The Cost of Lunch, Etc. (3 page)

It isn’t like Suzie is over here much. She likes to call me every couple of weeks and complain. I only hear from
Brady when he has something to boast about or wants to fly me down there for some event where a grandmother is welcome as some kind of certification of family. So he has his life, Suzie has hers and by the way, I also have mine.

I was just going along living my life happy as could be, collecting and sorting and cataloging, collecting and storing all the useful things I might need later on. I’m not Bill Gates (you didn’t think I’d know who he was, but I saw a documentary on him, one of my tapes) so why should I ever have to buy what I can get free? Chairs, tables, lamps, cabinets, nice ornamental stuff like this stuffed owl I found—where else would I ever get a fine creature like Roscoe? Some people collect art or even stupid things like license plates or baseball cards, and nobody calls the feds on them. What’s wrong with collecting useful things, I ask you? I feel bad for them, thrown on the rubbish heap when there’s still lots of life in them. So I save them.

Then there’s my daughter yelling at me that I have a sickness.

“What are you talking about? I always get my flu shots at the senior center. I hardly ever catch a cold.”

“You’re a hoarder. I saw it all on TV,” she said. “We have to get you help.” Clutching my hand, super dramatic. “We care for you, Mama, so we’re going to make things right.”

“What do I need help for? I’m doing fine. I’m happy. That’s more than I can say for you.” I meant it. Suzie is always complaining on the phone to me about her husband Ron’s bad habits—he won’t stop smoking, he leaves his underwear on the bedroom floor and his socks on the couch. As if I want to know about Ron’s underwear, give me a break.

She went on and on but I tuned her out. If I hadn’t learned to do that decades ago, I wouldn’t be such a good-natured person, believe me.

But two weeks later Suzie showed up at the door with a woman—blond, in her forties and wearing a navy suit. This
simpering bitch was a therapist and she plumped her skinny behind down on my couch, which is sideways between the walls of books and zines stacked, neatly I might say, on one wall and my entertainment section on the other wall, my 1,247 tapes. I only have about ten inches clearance between the couch and the entertainment section, but I can squeeze through, so what is the problem?

This therapist woman goes on about how hoarding is a disease but it can be treated. Then my daughter chimes in that if I don’t let them come into my house and take away all my wonderful things, she will call Elder Services and have me moved into a home. For this I raised her from a squalling baby and put her through community college and paid for her wedding?

They had me over a barrel, so finally after three of these sessions with the woman who pretended to be on my side but never was, I agreed. She insisted on a tour of my house, making notes on her gizmo, talking into it. She checked the basement where I do laundry, the attic where I store stuff I don’t need yet and the garage with my car in it. It turned out that same TV program that my daughter had been watching that got me into trouble was going to come to my house and film everything. They were going to clean up my house and make everything neat and orderly, the way surely I wanted it, and it wouldn’t cost me a penny. They’d clear things out with my approval, of course (smirk)—with that threat hanging over my head the whole time. I was sweating by then with anxiety.

“When will all this be happening?”

She consulted her electronic gizmo. “We can schedule you for two weeks from today. The film crew will come in the day before. Then we’ll have two days to clear all this junk out and clean and make your house like new again. I know it will be hard for you to adjust, but in the end, your house will be livable again.”

Livable? What have I been doing here, dying? That gave me some time. I started moving my best stuff to the garage. At least I could protect that. I jammed the garage door opener so they couldn’t get inside and moved my car to the driveway.

The film crew came. They moved a lot of my stuff around to make it look messy. They pushed some of the stuff from the hall into my bedroom so I could barely reach my bed that night. I could not sleep, facing the ordeal. Aside from when Walt died and when Brady had appendicitis and we just got him into the hospital in time, those two days were just about the worst of my life. They top my first delivery when I was in labor for twenty hours, the time I broke my ankle tripping on my neighbor’s dog and was in a cast for a month, and the time Walt had food poisoning from some stupid mayonnaise chicken salad at a picnic. Needless to say, I didn’t make that. Adele Fortunata did. Never forgave her.

They arrived early, the therapist, a cleaning crew and muscle, along with four huge semis labeled
JUNK EXPRESS.
Junk they called my stuff. I never picked up anything that wasn’t useful. They were going to strip me bare. I had a stomachache. I couldn’t eat breakfast and the coffee bored a hole in my belly.

When she saw how upset I was, the therapist took my hand as if I was a baby she was leading out of danger. “You need all these objects because you never properly processed your husband’s death. It was so sudden and unexpected, you couldn’t cope with the grief. You must let it out. You must experience your loss so you can let go of all these substitutes for him.”

The therapist sat down with me as they carried all my precious things out to the front lawn. The neighbors were gaping. I’d never live this down. I was supposed to pick through everything and save a few things. Whatever I picked,
they said I was saving too much. The therapist kept talking about processing grief. She insisted that I had never properly “processed” Walt’s premature death and that hoarding, as she called it, was caused by that. Bunch of hooey. Process? Like can or freeze it? Walt didn’t go collecting with me, but he liked the way I was frugal and found things instead of spending our hard-earned cash on a chair or a vase or some good reading matter. They couldn’t understand how much pleasure I took in saving money and protecting good things that would otherwise end up in the dump. Finally I agreed with everything. Suzie cried and hugged me and I pretended to cry with her. I really did manage to shed a few tears when I saw them carrying out the VCRs and the Oriental rug I’d found rolled up, set out for the trash collector. I had planned to put it down in my bedroom when I had time. I’d saved four VCRs in the garage, anyhow.

“Now, what would you ever need six VCRs for? They don’t even make them any longer. Don’t you see how much room they take for no use?”

“How many suits do you have?”

She looked blank and stared at me. “I don’t know … Maybe six?”

“Why not just one? And how many lipsticks?”

She ignored that. Then I saw my stuffed owl Roscoe going out into the trash. I made a grab for him.

“Now, why on earth would you want a dusty mangy old stuffed owl?”

I lied. “It belonged to my late husband.”

“It’s a poor substitute for him, isn’t it? Can’t you remember him without something probably full of dust and insect eggs?”

I loved Roscoe, his yellow eyes looking at me from the mantel. I made another grab for him but Suzie held me down in the chair. The therapist said, “If it bothers you so much, we can send it to the resale shop.”

The crew along with Suzie was dividing all my property into things to be dumped and items to go to a resale shop. I found out which one. I could have tried to find out where what they were trashing was going to end up, but I am not a garbage picker and those places stink. I counted my losses but I bore with them; I had no choice. My lovely oak bookcase, my gilt elephant with a howdah on top, Walt’s golf clubs, a round mirror with only a little damage to the left edge, three platters in the shape of fish, the tin of buttons, straight chairs that just needed a bit of work. I imagined running away to Florida or Mexico or Puerto Rico when they were done, to escape scrutiny, but I love my house and I know my way around here, so I sat in the lawn chair and picked through my treasures and watched them disappear. I wished for a hurricane or a blizzard, but the sky stayed blue and the day stayed mild for early November. I imagined a great wind carrying them all off and me returning to my own home, my private home, and putting everything back where I keep it. But they kept stealing my things and carting them off and I had to sit there and smile for the cameras and listen to that simpering therapist’s bull dung. Inside I was boiling, but I’m not stupid, no matter what they think. They had the upper hand—for now.

Finally they had “restored” my home to what it had never looked like in all the years I’d lived there, raised my ungrateful children, been married and happy with Walt, made a life for myself that satisfied me. The therapist set up an appointment with me for some other meddler. I promised to go. I could sit through more bull dung if that would get them all off my back.

Adam and Liz had decamped before the last truck roared off with my things inside. They had a fundraiser to attend for some private school. Adam is in real estate. I don’t know what he does and I don’t particularly care, so long as he lets me alone. Finally Suzie, who had hung around to
the bitter end—bitter for me—left, telling me how wonderful the house looked. At last they were all gone, relatives, therapist, muscle men, cleanup crew and trucks. I sat in my boring living room with only the TV for company, a single bookcase of books they’d agreed to leave me, one VCR and ten tapes. The dining room was set up for company who would never arrive. At least they cleaned everything. It does tend to get dusty, but I don’t have allergies, so what do I care. I was exhausted and furious. How would you like a bunch of strangers to invade your house, take three-quarters of your possessions away, tell you what you’re supposed to think and feel—all of which was being filmed for anybody in the country to gape at. I felt humiliated. I felt violated. And they had kept saying how nice it was now and expecting me to thank them. The next morning I brought my few saved treasures from the garage into the house. It still felt bare and lonely. My house and I were bereft, robbed, pillaged!

Monday I went to the bank and withdrew $500 in cash. Then I rented a U-Haul and headed for the resale shop. I figured after three days, they’d have my stuff out. I recognized twenty-three pieces of mine, so I bought them back. I told the lady I was furnishing a condo. When I unloaded the stuff into my house and set everything up, it was still barren but at least I had a few things to look at and use like that easy chair. The maroon upholstery was worn but it was comfy. Some of the glassware and dishes I’d collected, good pieces. My extra china closet that I could begin to fill. That nice table with the inlaid chessboard. A few cracks didn’t spoil it. The stuffed owl, put back on the mantel. Welcome home, Roscoe. Two salad bowls. I like wood. Two end tables. I can always use end tables. Another bookcase. It was a humble beginning but better than they’d left it. I didn’t feel quite so strongly I was rattling around alone in the house.

I had the locks changed so Suzie couldn’t come barging in. I found some thick drapes in a different resale shop so
she couldn’t see in any longer from the porch. I’ve learned to protect myself. They won’t catch me again. I went to the therapist, a man this time but just as opinionated and misguided as that lady. I parroted what they expected me to say. I’m not stupid. He said he was very pleased with my progress and my cure.

Every weekend I search for yard and garage sales and slowly I am collecting things that make my life worthwhile, treasures others have abandoned that I can enjoy. My home is beginning to feel like mine again, comfy and full of objects I have rescued. The month before last, I was on TV and lay low for a while. The show was just as humiliating as the experience itself. They made my home look disgusting. I found an auburn wig in a consignment shop I put on to go hunting now. If people stare at it, I say I had chemo and they shut up. I know people will forget that show shortly (there was a man on half the show who collected so many toys and dolls he couldn’t get to his bathroom; I’ve never had trouble getting to mine. I love to take baths.). People nowadays discard memories as fast as they discard perfectly good objects. But here I am ready to save what shouldn’t be thrown on the trash heap, like this old woman and many another. I’m gradually getting my life back, the way I like it. I’m settling back into my home.

Circa 1950

“Depart ye, go ye from thence, touch no unclean things; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.”

Deborah mouthed the words Brother Gentry read, her body taut to the flow from his bull throat. Then with a crackling he shut the large Bible and picked up the tract “Let Jesus In.” “A wise choice of text, Brother Harman. Lead on, as the Lord chooses.”

Fat-bottomed Dickie Harman, who was fifteen, just three years older than she was, took up the notes limp from his sweating hands. She wouldn’t be nervous if it was her turn to lead a group, but they thought her too young. “Sister Ida, would you give us the next reading?”

Mother droned, gnawing the words. Deborah shifted on the scratchy mohair couch and a bent spring pinged. Brother Gentry wagged a thick forefinger tilted back on a chair, with his greasy briefcase gaping to spill its load of Bibles and tracts with bright violent lettering across the narrow front room.

Dickie was asking a question, and she waved her hand. “Bearing the vessels means holding to the truth, because we brethren in the truth, on the narrow way …”

Brother Gentry boomed, “Very good, Deborah,” and
she looked at Dad to see if he had noticed, but he gave her a quick frown to make her duck to her book. She wished they were doing Revelations, with its great shifting of powers and the winnowing of the chosen and the damned. She loved feeling carried on a dark wind of seeing, seeing not the worn nubs of carpet, but things that ought to be, like cedars of Lebanon, pomegranates and jacinth, and a woman upon a scarlet beast. She had been born Chosen. They said grace at every meal, and when Dad wasn’t on the road selling, he would read out a chapter of the bible and pray over them. She sighed.