Dirty Little Secrets

“I’m sure she’ll manage,” I said, wondering how blessed she’d think Mom was if she could see us now. I tried to tune into the conversation, but my eyes were scanning the tops of the debris piles that clogged the kitchen and the dining room. The smell was so bad in the kitchen I stretched the cord as far as I could into the dining room so I wouldn’t have to breathe it in. Even in here, the visual noise from the garbage made it difficult to see the individual pieces that made up the mountain. A plastic bag from the grocery store full of God knows what. A stack of old margarine tubs. A box full of empty egg cartons and toilet-paper tubes. A pile of clothes still on their wire hangers from some adventure to the dry cleaners years ago. And green plastic storage bins stacked so high they brushed the ceiling in every room. Green plastic bins were like crack for Mom—she couldn’t get enough of them.

“Lucy, honey?”

“I’m sorry.” I shook my head trying to pick up the last threads of the conversation. “You cut out on me there for a second.”

“I was asking you if you’d picked a college yet. Don’t you have to start applying soon?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Well, really, we have a whole year before things are due. They don’t make you decide until senior year.”

“Well, you be sure to come down here soon for a visit. You haven’t been in here to see us for such a long time.”

“I will,” I said. “Soon. Oh, listen, I hear her calling me. I really have to go.”

“Okay, doll,” Nadine said. “You tell your mama just to take it easy and not worry about us. She works so hard, I’m sure she needs the rest. You holler if you need anything.”

“Thanks. I will.”

I leaned into the kitchen to put the handset back and wiped it with the sleeve of my jacket. We still had one of those big, square, wall-mounted phones everyone else got rid of years ago. A while back, Mom had bought one of those fancy digital systems with four portable handsets and an answering machine. It was good in theory, but it took less than a week for every last handset to be lost in the piles, and eventually I dug out this old mustard yellow phone and put it back on the wall. Ugly, but at least we always knew where it was.

Just talking to someone on the outside had calmed me down a little. My breathing got back to normal, and I felt like I could think straight again. Nadine thought we were fine. People all over town were doing regular things at work, spending winter break at the mall, going to the grocery store. Nobody knew. I had time.

Everybody still thought we were exactly like them—I just had to keep it that way.

I took a couple of deep breaths and looked down at the cell phone that was still in my left hand. Once I dialed those three numbers, there would be no turning back. Slowly, I closed it. There really wasn’t much reason to hurry, if you thought about it. Why call 911 when someone was so obviously dead? The paramedics couldn’t help someone who’d had their head cut off or had been shot straight through the heart—or had died under a six-foot-tall stack of National Geographics.

I walked back toward Mom’s room, forcing my eyes to travel past the magazines and focus on Mom’s face. She looked peaceful—relaxed, even. If you didn’t know she was dead, she actually looked pretty good. Most of the time lately her face had rippled with frown lines. At least when I was around.

I couldn’t even remember the last thing I said to her. Last words were supposed to be meaningful, about how much you loved the person and how much you were going to miss them, and the last thing she’d said to me was something about scissors. Or was it about going to Kaylie’s? Of course, she probably had other last words that nobody was around to hear. Did those count? My mind started reeling again, and I shook my arms to try to release some of the energy.

I took a couple of steps backward toward my room so I could think a little better. Here, the path was wider and you could see patches of the dirty brown carpet that covered all the floors, but only appeared here and there through the drifts of garbage, like jagged cracks in the earth. My chest felt heavy, and my breathing was fast and shallow as the panic started to wash over me again. I couldn’t possibly deal with all of this by myself.

I clicked my phone open again. This was crazy. I hit the numbers and held it to my ear, my left hand shaking so violently I had to reach over with my right hand to try to steady it. It rang twice. Three times. Come on, answer, I thought, all of a sudden feeling like I had to hurry. I switched the phone to my other ear just in time to hear the voice mail click on.

Hey, this is Phil. I’m probably on the phone, so leave a message and I’ll call you back. I waited for the beep, and then snapped the phone shut. What kind of message could I possibly leave him?