A Clean Sweep

  I need to wake up. By the time she stepped out of the shower, she smelled coffee brewing.

  Oh, I love Loren.

  She threw on jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers and made her way out to the kitchen. Loren was also dressed in dejunking chic fashion, jeans and sneakers and a tank top under a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She’d also pulled her hair up into a messy bun on the back of her head.

  Good idea. Essie had stopped at a ponytail. She pulled the band out of her hair and quickly twisted it up and off her neck. Less chance of catching it on something in that fricking maze.

  “Thank you sooo much,” Essie moaned as Loren poured her a mug of coffee.

  “Like I said, coffee is mandatory in this house.” Loren prepared her own mug. “So how was dinner last night?”

  “They were very nice.” She sipped at her own coffee. Truth be told, she hadn’t wanted to leave their house, wanted to curl up on their couch, preferably in their laps.

  And that scared her.

  It wasn’t like her to just feel that way about someone.

  I hope this isn’t a bad thing.

  Her mom appeared, dressed and looking far too chipper for that early hour and also allowing Essie to shove her thoughts about the men out of her mind.

  “Good morning, sweetheart.”

  “Are you all right?” Essie asked her.

  “I’m great.” Her mom’s bright and cheery mask slipped only a fraction before she firmly fixed it in place again. “I’m ready to get started as soon as possible.”

  Once Ross was up, he took the keys to the truck and to her mom’s car, as well as Essie’s rental, and moved them across the street to their driveway and yard. Essie helped Loren cook them breakfast, and then Mark showed up a little after six.

  Essie felt somewhat guilty that she was attracted to his brothers, even though she knew they likely didn’t feel anything like that toward her. She never should have kissed Mark. It was wrong to dump him twice when he was such a nice guy.

  I won’t be here long-term, so it doesn’t matter. I’ll just be more careful.

  Moments later, Mark’s brothers showed up with a work crew, as did Purson and his film crew. And by the time Purson had Essie, her mom, and Ted set up with mics, two large trucks had arrived and were looking for guidance on where to drop the large trash containers they hauled.

  Mark and his brothers helped guide the trucks, one at a time, into the driveway, and from there it felt like Essie was swept up into a tornado.

  Ross coordinated the arrival and assistance of their friends, who also seemed to know the three brothers. Essie was introduced to so many people in such a short amount of time she knew she wouldn’t remember most of their names.

  By eight o’clock, Loren had guided Essie back across the street under the guise of getting more coffee. Apparently Purson had instructed his film crew not to follow her.

  “How are you doing?” Loren asked.

  “Apparently not as good as Mom is,” she said as she stared through the front windows at the anthill of activity. Already, the first things were being hauled out of the garage and tossed into the trash containers. Someone had set up two portable picnic tents in the front yard, with tarps spread out under them, to use as a holding area for items they wanted her mom to look at to decide their fate. In the backyard, another set of tents and tarps were set up for the same purpose.

  A portable storage unit had also been delivered, and several boxes of photographs and papers had been deposited there for temporary storage.

  Her mom had shocked Essie by declaring she wanted the house stripped down to the bare floors where possible, all the carpeting ripped out, the beds, sofa, and any other “soft” furniture thrown away. She only wanted to keep things like the table and chairs, bookcases, and other items of furniture that could be cleaned.

  Then a small cheer went up. Essie watched as a group of about fifteen men forced the large garage door up while her mom clapped in glee. They helped another man, who’d been inside, extricate himself from the mound of stuff that seemed to flow from the opening, like a mudslide of junk.

  Her mom, standing nearby, made an unmistakable gesture, waving both her arms at the garage and then at the trash containers.

  Throw it all away.

  The men set upon the pile, using large shovels and their bare hands as they began digging out the space.

  “I should be out there with her,” Essie said, feeling guilty.

  “No one blames you for feeling overwhelmed,” Loren said, making her take the mug of coffee.

  “Oh, dammit. I forgot to ask Amy to send me those pictures Purson wanted.” She quickly texted her friend, who responded a few minutes later that she would do it as soon as she got home from her shift.

  Apparently all efforts had been shifted to the garage. By the time Essie finished her coffee and rejoined her mom twenty minutes later, they’d only made a few feet of progress despite every available worker getting involved.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” her mom asked with a smile on her face. “I’ll have a garage again. I’ll be able to park my car in there.”

  Essie draped an arm around her mom’s shoulders, holding her close and feeling horribly sad that her mother’s existence had been rendered to such a sad benchmark of progress. “Yeah, it’ll be nice for you.”

  Ted took a moment to join them. “How are you holding up?” he asked them.

  “This is so wonderful,” her mom gushed.

  “I feel guilty I’m not doing more,” Essie said.

  He gave her a kindly smile. “We decided to focus on the garage because if it rains, we can also use it as a staging area.”

  “That makes sense.”

  He looked to where everyone was pitching in. “I think we have enough people in there right now.” He returned to her. “But if you want to go into the kitchen and start on the floor in there, that’s a one-person job.”

  “Okay.”

  He led her to a trailer, where they had all their supplies stored, and handed her two boxes of contractor’s bags. A cameraman and sound tech broke off and followed them.

  “Just fill them and put them near the doorway,” Ted told her. “I’ll have someone come take them out for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Aware of her shadows, Essie rounded the garage and headed into the kitchen. Like Purson had the day before, she knew the cameraman would periodically ask her questions. Essie set the boxes of plastic bags in the kitchen sink and looked around, trying to decide where to start, the crew scrambling to stay out of her way as much as possible.

  I shouldn’t have to do this.

  But she knew she had to do it, to help her mom.

  Essie ripped the box open and pulled a bag out, deciding to work from the corner where the fridge was located and make her way across the kitchen. It took her less than a minute to fill the first bag with newspapers and magazines and tie the top flaps off. She dragged it over to the doorway and started filling a second bag.

  She tried to remember the good times with her father and had to dig deep, back to her childhood, before middle school, to find one. Standing next to him at the stove while he cooked, frying up a batch of fish he’d caught that afternoon from a local fishing pier.

  Before she’d realized how flawed her father was. When he was still her daddy and could do no wrong in her eyes.

  By the time she’d finished filling the first box of bags, she was crying and didn’t realize it. It wasn’t until the cameraman spoke to her that she remembered they were there, wedged into the hallway to stay out of her way while unobtrusively documenting her progress.

  “What are you thinking about right now?”

  She sniffled back tears. “How my father wasn’t always like this. How I wish I could have that man back, the one who spent time with me and Mom.”

  Josh appeared in the doorway and, without a word, grabbed two of the bags and hauled them out. In a few minutes, a steady line of people coming to take out
the filled bags had whittled the pile down to nothing.

  For Essie’s part, she felt like she wasn’t making any progress. Although there was now a larger clear space on the kitchen floor, it only served to accentuate the clutter in the rest of the kitchen, and the house.

  Ted returned to check on her, bringing her three more boxes of contractor’s bags.

  “Is someone bringing more stuff in while I’m not looking?” she tried to joke. “I feel like Dad’s ghost is here adding crap as fast as I get it out of here.”

  “That’s a normal feeling,” he assured her. “We haven’t really begun the process inside yet. You should come take a break and check out the garage.”

  She did, following him out through the side door. It was weird being able to see daylight over the top of the canyon wall of the path from the doorway. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the large garage door standing open. When she walked around to the front of the garage, her mom’s beaming smile greeted her.

  “Look!” she happily exclaimed, walking inside the garage. They’d excavated about ten feet inside. “And I haven’t saved anything so far except a rake and a shovel,” she proudly announced.

  “That’s great, Mom,” Essie said, hoping her smile looked real.

  Inside, she was crying, her soul curled up in a tight little ball. Again, how sad was it that her mom had been forced to find joy in excavating her husband’s legacy from her home?

  Ted rested his hand on Essie’s shoulder. “Let’s take you and your mom into the backyard for a few minutes, okay?”

  She nodded, letting him guide them back there, a film crew following.

  No one had started using this staging area yet. “Corrine,” he started, “how are you holding up?”

  Her mom eagerly nodded. “You have no idea how happy I feel right now. I know I should be upset, but I’m not. I’m free!”

  “However you feel is valid,” Ted assured her. “Purson asked how you’d feel about a crew going with you to the funeral home this afternoon.”

  “I’m fine with that if Essie is.” Her mom looked at her.

  Essie shrugged. “Whatever Mom wants.”

  “Okay,” her mom said. “That’s fine then.” A look of horror crossed her face. “Will things stop while we’re gone? Because I don’t want to hold up the cleaning.”

  Ted kindly smiled. “No, nothing will stop. You’ve made it clear what items we’re looking for, what you want to personally check before it gets tossed, and we’ll make sure anything we’re doubtful about will be saved in a staging area.”

  “Oh, okay.” She smiled. “I really feel happy for the first time in…I can’t remember since when.” She hugged Essie. “Thank you for coming home, sweetheart. I love you so much.”

  Essie choked back her emotions as she hugged her mom. “Love you, too. I just wish it’d been under better circumstances.”

  * * * *

  Essie threw herself into the process, making what she considered visible progress in the kitchen after several hours and refusing to stop for a lunch break when everyone else did.

  She didn’t want to stop. She wanted every last scrap of useless crap gone from the house. The film crew left her alone so they could go eat as she continued filling bags. New, old, she didn’t care what the stuff was, if it wasn’t something she knew belonged to her mom, she trashed it.

  Mark walked into the kitchen, alone. She wondered what he was doing when he made her turn around and lifted the hem of her shirt.

  Then she realized he was turning off her mic pack.

  He put his arms around her, hugging her from behind. “How are you really?” he softly asked.

  She shook her head. “If I start crying now, I might not stop for a long, long time.”

  He turned her around to face him and held her. “Are you going to be okay at the funeral home today? I can ask Purson to call off the crew.”

  “I’ll be okay.” She let out a ragged laugh. “At least if I cry there I’ll appear to be a reasonably sympathetic human being and not a coldhearted bitch.”

  “Stop. No one thinks that about you.”

  She was about to respond when her phone buzzed in her pocket. Untangling herself from Mark, she pulled it out and found a text from Amy.

  Went home @ lunch. Check UR mail. Luv U!

  She thumbed through to her e-mail and downloaded ten pictures. The first five were of their apartment, including Amy’s room, showing how neat and tidy they were compared to…this.

  She let Mark look over her shoulder. “Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said you’re not messy.”

  “No.” The next picture made Essie burst out laughing. Amy had taken a close-up selfie, eyes crossed, cheeks puckered, and her tongue stuck out.

  Mark smiled. “She seems like a good friend.”

  “She is. I love her like a sister.” She thumbed through the rest of the pictures showing their apartment before texting her friend back.

  Thank U. I needed that. Love U 2.

  Amy texted her back immediately.

  :)

  Mark turned her microphone back on before leading her outside to where everyone was eating. He prepared Essie a plate of food while she e-mailed Purson the pictures of the apartment.

  As the producer previewed them on his phone, he walked over to Essie, also switching off her microphone as well as his own before speaking with her. “I don’t mean this to sound the wrong way, but believe me, you won’t look bad when this episode airs. This here shows the contrast. A child of a hoarder reclaiming her life and controlling it. This is hope for others. This is a good thing.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I’m rarely wrong. This will be a powerful episode in a good way.”

  He switched their mics back on and the rest of the crew started clearing the garage again while Essie sat and watched as she ate. When she finished, she was going to return to the kitchen when her mom stopped her.

  “One of the men on the cleaning crew said his brother-in-law needs a work truck. Can you help me clean out your dad’s truck?”

  Essie cast a longing look at the house. At least in there, even when she was being filmed, she hadn’t felt like she was on display.

  “Okay. Let me get some bags.” Now knowing where they kept the supplies in the trailer, Essie grabbed a box of contractor’s bags and headed over to the truck with her mom. With them working on each side of the truck, it only took them a few minutes to get the worst of the stuff emptied out of the cab.

  It wasn’t until Essie pried open the glove box, which likely hadn’t been opened in years, that she felt like she’d been punched in the gut.

  Inside, nestled among outdated registration paperwork, long-dead ink pens, scraps of paper, and other assorted detritus, she found one of her school pictures, maybe from fourth or fifth grade. She also found a faded Polaroid of her and her father, taken in front of the garage. He stood behind her, a smile on his face, while Essie held up a stringer of four fish they’d caught that day.

  Written on the bottom of the picture in her dad’s handwriting—My little fisherman.

  She slid to the ground, landing on her ass with the pictures clamped in her fingers as she rocked back and forth, crying. Her mom hurried around the truck to the passenger side and sat next to her.

  “What is it—oh, sweetie.”

  She let her mom hold her close as she cried. She remembered that day, one of the few good memories she had of her father.

  Like the picture, the memory had become buried under a mountain of other crap.

  Mark and Ted both rushed over, soon followed by Josh, when they realized there was a problem.

  Essie held the picture against her chest, her eyes clamped tightly closed. “Why, Mom?” she whispered. “Why weren’t we good enough for him?”

  She was aware of Ted kneeling behind them, his hands on Essie’s shoulders. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Neither of you. He was sick, and unless he wanted to get help for it, nothi
ng either of you could have done would have changed what or who he was. He had to want it. It wasn’t a reflection on either of you.”

  “But he had a choice,” Essie said. “He had a choice, and he chose wrong. For years.”

  “And nothing you say or do will change that now,” Ted gently said. “All you can do is try to understand that it wasn’t about you or your mom. It wasn’t that he didn’t love the two of you. It was about a silent battle he waged and lost inside himself.”

  Someone pressed a wad of tissues into Essie’s hand. Loren, if Essie had to guess, but she wasn’t ready to open her eyes yet.

  She wanted to cling to the precious, bittersweet memory.

  Wanted to hold on to the illusion that this was all a nightmare.

  Eventually she opened her eyes and, laying the pictures in her lap, blew her nose. After a moment, she threw the tissues away in one of the bags and picked up the pictures. Getting to her feet, she tucked the photos in her back pocket.

  “I want this done,” she said, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Let’s get the truck emptied, and then it’s one more thing checked off the list.”

  “Do you want to go talk in private?” Ted asked.

  She shook her head, not daring to look him in the eyes. She knew if she did, if she saw the concern that would certainly be mirrored there considering his tone of voice, she knew she’d break down crying again.

  Instead, she forced a smile. “Nope. I want this truck cleaned out and off their lawn.”

  Thirty minutes later, the truck was emptied, her mother had given the title and a bill of sale to the new owner, who’d come to get it, and the new owner was driving it down the street with a promise to bring back the old license plate later that day, once he’d gotten the new one for it.

  Essie felt a mix of joy and sadness at war within her as she watched it go. One less piece of crap weighing her mother down.

  And a piece of her childhood—gone. For good or bad.

  I have memories. I need to try to weed the good ones out and toss the rest.

  Chapter Eleven

  Ross volunteered to drive Essie and her mom to the funeral home.