“Chicken soup? Advil? I can stop by on my way home,” she said.
“Really,” I said, “we’re fine. I’ve got it under control.”
“Your mom is blessed to have you,” she said. “I don’t know what she’s going to do without you when you go off to college, especially now that everyone else is gone. It’s always hardest when the baby leaves.”
“I’m sure she’ll manage,” I said, wondering how blessed she’d think Mom was if she could see us now. I tried to tune into the conversation, but my eyes were scanning the tops of the debris piles that clogged the kitchen and the dining room. The smell was so bad in the kitchen I stretched the cord as far as I could into the dining room so I wouldn’t have to breathe it in. Even in here, the visual noise from the garbage made it difficult to see the individual pieces that made up the mountain. A plastic bag from the grocery store full of God knows what. A stack of old margarine tubs. A box full of empty egg cartons and toilet-paper tubes. A pile of clothes still on their wire hangers from some adventure to the dry cleaners years ago. And green plastic storage bins stacked so high they brushed the ceiling in every room. Green plastic bins were like crack for Mom—she couldn’t get enough of them.
“Lucy, honey?”
“I’m sorry.” I shook my head trying to pick up the last threads of the conversation. “You cut out on me there for a second.”
“I was asking you if you’d picked a college yet. Don’t you have to start applying soon?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Well, really, we have a whole year before things are due. They don’t make you decide until senior year.”
“Well, you be sure to come down here soon for a visit. You haven’t been in here to see us for such a long time.”
“I will,” I said. “Soon. Oh, listen, I hear her calling me. I really have to go.”
“Okay, doll,” Nadine said. “You tell your mama just to take it easy and not worry about us. She works so hard, I’m sure she needs the rest. You holler if you need anything.”
“Thanks. I will.”
I leaned into the kitchen to put the handset back and wiped it with the sleeve of my jacket. We still had one of those big, square, wall-mounted phones everyone else got rid of years ago. A while back, Mom had bought one of those fancy digital systems with four portable handsets and an answering machine. It was good in theory, but it took less than a week for every last handset to be lost in the piles, and eventually I dug out this old mustard yellow phone and put it back on the wall. Ugly, but at least we always knew where it was.
Just talking to someone on the outside had calmed me down a little. My breathing got back to normal, and I felt like I could think straight again. Nadine thought we were fine. People all over town were doing regular things at work, spending winter break at the mall, going to the grocery store. Nobody knew. I had time.
Everybody still thought we were exactly like them—I just had to keep it that way.
I took a couple of deep breaths and looked down at the cell phone that was still in my left hand. Once I dialed those three numbers, there would be no turning back. Slowly, I closed it. There really wasn’t much reason to hurry, if you thought about it. Why call 911 when someone was so obviously dead? The paramedics couldn’t help someone who’d had their head cut off or had been shot straight through the heart—or had died under a six-foot-tall stack of National Geographics.
I walked back toward Mom’s room, forcing my eyes to travel past the magazines and focus on Mom’s face. She looked peaceful—relaxed, even. If you didn’t know she was dead, she actually looked pretty good. Most of the time lately her face had rippled with frown lines. At least when I was around.
I couldn’t even remember the last thing I said to her. Last words were supposed to be meaningful, about how much you loved the person and how much you were going to miss them, and the last thing she’d said to me was something about scissors. Or was it about going to Kaylie’s? Of course, she probably had other last words that nobody was around to hear. Did those count? My mind started reeling again, and I shook my arms to try to release some of the energy.
I took a couple of steps backward toward my room so I could think a little better. Here, the path was wider and you could see patches of the dirty brown carpet that covered all the floors, but only appeared here and there through the drifts of garbage, like jagged cracks in the earth. My chest felt heavy, and my breathing was fast and shallow as the panic started to wash over me again. I couldn’t possibly deal with all of this by myself.
I clicked my phone open again. This was crazy. I hit the numbers and held it to my ear, my left hand shaking so violently I had to reach over with my right hand to try to steady it. It rang twice. Three times. Come on, answer, I thought, all of a sudden feeling like I had to hurry. I switched the phone to my other ear just in time to hear the voice mail click on.
Hey, this is Phil. I’m probably on the phone, so leave a message and I’ll call you back. I waited for the beep, and then snapped the phone shut. What kind of message could I possibly leave him?
Hey, Phil, it’s Lucy. Mom’s dead, and if you don’t get over here and help me quick, everyone’s gonna know our secret, and life as you know it will be over. Phil had just as much to lose as any of us—a serious girlfriend, fraternity brothers, a fancy job as soon as he graduated. I tapped the phone against my forehead, trying to think. What did I want him to do, anyway? He couldn’t make her less dead. At least he could be here to help me decide. I only knew calling 911 was as good as ruining all of our lives.
From where I was standing in the hallway, I couldn’t see Mom’s head anymore, only her legs and feet. It looked like she was still wearing her robe, and she had on those nasty slippers like she always did when she was home. Mom had worn the same brown suede slippers as long as I could remember—repairing rips with silver duct tape until that wore through as well and left dirty, sticky marks from the adhesive.
I closed my eyes and tried to think of nothing. Just for a few minutes, if I could get my mind clear, my thoughts could sort themselves out, and I would know what to do and how to feel. It was just the shock of it all that had me confused.
Past the kitchen, I squeezed myself into the living room and turned off the TV so I could think without it squawking around inside my head. We only had one trash can in the whole house so Mom could monitor what went in it. If something couldn’t be recycled, it could be reused. If it couldn’t be reused, it could be composted. If it couldn’t be recycled, reused, or composted, it could be put in a pile somewhere in this house where it would never again see the light of day.
I could put a few bags out in the trash bin, but then what? A few bags in the garbage wouldn’t begin to make a dent in the accumulation of almost an entire lifetime of “treasures.” Which was mostly what other people called trash.
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.