Dirty Little Secrets (5 page)

I walked back into the kitchen and took a look around. I hadn't looked in here for a long time—with good reason. The microwave and minifridge in my room were all I ever needed, so I avoided this part of the house at all costs. The counters were stacked with dirty dishes, petrified pizza boxes, and takeout containers full of food that had sat long enough to congeal into one black, furry mass. I knew the stove was to the left of the sink, but I couldn't see it beyond the one clear spot right in the middle of the room. The cupboard under the sink was open, and the big pipe underneath drained into an old green bucket that sat on the floor half full of moldy water. Back when we still used the sink, I had rigged this so the waste emptied into the bucket, and we could take the bucket and dump it outside. The system was so primitive it almost made me smile—I could do a lot better now.

The sink itself was full of a uniform dark brown mass that could have been anything once. It looked like chocolate pudding, but I could guarantee it wasn't.

As I glanced around at the remains of the kitchen, I could feel trickles of sweat running down my neck despite the frigid house. I couldn't fix this. It had taken years to get it this bad; how was I supposed to fix it overnight?

I wrapped my jacket tighter around me and wished for more time. A few days—a week, maybe, and I could have this place looking okay enough to let people in. It's not like I had to make it perfect, just good enough so it wasn't a freak show.

A draft of cold air came from somewhere and brushed against my cheek. It was so cold inside, I could see my breath hang in front of me. It felt almost colder in here than it did outside, and, without the furnace working, this whole place was turning into one giant freezer. I'd have to keep moving or I'd freeze to death along with her.

Oh my God—my stomach did a flip-flop as the idea started to form. It was
freezing
in here!

A glimmer of hope started flickering inside me as I picked my way to the other side of the room as fast as I could, my thoughts racing one step ahead. This was totally crazy and totally wrong and totally the only hope I had at all.

The smell near the sink was so bad I had to hold my breath as I worked the windows halfway open. The moldy curtains waved listlessly in the breeze as the frigid air worked its way inside. The window in the laundry room was stuck pretty tight, but I did manage to open it a crack, and I hoped it was enough. With this many windows open in the back of the house, it would probably drop the temperature close to actual freezing. It almost never got cold enough to snow around here, but I'd heard on the radio that there was a frost warning this week, just in time for New Year's Eve. The timing couldn't be better.

The answer had been staring me in the face this whole time. The cold. As long as I could get it cold enough, Mom would . . . keep . . . until I had time to make things look better. I didn't know that much about dead bodies, but I'd watched enough cop shows to know the cold would buy me a couple of days before things got too bad. And a couple of days might be all it took to make the difference between normal and newsworthy.

I could never keep track of the days during vacation, and it took a minute to figure out today was Tuesday. That meant I had until at least Thursday morning, maybe Friday, before Mom would have to be “discovered.” I could spend the next couple of days cleaning the place up, and then go to Kaylie's to spend the night. When I came home in the morning, I could “find” Mom on the floor in a normal-looking house that contained a normal amount of stuff—lying dead in a normal position, not buried under a mountain of magazines in a house that looked like a landfill. If I closed all the windows before I left, it should warm up enough in here to make it look like she'd just died.

Two more years until I could have a normal life had seemed like an eternity, and suddenly it was like the universe was handing me a chance to have all of it ahead of schedule. There was only ten tons of garbage standing in the way.

I rushed back through the pathway, out of the kitchen, and down to my room at the end of the hall to grab my wallet. I'd need garbage bags—the big, black ones made for moments like this. As far as I knew, we didn't even own any. I stood in my open doorway and felt my heartbeat slow and the knot in my stomach loosen. I kicked the door shut behind me, blocking out the smell and the mess, and took a deep breath.

The flutter of panic that had been whirling in my head was being replaced by something else. I felt a little guilty for the warmth of optimism that was spreading throughout my body at a time when I should have been devastated, but there it was. For once in my life, I was in charge. If I worked hard enough, I could keep Kaylie and Josh and the glimmer of a normal life that had started to form.

Was it selfish? Absolutely. It wasn't like I could do anything to save Mom at this point, but I could do something to help me. But I wasn't
just
doing it for me. I was doing it for Phil and his girlfriend and Sara too. In a way, I was even doing it for Mom. She could still be the hardworking single parent everybody thought she was. Now Nadine and everybody else who knew her wouldn't have to change their memories.

As I looked around my bedroom at the clean surfaces and my neatly made bed, I could feel some energy return deep inside. I could do this. I didn't help Mom last night, but I could help all of us now.

Taking one last look around my room, I gathered strength from the peaceful space. Mom was dead—there was nothing I could do about that. Local history would remember us either as that garbage-hoarding freak family on Collier Avenue, or as the nice oncology nurse with the lovely children.

It was up to me to decide which one was our truth.

chapter 4

11:00 a.m.

Our street was one of those that had ridden the roller coaster of good times and bad, and it showed in the little details, like fine wrinkles around an otherwise pretty face. You could tell it had once been a really nice neighborhood because the houses were set back from the street and most of them had big porches, but the old Toyota up on blocks in the Harveys' driveway and the weeds that choked out any grass in the yard on the corner told a different story. The houses were old, but mostly in a good way, and each one had a big yard, which meant the neighbors weren't so close that they were always peeking in your windows. Keeping nosy neighbors away was a good thing as far as I was concerned.

I shifted the bag of cleaning supplies to my left hand and unlocked the front door with my right. As the door swung open, bits of mail caught in the bottom and made a scratching sound along the tile floor. I kicked the mail to the side, where it joined the pile from yesterday.

Standing in the hallway, I stopped to listen. I wasn't sure what I was listening for, but the whole house was silent. Dead silent. I knew Mom was lying in the back hallway, but just for one moment, I wanted to pretend I was coming through the door for the first time today. Mom was at work, I was coming home from Kaylie's with the warmth of Josh's arm still on my shoulders, and none of this was my problem. Yet.

Our entry hall was wide, with the living room on the right and the dining room on the left. Piles of belongings, newspapers, and green plastic bins draped with clothing started at the edges of each room and marched toward the center until the only way to maneuver through the stuff was to turn sideways and pray you would reach your destination unscathed.

On the other side of the living room was the fireplace mantle, which held a brown, spindly potted plant that had been dead for years and a couple of framed pictures. I stood on my tiptoes so I could see them better. The picture on the right was my school picture from fourth grade. I was wearing my sweatshirt jacket, and Mom had gotten mad at me because I forgot to take it off for picture day so my new shirt would show. I remember when Aunt Jean put the picture in the big gold frame and set it on the mantle. It was the last time she was in our house, before Mom banished her forever.

The house wasn't nearly as crowded back then—the kitchen still worked, mostly, and both bathrooms were usable. The piles were just starting to accumulate, and most weren't any taller than my head.

Even though I was only nine when it happened, I'd been able to figure out that the car accident was bad. Mom didn't come home after work that first night, so Sara had come back to stay with us for a few days, not letting us forget she was doing us a favor. Phil was five years older than me, but Sara was almost ten years older—somewhere between a sister and something else, and she was always looking for an excuse to boss us around. She had already graduated from high school and had moved to San Francisco, so she couldn't stay with Phil and me for very long without missing work. She left after a few days, and Aunt Jean came to stay with us until Mom got better.

I was helping Aunt Jean with her suitcase when she got her first look at the inside of our house.

“Oh my God,” she said. Her hand flew to her mouth as she surveyed the clutter that covered most horizontal surfaces and lined the edges of every room.

I put her suitcase down on the tile floor, thinking she'd seen a mouse or something. “What?” I looked around frantically.

Aunt Jean turned to look into the dining room. “This . . . this place,” she said. “Look at all this junk. My God, there's crap everywhere.” She turned to me. “How long has it been like this?”

I looked around the living room and shrugged. There were some piles of clothes that had never been folded and put away, and Mom did like to save newspapers in case she missed an important article. The sink was clogged, so the dishes hadn't been done for a while, but I really didn't see the problem.

Aunt Jean ran her fingers through her hair as she rushed from room to room, looking at the piles of clothes on every bed, and the mildew that was starting to become a permanent fixture in the bathrooms. I finally caught up with her in Mom's room as she sat in the one tiny clear spot on the bed with her head in her hands.

“Auntie Jean?” I said quietly.

She looked up at me, tears running down her face, and shook her head. “I had no idea . . . I should have known because of Mama that Joanna could get this bad. But I really had no idea.”

I stood there quietly waiting for her to say something else. Mom cried a lot like this after Dad left us, but other than that, I hadn't seen many grown-ups freaking out before. Aunt Jean reached out and pulled me to her, grabbing me around the waist and holding me tight.

“I'm so sorry,” she said over and over. “I had no idea.”

As I stood there, wrapped in her arms, I decided maybe I'd gotten it wrong. Maybe Mom was hurt worse than I'd thought, or maybe she was already dead. We were supposed to go and see her that afternoon, but now it was too late. I turned this thought over and over in my head until I believed it was true with all the conviction a nine-year-old can gather, and tears started spilling out of my eyes and down my face. Mom was gone. Mom was gone, and I was going to have to go live with someone else, away from my school and everything I knew. I didn't want to go and live with Dad—Mom said that Daddy was the devil and that he never really loved any of us. If he did, he'd never have abandoned us like he did. Even worse, maybe he'd only let one of us live there, and I wouldn't have anybody at all who cared about me. My tears turned from silent tracks into loud sobs that made my whole body shake.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Aunt Jean said. She held me away from her so she could see my face. She rubbed my tears away with the palm of her hand and smoothed my hair back from my forehead. “It's going to be okay.”

I tried to swallow the hiccups that had started in my chest so I could speak. “Are we going to have to live somewhere else?” I finally squeaked out between sobs.

Aunt Jean looked around the room. “No. No, honey. We'll get this straightened out in no time. Your mom is going to have to stay in the hospital for a couple of weeks—that should give us just enough time to have this place spic and span.”

I blinked back a fresh set of tears in disbelief. “She's coming home?” I said. “I thought she was dead.”

Aunt Jean laughed and gave me another hug. “No, honey, she's not dead.” She took another look around the room. “Your mom is one hell of a slob, but she's definitely not dead.”

As we drove to pick up mom from the hospital on the last day, Aunt Jean turned to us. “Now remember, we want this to be a surprise, so don't say anything until we get home.” She sounded cheerful and confident, but she looked nervous as she said it, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles were white.

I looked down at my own hands. Aunt Jean had told us to wear gloves as we cleaned and scoured every surface in the house, but I could never get any gloves that fit right, so I'd just gone without. Now my hands were an angry red, and all of my nails were broken down to the bare edges.

But it had been worth it. For two weeks, Aunt Jean and Phil and I had dragged bags of trash out to the Dumpster she had rented that stood sentry in front of the house. The plumber had been called, and every dish shone from its place in the cupboard. Once the floors and tables were clear, we had sorted through the closets and drawers. Finally, every surface was scrubbed and bleached until there wasn't a speck of mold left in the whole house. Aunt Jean had done most of the work; I could see the light from the hallway streaming under my door late into the night. It was like she couldn't sleep until the house was spotless.

Phil was chewing on his fingernail and staring out the window as the streets rushed by. “Auntie Jean,” he said quietly.

I could see her glance at him in the rearview mirror. “What's on your mind, babe?”

“Do you . . . do you think she's going to like it?” he asked.

Aunt Jean glanced at the road, and then back to him. “We did it out of love,” she said. “How can your mom not like something we did out of love?”