Objects of My Affection (40 page)

Boy, and I thought I could be hard on myself.
“But you painted it. It still inspires people.”

“It's a fake.”

“Wait … you didn't paint it?”

“Oh, I did, and many others like it afterward. Although it bored me to tears, limiting myself to a particular style, even if it was my own. But I was so afraid of losing Filleppe. He was my lover, but he also handled the business end of things. He created me, my
brand.
To
abandon it and try something new was to risk it all … my reputation, my standing … Filleppe … everything.

“And then he left me anyway.” She sets down the tissue. “We were so young. We'd sworn we'd never get old … never lose our edge. But fear made me play it safe. That's why he walked out on me—said that he intended to carry out our bargain, to only bother living if it was on the edge, and he'd do it with or without me.”

I shake my head. “Damned if you do, damned if you don't. But wait. If he left you, why was he in the house when it burned down?”

“I'd begged him to stay … pleaded. Not my finest hour. Said to hell with my dignity and went crawling after the man. And I wonder now why my knees are shot? I was so in love, or thought I was, and determined to prove myself to him. I left to pull an all-nighter at the studio. Everything I painted was complete garbage, of course. Never confuse desperation with passion. At any rate, I wasn't home to remind Filleppe not to smoke in bed when he'd been drinking. And that was that.”

“How awful,” I say, again trying to picture the moment Marva walked up to her burned-down house, knowing now it was more than a house and her things that she lost. “But it wasn't your fault, you realize that, don't you?”

“I do, but I sometimes wonder if it was no accident—if Filleppe wanted to go out on a high note.”

“You think he set the fire on purpose?”

“He always did have a flair for the dramatic. They say you can't take it with you. He managed to, in a sense, take everything I had.”

They say you can't take it with you.
The reference to the first line of her suicide note is a Taser to my insides. “If that's true,” I say, and darned if my tough-mom voice doesn't get trotted out, “then it's not flair, it's selfishness. And cruelty.”

“I'm only speculating.”

I drop the broom. “Marva, I can't do it anymore—I can't pretend everything is all right when I know you're planning to do the exact same thing yourself. Whether you like it or not, I care about you—so
do a lot of people, including your
son.
So big deal—you had your heart broken. As a wise woman once told me, welcome to the human race.”

She stands and sets the lid on a box of photos she'd been looking through. “Not so wise, only older. Apparently the two don't always go hand in hand. And I wish you wouldn't waste your concern on me. You have plenty going on in your own life to keep you occupied, I would assume.”

“Yet here I am, concerned all the same.”

“Fair enough. Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I'll retire for the night.”

Although I try to convince her to stay—“I'll drop it, let's talk some more about anything you want!”—she says she's tired. If I want to do some shredding, she adds, the noise of the machine won't bother her.

After she leaves, I finish sweeping up the ashes. I scoop them back into the urn and set it on a lower shelf. My mind reels with the things I wish I could say to convince Marva that her life's worth living, but I hold no sway. The one person who possibly does seems unwilling to take the risk. If I could, I'd use Will like a ventriloquist's dummy, hand shoved up some orifice, making him speak words of need and love and hope until Marva broke.

I
sleep later than I mean to, and my phone wakes me up shortly before 9:00 a.m. My first instinct is that it's Ash calling with his answer, only when I look at my phone, I'm surprised by whose number I see there.

My voice still has its morning frog when I answer it. “Daniel?”

“Did I wake you up?”

“That's okay. I needed to get up anyway.”

“So you don't know then.”

“Don't know …”
Oh, no … She killed herself last night. Why did
I let her go to bed depressed? And I ran the shredder—probably her trick to cover up the gunshot noise! But, wait, how would Daniel
… “What? What don't I know?”

“Marva,” he says, and at her name, my worst fears are set alight. “I was on Yahoo! news, and I noticed she was trending. Somehow it got out that she plans to kill herself, and that she's a hoarder. They've got pictures. And a suicide note. They're crediting a reliable source close to the family.”

I'm flooded with such relief that I'm giddy. “Oh, thank God!”

“You're glad about this?”

“The way you led into it, I thought you were going to tell me she's dead.”

“Hmm. I could see why you'd take it that way. Then allow me to deliver the happy news. She's not dead, but she is a scandal.”

“But how?” I'm up and flipping on my computer. “Who could have leaked this—and what would be the point? We're nearly finished!”

“There are a lot of guys working there. Not suggesting your little friend did it, but
you
didn't … did you?”

“You're not seriously asking that question …”

“No, I'm just—” He pauses. “I wanted to give you a heads-up. Thought you might need the warning.”

I barely have time to enjoy the idea that Daniel would care enough to call after all that's happened between us because an image of a pinched, angry face floats to my mind. “Will is going to be
furious
,” I say.

“He wasn't what I was worried about—although you're right. I meant the media. It's a pretty sexy story. Hoarding. A possible suicide. Even if Marva isn't a name a lot of people know anymore, she's about to be. You might want to think twice before you answer the door.”

“They wouldn't come here, would they?” I ask. As I do, I leave the computer to check, walking out of the bungalow and starting up the drive—only to stop short because news vans are there and I'm in my jammies. “Crap, they would. Gotta go.”

Y
ou,”
Will says when I let him into the bungalow, having confirmed it's him and not a reporter. “You let this happen!”

“I'm glad you're being reasonable.”

“I thought you understood the importance of discretion. I hear there are photos all over the Internet showing every room in the house. You know where I heard that? From a Channel Seven news reporter parked outside!”

“What makes you believe I have anything to do with this?”

“Please—who else has that kind of access?”

“Lots of people—and people
you
hired, not me.” As I'd poked through the Internet coverage while getting dressed (and it's definitely an inside job, nobody could have gotten such detailed shots of the rooms through a window), I'd tried to imagine Niko doing this and can't. He's too sweet. Torch, however, is another matter.

“I hired
you
,” Will says. “Big mistake.”

“It wasn't me that leaked it, I swear. With all I've gone through to help your mother, you must know I'd never hurt her this way. Besides, look.” I pull my phone from my pocket. “I don't even have a camera.”

Will takes my phone and looks at it, appalled. “I didn't realize they made phones like this anymore.”

Snatching it back, I say, “They don't. I'll be able to afford a better one as soon as I get my bonus.”

“You might want to hold off on shopping. I've seen that mess of an office.”

“You'd better not be implying you'd stiff me because of one lousy room. Besides, I have all day today, and Smitty is coming, isn't he? He'll be taking much of what's in there.”

“He's due any minute, which is why I'm here. What a lovely surprise to be greeted at my mother's home by the fine representatives of the local Chicago news media asking me how I know Ms. Meier Rios and if she hoards animals, too, or if it's only the garbage.”

“What'd you say?”

“‘No comment'—what do you think I said? Then I made them get the hell off the property.” He notices my computer, which is open to a news item on Marva, complete with a shot of the living room as it was on my first day on the job. “So how bad is it?”

“You haven't seen any of it?”

“I only found out two minutes ago when I got here. I was just swinging by to double-check that all signs of my mother's identity were out of the way so Smitty wouldn't figure anything out. Guess that cat is out of the bag.”

“At least it's only the one cat, and not a hoard of them,” I say, and Will's steely look reminds me he's not one to joke in times of pressure. Or ever. “You can use my computer. I've bookmarked some of the stories, or feel free to browse around online. I'll finish getting ready. Then we can figure out what to do.” As Will takes a seat, I remember the suicide note. The leaked version is a different draft from what I saw. In the leaked draft, Will actually gets an
I love you.
But that's crossed out and replaced with
I wish I could have loved you the way you wanted to be loved.
Only
wanted
is crossed out and replaced by
deserved.
Then Marva signed it, apparently crumpled it in a ball, and tossed it into the trash—only to have it retrieved and fed to an Internet news site, where soon her poor son will have to see it.

“Wait a minute,” I say, and dig out the Scotch left over from Marva's visit. Before heading into the bathroom, I pour Will a shot and hand it to him.

“Drinking on the job?”

“Not me, but you may want to.”

W
ill intercepts Smitty when he arrives and fills him in on the situation, shielded from the media by Smitty's massive truck and aided by Smitty's diminutive stature. Then Will leaves directly for his office, never having said anything to me about the suicide note other than to acknowledge he saw it and giving firm directions to let no one in. He's already canceled Niko for the day.

I search for food in Marva's kitchen that I can pilfer for breakfast and settle on a banana. As I peel it, Smitty bustles through the mudroom door and clasps my arm, jittery with excitement.

“Will told me she's here, but I'm to leave her alone,” he says. “Surely you can arrange a meeting, can't you?”

“Yes, but in a while. You're bound to run into her anyway. Only a quick hello, though. She's very busy.” I neglect to elaborate that she's busy on the Internet and flipping through the TV looking at the coverage after Will broke the news to her. It's like getting to rubberneck your own freeway accident, and she's watching it with a ghoulish and yet detached fascination.

“Is
it
here?”

I play dumb, solely for the fun of toying with him. “It … ?”

“
Woman, Freshly Tossed.
Is it here? In this house? Which, by the way, looks fabulous. Can't believe it's the same place I was in before.”

“It does, doesn't it,” I say, pleased to receive a compliment on my work, since they're not being handed out by anyone else around here. “And, yes, it is.”

He brightens. “Any chance I'd get the chance to represent that particular—”

“It's not for sale.”

“Can't blame me for trying.” Smitty leaves to get his workers under way, who will use the back entrance to avoid giving a free show to the cameras outside. I scarf down the banana and then check in on Marva.

She's at her computer, which rarely gets used since I came here and put the kibosh on her online shopping habit. “It's time to shut that down and stop torturing yourself,” I say.

She points at the screen at a picture of one of the upstairs rooms taken during its previous state. “Did I keep this mirror?”

I study the photo. “No.”

“What a shame. It would look so nice over the credenza.”

Blinking in disbelief, I say, “That's it? You're sad about a mirror? But you're not upset that this is all over the Internet?”

“I'm not
thrilled
, but it's not as if anyone remembers who I am anyway. Frankly, I'm surprised it's getting so much attention.”

“People clearly remember who you are.”

“Yes—
now
—but not as an artist. Merely as a suicidal hoarder. Today's freak show.”

Without asking if she minds, I turn off the screen. “Then prove them wrong.”

B
y the time Will calls in the afternoon, Smitty is finishing up—his progress slowed by his repeated fawning over Marva and pausing to longingly sigh over the dream of including
Woman, Freshly Tossed
among his acquisitions (which I encourage—if love or logic can't save Marva, maybe appealing to her ego can). The reporters, having no luck talking to any of us, have moved on to neighbors. None of them have met Marva, but they speak of her in the serial-killer stereotype of keeping to herself but seeming like a nice lady. Who knew she was hiding such a shocking secret? Despite my efforts to cut Marva off from the news and keep her focused on clearing out the office, she keeps going back to check updates.

After telling Will it went well with Smitty—and doing a PR pitch about how
great
the office is starting to look—I ask him how he's holding up.

“Other than a senior VP hugging me this morning—
hugging
me—it's been relatively a nonevent.”

“I'm not surprised. Everybody is so tied up in their own problems, they don't have the energy to pay attention to yours as much as you fear they do.”

“Or they're being polite to my face and gossiping behind my back.”