Dirty Secret (15 page)

None of the dance clubs was open, so we ended up at a smoky, loud, expat bar. While my friend was talking to some Italians, David asked how long she and I had been together. I practically choked on my beer.

“We're just friends,” I said.

“It's just that earlier, when you said you were with her, I thought you meant
with
her.”

“Right,” I said, laughing, and then added, “Not that there's anything wrong with it. I mean, you're gay, aren't you?”

He shook his head. “You're not the first person to think that, but no, I'm not.”

Interesting, I thought, and scooted my barstool a little closer to his. David told me some of Prague's fascinating history, and he made me laugh, which I've always been a sucker for. We stayed perched on our stools, talking and laughing long after my friend, exhausted from performing, said good-bye and went back to the hotel. My train for Paris was leaving at 6:30 the next morning, and when it got to be 2:00 a.m., David and I decided to just stay up. He offered to go with me to retrieve my bag from the hotel, and then take me to the train station when it was time.

And that time came way too fast.

As David carried my bag through the echoing halls of the station, I tried to convince him to get on the train with me. And he would have, except that he didn't have his passport with him; besides, in two days he had friends flying in from London. It wouldn't be right, he said, to leave them on their own.

Though I'd known David less than twelve hours, the good-bye was difficult.

The writing workshop was horrible. And I couldn't stop thinking about David. So after my third day in Paris I called him and asked if he wanted me to come back to Prague.

“Of course,” he said and I got right back on another train.

For three days we binged on hearty dumplings, goulash, and rich thick beer, rode the trams among Prague's perpetually making out teenagers, drank pumpkin/ginger/forest-flavored Becherovka, gawked at the withered, centuries-old hand in the church of St. Jacub, relaxed at a secret teahouse where you had to pull on a silk rope to be allowed in, walked and walked over narrow cobblestone streets and through the sprawling chess-piece castle, and talked, talked, talked.

Our second good-bye was even more difficult.

I had to take a bus back to Paris to catch my flight home, and during the long ride I made a surprisingly easy decision: David couldn't leave San Francisco because of his graduate program, but I could leave New York. I'd lived in San Francisco for three years prior to moving to New York and still had warm feelings for the city and plenty of friends there. I called him from the Paris airport and asked what he thought of my idea. I listened closely for any hesitation from him, but there was none. He was just excited. He even suggested that once he graduated we could travel around Europe for a while, move back to New York if I wanted, or both. So within a few days of my return to New York, I began making arrangements to leave again.

I'm not normally impulsive. I usually agonize over big decisions, or any decision, really. That might have been why my dad and many of the people I knew in New York thought I was crazy to make such a hasty move. But not my mother. My mother was thrilled about it.

And she took credit for it, too. “It's because I gave you that money that you could go to Europe, and that's how you met him! You wouldn't have met him if it wasn't for me!”

It wasn't exactly true—I certainly would have gone anyway, though the money she gave me enabled me to not worry so much about things while I was traveling. And I definitely appreciated the help with my student loans, especially as I watched some of my former classmates struggling. Still, she was in the midst of grieving Roger's death, so I let her think what she wanted to; it did me no harm. If it made her feel better to take credit for me meeting the man who would become my husband, so be it.

Of course, now that I'm looking through her cluttered house for bank statements, hoping to find evidence of another account somewhere, I regret taking those checks from her. I didn't keep track at the time, but over the course of five years she had to have given me at least $15,000. I never should have taken a penny.

“Mom, please,” I say now. “What are we going to do about your finances? I need to know how you're going to pay your bills.”

“I'm going to put some coffee on. Do you want some?” she asks, before she turns away and walks toward the kitchen. Yesterday we went to Target and bought her new sheets, towels, and a coffeemaker.

I begin sorting through a pile of sweaters on top of one of her dressers—picking up each one, folding it, and shoving it into one of the empty drawers. I just need to clear some surfaces. The
next time I come here, if I find the sweaters untouched in the drawer I'll sneak them out and donate them to Savers.

Eventually she comes back, sipping a cup of coffee. “Jessie,” she says, “don't worry about me. There really is more money.”

“Are you being serious?”

“Yes.”

I knew she had another stash somewhere. My dad and I couldn't have been off by that much, there's just no way.

“Where is it? Another bank?”

“It's not in a bank,” she says, and I don't like her mischievous tone.

I know where it's going to lead. “Don't say it—”

“Cat beds!” She practically falls on the floor laughing. “Just wait until you see them!”

I hoped at first that she was joking about the cat beds, but while cleaning I've come upon notes for other “inventions,” including a “money clip,” a “shopping list holder,” a “paintbrush holder,” and “knee pads.” Could she really be that clueless?

It's possible.

And I'm afraid her cluelessness will end in homelessness. It's always been a worry of mine. Since Roger's death she's said numerous times that she wanted to move: to live in a trailer (or that step van) in Florida, to become a traveling nurse, and for a while she was talking about just selling her house and renting an apartment with roommates—refusing to believe me when I told her how much rents were. As much of a problem as her house is, I've always felt she was safe tucked away there.

But I can't keep coming back here and cleaning like this, and the things that need repairing aren't going to fix themselves. This house is just too much for her.

And then, toward the end of the day, I finally find a letter from another bank.

I tear open the envelope. It's a savings account. With $10,000 in it.

“Ah, there it is,” my mother says, standing next to me.

“That's all your savings? This, plus the other account . . . that's forty-five thousand dollars. This is everything you have for when you retire?”

“Yeah,” she says, smiling as if it's an enormous sum.

“You must have more money—what about all those years of working overtime? Where did all that money go?”

“I don't know,” she says meekly.

All those Savers bags. Every meal eaten out. All the doubles, triples, quadruples of identical objects.

“Oh, Mom. What if you can't work again after the surgery, or if you have some kind of emergency? You could be completely wiped out.”

“I'll be fine,” she says, waving away my preposterous concern. As always.

That evening, when I'm done cleaning, I call my dad and he comes to pick me up. I get into the car and sink into the seat. Leaving her house is always like being inside the funhouse at the state fair—mirrored and dark and vaguely menacing—and getting to the end, when you walk out into the sunlight.

“Rough day?” my dad asks as he pulls away from the curb.

“You could say that.”

“At least there's just one more after this.”

“Right,” I say, too tired to explain that that's the problem: Tomorrow's my last day to clean and I haven't gotten nearly enough done.

As soon as we walk in the door, Sandy hands me a glass of red wine. “I had a feeling you'd need this,” she says. “This and a nice warm bubble bath.”

“Thanks,” I say, “and you're right.” I head up the stairs, where
I fill their claw-foot tub and climb in. When I emerge my muscles still ache, so I take some Advil. I put on one of Sandy's fuzzy bathrobes and go downstairs. Sandy's making curried chicken and the house smells like peppery curry and sweet coconut milk. My dad comes into the kitchen and grabs a nonalcoholic beer from the refrigerator, then sits down at the table.

“Guys,” I say, “I really need some advice.” I pour myself more wine from the bottle on the counter, then walk over and sit down next to my dad.

“Of course, honey, what is it?” he says. My dad's good at advice. He's still one of the first people I go to with a problem.

“I need to figure out how to get my mom's house in decent shape so she can sell it. You guys know contractors, right? I thought maybe I could tell you what's wrong with the house and you could call your contractors.”

“Honey,” my dad says, “your mother's house is not
your
problem.”

My dad and Sandy have been telling me for years to detach from my mother and her hoarding. But I can't.

“Yes, it is my problem,” I say. “Who else is going to look out for her? Who else does she have?”

“Well . . .” my dad starts, but then his voice trails off.

I put my head in my hands. “Jesus Christ, what am I going to do?”

Sandy comes over and puts her hand on my shoulder. I lift my head in time to see her shoot my dad a look. “Don't worry, sweetie. Of course we'll help you. What have you seen inside the house that needs fixing?”

“For starters, I'm pretty sure her basement's partially flooded, but I can't stand to be down there long enough to thoroughly check”—here I can see my dad's jaw clenching; he knows all about my mom's snake-teasing and it drives him
crazy—“the rain gutters need to be replaced, and I'm pretty sure there's a family of squirrels living above the front porch. And that's just what I can see. I know there's more.”

“Just from driving past it I can tell you that the exterior needs repainting,” Sandy says. “And the window frames need replacing.”

My dad takes a sip of his nonalcoholic beer and shakes his head. I understand his frustration: He remembers how nice the house used to be when we all first moved in thirty years ago—he remembers because he did a lot of the work himself. He's an excellent carpenter. My dad and Sandy left the yellow house five years after I did, and they're now in what they consider their dream house, and not just because my dad designed it and did much of the carpentry. It's a 1920s bungalow with shiny red oak floors and trim and perfect Arts and Crafts details: from the crown molding with dentils to the wainscoting to the built-in bookcases and intricate American Craftsman fireplace, mantel, and overmantel. Their house was even featured in a coffee-table book about bungalows. My dad and Sandy spend vacations swooning over homes, going to Pasadena to look at bungalows, touring Frank Lloyd Wright buildings throughout the Midwest. In many ways their lives revolve around nice houses. I have no idea how I could have one parent who's a connoisseur of beautiful homes while the other wrecks her house through hoarding.

“She's destroying that house,” I say. “I have to get her into a condo before it's too late and she has nothing.”

“The problem is that those repairs cost a lot of money. But if she doesn't do those things, she won't be able to sell it,” Sandy says.

“Won't be able to sell it at all, or just won't be able to sell it for much?” I ask.

“At all,” Sandy says.

“But honey, don't worry. She'll be fine,” my dad says. “She's probably got a million bucks in a mattress somewhere.”

“She doesn't,” I say and tell them what I've discovered about her bank accounts. “And that's all, I'm sure of it.”

“That can't be,” my dad says. “Where did it all go? All that overtime?”

“If you think about it, she only worked a little overtime when she was with Roger, then she didn't work at all during the last year he was alive—all those really intense long hours were after he died. So the major overtime was only for about six years.”

“Still,” my dad says. “That's a lot of overtime.”

I'm stabbed with guilt. “I shouldn't have cashed all those checks she sent me—I should have known better.” Though I realize $15,000 wouldn't make
that
much of a difference to her now, it would have made a slight difference. I just didn't know that her irresponsibility extended into financial matters. I thought that was one area of her life I didn't have to worry about.

“And she won't qualify for social security for two more years,” I say.

“Do you know how much she'll get?” my dad asks.

“I have no idea, and neither does she. She claims to have thrown out those letters you get every year telling you about social security benefits.” I laugh, but it sounds more like a bitter snort. “Those would be the one thing she gets rid of.”

My dad pushes back his chair. “We can figure it out.”

We go into his office and he sits down at his computer. We get her social security number from the power of attorney papers Sandy signed. It takes five minutes online to learn how much her monthly payments will be once she qualifies. And it's not much.

*   *   *  

THE NEXT MORNING
, when I arrive at my mother's to clean for the last time, I bring some harsh news: From now on she can spend only $900 dollars a month, because that's how much she'll get from social security. I want to get her into the habit now. I've decided to not harass her anymore about selling her house, at least until after the surgery. I've given her enough stress. And there's more to come: I tell her that she's got to curtail her favorite activity, shopping. No more Savers.