Objects of My Affection (2 page)

Touchstone

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Jill Smolinski

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Touchstone hardcover edition May 2012

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Designed by Joy O'Meara

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Smolinski, Jill.

Objects of my affection : a novel / Jill Smolinski.

p. cm.

“A Touchstone book.”

1. Single mothers—Fiction. 2. Compulsive hoarding—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3619.M65O25 2012

813′.6—dc23                                                       2011039107

ISBN 978-1-4516-6075-3 (print)

ISBN 978-1-4516-6078-4 (eBook)

For Mary Jo Reutter, who, as best friends go, is forever in my “keep pile”

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Reading Group Guide

objects
of my
affection

I
remind myself as I enter the coffee shop that it's actually a
good
thing I sold my house and, for that matter, almost everything in it. Sure, some may find my situation pitiful—a thirty-nine-year-old woman reduced to sharing a bedroom with her best friend's preschooler daughter. But for purposes of this particular job interview—I pause to look around to see if anyone is looking around for me—it makes me even more of an expert. Will Meier is going to be downright
impressed
that the woman he's thinking of hiring to clear out his mother's home barely has a possession left of her own.

Not that I'll mention anything about it to him.

A man at the counter orders one of those ridiculous coffees that sound as if you should get a cake with several people around it singing “Happy Birthday” rather than something in a paper cup. Then he turns his attention to me. “You must be Lucy Bloom.”

This is my guy. “Hi, and you're Will Meier! Nice to meet you,” I say, shaking his hand. He's tall, fortyish, clean-cut, and wearing a business suit with the sort of ease that makes it clear he doesn't usually waste his mornings hanging out in coffee shops.

“I recognized you by your book.” He points toward the copy of
Things Are Not People
that I'm clutching. “What can I get you to drink?”

“Coffee, black. Thanks.”

Maybe my spartan drinking style will be another check in the yes column for me.
The woman is amazing! Even her beverages aren't cluttered!

The coffee shop is only half-full this late in the morning on a Tuesday. We grab a table near a window.

“So what have you been told about the position?” Will asks.

I take a sip of my coffee to buy myself a few seconds to think. Then I list off some of what the woman at the referral agency explained to me. “You need someone to help you clear out your mother's home. I'd be supervising crews and working directly with her to determine what stays and what goes. And it's important the job get done in a timely manner.”

What she said that I elect not to mention: Your mother, besides being renowned artist Marva Meier Rios, is a monumental pain who has either frightened away or turned down every organizer they've referred to date. Also, the contents she's managed to cram into one house could in fact supply an entire third-world nation if there were a way to ship it there … that is, if most of it weren't junk.

“It needs to be done no later than May fifteenth,” Will says.

Just shy of two months. “Sure.” It seems like a generous amount of time, and I can't help but wonder what the catch is. “Of course I'll need to see the house first,” I say in a tone that I hope disguises how desperate I am to get this job. “May I ask why your mother wants to do this now?”

He gives a shrug. “Don't know.” Pulling his cell phone from his pants pocket, he snaps it open. “Although she's had health issues. Smokes like a chimney. Diabetes. Been hit with some chronic infections—miracle she's hung in there this long.” He looks at the screen. “Hold on a sec. I need to return this text.”

It's all I can do to hide the disgust I feel. Could the man be any colder? Talking about his mother's failing health as if he's commenting on the weather! It's weird how quickly Will Meier morphed from being a man who'd initially struck me as rather good-looking in a
Clark Kent sort of way to one who
could
be but isn't due to an apparent lack of a heartbeat.

Tucking the phone back in his pocket, he says, “I assume the agency described the pay structure?”

I nod. Although I'm supposed to charge by the hour, Will is offering a weekly salary that, truthfully, isn't great. But there's a big, fat bonus if I bring the job in by the deadline—enough to make my eyes roll in my head and make that
cha-ching
sound like an old-fashioned cash register.

More important, it would be enough to start my life over again.

Will smiles, but I see there's a challenge in his eyes. “Tell me, Lucy, why should I hire you?”

My mind immediately flashes to the list of credentials I'd mapped out while preparing for the interview.

 

1. I've always been good at letting go of things. Back in grade school when they were collecting toy donations to raise money for the starving babies in Africa, I didn't give them old, broken junk (like some brothers of mine I could name)—I even fixed up my outgrown Sting-Ray bike to add to the pile.

2. On a recent trip to see my parents in Arizona, I managed to talk them into throwing away their entire collection of empty margarine containers, which took up two cupboards.

3. Anyone who can convince her nineteen-year-old son to go away to a drug rehab will have no trouble strong-arming some lady into giving up stuff.

4. I really, really, really need the job—rehab costs a fortune—so I'll work hard out of sheer desperation. …

 

I pull out the copy of
Things Are Not People
that I brought. “You should hire me because I'm organized, efficient, and an expert in the field of de-cluttering,” I say as I hand it to him. “This is for you. I would have autographed it, but that seems so pretentious.”

“I'll admit, I was intrigued when the agency mentioned you'd written a book on clutter. Interesting title.”

“The book is part how-to, but it's also an exploration of the way people tend to get attached to things—you know, if Susan gives you a mug, and then Susan moves away, you can't let go of the mug because it reminds you of Susan. The mug
becomes
Susan.”

“What inspired you to write it?”

“It started as an article on assignment for a magazine—I did a bit of freelancing when I worked for a PR agency, before I opened my own organizing business.” I fish my résumé from my bag and hand it to Will. “The article was supposed to be tips for de-cluttering your home, but as I researched it, it grew into something different. The editor liked it so much, he suggested that I shop it as a book.”

“How'd it sell?”

Why do people always ask that? Can't they just be awed by the fact that I got a book published at all? Does success always have to be based on how many copies it sold? “Quite well … for that type of a book.”

Truthfully, after I got laid off from the PR agency, I'd hoped that writing a series of books about organizing would become the next step in my career. That idea hasn't panned out since the first book was such a flop. A few months ago, with my unemployment and much of my savings having run dry, I earned a possibly bogus online degree as a professional organizer and decided to try my hand in a new field. My first client was a former neighbor who needed help running a garage sale, which I did for the fee of him helping me run mine. Then, unable to drum up any other business—and too broke to rent office space and hang my “open for business” sign—I stumbled across a referral agency that specializes in placing organizers. Will Meier is the first nibble I've had from them.

He sits back in his chair and levels a look at me. “You know who my mother is?”

“I'm familiar with her work, of course.” Originally, I'd planned to gush a bit at this point—mention how Marva Meier Rios practically
pioneered the neo-Expressionism movement back in the 1970s, how one of her paintings,
Woman, Freshly Tossed,
is considered one of the greatest works of art of this century, how she used to hobnob with celebrities from John Lennon to Liza Minnelli, and other fun facts I'd looked up on the Internet (never having heard of her before). Given Will's chilly attitude toward his mother, however, perhaps understated was the way to go.

“You're aware she can be difficult,” he says.

“Who could blame her? She's sick. She's elderly.”

“You want to see how difficult she can be, try calling her elderly to her face.”

“I'm only saying I can roll with the punches.”

“There might be a few of those, too.”

“You're joking. I get it.”

He leans in. “Look, here's the deal: I don't have time to babysit this project. I'm out in Hinsdale, and the drive here is a hassle. Meanwhile, I've got a crew of guys ready to work, and everything's at a standstill because the client—my mother—is being uncooperative. They can't get rid of a thing unless she says so. I need somebody in there who can make it happen.”

“I can definitely do that.” I feel a strange urge to leap to my feet and salute.