Ted shifts his gaze to the carpet.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I’m trying to be ruthless. I’m taking Dad to his new home tomorrow, then the estate agent wants to take photos of an empty house.”
“Do you have to sell it?” I ask, noticing he looks tired, his eyelids heavy.
“I can’t afford to keep it, not with Dad’s care.”
“I thought doctors earn a fortune?” I say, drawing out the word fortune.
Ted looks at his hands. “Well, my career is in about as good a state as my marriage at the moment.”
“Oh.” I feel a jolt of concern. “How come?”
Ted inspects his knuckles then clenches and unclenches his hands.
“It doesn’t matter.” He glances across at me, almost shyly, then groans. “I’m so bad at this stuff, Laura.” For a moment I think he means talking to me, but then I see he’s gesturing toward the boxes.
“Let me help you,” I offer.
“You don’t want to help me sort through my parents’ junk at eleven thirty at night,” he says, but strangely, I do.
“I’m good at this kind of thing, please, let me help.”
Ted’s lips move into a grateful smile and he gives a small shrug of acceptance. He disappears upstairs and brings down more boxes, and we quietly unpack the contents. There is old clothes, paperwork, bundles of letters, old bits and pieces collected over a lifetime. His mother’s silver-plated hairbrush, dusty watercolors of the English countryside, a calendar from 1995, sticky cookbooks, and half-empty face creams. Endless coat hangers and jars full of pens, boxes of outdated electrical items, a VHS player and an old-fashioned toaster—things no one would ever want or need.
“Gerry didn’t want to sort through any of this?”
I can see why Ted has been overwhelmed by the task.
“We started doing it together, but it was upsetting him,” he explains. “He tries not to dwell on the past and packing up a house is pretty much a field trip in nostalgia. In the end, he packed up a box of things he wants to keep, the rest he was happy for me to deal with. I figured it’s enough of a wrench making him leave this house without forcing him to rake through the ashes of his life too.”
“You’re not making him leave, you know,” I say, hearing the guilt in Ted’s voice. “He can’t live here on his own anymore. The move isn’t down to you.”
Ted rubs an eye with his finger. The air is heavy with dust, and my eyes begin to itch too.
“I guess not.” He doesn’t sound convinced. He picks up a glass paperweight and turns it over in his hands. “I thought I’d just chuck all this stuff, but it feels too—I don’t know—disrespectful, not to at least look through it all.”
“There was so much of my mum’s stuff I didn’t know what to do with,” I say, looking around. “It’s strange, the things it upset me to throw away. Weirdly, her toothbrush really got me. It suddenly felt the saddest thing that she’d never brush her teeth again.”
“What happened to your mum?” he asks, cautiously.
“Colon cancer. It was very advanced, happened quickly.” I think Ted’s the first person I’ve said that to without crying.
Ted gives me a nod of empathy and understanding, and I feel the depth of compassion in his eyes, none of the pity or embarrassment I usually see when I tell people about my mother.
“Anyway, I suspect it’s easier to sort through a stranger’s things,” I say, clapping my hands, returning to the task in hand. “We’ll make piles. Keep, Bin, Recycle, Sell, that’s the way to do it.” It’s already eleven thirty p.m., but having felt tired at Jasper’s house, I now feel a second wind of energy with the prospect of being helpful to Ted.
* * *
*
We work in companionable silence, occasionally holding up things we’re unsure of, waiting for the other to point to the pile they think it should go in. I feel useful, filling bin bags and folding clothes for the charity shop.
Picking up a box of videos, I flick through the titles. “Psycho, Strangers on a Train, To Catch a Thief, someone really is a Hitchcock fan then.”
Ted leans across to look, then he spreads his legs wide on the floor and pulls the box between them.
“I used to treasure these,” he says, picking one out, tapping the label fondly. “These were my teenage years—Hitchcock on a Friday night, Mum baking wonders for my friends in the kitchen.” His eyes sparkle as he turns the VHS box over in his hands. “I went to this special screening of Vertigo a few years ago. As soon as the film started, I could have sworn I smelled fried dough.” He spreads his fingers in front of his face and inhales, as though replicating the experience. “Your mind can play tricks on you like that.”