Objects of My Affection (41 page)

“There's that possibility.”

“My only consolation,” he says, “is that this will blow over the next time some politician gets busted texting pictures of his man parts, so I'd say a day or two.”

“Or”—I say, deliberately being blunt so as to slap reality into him—“it'll be an even bigger story Saturday, if there's news on her birthday of a tragic suicide.”

“Yes. About that. I'll be over tomorrow evening at some point to spend the night and all day Saturday. If she plans to do it on her birthday, I intend to be on her like stink on a goat so she can't.”

“I'm so glad!” It's such a relief that Will is taking over, since I'll be distracted with Ash tomorrow. He's agreed to come home, and I'm due to pick him up at O'Hare at noon. It's not how I imagined my last day on the job. I assumed I'd be hanging out, perfecting the last few details, but I've got to tend to Ash, and the job is passably finished. “Marva's not going to make it easy on you,” I say to Will. “It's going to drive her nuts to be followed around. She'll fight you on it tooth and nail.”

“Well, then I suppose I'll have a taste of what you've been going through these past several weeks, now won't I?” He exhales loudly, letting me know he's aware of exactly what he's up against.

I
n the morning, I let myself in through Marva's front door. I still can't believe the project is done, and right on time. Just for the satisfaction of doing it, today I wrote the final X on the calendar, amazed at how many days I've been here. It feels both like yesterday and a year ago that I first met Marva, and it's strange to think I won't be back except to gather the rest of my things.

Although I'm about to leave for the airport, I want to say good-bye. Before heading to find Marva, I give myself the reward of doing a walk-through of the house—a much more understated celebration than I feel the occasion merits. For all I've been through, there ought to be popping champagne corks and brass bands—or at the very least a beribboned finish line that I bust through—but it's unusually quiet today. Niko and crew are still banned until Will can figure out the identity of the mole, and the news reporters have drifted away. Apparently, a famed local artist is only saucy enough to warrant one day's attention, even if she is a suicidal hoarder.

I start upstairs, where the rooms were once so cluttered I had to climb garbage mountains to see them. Hard to believe this is the same house I wedged myself into mere weeks ago. Now it's open, airy, and decorated in an eclectic style that's cozy without being overly cluttered.

Soon I'll have a home like this again. Okay, not this enormous. And I can't afford Oak Park. In fact, I'll rent for a while—some crappy apartment, but it'll be
my
crappy apartment. The idea sends a warm rush through me. When I head back downstairs, I find Marva in the kitchen, making coffee. “I didn't expect to see you today,” she says, scooping grounds into the filter. “The job is done. Haven't you heard that means you don't report to work anymore?”

“Ha, ha. And did you really think you'd get rid of me without a good-bye? I'm about to head over to the airport.”

“So you got what you wanted, your son back.”

Is that what I wanted? “I want him off drugs, working on a future. So hopefully this is a step.”

“Well, you did a fine job here. It can't have always been easy.”

“Nah, piece of cake. Will is coming by later for the final inspection,” I say, although I don't add he'll be spending the night and all day on her birthday so she doesn't do anything to hurt herself. I only pray he has the guts to follow through. “Don't buy anything between now and when he gets here, okay? I need that bonus check.”

“Rest assured, I won't. I plan to spend the day in quiet reflection.”

There's no escaping she'll be reflecting on her life. Isn't that what you'd do the day before it's ending, if you knew? Sure, I'd probably eat a giant tub of Garrett's cheese popcorn and wash it down with Cristal chugged straight from the bottle, but all the while, I'd be reflecting.

“Spend some time thinking about how people care about you,” I say.

“Do they? You'll notice the media is gone. I'm yesterday's news. Just Marva Meier Rios the clinically depressed hoarder who, according to some reports, is raising chickens in her living room,” she says, chuckling.

It's alarming how it doesn't bother her—as if she's already checked out so nothing matters. But it does. “You can't let that be your legacy. Not after all you've achieved in your life. Don't let that be how you're remembered.”

“At least I'll be remembered.” Her tone is joking, but this isn't funny.

My voice is trembling as I say, “It's not too late. You can create something new. Please … stay around to do it.” Then, though I expect she'll hate it, I throw my arms around her in a hug. She stiffens, but she at least gives me a couple pats on the back before pulling away.

“Best of luck to you,” she says.

“I'll be back in a few days to pick up the rest of my things, and to make sure you haven't dragged a bunch of junk back the moment my back is turned.” Tears are welling in my eyes. “I very much look forward to seeing you then.”

I
allowed for traffic, but the freeway didn't get the memo that rush hour is supposed to be over by now, so I'm racing to baggage claim to meet Ash. According to the monitors, his flight arrived eight minutes ago. Standing at the spot that divides me from the secure area, I wait, catching my breath. There's plenty of time. Ash still needs to disembark and get down here.

It's going to be tough, but I'm allowing myself only a minute or two of gushing over how happy I am to have him home, and then it's on to business. I've got a bag packed in my car that'll see me through the next few days. We'll get a hotel, then we'll immediately sign him up for NA and look into local outpatient rehab programs. Heather and Hank offered to let us stay with them—mind-blowingly generous of them considering they have a toddler and an impressionable teen—but it's important that Ash and I have time alone. I'll need one-on-one time without distractions to get him ratcheted into the new rules—the new
me
—from day one. He needs to understand that it's not going to be how it was before.

After a few minutes go by, I unfold the piece of paper on which I've written
ASH
and stand holding it jokingly as if I'm a hired driver, staring with a mix of excitement and fear at the escalator that will transport my son to me and into his—our—new future.

After thirty minutes and no sign of Ash, I decide to give it ten more. Still no Ash. I find my way to ticketing, where I wait in line another twenty minutes before being waited on by a woman who looks quite a lot like me—granted, me on a good day, when I've bothered blow-drying with the round brush. “My son was supposed to be on a flight from Tampa, and I'm meeting him at baggage claim. He hasn't shown up. Can you check if he was on that flight?”

“A minor?”

“No, he's nineteen, but he doesn't have a cell phone.”

“Good for you,” she says. “I'm embarrassed to say my eight-year-old has one.”

After verifying my ID and collecting a confirmation number, she consults her screen. “According to this, he got a boarding pass … but didn't check in for the flight.”

“How could that be? He went all the way to the airport and then didn't bother getting on the plane?”

“He might have cut it too close, gotten stuck in security. Or you'd be surprised how many people stop for Burger King and miss their chance to board—happens all the time. He's probably trying to get on another flight standby.”

Or he changed his mind and left.
“Is there any way to check?”

“Sorry, no. Don't worry, he'll get ahold of you somehow.” She gives me an encouraging smile—mom to mom—and I leave, crumpling up the
ASH
sign and tossing it in a trash can on my way out.

H
oney, I'm
hooooome
!” I shout as I poke my head in through Marva's mudroom door a few hours later. I'd stopped for lunch and to make phone calls to tell my family and Heather that Ash didn't show. With each passing hour, I'm forced to face the ugly reality. He didn't miss his plane. Nope, that little shit just changed his mind.

Marva comes out from the hallway. “You don't get it, do you. The job is over. You can go home.”

“He never got on the plane.”

“Ah,” she says. “Sorry to hear that.”

“So I might as well do more work on the office before Will gets here for his inspection—especially since, technically, I don't have a home to go to.”

“You're free to stay in the bungalow if you wish.” She grabs a pen from the counter and turns to leave. “But I prefer to be alone today.”

Now that I'm no longer an employee, I can hardly wander around as if I work here, so I leave. To kill time until Will arrives—which I expect will be as close to the birthday deadline of midnight as he can cut it—I start packing my things and cleaning up. About seven o'clock, Will storms into the bungalow, slamming the door behind him. He startles when he sees me. “What are you doing here?” he says irritably, as if I were the one bursting in on him.

“I thought I'd stick around in case you needed me,” I say, meeting him scowl for scowl. “Pardon me for trying to help.”

He does that thing he did the very first day I met him, pinching the bridge of his nose in frustration. “It's not you—sorry. I came out here to blow off steam. You took me by surprise. My mother. She just—
ugh.
”

“What's she doing?”

“Acting like nothing's wrong, that's what. And meanwhile, I'm a wreck, panicking that anything she touches might be what she'll use to off herself tomorrow. She's ironing, and I'm wondering, ‘Is she going to take that in the tub and electrocute herself?'”

“What is she ironing?”

“What? Uh … a top or something.”

“Purple?” I can't help it—I'm curious if she is going to go with the pantsuit I helped pick out.

“What difference does it make?”

“None, really, only I thought she might be preparing what she wants to be … er”—no point in being delicate—“found in.”

“That does it, I'm done pussyfooting around. It's time to be proactive.
Whether Marva likes it or not, I am combing every inch of that house and confiscating anything she could possibly use to kill herself.”

“Could be tough. She's pretty creative.”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“Sure, I'll help. You want me to distract her?”

“I don't care if she sees what I'm doing—in fact, I hope she does. Let her call the cops on me, but she's not going to be able to stop me otherwise. I need to make it clear I'm not taking this lying down.”

Once we're in the house, Will grabs a garbage bag (blue, which technically is for recycling, but I'm not foolish enough to say anything). I follow him to the bathroom, where he throws open the medicine cabinet and begins chucking its contents into the bag with noisy abandon. “Check the shower,” he instructs me, his eyes wild with a mounting fervor.

I whisk open the shower curtain and am snapping up the plug when Marva arrives. “What on earth are you doing?”

“Childproofing,” Will says, crouching down and opening the cabinet doors. “If you don't have any razors”—he holds up a pack of old-fashioned single-blade razors—“then you can't slit your wrists, now can you?”

“Why, of all the cheek! Put those back, and get out of my bathroom.”

“No.”

“William, I insist you stop this instant.”

“Nobody in this room named William. Call me by my real name. Go ahead, say it!”

“Are you still angry about that? It was a whim!”

He stands, grabbing up the trash bag and brushing past her toward her office. “A whim I lived with for eighteen years. How long am I going to have to live with this latest whim, huh? You go off, doing whatever you want to do, and don't give a damn how it affects me. So long as it suits you. And I pick up the pieces.”

She follows him into the office, her cane thudding on the floor,
and I trail behind, willing myself invisible, which seems to be working. “None of this is your affair,” Marva says to Will.

“Of course it's my affair! You're my
mother
!” He snags up a mug filled with pencils, considers it, and, apparently finding it dangerous, dumps it in the bag.

“You have no right to dispose of my things.”

“What's the difference? You're not going to be around to use this … this …” He looks around and snatches up a stapler. “This stapler!”