wall on the opposite side of the room. “There are your books.”

“Yeah. Wow.” I had expected to see several large bookshelves full of books, but there were no shelves. Instead, many hundreds of books were stacked one on top of the other all the way up the wall, stretching well above my head. Some books were stacked directly on the floor; others were stacked on tea tables. Most of the stacks stood at least six feet high against the wall.

“How tall was Wanda?” I asked, frowning at all those towers of books.

“About your height,” Mom said.

I shook my head. “She would have needed a library ladder to get to the top of those stacks.”

Mom nodded, then wandered off to inspect the antique furniture, making notes as she went. Being my efficient, anal-retentive self, I started calculating, counting books to figure out how many there were. It took a minute, but I estimated about eighty books in the first stack. Then I counted the stacks themselves. There were twenty-six of them butted up against this wall alone, and although the stacks were uneven, that still meant that there were approximately . . . okay, here came the hard part, doing multiplication in my head. But the total I came up with was well over two thousand books.

Two thousand books. It was overwhelming. I couldn’t take them all with me, of course, but I supposed I could start picking out the ones I wanted. But how? If I pulled one out, the entire stack might topple over. The movement could cause the next tower of books to fall, starting a chain reaction that could bring them all down in a chaotic heap, burying both me and my mother in a pile of pulp and leather.

How had Wanda managed to keep all these high stacks in such neat rows? I guess it offered her something else to obsess over, but why didn’t she get some bookshelves? She had every other kind of furniture in this place. What if there was an earthquake? She would have been drowned in books.

Since Wanda wasn’t around anymore, I took a moment to feel more sympathy for the books than for their owner. I couldn’t help it; I was a book person. And this stacking method was one of the worst ways to store good books.

How many times in a book-repair class or at a book festival workshop had I decried this very thing? It was especially bad for leather-bound books whose covers, when pressed tightly together in stacks like these, would “sweat” against each other, causing water damage, sticking, tearing, and warping.

I knelt down on the carpet and placed one of the packing boxes beside me. Then I stared up at all those books towering over me and wondered if this might be a bad way to accomplish the task. “I’m afraid if I remove one book, they’ll all fall down.”

“We can always restack them,” Mom said easily, still taking notes on the other side of the room.

That was not a good answer. “You’d have to do it alone. I’d be lying unconscious from all these books battering me in the head.”

She looked over and smiled indulgently. “Then don’t do anything yet. I’ll help you in a minute.”

“Okay, thanks.”

As Mom continued exploring the room and making notes, I stood and skimmed the book spines for titles. Besides looking for books to repair, I was looking for books to read for pleasure.

I’d always thought I could never get enough books, but I think Wanda had come close to it.

In one stack alone, there were three copies each of
Jane Eyre
and
Wuthering Heights.
Wanda was obviously a fan of the Bronte sisters, as well as Jane Austen, Trollope, Mary Stewart, Raymond Chandler, and a huge number of contemporary authors.

Two tall stacks were devoted to romance novels. Another two or three were all mysteries and thrillers. I noticed she didn’t mix hardcovers with paperbacks. And as Mom had promised, there were piles of leather-bound classics in abundance. It was a booklover’s fantasy and a bookbinder’s dream.

“What makes someone start hoarding stuff like this? I mean, I love books, too, but this is ridiculous.” I stretched to reach a book at the top of a stack of leather-bound classics, but couldn’t get hold of it.

Mom glanced at me from thirty feet away. “I have no idea.”

“Is it a control issue?” I said, then added, “But then she lost control. Sad and weird.”

“Maybe she always planned to buy some nice bookshelves to organize everything, but then couldn’t decide what style to buy.”

“So she never bought any?”

Mom shrugged. “Who the heck knows?”

“They’re just bookshelves,” I muttered, then felt guilty for judging the deceased woman. “I guess some people have a hard time making a decision.”

“That was Wanda.” Mom chuckled, but there was a touch of sadness to the sound. “She used to drive me to distraction over the simplest little choice. Chocolate or vanilla? Coffee or tea?”

“Now wait a minute,” I argued. “Who
wouldn’t
have a problem deciding between vanilla and chocolate? I assume we’re discussing milkshakes.”

“Yes,” she said, chuckling again. “But Wanda would act as if the fate of the world depended on her decision. Whenever we went out to lunch, I would have to grab the menus and order for her. She couldn’t handle reading all the choices. We used to laugh about it, but I can see now how that little quirk might have developed into a real sickness with her.”

“That’s so sad.”

Mom looked thoughtful as she gazed around the room. “At least she surrounded herself with beautiful things.”

“That’s something, anyway,” I murmured, glancing at the profusion of “things.” I wondered if Mom was trying to picture her old friend living amidst this overabundance. “Did Wanda and Byron have children?”

“No, they never did. I imagine she wanted to. I think she would’ve been a good mother. She always loved you kids.”

“She was always so nice to us.” As I studied the cracked leather spine of Edith Wharton’s
The Age of Innocence,
something sparked a memory and I looked over at Mom. “What was that cake she used to bring us?”

“Oh.” Mom smiled, reminiscing. “She used to make a cinnamon coffee cake for you kids. It came from an instant mix, I think, but it didn’t matter. You loved it.”

“That’s right.” I smiled, too. “We would shadow her from the front door to the kitchen table. As soon as she set the plate down, we’d gobble it up like piranhas. She must’ve thought we were little monsters.”

“You were,” she said, chuckling. “But she enjoyed you all.”

I put the Wharton in the packing box. Then Mom joined me and we worked as a team for the next twenty minutes. We filled four boxes quickly, despite my rule that we keep the selection limited to leather-bound books that needed repair. I noticed Mom sneaking a few current paperback thrillers into the box and I have to admit I did the same.

I was perversely thrilled to find that a number of the leather bindings were indeed warped and peeling from being compressed together so snugly. Despite wincing each time I spotted any damage, I reminded myself that these books would give me and my students more to work on and learn from.

I leaned back to look up at all the books I hadn’t reached yet. Pointing, I said, “She’s got three volumes of Jane Austen at the top of that stack, but there’s no way I can reach them.”

“You’ll get them later,” Mom said from her crouched position.

“Are you okay?” I asked, looking down at her straining against the tower of books.

“This stack is getting a little wobbly.”

“Can you hold it steady while I grab these two Robert Louis Stevensons?”

“Go for it,” Mom said, and pushed against the stacks with her whole body.

“Looks like a beautiful set.” I eased the first Stevenson out and turned it over to check its condition. “Well, they used to be, anyway. Nice leather with lots of gilding. There might be more of them. I wonder if—”

“Hurry, sweetie. It’s starting to buckle.”

“Okay, okay.” I pulled out the second book.
Treasure Island.
“This one’s in better shape.”

“Brooklyn.” Her tone was a warning.

Suddenly I could feel the tower swaying. “Mom?”

She squeaked out a sound. “No!”

“I got it, Mom. I’m almost—”

“It’s coming down!” she cried and scrambled back. Jumping up, she grabbed the back of my shirt and gave a mighty tug, yanking me away from the stacks. I did my best to scamper backward, but I wasn’t fast enough. Books began tumbling and hitting me as I turned and scurried away from the line of fire.

“Yeow!” I howled like an offended animal. “Ouch!”

“Oh, honey!” Mom cried.

“I’m okay! I’m okay! Owww!”

“Get over here!” she yelled, and literally lifted me off the ground by the scruff of my collar like a mama bear would.

I stumbled until I managed to right myself. Out of breath, I leaned against her and watched as the domino effect took place with each tower careening into the next one. Books were falling every which way and I cringed and winced as each one struck the floor.

Better they suffer a soft carpet landing than smack me in the noggin again,
I thought, grimacing.

“There goes another one,” Mom said, squeezing her eyes shut.

“I can’t take this anymore.” I braced myself, then stalked back and pressed against the next tower to steady it. A few books on the top banged into my head, but I managed to staunch the worst of the toppling.

“Good girl,” Mom said, impressed. “That was heroic.”

I continued to splay my body against the books. “My head hurts, but I’m afraid to move.”

“Then you’d better stay right there and try not to move.”

“Okay. But I think I’m getting a cramp.”

She came over and patted my back. “You’ll be fine. Let me know if you get hungry. I’ll warm up the taco casserole and feed you myself.”

“Very funny,” I said, but was afraid to laugh for fear of shaking the tower.

“I’ll bring you a damp washcloth so you can freshen yourself every few hours.”

Swallowing a chuckle, I said, “You’re having the best time with this, aren’t you?”

“Well, you wanted some books.”

I groaned. “Stop trying to make me laugh.” I rested my forehead against a well-worn hardback copy of
Gone With the Wind
and willed the books to stop wobbling. “I’ll take some of that taco casserole now.”

 

 

Forty minutes later, we had secured the towers of books as well as we could and had reassembled the fallen ones into shorter stacks.

We were both dirty and sweaty and tired. Mom’s hair had fallen out of her ponytail and I knew mine looked straggly, too, but I felt that we’d accomplished something. I had six boxes of books and Mom had a long inventory of items to give to Guru Bob, including the dresses hanging inside an armoire, all looking as though they’d never been worn.

“I’m a mess and I’m starving,” I said. Pushing my hair off my face, I lifted a heavy box off the floor and onto a nearby tea table to get a better grip on it. “Are you ready to go?”

“Almost. I want to take some more of these dresses from—”

Suddenly the front door swung open and hit the wall with a loud bang, scaring the hell out of me.

My packing box tottered and the insubstantial tea table waivered precariously close to another tower of books. I couldn’t steady it and still keep my balance. I felt myself falling forward just as a well-dressed woman walked into the house, took one look at us, and screamed like a banshee from hell.