The Opposite Of Tidy (4 page)

Good grief. What was Junie thinking? Her dad had only left a few months ago! She poked at her rice pilaf, her appetite gone. She was crazy. She didn’t want her father to marry Mrs. D. And besides, he was already occupied with That Woman. What Junie wanted was for her father to unceremoniously dump That Woman and come back home, where he belonged. What Junie really wanted was for her mother to be normal again.

And anyway, where would her mother be in all of
this? Festering away in the hovel down the street? Junie couldn’t let that happen. No matter what, she loved her mother. More than anything. She just wanted things to be different. She wanted her mother to change. That was all.

After dinner, Mrs. D. shooed Junie and Tabitha off to the basement so they could do their homework. After half an hour of puzzling out Mr. Benson’s evil math equations, Junie brought herself to let Tabitha in on the fact of the matter.

“I didn’t tell you everything.”

Tabitha put a finger in her textbook, marking where they were. “What’d you leave out?”

“The most important part.” She told her what had happened, and exactly what and how Wade had said what he did. “Obviously he likes you better. I didn’t say so before because I was enjoying five minutes of thinking he might like me.”

“And he probably does.” Tabitha shook her head. “You can’t tell anything from what he said.”

“It’s how he said it,” Junie said.

“
Or
how he said it.” Tabitha moved her finger and took her attention back to the textbook. “You can’t tell.”

“I can so.”

“I bet he likes you.”

“And I bet he likes
you
.”

Tabitha smiled. “I won’t lie. If he did, I’d be thrilled.”

“No more than I would be, if he liked me.”

Junie and Tabitha appraised each other, and then Tabitha said, “We always knew this might happen.”

“Yeah, well.” Junie arched her eyebrows, hoping to look haughty. “Maybe you should develop an interest in a different type.”

“Why don’t you?” Tabitha mimicked Junie’s face.

The two of them grinned at each other. “Whatever,” Junie said. “If it’s you, I’ll be happy for you.”

“And if it’s you, I’ll be happy for you.”

There was a tiny, sharp lull then. Just enough time for both girls to wonder if that was true.

“But it’ll be you,” Junie said quickly.

“You don’t know that,” Tabitha said. “And do you know how I know? Because if the tables were turned, and I’d been in the van and you’d been at a piano adjudication, he’d have said the same thing!”

Junie had to admit that Tabitha had a point. “I guess that’s possible.”

“He probably just really wants extra people for his bottle drive thing. Nothing more, nothing less. He probably isn’t interested in either of us. Maybe he’s gay.”

“I doubt it.” Junie glanced down at her math worksheet. The numbers shimmered like hot pavement. She hated math. She hated crazy-making boy encounters. Well, maybe she didn’t exactly hate them . . . perhaps she even liked them. But that didn’t make them any less confusing.

“You know what?” Tabitha handed Junie her own sheet with the answers filled in. “Either way, we’ll be okay. Right? If he likes you, I’ll be cool. And if he likes me, you’ll be cool. And if he likes Ollie, we’ll both be cool.”

They laughed at the thought.

The phone rang, but neither of them dove for it. They both knew it would be Junie’s mom. Sure enough, they heard Mrs. D.’s reassuring murmurs trickle down from upstairs. Then silence. Then footsteps. Mrs. D. appeared on the stairs, a small plate in each hand.

“Juniper Rawley. Your mom had no idea where you were!”

“I’m always here. She knows that. Where else would I be?”

“But you hadn’t told her. And you told me you had.”

“I told you she wouldn’t mind. And she didn’t, right?”

“I’m not so sure about that.” Mrs. D. tried to look full of lawyerly discipline, but Junie had a point. Her mother could have called earlier, but she hadn’t. And they all knew why. First she’d been busy making a scene with Junie’s father in the driveway, and then she hadn’t bothered because she knew exactly where Junie was. “It would have been much better had you been clear.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. D.,” Junie said. “I was flustered and messed up.”

“Apology accepted.” Mrs. D. set the plates in front of them. A little quenelle of vanilla ice cream rested in the centre, with a fan of roasted pear slices tucked beside it. “She said you could have dessert first, but then you are to go straight home. To your real home.” Again, she tried to sound firm, but she didn’t really. She set her hand on Junie’s shoulder and gave her a tender squeeze. And her tone was more gentle than stern. “I am sorry you’re going through this, Junie. You know you’re welcome here any time.”

Going through this
. Which “this” did she mean? The divorce?

“Or the usual ‘this’?” Junie asked Tabitha as she walked her home.

“Both.”

Junie stopped at the end of her driveway, Tabitha beside her. Inside, the only light was the blue flicker from the TV in the living room. In the houses on the rest of the block, a warm orange glow emanated from various rooms. A couple of porch lights were on, beckoning. Each one of those homes looked more inviting than her own.

“I wish the moms would let me sleep over on weeknights,” Junie said. “Even just once in a while.” It was a rule, though, and there was no breaking it. Junie was sure it was a rule not because they’d never get any sleep, but because it would hurt her mother’s feelings if she chose to sleep at Tabitha’s every night. And she didn’t want to sleep there every night. But after a day like this, she would. For sure, she would. After a day like this, she didn’t really want to go home at all.

“You’ll be okay.” Again, Tabitha read her mind. “You’ll go in, say goodnight and hide out in your room until morning. You don’t have to listen to her go on about your dad. And you don’t have to hang out in all that—”

“I know. All that crap.”

“Yeah.” Junie could hear the awkwardness in Tabitha’s voice. “Well, not crap, really. But—”

“Call a spade a spade, right?”

“I guess so. Night, Junie.” Tabitha hugged her. “Sweet dreams of Wade Jaffre.”

“You too, Tab.” She backed up the driveway, slowly. “And congratulations on your stellar piano performance!”

The front door had a creak, so it announced her arrival, no matter how stealthy she wanted to be.

“Junie?” her mom called, from what was called the living room in most houses. But in Junie’s house, it was not livable at all. She and Tabitha called it the unliving room. “I’m home.”

There was a pause. Her mother turned down the volume on the TV, but she could still hear some shrill lady pleading with her to buy a set of cubic zirconium earrings for only $29.99, including shipping.

“Come on in here for a minute.”

This was easier said than done. Junie hated going into the living room. It was the worst place in the whole house. And only because it was where her mother dwelt amongst her accumulated junk, like a foul queen amongst her wretched legions. Her mother was a hoarder—there was no better way to describe it. No stronger word. No more accurate word to describe the mountainous squalor. The front entrance was cluttered with boxes and padded envelopes from couriers and the mailman and delivery trucks, stuff she’d bought off the Shopping Channel and the Internet, stuff she hadn’t even bothered to open. The closet was jammed open with jackets and boots and hats. The hall leading to the living room was stacked with plastic
bins and crates and boxes full of more crap she didn’t need: MiracleMan Hair Rejuvenator from when Junie’s father started to go bald, the Fabio Fab Abs Machine from when her mother finally realized she’d gotten very fat, the Number Whiz Kid Genius Kit (Success Guaranteed!!!), another “system” that she’d ordered when it had become clear that Junie was seriously numerically challenged. And amongst all that, plain old garbage. Bags of old shopping bags, teetering stacks of washed out tin cans she “might need one day for a craft project” she had in mind. Leaning towers of old newspapers. Black garbage bags bursting with clothes that didn’t fit any of them any more but that might have “one or two good wears in them yet.” Shoeboxes jammed with pencil stubs and twist-ties and paper clips, margarine tubs bursting with old elastics.

The entire house had been overtaken by her mother’s
stuff
. Her crap, her doodads, her compulsive purchases, the detritus of her extreme and out-of-control hoarding. Junie couldn’t blame her father for leaving them, considering the mess he’d had to live with.

It took three times as long as it should have to make her way from the front door to the small patch in the living room that wasn’t occupied by stuff, stuff and more
stuff.
Broken lamps, rolled up carpeting from the old house they’d lived in (“In case we decide to use it in the basement . . .”), pillars of phone books, catalogues, takeout menus, yearbooks, old bills and receipts, entire sets of dishes still in the boxes (“But don’t you LOVE the pattern? You can have them when you go to college!”). The only free space was the short distance between her mother’s armchair
and the TV. A very small expanse of nothing. So as not to obscure her view. Sometimes Junie did her homework there, sitting on the floor with her books spread out around her while her mother watched the Shopping Channel. She only did this when she was feeling guilty about not hanging out with her mother enough. But that was rare. Increasingly rare. Mostly, Junie stayed in her room.

“My errant child,” her mother said drolly. “Returned to the hideous home front.”

“Don’t say that.” Junie hated it when her mom made jokes about the state of their home. It was so terrible; there was nothing funny about it. It was no laughing matter. Not at all.

“Why didn’t you come home after school?”

Junie didn’t answer. She looked at the TV.
The Amazing Closet Butler! Organizes up to sixty-three items! Indispensable.
Her mother wrote something in the notebook she kept by her chair.

“We don’t need that, Mom.”

“We could organize the front closet.”

“I
did
organize the front closet. Last year. And the year before that. It always goes back to being your stuff-it place for the mail and packages you never even bother to open.”

“There are coats and boots and such in there too.”

“Mom!”

“Junie!” Her mother held up her hands in a truce. “I get it, okay?” She paused. “Did you do your homework at Tabitha’s or do you still need to get it done?”

Apparently, she was not going to mention that Junie’s father had been there. Apparently she was not going to
mention the very public fight they’d had in the driveway. Apparently she was going to pretend that everything was business as usual. As usual as it could be in this mess.

“Did it at Tabitha’s.”

“You should get to bed, then.”

“So you can buy three Closet Butlers?” Junie couldn’t help the sarcasm. She was sorry for it the moment she’d said the words. But it was true. Junie’s mother would pick up the phone the minute Junie was out of sight. Her mother couldn’t help it. It was an addiction. As bad as a crack addict jonesing for a fix. That’s what her father told her. That was his explanation for it. That—along with the hoarding and the filth and every other problem her mother seemed to have—was why he wanted Junie to come live with him and That Woman.