The Corpse With the Golden Nose (21 page)

Within about ten minutes of setting out from her office, all three of us were jumping down from the cab of Ellen's truck, now tucked into a rather tight spot in the underground parkade of her apartment building, which was right on the waterfront.

As Ellen marched toward the elevator, she seemed to be in full
bossy
mode—a role usually appropriated by myself. I felt a bit left out, but I tagged along like a good little guest. Emerging from the elevator, Ellen unlocked the door to an apartment. We trooped in behind her, suddenly slowing as we found ourselves turning sideways to negotiate a very narrow hallway. Ahead was the living room, but every wall we could see was piled high with plastic buckets, neatly stacked in rows, each bearing a description and a date.

“I know
exactly
what to pick out for you, Cait,” Ellen cried excitedly as she dropped her purse onto a small desk that stood in front of the window facing the glittering lake.

“Great. Thanks,” was all I could muster. I was finding the apartment claustrophobic, and I eyed the stacked bins with suspicion.

“But I should offer you something to drink, first. How about some lovely French lemonade—I've got a bottle here, unopened. I think you'll like it Cait, because it's just like British lemonade—you know, it doesn't have any lime in it, like we always seem to have here. I use it with Pimm's—that's very British, isn't it? Annette introduced me to it, and sometimes, when I sit and think about her, I'll make myself a glass and remember how she enjoyed it. Just a minute . . .” and she dashed beyond a pile of boxes to the kitchen area.

Bud looked at me and mouthed, “Oh my God!” He surveyed the room, peering wide-eyed into the open plan kitchen.

I mouthed “Shh!” back at him, as Ellen reappeared with two glasses of lemonade, which she carefully placed on coasters on the desk.

“There, that'll keep you busy! I'll give some thought to Bud's get-up while I'm digging out yours. I won't be long—make yourselves at home,” she called and she disappeared, sideways, back along the corridor toward what I assumed was a bedroom or two.

Bud and I dutifully sipped at our lemonade as we took in our surroundings.

Ellen was, clearly, a hoarder. But, unlike many, she was a very neat hoarder. As I glanced around the boxes, I read the labels:
ELLEN AGED 27
;
MOM & DAD: VACATIONS, 1960s
;
Ellen Aged 30
;
ELLEN AGED 28
, and so on. The multi-colored boxes were all clean, not dusty, stacked not just five high, but three deep, which reduced the width of the room, and therefore the view of the lake, to about four feet.

Bud couldn't constrain himself any longer. He, too, was eyeing the stacks of boxes with alarm.

“What the hell . . . ?”

I whispered, “She hoards. It's a compulsion. I understand her a good deal better now. She cannot let go of things.
Anything
, it seems.”

“Explain it to me—quickly,” hissed Bud. “Is she sick?”

“Okay,” I replied quietly, “I'll try. Hoarding is complex. There are many different types of hoarding, stemming from many different psychological roots. I'll give you my take on Ellen. She's not compulsively hoarding what we might see as ‘garbage'—you know, she hasn't got filthy old bits and pieces, or piles of old newspapers here, and it certainly doesn't smell of decay. I'm guessing her bathroom is still accessible, and we can see that her kitchen is clean and tidy, though it's stacked with boxes. She hasn't even gone out and compulsively bought fifteen sets of paper napkins or a dozen sets of Christmas lights, in case she ‘runs out.' No, Ellen is keeping things from her past, and, it seems, her parents' past, too. Often, hoarding suggests an inability to make decisions. People keep things because they literally cannot make up their mind if it's good or bad to get rid of it, so they hang onto it ‘just in case' they might need it one day. It looks to me as though Ellen
has
made a decision, and that's to keep everything that's precious to her about her own history and that of her parents. I'm thinking that it might be the death of her parents that started her on this route. There's often a trigger that is traumatic. It's not surprising she couldn't get rid of Annette's stuff. She can't get rid of
anything
.”

“This
cannot
be safe,” said Bud, standing as close to the desk and the window as possible. “Not for Ellen and not for the folks who live below—or even above her. What if there was a fire? Do you think I should say something? Are there pills for this sort of thing, or is it not that simple?”

“
Bud.
Hoarding isn't something Ellen necessarily sees as odd. She might see it as completely normal. If you're going to raise it as an issue you'll be opening a can of worms she might not even know exists. It's not something you approach easily. In fact, a cognitive behavioral therapist would probably need to work with her for a long time to tackle this level of obsession and compulsion. Many don't even think that hoarding and obsessive compulsive disorder are on the same condition scale, though, for me, the jury's out. If, as I'm guessing, the loss of loved ones is at its base for Ellen, it might take years. In fact, with Annette's death, it might get worse before there's any chance it'll get better. She
has
lost every member of her family to sudden death, after all.”

Bud took my point. “Okay, I won't say a thing,” he said, rolling his eyes and holding up his hands in surrender.

“But you know what, Bud,” I was relating this new insight into Ellen's psyche to the case of her sister's death, “Ellen hoards, and we know that Annette collected, so maybe they weren't ‘chalk and cheese,' as Marlene Wiser described them—maybe they were both grappling with loss in their own ways. What if this means that Ellen possesses other personality and behavioral traits that are often associated with hoarding?”

“And what might they be?” asked Bud nervously.

“Oh dear—it's a long list and we psychologists don't really know the level to which they always, or only sometimes, present. It's complicated.”

“I get it! You need multiple degrees and a brain the size of a planet to do what you do, but just give me the Cole's Notes version, okay?”

“Anxiety, depression, neuroticism, self-consciousness, vulnerability, indecisiveness, impulsiveness, and perfectionism. All jumbled up, in different ways, somehow related and intertwined. We're not sure which, if any, of these traits, have a causal relationship with hoarding, we just know they are observed traits. So they might lead to hoarding, or hoarding might lead to them. All we know is that they are related. Like collecting and hoarding: not all collectors become hoarders, but you're unlikely to become a hoarder without first seeing yourself as a collector.”

“So am I on the slippery slope with my collection of baseball hats?” Bud looked alarmed.

“Is your collection preventing you from using your home for its purposes? Is it disrupting your life? Is it hurting those around you? Do you only find beauty, fun, or joy in your hat collection, or do you see it in absolutely everything? If it's ‘No' to the first three questions and ‘Just the hats' to the fourth, you're okay . . . so far,” I smiled.

“Here you go—these should work,” said Ellen breathlessly as she returned to the postage-stamp of a living room. I envisaged her lifting boxes in a small, confined space.
She must be pretty fit
, I thought.

“Bud—go to the last door at the end of the corridor, you can change there. Cait, you can have the bathroom, it's first on the right.” Ellen handed me a bagged hanger, which I unzipped. Inside was a dress and a fluffy petticoat. “It was my Mom's, she made it herself,” said Ellen softly. “She was short and . . . about your sort of shape. I hope it fits. What size shoes do you wear?”

“Six and a half,” I replied, heading for the bathroom, which was clean, though also stacked with boxes, smaller, all white.

“Oh great, my Mom's size!” yelped Ellen. “I'll just go find the right shoes and purse—YAY!” She seemed absolutely delighted to be doing this.

A few minutes later Bud and I stood looking at each other in disbelief as we compared outfits. He'd got away with it lightly: a red and cream 1950s-style leather jacket, obviously originally worn by a much bigger man, a pair of Ray-Bans, and his own jeans and shoes. He looked quite dashing. But me? The bathroom mirror had told me a part of the story, but Bud's face told me the rest. I was wearing an early 1960s dress, with a buttoned-up bodice (which actually fit—wow!) and three-quarter length sleeves; the full, gathered skirt skimmed my knees and was held out by the petticoats beneath it. White stilettos, a white purse with a gold clasp, and white gloves finished off the outfit. The whole thing wouldn't have been too bad if it hadn't been for the pattern of the fabric: it was light blue, with stripes of yellow roses, surrounded by little white flowers all circling my body. I looked as though I'd been upholstered!

Ellen walked around me, as best she could in the limited space, and said, “You look fabulous! Oh, dear. You remind me of Mom!” She burst into tears.

I sighed. Ellen wasn't the only one who felt like a good cry. All of a sudden, this “retro” lunch was looking like a bad idea.

I rushed to the bathroom to get some tissues. Handing them to Ellen, I asked, “Would you like a glass of water?”

“Thanks,” she snuffled. “There are some bottles in the fridge.”

I headed to the kitchen, circumnavigated more storage boxes, and pulled open the fridge door. A quick survey of its contents told me that Ellen lived mainly on salads and stir-fries. There couldn't be any other reason for owning so many different types of oil—sesame, cold-pressed virgin olive, peanut, walnut, hazelnut, avocado, and flaxseed—all arranged in dark-glass bottles with handwritten labels beside a dozen small bottles of water. I grabbed one and headed back to the other side of the room.

While we waited for Ellen to stop crying, I tried to cheer her up by observing, “You've done a good job of kitting us out. Thanks. I wonder what Raj and Serendipity will wear. I bet they could wear almost anything and look good. Maybe Serendipity's parents will let them raid their old closets.”

“I don't see why you're talking about them like they're a couple,” sniffled Ellen.

“Oh come off it. Of course they are!” I realized what I'd said. “Or would that be a bad thing, if they're at competing wineries?” I asked.

Ellen was beginning to calm down a bit. “Not really. Serendipity isn't wine, she's food. I guess if they were competing vintners it might make things a bit awkward. Anyway, I don't think you're right. He doesn't see that much of her.”

I was puzzled. “When he scoots off to the gym in the afternoons, he could be visiting her then. She'd be between lunch and dinner at the restaurant at that time of day. They do seem very well matched, physically and in terms of lifestyle.”

“I guess,” Ellen replied curtly. “Could you guys make your way back to the truck, while I just sort out my makeup?” she asked plaintively. I got the impression from the way she'd been dabbing at her eyes that she wasn't used to wearing mascara, and she was right, she needed to give her face some attention.

“Sure,” said Bud, “take your time.” Ellen gave Bud the keys for the truck, and the bags containing the clothes we'd arrived in, and we left her to her own devices.

Back at the truck, it wasn't that easy to get into it. I felt ridiculous. Finally, after a few moments of silence, with Bud grinning over his shoulder from the front seat at me, and me
not
grinning back at him, Ellen joined us, started up the engine and we set off for lunch, hurtling around corners, across intersections and back along Lakeshore Road toward the MacMillans' house. I was hoping that other guests at the luncheon would look as idiotic as I felt.

As I battled my petticoats in the back seat, I took off the white gloves I'd been wearing to be able to transfer the essentials from my own purse to the tiny little thing that Ellen had given me. It obviously hadn't been designed to cope with anything more than a lipstick, a hanky, and some change; try as I might, all my bits and pieces weren't going to fit. Finally, I managed to squash in my cellphone, nicotine gum, and my cigarettes and lighter. This
not
being the 1960s, I suspected that could probably live without lipstick for a while.

WHEN WE ARRIVED AT LAKEVIEW
Lodge, a few vehicles were already parked along the roadside and the driveway to what looked like a tiny, one-storey house with gray wood siding and white trim. Bud graciously helped me out of the vehicle (
so that's why men did that—because women wearing those skirts had no idea where their feet were!
) and I tottered over the gravel on my kitten heels toward the front door.

Colin MacMillan was there to greet us, wearing a green velvet smoking jacket, a frilly pink shirt, and gray-green dress pants: the Jon Pertwee version of a
Doctor Who
outfit.

“Ah, ready to ‘reverse the polarity of the neutron flow' at a moment's notice, eh?” I quipped, puzzling both Bud and Ellen.

“Absolutely,” replied Colin, beaming. “You'll spot Poppy, she's Sarah Jane Smith from the Third Doctor period. I suggested she wear Amy Pond's policewoman outfit, but she said it wasn't ‘retro,' so she's gone with Sarah Jane. We don't think many people will get it, but it's 1970s clothing, and
we'll
know, so who cares, eh? By the way, Mom said everyone's to keep their shoes on today, 'cos of, like, the costumes. Some of them are great—like yours.” Colin seemed very excited, and clapped a little round of applause at me as he ushered us inside.