Dirty Secret (9 page)

I said okay and about a week later I received a card from her. It said:
If you're ready to stop yelling at me, we can talk. Mom.

That sounds really appealing, I thought, and threw the card in the trash. I figured we'd go another five years without speaking.

But a year later, she wrote again:
I'd like to talk to you again if you're ready. Love, Mom.

It was June, and I happened to be headed to Minneapolis for a long weekend over the Fourth of July. So I called.

She sounded the same. Her accent was just as strong.

I told her about my upcoming trip to Minneapolis and she asked if I'd like to come over.

“I can make us coffee,” she said. “And you can meet Roger.”

“Sure,” I said. And then I didn't know what else to say. “So . . . I'll call you when I get to town, then?”

“Sounds good, honey.” My mom sounded strangely serene. Maybe my brother was right, I thought. Maybe she really had changed.

When she opened the door, my first reaction was surprise at how tiny she'd become. This was the woman I was once so afraid of?

“Well, hello,” she said and opened her arms to hug me.

I was caught off guard. We'd rarely hugged. But I wanted things to be okay between us. We hugged quickly and then I followed her into the hallway. The floor was still carpeted then, a worn brown shag. It looked recently vacuumed. There were no piles of things, and the hooks for coats were being used. A maple-encased antique radio sat against one wall of the hallway, and next to it was a china cabinet holding fragile teacups and saucers, crystal dishes, and ceramic figurines of ice skaters and Scottie dogs.

In the kitchen, a sky blue shelf held a familiar collection of porcelain salt and pepper shakers shaped like robins, chickens, cows, and toque-topped chefs. The door was open between the kitchen and the living room and the television was tuned to a nature show.

“Roger,” my mom said, “this is Jessie.”

I peeked my head into the living room. It was crowded with furniture, probably twice as much as was necessary, but it wasn't unclean. Roger was sitting on the couch with his feet propped up on a footstool that was layered with pillows on top.

“Hi, Jessie!” he said. “I'd get up but I have to keep my feet elevated for now.”

“It's okay,” I said walking toward him and holding out my hand. “It's nice to meet you.”

“Helen's told me so much about you,” he said, “but it's nice to meet you for myself.”

He had red hair and pale skin and looked sweet and elfin, like a man who'd say “doggone it.” The kind of guy everyone liked.

“Do you want coffee, Jessie? Or tea?” my mom asked. “And I bought some Mint Milanos. You like those, right?”

“I do,” I said. “And I'll have coffee, please.”

“Do you need anything, Roger?” my mom called out to him.

“I'm good, Helen,” he said. I couldn't tell if he truly was immersed in the show about armadillos or if he just wanted to give my mom and me time to talk, but he turned back to the television and stared at it, seemingly absorbed.

I sat down at the kitchen table while my mom poured us cups of coffee from an already made pot. She took the white bag of cookies from one of the cabinets. I glimpsed inside while the cabinet door was open and saw that it was crowded, but everything was neatly stacked. She pulled out a chair and sat across from me. Her fingers on her coffee cup were pale and slightly puffy. And I'd forgotten about my mother's bizarre thumbs: They're squished looking at the ends, like tiny troll thumbs; the crescent-shaped nail is only about a third of an inch long. I've never seen anyone else with thumbs like hers. Sitting across from her, I found her hands cute, like little paws. They didn't look like hands that had pulled my hair or shaken me awake in the middle of the night. They didn't look like hands that ever would.

She blew on her coffee, took a sip, and smiled at me.

I pulled a cookie from the bag and bit into it.

It seemed as if neither of us knew where to start.

“So how are you, Mom?”

“I'm good,” she said, nodding. “How are you?”

I didn't want to tell her anything personal. It felt too risky.
“Oh, you know, things are fine,” I said vaguely. “What about you?”

She told me that she and Roger had been spending winters in Florida for the past few years, about the trailer they owned there and the welcoming community of neighbors they'd found. I could picture my mother playing cards and walking on the beach. “We might not make it this year, though. It depends on how Roger's doing,” she said, leaning forward.

That was worrisome. But my mom didn't sound particularly worried. I'd never seen her like this: self-sufficient. Adult. The tension—the sense that at any second she could start gritting her teeth and lash out—was gone.

After a while, I decided it would be okay to tell her a little bit about my life. I mentioned a trip I had coming up: A friend and I were going to travel in Mexico and Belize for two months. We were going to try to write a screenplay during that time.

“That sounds wonderful!” my mother said. “I've never been to either of those places. Will you take pictures? So I can see what they're like? Because I don't think I'll ever get there.”

“Sure.” It made me sad that she thought she'd never go. I felt guilty that I would get to experience something she wouldn't.

I went upstairs to use the bathroom, and while I was up there I couldn't help but sneak a look around. All of the rooms except the biggest bedroom weren't too bad—messy, yes, but like the rooms downstairs nothing beyond mild pack rat. Only the biggest bedroom, which had been my mother's at one point, was piled high with sweaters and shoes and orphaned hangers and empty boxes. It was hard to resist trying to straighten it up. If I thought I could get away with running downstairs, grabbing a garbage bag, and filling it, I probably would have.

When I came downstairs, Roger was in the kitchen, sitting with one of his feet propped up on the table. My mom was massaging it.
“I need to get the circulation going,” she said. “We have to do this at certain times each day.”

“I hope I'm not interrupting you two,” Roger said.

“Not at all,” I said, feeling like I was the one interrupting. I picked up my coffee cup and took a sip. I was completely uncomfortable—and not just because Roger's foot was on the kitchen table. I'd never seen my mother act that nurturing. The weirdness at the door when she hugged me was compounded now by a thousand. “I actually have to leave soon,” I said. “I told my dad and Sandy I'd have lunch with them.”

It was true. I'd only given myself about an hour, because I wasn't sure how it would go.

“Oh, okay, honey,” my mom said. “Hang on one second.” She patted Roger's foot, wiped her hands on the edges of the towel, and stood up. “I'll be right back.”

“She's got a surprise for you,” Roger said and winked.

She came back holding two jewelry boxes—the kind made from thin cardboard and painted red, with gold lines swirling at the edges. “Sit down, honey,” she said and I pulled out the chair next to hers. She opened one of the boxes and lifted out a necklace. It was made of chunky orange stones strung together on gold thread. She held it up to the light and then out to me.

“I want you to have this. Isn't it gorgeous? That stone is carnelian.”

It was nothing I'd ever wear, and I knew it would just take up space in one of my dresser drawers until I eventually gave it away. But it seemed cruel to refuse it.

“It's really pretty,” I said. “Thank you.”

She pulled out another, this one with thick slices of jade, and an amethyst one, too. Strand after strand, she wanted to give them to me. And I had no choice but to accept them.

When I left, walking back to my dad and Sandy's, it felt like the start of something. I was nervous, fluttery in my stomach. She seemed good, and different from before, but I was wary. How long would this new and improved mother, this self-reliant mother, last?

It turned out, not long. In less than a year, Roger would be gone, my mother's true hoarding would begin, and she'd come to rely on me more than she ever had.

I pick up a paperback from the floor and toss it into the box for Savers. My mother is still staring at the photo.

“What was your dog's name, Mom?” The sheltie was gone by the time my mom and I began speaking again.

It's hard to imagine my mother having a dog because she's so afraid of them—I've seen her hang back on a sidewalk to put some space between herself and a Pomeranian—but apparently Roger surprised her with it one day.

“Buddy.”

“What happened to him?” I ask.

“He ran away from a veterinarian's office.”

“What do you mean, ran away?”

“It was a kennel, I mean. Roger and I went to Florida, and when we came back they said he ran away.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing,” she shrugs.

That's not like her. This is the woman who used to regularly call television stations when I was a kid to complain about sexism in cartoons, who threatened to sue the Mayo Clinic because she believed Roger died for lack of funds; this is the woman who's been talking nonstop these last few days about suing her former employer. This is not a woman who backs down when she thinks she's been wronged. This is a woman
who searches for instances of having been wronged, then wields them like hand grenades.

“You didn't try to sue them?” I ask.

“No.”

“Did you try to find the dog? Did you put up signs or anything?”

“Oh, yeah, we did that. But no one called.”

It occurs to me that possibly the people at the kennel could tell the dog was being neglected—I can't imagine my mother taking the time to brush its long fur or walk it or even remember to feed it—and said it was lost when it wasn't.

“Can I have the name of the kennel?” I want to find out the truth. It feels important.

“Why?”

“Because it's not right that they lost your dog.”

She looks uneasy. “It was so long ago. I don't remember the name.”

“Mom, really. Tell me.”

“I think the place shut down,” she says with finality.

It's obvious that she doesn't want to know what really happened. And I don't blame her.

THROUGHOUT THE DAY
I come across other photographs of her and Roger together, as well as (unopened) Mother's Day and birthday cards from me; in each case the objects are on the floor under or among one of the junk piles. Someone who didn't know my mother might wonder how she could be so careless with these things.

But it isn't carelessness. It's the mental illness of compulsive hoarding. That's why she insists on keeping broken sewing machines and broken coffeemakers and a broken dishwasher hogging
the last of the free space in her kitchen; that's what leaves her frozen in place whenever she needs to make a decision—in the bank, in the grocery store, in the middle of her cluttered staircase—while she mumbles to herself, weighing the consequences of choosing X, Y, or Z.

I'm at the other end of the room from my mom when I find a cardboard box under a pile of yarn, clothing patterns, two orange lava lamps, and a stack of newspapers. The box is square, about two feet by two feet, and sealed at the edges. I pick it up and give it a shake. Whatever's inside is too light to warrant a box this size.

My mother, going through a pile of papers, sees me holding the box and looks petrified.

“What's in here?” I ask.

She hesitates.

“Mom, what is it?”

“Roger.”

That's a sick joke, even by her standards. I wait for her to laugh and tell me the truth.

“Really,” she says.

I'm horrified. “Under all this junk? When you loved him so much?”

“I haven't found the right spot for him yet,” she says, but her half smile reveals her shame. She knows it's wrong to leave him like this, but she doesn't know what else to do. She's paralyzed by indecision.

A bureau with shelves sits along one wall in the living room and I get up on my tiptoes and clear off a space on the highest shelf I can reach. I slide the box with Roger's ashes into the spot.

“He'll be safe from the clutter up there, Mom, until you find a better place for him.”

“Thanks, honey.” My mother sounds equally humiliated and heartbroken.

My poor mom. She doesn't want to live like this.

I wish there were a magic pill or surgery or something instantaneous to cure her, but there isn't. I wish I could convince her to stop, but I can't. Not that that's going to keep me from trying.

MYRON, MY MOTHER'S FATHER, WAS A RUSSIAN JEW, born in the United States to immigrant parents. He was under five feet tall, barrel-chested, with a bulldog's face and sausage fingers. My mother's mother, Esther, came to the United States from Poland—she refused to say exactly where she was from, but my mother thinks it's Lodz. Esther, her sister, and two brothers arrived in 1939, among the last of the Jewish Poles to get out. But not all the siblings chose to leave. There was a third sister who stayed behind in Poland with her husband and three children. They were all sent to Auschwitz, where they died.

My mother disagrees with me, but I think it was partly my grandmother Esther's grief and survivor's guilt that left her unable to stand up to Myron when he woke up the whole family as he came home stumbling drunk at 2:00 a.m.—among
other charming behaviors. My mother blames Esther's timidity on depression and anxiety. I've suggested before that those, too, could be from the survivor's guilt, but for some reason, my mother doesn't want to hear it.

I wish I knew more about my mother's childhood. Every time I ask her, I end up hearing the same stories—the one about being left outside when she was a baby, and how occasionally when she was a teenager her parents would ship her off to stay with an aunt and uncle for weeks or even months (they'd eventually send her back because, according to my mother, she “cost too much”). There was the time Myron accused my mother of giving him a dirty look in the hallway, then flung open her bedroom door, stormed over to her dresser, and swept the one thing she cared about—a collection of glass animals—onto the floor. As my mother cried and tried to retrieve the broken figurines, Myron stood above her, laughing.