Dirty Little Secrets (10 page)

As I held the mug over the garbage bag, I remembered with a creeping sense of dread how the dishes got into the drainer. I'd done them about four years ago, before “Garbage Girl” happened. Before I'd totally given up. It was probably the last time I'd done anything constructive in this room. In this whole house. I'd learned my lesson well.

I had planned it as a surprise for Mom. She'd been working late all week, and I'd wanted to do something that would make her life a little easier, so she'd make mine easier too. And at that point in seventh grade, I needed an easier life more than just about anything else.

Carefully pushing aside all of Mom's stuff that had started to take over the space—after the Auntie Jean episode I knew better than to throw anything away or move it more than a few inches from where she had put it—I managed to make enough room to cook dinner. Okay,
cooking
dinner might be an exaggeration, but I made a meal in that kitchen for the three of us to eat. This was before the sink stopped working and developed a permanent brown crust, and before mold had started its incessant march across all surfaces. Back when you could still eat something that had come into contact with the space and not watch for signs of botulism or trichinosis.

After school that day, I'd gone down to the grocery store on the corner and picked up one of those already cooked chickens that came in the little plastic containers. If nothing else, I knew how much Mom loved those containers with the clear plastic dome on top. For her, something as simple as a chicken container held endless possibilities. After the chicken was gone, it could be a container to take food over to a sick friend, or with a slit cut in the top, become a place to put receipts. Most likely, it would become just another piece in her ever-growing collection of useless plastic containers. It was like she used up all her energy thinking about possibilities for reusing stuff, so she never got around to actually doing it. As long as something could be labeled useful, it was allowed to stay, and if you thought about it hard enough, you could figure out a use for just about anything.

French bread and salad completed the meal. Phil hated salad or anything that was naturally green, but I'd tried to make it up to him by buying ice-cream sandwiches for dessert. Just as I was setting the bags on the counter, Phil came in from his room and started poking around in my bags.

“Get out of there,” I said, slapping his hand away. “It's for dinner.”

“Whose dinner?”

“Our dinner. Yours, mine, and Mom's.”

“What's the occasion?”

“No occasion.” I pulled out the bag of salad and set it on a clear space on the counter. “I just thought it would be good for us to eat dinner together.”

Phil opened the cupboards and found a box of Cheez-Its that had hopefully been put in there not too long ago. After shoving a handful of crackers in his mouth, he said, “Bull.” Tiny crumbs of cracker flew out of his mouth in a dry, orange shower as he spoke.

“What?” I asked. He always thought he was so smart.

“Bull that you don't want anything,” he said. “You're totally fishing for something from her. What is it? You want a cat? Or a new bike?”

I made a show of concentrating on opening the salad and digging through the bottom cupboard for a cleanish bowl to put it in. “No.”

The bag crackled as he fished around the bottom for whatever crumbs were left. “Well, I'm not falling for your ‘let's be a happy family' act. You wouldn't be doing this if you didn't want something from her.”

I sighed and wiped a dinner plate with a wet paper towel. “It's just that I was thinking about trying to have some girls over here. For my birthday.”

Phil wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. “Why would you want to do that?”

For someone in AP classes in high school, he could be such an idiot. Was it really that different for him? Did he not care that he could never have anyone over to play video games or hang around watching late-night TV? Didn't it bother him that we always had to make excuses for why nobody could come in the house, and that we always had to figure out ways to meet people outside? Maybe boys just didn't notice those things. Unfortunately, girls did.

“A couple of the girls in my class wanted to have a sleep-over. You know, have one over here because we always go to someone else's house. I've been stalling them for months, but they're starting to get suspicious.”

I secretly thought that Elaina from my class had a crush on Phil—God only knows why—and that's why they all wanted to come over here. We weren't even very good friends, but she was always asking if he was going out with somebody, or if he was going to be home after school. Elaina said once that she thought Phil's curls were hot, and did I ever think he would grow his hair out. I gave her such a look that it never came up again. Luckily, he was in high school, and seventh-grade girls were totally off his radar.

Phil looked around the room. Knowing him, I figured whatever was going to come out of his mouth would be obnoxious. But he just nodded. “I can see how that would be a problem.”

Buoyed by his sudden understanding, I continued letting my thoughts form into words. “So I figured I'd be nice to Mom, you know, make it easy for her, and then see if she would let us clean up a little bit—it wouldn't have to be perfect—but enough so I could have a couple of girls over just this once.”

“That way, they won't have anything to say behind your back,” he said. He opened the fridge and stuck his head all the way in. “Did you get any soda?”

I leaned against the sink to look at him carefully. Because he was five years older than me, we didn't do much together. He ran track at school so he was in pretty good shape, if you could think that about a brother. The fact that I wrinkled my nose made me realize you couldn't actually think that about a brother. “No soda,” I said. “But there are ice-cream sandwiches in the freezer. They're shoved way up in the corner.”

Phil opened the freezer and grabbed the box, sending a cascade of ziplock bags full of mysterious meat products onto the floor. “Crap,” he said, hopping around on one foot. “Those things are like bricks.”

I helped him pick up the bags and shoved them back into the freezer. We slammed the door quickly so nothing else could attempt an escape.

“Thanks,” he said. He unwrapped the top of a sandwich and took a bite. As he put the wrapper in our one trash can that lived under the sink, he looked me in the eye.

“About the whole Mom thing,” he said. He shut the door to the cabinet and looked around the room. I felt closer to him at this moment than I'd ever felt before. We never talked about what went on in the house. Not after what happened with Aunt Jean. “Yeah,” he said. “Good luck with that.” He shoved the last of the ice cream in his mouth and ducked out of the room.

I was sitting at the kitchen table when Mom got home. I'd managed to clear enough space for two place settings, complete with placemats and napkins. Phil had taken a plate of food to his room, but I didn't care, as it didn't look like he was going to be all that much help.

Mom set the bags she was carrying down in the doorway to the kitchen and looked at the table. “Did I miss a holiday or something? What's all this?”

I brought the plates into the kitchen where I'd set up the food. “I just thought you could use a break,” I said. I was so nervous I couldn't look at her directly. One wrong word would set her off, and I needed her to be in a good mood. The only question was what that word would be. “I picked up some dinner after school. You didn't plan anything else, did you?” Since the closest we got to family dinner was all meeting up at the pot of SpaghettiOs at the same time, it was more of a rhetorical question.

“No,” she said cautiously. “I didn't. This looks nice.”

“Yeah, I've got some salad and chicken. There's ice cream for dessert. I borrowed a twenty-dollar bill from the kitchen jar—is that okay?”

“It's fine.” Mom washed her hands with the special antibacterial soap she got from work. She was afraid of germs and washed her hands until they were bright red. I'm sure she would have liked to declare a national holiday for the day they invented sanitizing gel for your hands. Mom was always telling us to bundle up so we wouldn't catch cold, no matter how many times I told her that clinical studies proved it didn't make any difference, and she would never, ever, even if it was the last morsel of food on earth, take a bite from someone else's fork. “That's how you get sick,” she always said. Forget about living with rotting food on the counters, mold spores in the air, and no clean dishes—just make sure you didn't share food with anyone.

We filled our plates and took them to the kitchen table, eating in awkward silence like we were on a first date. My stomach was in knots, and even though I'd spent a lot of time thinking about the food, I could barely eat.

Mom spoke first. “So, how was your day?”

I speared a giant piece of lettuce and tried to decide whether to cut it or just shove it in my mouth whole. “Fine. How was work?”

“It was good.” She wiped her mouth with her napkin. I watched her as we ate. She was getting those lines around her mouth that made people look like they were still smiling even after the happy thoughts had faded, and her dark hair had strands of gray shimmering through it. Mom looked over at the bags she'd dropped in the hallway, and her eyes lit up with excitement. “Oh, I stopped by Thrift Town after work, and they were having a blue-tag sale on books. Everything was a quarter, so I got some great hardback books practically free.”

I thought about the four bookcases we already had stuffed full of Mom's bargain books that none of us had ever read. The overflow books had taken up residence next to the bookcases and were now the holders of other useless stuff, as if they were some kind of towering side table. “Where are you going to put them?” I asked tentatively. I kept my eyes firmly on the rapidly cooling chicken on my plate.

“Oh, I don't know, I'll find somewhere,” she said. “Some of them I bought for other people. There was one called
Mexico on
$5 a Day
that I'll give to Sara for her trip next summer. It's from 1989, but I'm sure most of the information is still the same.”

I took a deep breath. Here was my opening, and if I didn't take it now, I might not get another one. Dinner was coming to an end, and I knew that after that, Mom would retire to her recliner to watch TV for the rest of the night, while Phil and I stayed barricaded in our rooms. “About finding places for stuff,” I said slowly. I glanced up quickly to see her expression, but she was happily cutting up chicken on her plate. “I was wondering if we could maybe do some straightening up around here this weekend.”

Mom chewed and nodded slightly. “We could probably do that,” she said between bites. “You know I've been busy organizing the drawers in the coffee table. There was so much good stuff in there, you wouldn't believe it.” Maybe she would understand, after all.

“Well, I was thinking about more than just the coffee table,” I said. I could hear myself starting to talk more quickly. Once the words were out, I wouldn't be able to take them back again, so I just had to move forward. Like taking a Band-Aid off in one quick motion. “I was thinking maybe we could take some of the newspapers and magazines to the recycling center and go through some of the stuff that's starting to pile up in the living room.”

Mom's chewing slowed. “I don't know about that,” she said. She glanced down the hallway with a worried look. “I haven't had a chance to go through all of the newspapers yet. There might be something in there I really need, and if we just toss them all, I might miss it. And stuff is not starting to ‘pile up' in the living room. I know where everything is, and it's all very necessary. I have my quilting supplies for when I start quilting again, and there are the clothes I'm sorting through for the charity drive at church.”

“There is such a thing as the Internet, Mom.” I could hear sarcasm creeping into my voice, but I couldn't stop it. I could feel her pushing back, and I wasn't ready to give up yet. “You can pretty much find everything you need there, you know. You don't have to save all these papers.”

“Well, Ms. Smarty Pants,” she said, “how do I know what I'm looking for if I haven't read about it yet?” She put her fork down on her plate with a loud clatter. “You haven't been talking to Aunt Jean, have you? I knew she wouldn't mind her own business. She's just jealous about all my treasures—”

I was losing control of this situation quickly and had to pull it back if there was ever going to be a chance to look normal to Elaina and the other girls. “No. I would never talk to Auntie Jean. We promised you we wouldn't.” My stomach was beginning to churn, but I got up from my chair and put my arm around her to try to get her back on my side. “It's just that some girls wanted to come for a sleepover—you know, for my birthday—and I thought—”

“You thought I was an embarrassment, is that it?” Her eyes were wet around the corners, and I could see she was going to start crying. She shrugged my arm off. “I'll have you know I work hard for this family just to keep us afloat. No thanks to your deadbeat father, I'm killing myself to keep a roof over all our heads. Maybe other mothers have time to keep their houses spotless because they don't have to work twelve-hour days and then come home to ungrateful children who can't manage to pick up after themselves.” She slid her chair back with such force it banged into the sliding glass door. “I don't need to come home to this kind of pressure, Lucy Anne Tompkins.” Tears were rolling down her face, and she wasn't doing anything to stop them. “If I'm not good enough for your snotty little girlfriends, then maybe you should find somewhere else to live.”