Objects of My Affection (15 page)

“More like pop art, and tons of movie memorabilia. And I haven't the faintest idea what's of value.”

“You know who knows everything about movies and could—” Hank stops himself. “Never mind.”

You can't say Hank doesn't learn.

“You mean Daniel,” I say, mentioning the name he knew better than to bring up. “I'm not that desperate.”

“Although he certainly owes you,” Heather says. “You
should
give him a call. He could go to that woman's house and give you advice. It's the least he could do.”

“Thanks, but I'll bet there's all kinds of information online,” I say, not telling Heather how tempting her idea sounds.

As many as fifteen million people, or one in twenty, may be affected by hoarding.

—Organize Me! website

I
'm deep into that dream I often have where my teeth fall out, so when I hear the noise, it confuses me.

What is—my alarm clock? No, wait. My alarm is more of a
bzzzz.
This is … ugh … what is that wet—? Abigail. She's climbed down onto the blow-up mattress with me and is drooling onto my clavicle. I ease her off and use the blanket to dry myself. The noise persists.
Bow, bow, wow, chicka bow wow.
It sounds like the music in bad eighties porn movies. It's vaguely familiar—not that I've watched a lot of porn—yet I can't quite … hmm …

What time is it? Except for the glow of a night-light, it's pitch-dark. And where—?

Finally, my muddled brain wraps around that I'm hearing my ringtone. My phone is ringing. My phone—

I jolt awake as if I've beer-bonged twenty cups of coffee.

Ash! It must be him!

By the time I scramble out of bed and reach my phone, which is charging on Abigail's dresser, the ringing has stopped.
MISSED CALL
shows on my screen.

When I flip the phone open to return the call, I see it's a local number. One I don't recognize.

It wasn't Ash—of course it isn't him. Why would he call in the middle of the night? Probably a wrong number.

As disappointed as I am, my body remains keyed up, as if it hasn't gotten the message yet from my brain.

The clock on my phone shows 2:24. The phone rings again in my hand.

Not wanting to wake Abigail, I answer in a whisper, “Hello?”

“What color is yard sale? I can't seem to find those little tags. I believe you took them when you went off in that snit last week.”

“Marva?”

“I have a stack of quilts here I'm ready to designate for the yard sale, but I don't want you people getting it wrong and throwing them away. And where are the trash bags?”

“It's two o'clock in the morning. And it was not a snit.”

“Two o'clock already? Time certainly flies,” she says, ignoring the rest of what I'd said. “I'd like to start on my papers. Do you know how to work this shredder? I can't seem to get it to turn on.”

“I … uh … hold on.”

I feel my way down the hall to the bathroom, where I close the door before turning on the light. “Marva, it's the middle of the night.”

“Yes,” she says agreeably. “I find that's when I do my best work.”

“I was sleeping.”

“Then you're missing out on a lovely evening. Did you see that moon? Huge!” I'm struggling to find the words to express to her
how inappropriate it is to call me like this when she adds, “You'll be pleased to learn that the duck statue is gone. I didn't care for the way it was staring at me from the shadows.”

Interesting. Middle-of-the-night Marva seems to be more willing to let go than daytime Marva. And friendlier, too. It occurs to me: Here I am, awake. Why not go take advantage of the situation?

“I'll be there in half an hour.”

When I get there, she's in her office. She's standing, hand on her chin, studying an Impressionist painting that is propped against a bookshelf. It feels strange—Marva and I are almost never entirely alone. Between Niko and his crew, the housekeeper, Nelson, and even Will's occasional pop-ins, it always felt as if I were reporting in to a workplace. This has the hushed intimacy of intruding on someone's home in the wee hours, which it basically is.

“That's pretty. Is it for the auction?” I say, pulling out the bag of supplies I took home the other day.

“This painting? Lord, no. It's atrocious. I don't even want it in the yard sale. I'd be afraid someone might buy it and hang it in their home.”

“If it's so awful, why do you have it?”

“The frame. It's quite rare. I believe I paid ten thousand for it way back when.”

See, this is why I could never do this job behind Marva's back. I'd have kept the painting and tossed the frame. It's a gold, ornate monstrosity that looks as if it belongs in a whorehouse.

By the time Marva calls the next night, I'm not so jumpy. Dr. Paul and I have already spoken. Ash and I are scheduled for a phone call during his next session, which to my frustration is a week away. So when the phone rings, I don't have any false hopes. I know exactly who it is.

The next two middle-of-the-night summonses, however, start to take their toll.

“Why don't you say no? Or not pick up?” Niko asks. He stopped by the bungalow to say hello Saturday morning, only to find me half-asleep
on the couch. When he teased me about being a slacker, I'd filled him in on my midnight trysts with Marva.

“It's hard to resist.” I'm sitting on the couch, curled up in one of the quilts Marva set aside for the yard sale. “She's so much more cooperative at night. And
nicer.
”

“That's not saying much.”

“I want to bring this job in on time. If that means that I lose beauty sleep, so be it.”

Niko sinks onto the other end of the couch. “Ah, so that's how you do it. Sleep. I thought you were born this beautiful.”

“Very smooth.” I aim for a note of sarcasm—although I'm horribly flattered. Men aren't exactly lining up to feed me compliments these days. I'll take even shameless ones, and I have to say, Niko is pretty darned generous in the flirting department. “Anyway,” I say, trying not to read too much into the way he's grinning at me, even though it's deliciously unnerving, “I'm less worried about the bags under my eyes and more that I'm going to crash my car on my way over here. Last night I started to nod off while I was driving. I had to pull off to get one of those energy drinks before I dared get back on the freeway.”

His look turns serious. “I was already not liking the thought of you driving around by yourself in the middle of the night. If you're tired, that's worse.”

“It's sweet of you to be concerned. But I'm not worried. And there's nothing I can do about the drive anyway.”

“Why don't you move in here?”

“Here? Oh, yes, Marva and I would be swell roommates. We can have a pajama party and do each other's hair.”

“I mean it. The bungalow is private enough—she never comes out here. She doesn't even step into the backyard. I'll bet she'd have no problem with you staying here for a few weeks.”

I look around. There's a shower in the bathroom, and an elf-size closet. I could set up a microwave. Bring in a minifridge. It's not a completely outlandish idea. And it would be pleasant to wake
up without My Little Puppy accessories embedded in my face for a change. Although …

“The problem is the rest of your crew,” I say. “It's one thing to have them tromping in and out of my office—it's another if it's where I sleep. That's creepy.”

“They still come in here?”

“Every now and—” I stop myself. It's been a while, now that I think about it. “I guess they don't. Not anymore.”

He nods. “I set up my Xbox in the basement, and there's a wet bar down there. And a bathroom. It's a regular man cave.”

“You're kidding!”

“We have a lot of time to burn.”

Niko's idea is certainly tempting, if for no other reason than it would get me out of Heather and Hank's way. They've always made me feel welcome, but there's that old adage about fish and guests stinking after three days. I'm well past my expiration date.

I toss off the quilt and get up. “I suppose it couldn't hurt to ask.”

Partway into the house I realize that it could in fact be moderately painful. “Marva?” She's at her desk, reading glasses perched low on her nose, making notes in that book again, as if she were going to be tested on it.

“Working on a Saturday?” she says, as though
that's
strange, but reporting to work at 3:00 a.m. isn't.

“It's about that. Marva, I very much want to get this job done on time for you, and if that means working weekends or the middle of the night, I'm open to it. Only, the commute is killing me. I'm wondering”—I can feel heat rising to my face I'm so uncomfortable asking—“if I could move into the bungalow for the duration of the project.”

“As in live there? Move in entirely? With your belongings?”

“I don't have much. Next to nothing!” She gives me a dubious look, so I try to explain my situation without revealing how strapped for cash I am. “I recently sold my house, and I'm not ready to buy a
new one yet. So, there was no need to keep furniture. Or dishes. Or much at all for that matter.”

She slides her reading glasses off. “I wonder. What's happened to you that you're this way?”

“Pardon me?”

“What went wrong? That you seem to have no attachment to things. It's not normal.”

Funny, that's what I think about your hoarding. “I like
things
,” I say. “I just don't get carried away by them. Ultimately, that's all they are.
Things.
In my book—”

“I'm not buying it,” she says firmly. “Frankly, your refusal to give me an answer is insulting. You strut about this house, playing amateur psychologist with me—digging around in my psyche like you're going to find the umbilical cord that ties me to my possessions so you can snip it. I am simply asking why you are the way you are.”

“I don't know, I've always been like this,” I say, mortified that I was so obvious about analyzing Marva. “In fact there was this one time …” I start to laugh at the memory, but then say, “It's not really a funny story. It's quite awful, in fact.”

“Oh, I love awful stories. Do tell.”

“It's nothing. When I was five, my mother threw away my toys because I wouldn't put them away. On Christmas morning—and they were all new toys from Santa. You'd think I'd have gone ballistic, but I handled it quite calmly. My mom says
too
calmly.”

“How so?”

“My memory is dodgy on it, but she says I'd been told I had to pick up my toys before I went over to a neighbor's house. When I started out the door with my new Tootsie doll in my hand and the other toys all over the place, my mother threatened to throw them away. Apparently—and honestly, I can't believe I was this big a brat—I said, ‘Go ahead.' And then left.”

“Nice to see you had some spunk,” Marva says.

“When I returned, my toys were gone. Or at least that's what I
thought. Turns out my mom had only hidden them in the attic. Once I'd begged and groveled to get them back, she planned to dole them out to me, one at a time, for doing chores or being a good girl.”

“But you didn't.”

“As she tells it, I simply walked up to her, held out the Tootsie doll, and said, ‘Here, you forgot one.' As it turned out, she let me keep the doll. Said I never once asked about the other toys. Ever.”

“Bravo,” Marva says. “You may have lost the toys, but you won the battle of wills. Far more important.”

“It's weird how I barely remember it.”

“Well, perhaps you don't want to think of yourself as that brat. There are those times one finds that it's easier to alter the memory than it is to face the truth.” She slides her glasses back on. “As for moving into the bungalow, I assume there won't be any wild parties? People coming and going at all hours? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll?”

I chuckle. “That's right, there was a time when Will was young that you had to worry about that sort of stuff. Glad you don't have to anymore?”

“Dear, when Will was young,” she says, turning back to her book, “I was the one
doing
that stuff.”

H
eather backs her minivan into Marva's side drive and pops the hatch. “Great house,” Heather says, climbing out of the van. “It's hard to believe it's as bad as you say on the inside.”

“It is, although getting better. Thanks for helping me move,” I say. I don't have much to bring, but my Mustang is built for beauty and speed—not so much for hauling bulky items such as the computer cart we stopped to retrieve from my storage unit. I lean in to wave to Abigail, who is eating Goldfish crackers from a baggie. She averages about a fifty-fifty ratio of how many make it to her mouth and how many surround her in her booster seat.