Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [30]
Jan had already started her shift and met me as I stepped off the elevator.
“Whatever they’re serving down there must be toxic. You look terrible,” she said and steered me to the sofa.
“Happy to see you too,” I told her and plopped on the cushions. Jan started to sit next to me, but I held up my hand to stop her. “If you’re going to sit, please be gentle. My stomach is sloshy, but I need something. How's the stash of Diet Cokes and crackers?”
“That's not dinner. You haven’t eaten well since you’ve been here. What about a sandwich? Or soup? Both?”
“None of the above. How about peanut butter and jelly? I can handle that.”
“No problem. In fact, you’re in luck. We already have peanut butter on the floor. It's Matthew's, but I’m sure he’ll be a good boy about sharing. I’ll send him down for some of those packs of jelly Cathryn told me you’re so attached to.” Jan patted my hand and walked down the hall to find the peanut butter.
By the time the crew returned from dinner and the ritual volleyball game, I‘d retreated to my bed. The gaggle of voices in the hall reminded me my new roomie would be joining me tonight, and Jan would be calling “lights out” soon. My moment of decision.
I could: a) stay awake and attempt a mini-bonding experience with Theresa, or b) turn off the lamp, wiggle under the covers, face the wall, and let her think I was sleeping. The kicker was neither option was an honest one. I’d either be pretending to want to be friendly with Theresa or pretending to be asleep.
The door creaked open.
“Man, how does this little white bread chick expect me to see in this room?”
Theresa flipped on the overhead lights, and I flipped on the bed. I plowed my face in the pillow.
So much for any of the above.
“Hey, I wake you up?”
The next morning I woke up to an empty room. Theresa's bed was unmade, and her boxer shorts and T-shirt were on the floor. At least she wasn’t the queen of neat. Not that, judging by her disorganized hair, I really expected her to be. But, obviously, I’d been wrong before about lots of things. Having to share a room with someone as bizarre as Theresa was enough to deal with. I certainly didn’t need my mother's clean clone following me into therapy.
My mother had a place for everything, and everything had its place. Dad referred to their house as the museum. In the kitchen, the collection of four tin canisters on the left side of the cook top all faced large apples out. In the family room, the coffee table arrangement moved left to right: a stack of three books chosen because the hardcover shades coordinated with the room's harvest colors, a woven basket filled with large pine cones Dad merrily brought home from the golf course (“Aren’t these remarkable, Lola? Can you believe the size of these things?”), and three inches up and two over, a fan of four magazines that were replaced monthly. I wouldn’t dare move one of her knickknacks for fear some silent alarm would reverberate in my mother's clean control room.
One night, after too much ouzo at the Greek Festival, Dad zigzagged through the crowd to find Carl and me as we watched the Hellenic Dancers. “Quick, gotta tell you the new name I came up with for your mother. Sh.” He looked around, spotted her, and waved as she stood in the bakery line for more baklava. “I’m … I’m getting Morrie over at the trophy shop to make a plaque for her. It's going to have her name and—” He slapped the table with giggling delight, “—a line that says, ‘official rep for the FBI—Female Bathroom Inspectors,’ and he's drawing a little toilet underneath.” He must have changed his mind when the anise-flavored liquor worked its way out of his system, because he was still alive months later.
All those years of cleaning, dusting, polishing, vacuuming, swishing, and swashing had taken their toll. When I finally moved out of my parents’ house, I became a creature of clutter. I surrounded myself with a happy jumble of books and papers and dishes, both clean and dirty. The disorder comforted me. Drove my mother crazy. She’d wince when