Dirty Little Secrets (11 page)

“Maybe I will,” I said quietly, staring into my napkin. I knew that was like throwing water on a grease fire, but I couldn't help myself. I was so tired of pretending, of not being good enough.

She inhaled sharply, and put all four legs of the chair back on the ground. “You think so, do you?” she said evenly. “And where would you go? Hmm? Who in the world is going to want an arrogant, whiny, good-for-nothing twelve-year-old baby? Your father?” She laughed. “You really think he wants you ruining his life? His perfect little girlfriend wouldn't let you in their house for a minute.”

I could feel my cheeks burning. “Auntie Jean would take me,” I said. “She always said she would help us if we needed it.”

“Jean?” Mom said with scorn in her voice. “How often have you heard from Aunt Jean?” She took a deep, labored breath. “You really think she's going to want to take you in? Trust me, she doesn't want anything to do with us. Face it, Lucy, I'm all you've got left, so you'd better get used to it.” Her face was flushed and she coughed twice.

“I'll run away,” I said, staring her down. “Anywhere would be better than here.”

“Fine,” she said, her voice raspy. She coughed and then inhaled sharply with a gasp. Her breath rattled in her chest as she tried and failed to fill her lungs with air. Mom's arms started flailing and her eyes grew wide with panic as the oxygen failed to come. “Inhaler,” she mouthed, pointing to her purse on the floor by the doorway.

“Phil!” I screamed as I dove for her purse. I'd seen Mom's asthma act up before, but I'd never seen an attack this sudden or this severe. I tore through the contents and found the beige inhaler sitting at the bottom. I shook it as I raced back to her place at the table, where she grabbed for it like a lifeline, Phil standing uselessly wide-eyed next to her. After a couple of hits, her breathing was ragged but successful, and the wild panic in her eyes was replaced by weariness. I stood next to her chair, not knowing what to do next, the feelings of hate mixed with guilt for almost killing her. Several long minutes passed as she gained control of her breathing and I held mine, remembering the words that hung between us.

Mom took one last hit on her inhaler and put it in her pocket. She held her hand out to me, and I helped her up out of her chair, her legs still shaking. She braced herself on the table before letting go and testing her balance, her shoulders squared as she stood up and looked me in the eye. “You do what you want,” she said and paused for breath. “But I won't be an outcast in my own home.” She took a couple of shallow breaths again. “If you walk out that door . . . you'd better be able to make it on your own . . . because you won't be welcome back.” She took a few shaky steps out the kitchen door and down the hallway, slamming the door to her room so hard the windows rattled.

I didn't cry or get upset like I usually did—I just felt a numbness that started in my chest and flowed outward with a strange kind of peace. Slowly and carefully, I picked up our plates and carried them both to the sink. At least now I knew what was possible, and I'd never ask her again. I'd start marking down days on the calendar until I could move out on my own and keep my house the way I wanted, and have people over whenever I wanted. It seemed like forever, but what else was I going to do?

“That went well,” Phil said, grabbing a dish towel from the drawer next to the sink as I ran water for the dishes. “Anyone walking by probably thought so too.”

“Thanks for your support,” I said. “She almost died out here, you know. If it hadn't been for her inhaler . . .”

“She'll be fine. Probably sleep until tomorrow, anyway,” he said. “I could have told you not to bother.” He grabbed a couple of plates that were in the drainer and started slowly rubbing them in circles with the towel. We didn't speak for several long moments. I could feel hot tears beginning to form behind my eyelids as I ran the argument over in my head. She always said it was our fault—that Phil and I couldn't pick up after ourselves, and that's why this place was such a mess. If I ever left so much as one shoe in the hallway, she'd scream and yell like
I
was the one who stacked up piles of crap in the middle of the living room that were so high you couldn't see around them.

“You know, it wasn't always like this,” Phil finally said. He was talking quietly, and I almost didn't hear him over the running water.

I sniffed. “What wasn't like this?”

Phil looked around the kitchen. “This place. The whole house. Mom didn't used to save stuff like she does now,” he said. “When Dad was here, everything was clean—almost too clean. Sara and I had to pick up everything, and if we left toys out, Mom would go crazy.”

“So Dad was a neat freak?” I was almost afraid to say anything in case he stopped talking.

“No. That's the weird thing. Dad wasn't a slob or anything. He was just regular. Mom was the neat freak.”

I let out a laugh so forceful it sounded like a bark. “Right,” I said. “Look around, Phil. Mom is the opposite of a neat freak. She's more like some kind of garbage freak.”

Phil shook his head. “Seriously,” he said. “The whole house was spotless all the time. Mom vacuumed and dusted like every day. She used to say that everything in this house had its place, and it was our job to make sure it got back there.” He laughed. “She had this thing about vacuuming—all the lines had to be going in the same direction when you were done, and if you made footprints in the freshly vacuumed carpet, she made you do it again.”

I looked around at the piles of stuff that hadn't been touched in years. “I don't remember any of that,” I said.

He shrugged. “I guess you were too little.” He stopped and looked around too. “It didn't start to get bad until after Dad left.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, we only have to deal with it until we move out. Then she can bury herself in it for all I care.”

I turned back to the dishes. “Easy for you to say,” I said. “You've only got another year.” The thought of being alone with Mom in this house made me nauseous. It seemed like Sara had always had her own apartment and was more like a distant, bossy relative than a real sister—but I wasn't sure I could do it without Phil, even though most of the time he was no help at all. It was just having someone around who understood, even a little bit, what it was like. We weren't one of those families that went around talking about their feelings all the time, but I was sure Phil knew what I was thinking.

“It's not that long,” he said. “And besides, I'll probably go someplace close by so I can come and visit all the time. And you can come and stay with me sometimes.” He bumped me with his hip. It was probably the closest thing to a hug I'd ever gotten from him. “It's going to be fine. You'll see.”

Just then the phone rang, and he ran to get it. I could tell it was a girl by the way his voice got softer and he stretched the cord as far into the dining room as it would go.

I picked the last dish up out of the sink. It was the pink “World's Greatest Mom” mug that she always used for her morning coffee. I stabbed at it with the sponge and tossed it into the drainer without even rinsing it. Maybe I'd get lucky and she'd be right about the germs.

Now, so many years later, I stared at the pink mug in my hand like it was an artifact from a previous civilization. As I threw the mug into the garbage bag with as much force as I could, it was satisfying to hear it break into little pieces.

chapter 9

4:00 p.m.

The smell in the kitchen was giving me a headache, so I decided to take a break from the worst of the mess and go back to the living room. I'd been digging for a while when the shovel hit something at the bottom of one pile that felt solid, not like the papers and clothes that were everywhere else. I leaned against the handle of the shovel and tried to figure out why I couldn't pick up whatever was on the bottom of this pile. It just looked like newspapers and maybe a couple of bags of something else. A McDonald's bag was lying near it, and when I picked it up, the top half tore off of the soggy bottom. The bag must have had food in it when it was set down here however long ago, because whatever it was had liquefied and seeped into the layers of newspaper down below, providing a home and nourishment to a colony of rice-sized maggots. I scrunched up my nose and tossed the remains of the bag into the big green can.

With the shovel, I felt around the edges of the soggy, maggot-infested papers. I put the blade on the very bottom of the pile and tried to lift it, but the pile had been in this spot for so long that the papers were stuck to the carpet. I tried again about halfway up the pile and, with a ripping sound, managed to separate part of it off from the bottom. As it ripped away from the base, the pile of papers flipped into the air, and several of the maggots were flung off the papers and into my face like a larval rain shower.

Raking my fingers through my hair to make sure none landed on me, I felt something cold and wet inside my shirt. I quickly shook it out and watched as one lone maggot landed on the ground, still moving. I ground the disgusting thing into the remains of the carpet with my shoe until it was just a pasty, wet smear.

Spitting and gagging, I ran into my bathroom and went straight to the sink. After splashing cold water over my face and peering intently into the mirror, I was sure with the reasonable part of my brain that there weren't any more maggots on me, but the unreasonable part felt like they were crawling through my scalp and down my neck.

I had come into this part of the job completely unprepared. Tearing off my shirt, I dug around in my drawer for an old turtleneck. There was a bandanna in my sock drawer from when we had Wild West Days at school, so I took it out and tied it around my head to protect my hair from whatever else I was going to find as I cleaned.

Armed with the neck of the shirt pulled up over my mouth, I walked back to the living room. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed the shovel again and tried to pry the stack of newspapers off the carpet. The tip of the shovel dug into the brown fibers as I jammed my foot on the blade to try and work the papers free. Finally, with a wet tearing sound, the small stack broke free of the floor, and I was able to heave it into the trash can. A big patch of the carpet had come up with the papers, and I could see the hardwood floors underneath. I poked at the floor with the metal shovel. Instead of being solid, the wood felt spongy and soft. We definitely couldn't keep the carpet the way it was once the place was cleaned. I wondered how much it would cost to replace an entire floor.

Dark clouds were rolling in as I dragged the bag toward the window, making it seem like dusk even though it was only four o'clock. As I balanced the bag on the sill, I could see the last rays of watery sunshine glowing behind the clouds in the distance as the sun began its roll toward the ocean. The weather didn't usually make much difference to me, because we always kept the curtains closed in the front of the house. I shoved the bag out the window and heard it join the others with a soft sigh.

“Hello?” The voice came from outside. I sucked in my breath and froze. It came again. “Hello?”

Pulling the turtleneck off my face, I stuck my head out the window and tried to manage a normal-looking smile. Mrs. Raj. Even though her house was a pretty good distance from ours, she seemed to think that living next door was an excuse to constantly monitor what we were doing.

“Oh, hello, Mrs. Raj.” I sounded remarkably normal, even though I was a little out of breath.

“Doing a bit of early spring cleaning, I see.” She stood at the corner of our house where the walkway ended. Her eyes darted to the growing pile of garbage bags, and then back to me.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. I forced a little laugh. “I didn't have anything else to do on vacation, so I thought I'd help Mom out. Just getting rid of a few things.”

She pursed her lips and looked at me. “I've heard teenage girls can be rather untidy,” she said. “It's nice to see you making a go of it.”

Her dog, Tinto, strained at the end of his leash, trying to sniff some of the bags. I hoped she had enough sense to pull him away before he chewed a hole in one.

I'd always begged Mom for a dog, but with her breathing problems, we could never get one. Not that I'd want a dog like Tinto—even calling him a dog was generous. He looked more like a long-haired white rat on a leash and was always barking in that high-pitched yap that could be heard all over the neighborhood.

“Tinto, no!” Mrs. Raj called, pulling him back toward the street. He lifted one flea-bitten leg and peed on the bags as a parting gesture. “Come away from there. I don't want to have to give you another bath today.” Mrs. Raj bent down and picked him up, nuzzling him on the nose. “My precious baby.”

“Well,” I said, giving her a little wave, “have a nice walk. You should probably hurry; it looks like it might rain.”

“Yes, we will,” she said. She tried to peek around the curtains at my back, so I reached down and held them closed with one hand. “I notice your mother's car hasn't moved from the driveway all day. Is she out of town?”

I kept the smile plastered on my face as my insides were screaming for her to mind her own business. “No. She's home. She's just not feeling well, so she didn't go to work today.”

“Oh, I see,” she said. She raised her eyebrows. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No, thank you,” I said. “We're fine.”

“All right, then,” she said, and turned like she was going to walk away.

I exhaled, unaware that I had been holding my breath. I started to pull my head back inside the window when she spoke again.

“Oh, Lucy, dear,” she called from the sidewalk.

I bumped my head on the bottom of the window as I stuck it outside again. “Yes?” I said brightly through the pain.