The Opposite Of Tidy (23 page)

Tabitha held a finger and thumb barely touching—“this close to calling Social Services on your mom? And the only reason I never did is because you trumped me on it. And you know how much I lied to my own mom about how bad it is over there?” Tabitha’s eyes filled with tears.

“Not lies, really.”

“But not telling, either.” Tabitha sat back a little, covering her face with her hands.

“I’m sorry, Tab.”

“Are you?” Tabitha pressed. “Really, Junie?”

“I am.” Junie’s voice hitched in her throat. She flopped back until she was splayed on the floor, staring at the dim ceiling. “What am I going to do about Wade?”

“I don’t know if there is anything you can do.” Tabitha wiped her tears. “You could try calling him. See if he’ll let you explain.”

Junie shook her head. “I doubt he wants to talk to me right now.”

“Probably not.” Tabitha scooted around the table and flopped down beside her. “Maybe it’ll blow over, though. You think?”

“No. Not a chance.” Tears slid down Junie’s cheeks. “I screwed it up. It’s all my fault, Tab. He’s never going to talk to me again. My mom and my house might be better after all of this, but Wade isn’t going to ever want anything to do with me ever again. That’s going to be the cost of all of this. And that’s not fair.”

Tabitha caught her eye, the two of them paused a beat and then said in unison, “Whoever said life was fair!” They laughed, half-heartedly, but at least the tears had stopped.

Just then there was a knock on the front door. Junie—thinking it was Wade for some hopeful, inexplicable reason—leapt up to answer it. It wasn’t Wade. It was a shiny-looking man with slicked-back hair and a microphone.

“Juniper Rawley? Daughter of Marla Rawley?” He thrust the microphone in her face. “I’m Jerrod Campbell, KELB
News Eleven
. How do you feel about the world’s most famous talk show host coming to your house to fix your mother’s hoarding addiction?”

Junie stared at him, and then at the cameraman behind him, and then at the station’s news van behind him, and then at the three other news vans that were pulling up from three other channels, two of which Junie had never heard of. She opened her mouth to tell him to piss off, but before she could, Tabitha yanked her away from the door.

“No comment.” She slammed the door shut.

The two girls stood in the hallway as Jerrod Campbell from KELB
News Eleven
banged on the door with his fist.

“A few questions, that’s all.”

And then there were several more reporters banging on the door.

“What do we do?” Junie wanted to crawl into the closet and not come out until it was all over.

“We call our lawyer, that’s what.” Tabitha grabbed the phone and called her mother, who was already on her way.

“How did she know?” Junie asked, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.

“Everyone is talking about it downtown,” Tabitha said with a grimace. “It’s all over the place.”

“Not good.” Every drop of Junie’s blood flooded to her feet and she swayed, suddenly light-headed. “Not good.”

“Come sit down.” Tabitha steered her into the kitchen, as far away as they could get from the pounding on the front door. She sat Junie at the table and then dug in the freezer until she found cookie dough ice cream. She brought it and two spoons back to the table, but Junie couldn’t even look at it. She was so close to throwing up that she was keeping her eye on the door to the bathroom in case she had to beeline.

The phone rang.

“You think they have my number?” Tabitha stared at the phone as it rang. “Can they get it even if it’s unlisted?”

Junie was only able to shrug. All of this was way out of her depth. She honestly had no idea.

“I’ll go see if we know the number.” Tabitha picked up the phone and checked the number on the call display. “It’s Wade!” Before Junie could tell her not to, Tabitha answered the phone. “Hi! Wade! We’re so glad it’s you! It’s insanity over—” Tabitha stopped talking, her face falling
into a frown. “Of course,” she said during a pause. “I understand,” she said during another. “Totally.”

From Tabitha’s expression, Junie knew it wasn’t good.

“Let me talk to him.” Junie held out her hand for the phone, but Tabitha was shaking her head.

“I’ll tell her.”

Junie waved her hand. “Give me the phone, Tab.”

“I’m sorry, Wade,” Tabitha said. She paused while he said something on the other end. “But it is partly my fault too, for going along with it.” Another pause. “I’ll tell her. She’s right here. She wants to talk to you.”

All of the blood surged up from her feet and flooded straight to Junie’s head. She was dizzy in a whole different way. What would she say to him? How could she make it better? But she wasn’t going to have the chance. Tabitha said goodbye to Wade and hung up the phone. She bit her bottom lip. “You were right. He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Junie’s heart bucked against her chest. Of course he didn’t want to talk to her. If she’d been him, she wouldn’t have wanted to either. She was a liar. And her lies were big ones. Nothing little, like padding her bra or smoking the odd cigarette in secret, but great big lies that cast shadows the size of mountains. She was a fraud. And her house smelled like shit. And her mother was so screwed up that she was going to be on
The Kendra Show
. These were not little white lies. Not in the least.

“What did he want you to tell me?”

Tabitha stared at the floor.

“Go ahead,” Junie said. “Whatever it is, I deserve it.”

Tabitha was just about to tell her, but the front door
was flung open, and there was Mrs. D., backing into the house while telling off the reporters. Junie and Tabitha ran to the front hall to watch.

“If you are not off my property within the next sixty seconds, I will sue all of you for trespassing, and you can be sure that I mean it!”

Jerrod Campbell was not deterred. “And your relationship to the hoarder is—?”

“You’re wasting precious time,” Mrs. D. growled. “I’d get moving if I were you.”

“We’re not intimidated by empty threats, lady.”

“She’s not just any lady,” a reporter from a local station said as he gave up and turned away. “That’s Georgia Dillard, Crown prosecutor. Keep talking and you’ll end up in court, still talking. And then you’ll lose. Like everyone else who goes up against her.”

Jerrod smiled at her, but lowered his mic. “Hey, it’s a free world.”

“You Americans. Those of us from here know better.”

Jerrod tipped an imaginary hat to her. “See you next time.”

He was the last to go, sauntering casually down the sidewalk. Mrs. D. called after him, “Your sixty seconds are long gone, sir. You can expect the litigation papers within the week.”

He kept walking, not turning back, and just lifted a hand and gave her a careless wave before getting into his van.

The scrum gone, Mrs. D. turned to her daughter and Junie. “Now. Tell me exactly what is going on here.”

Tabitha and Junie explained everything, and when they were done, Mrs. D. put a hand on Junie’s shoulder, her eyes moist.

“Why didn’t you tell me, sweetheart?”

“You would’ve called a social worker.” Junie felt tears dampen her own eyes. “You would’ve had to, right?”

Mrs. D. paused before she eventually nodded. “You’re probably right. I almost did that one time, but you managed to explain it away enough that I guess I was content to ignore it then. I wish I’d persisted. I wish I’d checked up on you. I wish I’d known. We could’ve helped. I’m sorry.”

This made Junie cry all the harder. Mrs. D. pulled her into a tight hug. “From this minute on, it’s going to get better. I promise. Okay?”

Junie nodded, hoping that she was right. And then Mrs. D. pulled away and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Tabitha asked.

“I’m going to Junie’s house to see Marla,” she said. “I’m not sure if this is the most ridiculous thing she’s ever done, or the smartest, but either way, she’s going to need me. Either as a lawyer or a friend. Come on, Junie.” Mrs. D. waggled a hand at her as if she was a toddler. “You come too. It’s time to face the music.”

But Tabitha held Junie back. “We’ll come in a minute, Mom.”

Mrs. D. angled a severe look at the two girls. “See that you do. Promptly.”

“We will,” Tabitha promised her.

So Mrs. D. left without them. Tabitha turned to Junie. “I’ll tell you what Wade said.”

Junie groaned. “I don’t know if I want to know.”

“He asked me to tell you and I told him I would, so I’m going to tell you. You can plug your ears and sing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ as loud as you want to if that’ll make it any easier.”

“Speak.” Junie hung her head, preparing for the onslaught. “I can take it.”

“He said that your date tomorrow is off, and that he’s going to start the filming by himself. And that he doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”

“He’s breaking up with me.” Junie’s stomach lurched up into her throat. She was sure she was going to vomit. She put a hand to her mouth. “Isn’t he?”

“He didn’t say that.”

“He might as well have.”

Tabitha repeated what he’d said. “That doesn’t mean that he won’t want to talk to you when things cool down.”

“Cool down? When is that going to happen?” Junie stalked to the living room window, yanked the curtain, and pointed down the street to the circus in front of her house. There had to be at least five hundred fans gathered now. There were two more police cars and three more media vans, from international stations by the looks of it. One van’s signage was in Spanish.

“When, exactly, will things cool down?” Junie backed away from the window as a cameraman waiting in the street—off the property—turned his camera on her. She pulled the drapes closed. This was her life crumbling into ruins, and it was going to be televised. Nationally and internationally televised.

SIXTEEN

Junie and Tabitha took the back way to Junie’s house and found Mrs. D. talking with Marla, the cameras nowhere nearby.

“Only your mother could accomplish that,” Junie said. She could tell by the expression on Mrs. D.’s face that the house had taken her by surprise.

“You have choices, Marla,” Mrs. D. continued as Junie and Tabitha joined them. “You can do this if you want, but you can also change your mind and not do it this way. I can help. If only you’d let me know how bad it had gotten.”

“I do want to do it this way,” Junie’s mother said. “I do. I really do. I think this is the way that will work for me. Nothing else has.”

Kendra approached the small group. “Marla? Junie? You girls ready to tackle this?”

“Kendra, pleased to meet you. Georgia Dillard.
Could I have a word? I’m Marla’s attorney.” Mrs. D. ushered Kendra to one side, and both Junie and Tabitha were impressed that Kendra actually went with her.

While Mrs. D. conferred with Kendra, Junie’s mother went back to what she’d been doing before Mrs. D. had arrived: showing Bob how her “system” worked.

“See, I can find pretty much anything I’m looking for. Try me.”

“Can opener,” he suggested.

Junie watched as her mother beelined for two heaps of dirty, mouldy dishes balancing precariously on the counter. She reached between them and pulled out the can opener.

“See?” Junie’s mother held it up like a trophy. “Not so bad, eh?”

Behind the camera, Bob gave her a thumbs-up. Then he turned the camera to Junie, who was feeling so embarrassed for her mother that she wanted to bury her in her pile of Shopping Channel purchases and tell everyone that the intervention was off.

The front door slammed, and a minute later a tiny woman barged into the kitchen, holding her hands up to keep them from touching any of the garbage.

“Oh my God, my flight was so late I thought it was going to be next year before I landed!” She spoke with a nasally New York accent and didn’t make eye contact with anyone except Kendra, who gave her a big hug. Beside her, the woman looked even smaller, birdlike. But her voice was bigger than anyone’s in the room. “Where do you need me, what can I do, where do we start, hopefully with the awful shit smell if we’re going to be here for the week.”

A week? Junie grabbed Tabitha’s sleeve and eyeballed her.

Kendra, not missing a thing, patted her shoulder. “Deep breaths, hon.”

The small woman spun and thrust out her hand. “Your hands clean?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll shake.” The woman grabbed Junie’s hand and pumped it. “Charlotte Falconetti. Call me Charlie. Assistant producer.”

“In other words,” Kendra explained, “this is me when I’m not able to be me, only with an A cup rather than a double-D, and not black, and considerably younger.”

“B cup, I’ll thank you very much.” Charlie gave Kendra a friendly smack on the arm. Junie couldn’t imagine being so familiar with Kendra that you could slap her. “I’ll be here for the week. Miss Thang here will come back to shoot some more on the last couple of days.” She gave Kendra a stern look. “But you’re getting footage now, right? From the storyboard we worked on back in L.A.?”

“Of course, Charlie.” Kendra introduced Junie’s mother, and Tabitha and Mrs. D. “Our key players. There’s a boy, too. What’s his name, hon?”