“Hi, Mrs. Hennessey,” said Rochelle. “Hi, Barry.”
Barry, about eight or nine, ducked his head. Mrs. Hennessey emitted a faint smile. The two climbed into their car.
“Drinks,” said Rochelle. Then she pointed her way around the cul-de-sac: “Smokes pot every single day. Batshit crazy. Husband tried to grope me after I babysat for his daughter a couple years ago. Kid hospitalized for depression. I’d be tempted to call it just this cul-de-sac but it’s everywhere. My mom started bringing things home when my dad left, and she couldn’t let anything go, I mean ever. So, room by room, it just filled up with junk. It’s so sad, and nobody hates it more than she does. Well, I do, I guess. But whatever I tried backfired horribly. Like, once I tried to take out a bag of trash, and she went out in the middle of the night and brought it back inside and put it under her bed.”
“Trash?” Sally said. She was having trouble getting her head around this.
“Yeah. And then once I just told her I’m doing this, I’m clearing it out, and I spent a weekend not listening to her even though she was crying and yelling at me, and I hauled stuff to the dump so she couldn’t bring it back, but she got so horribly depressed after I did it. I was afraid to leave her alone. I mean, I didn’t go to school for almost two weeks. And I ended up apologizing to her and telling her I’d never do it again, never even sneak anything out of the house without her permission, which of course she’ll never give. At least not without therapy and medication, which she’ll never consent to.”
“But … what does she do when she’s finished with something? Like, I don’t know … a candy bar wrapper. Or a bottle of conditioner?”
“She’s never finished,” Rochelle said shortly. “She’s never prepared to be abandoned by a candy wrapper or an empty bottle. It’s too hard for her. My leaving the house is unbearable. I’m actually really proud of her that she’s been able to let me go, and so far away. Weirdly, I think of her as brave.” She looked out past the pot house, the groping father house, to the road beyond. “But I can’t let anyone in. I’d say I wish I could, but I don’t wish it, and you wouldn’t either, if you could see it. Or smell it.”
Sally recoiled. She couldn’t help herself.
“You mean, it’s dirty?”
Rochelle gave her a queer look. Then, with real compassion, she said: “Yes, Sally. Very dirty. Very smelly. Very uncomfortable for you, trust me. I would never have brought you here voluntarily, for your own sake. On the other hand, I’m not going to be embarrassed. Like I said, it’s an illness. People get ill, and sometimes they’re lucky and recover. But sometimes not. This is a not-recovery situation.”
“But … do you understand it? I mean, in therapy, did you figure out why?”
Rochelle crossed her arms. She was cold, too, Sally saw. She was still focused on the road beyond, the darkening sky over the trees. How late was it now?
“I thought I had, at various times. At one point I convinced myself it had to do with environmentalism—you know, keeping things out of landfills, or the ocean. Then I thought: it’s art. She’s making some kind of art. She’s expressing something she’s never been able to express. I tried very hard to make the world fit what she was doing, so I could make it acceptable, if maybe not exactly normal. I just thought: okay, my mom is unique. She isn’t the typical Ellesmere hausfrau, keeping up with the Joneses. She didn’t care about the Joneses, she cared about saving the wishbone from the chicken in a special wishbone jar. That was quirky. But then also the rest of the chicken in another jar. And then our neighbor’s chicken in another jar. Anyway, I gave up. Or no, I didn’t give up, exactly, I just downshifted to maintenance. Psychic maintenance.”
“Hers?” said Sally, crossing her legs.
“No. Mine. Hers is out of my control. Or so my therapist—my multiple therapists—tell me.” She sighed. “Sally, I wish you’d called. I wish I could invite you in. I wish you could stay overnight and we could sit on the couch and watch Letterman and eat popcorn, but none of that is possible. All I can do is drive you to the train station and wait for the next train with you, and see you back at school in a couple weeks. If you’ll just hang on a minute, I need to pee,” said Rochelle, who got up, opened the door, and disappeared inside, leaving Sally more uncomfortable than before. It was nearly dark, the leafy dark of the suburbs, with the flickering lights of the cul-de-sac televisions. She felt levitational with loneliness, and so terribly sad. And desperately, she too needed to pee.