Breakfast with Neruda (19 page)

“And even though we lived in a terrible room in the Mission District and survived on bread, fruit, and the McDonald's Dollar Menu, every day felt like an adventure.

“But soon the money issue got critical. Theo took a part-time job at the docks, partly to duplicate Kerouac's experience and partly for the cash. Since I was a runaway with a fake ID, I couldn't exactly get a regular job. And I was afraid to tell Theo the truth because I was afraid he'd send me back to Ohio. So I got a job in a laundry that hired illegals and paid cash. It was horrible work, but we both earned enough to survive. The only luxuries I allowed myself were an occasional latte and hair dye.

“But when my hands got too raw from washing hotel sheets and table linens, I started to panhandle. I hung out near trolley stations on Union Square and looked for tourists. All the while I looked for Karen, my mother. Sometimes Theo helped. Karen's last address was in Haight-Ashbury, and she could have been one of the thousands of street people who slumped inside doorways or begged on street corners. But we didn't find her there.

“We walked around the Mission, Castro, Sunset, and Golden Gate Park and asked people if they knew Karen. All I had was a twenty-year-old picture I had stolen from my mom's photo album. Nobody seemed to know her, but the people we asked were mostly high and wanted money.

“One evening I showed Karen's picture to a toothless woman sitting on the ground in Sunset near the Bed Bug Motel. She glanced at the photo, and said, “Most likely she be dead, honey. We don't live too long out here. Myself, I got another year or so before I'll either be dead or in jail.”

“So you didn't find your mother?”

Shelly's shoulders sag and she shakes her head. Her voice grows thinner. “No. And after three months of being broke and cold the charm started to wear off. I felt ragged and missed my family, and was actually relieved when I got arrested for panhandling outside Powell Street Station.”

She leans against me and I wrap my arms around her. My hands are coated in dirt, but she doesn't seem to mind when I stroke her hair and kiss the top of her head. I'm glad Earl hasn't come outside to check on us. “Did you ever find out what happened to your mother?”

She shakes her head and wipes her face. “But other than upsetting my family, I still don't regret my journey.”

“So how did your parents deal with it?”

She pulls away and moves to the last clump of weeds. “After their relief of finding out I wasn't dead, my parents wanted to kill me, but my father contacted an attorney friend there to get me out of jail, and they still sent me a plane ticket.”

“What happened to Theo?” I ask.

“He's in Seattle now, working in a coffee shop,” she says. “Still working on his dissertation.”

“He didn't get arrested for kidnapping or harboring a minor?”

“I never ratted him out to my parents. He didn't know I was underage, and if he had, he never would have taken me with him.”

“But nothing flamed between you two.”

She gives me a wistful look. “No, I guess not.” She shakes her head. “I still love him as a friend, though. We took care of one another. He convinced me to come back home and finish school.”

“How come you waited until spring to go back to school?”

She tosses a handful of weeds in the garbage can. “I was just done with everything and everybody, so I did online classes.”

I notice the garbage can is starting to overflow. I stand up and tamp it down with my foot. “But you came back to school second semester.” I dump some more weeds inside and sit down to battle my last thistle.

She plops onto the ground next to me and rests her head on my shoulder. “I got lonely. I thought coming back would make me feel normal, but I wasn't the same. The whole high school drama shit is so trivial. Who gives a crap if someone looks at you funny, or someone else is wearing the same skirt as you? There are so many more important things to get pissed off about, like people out there starving and living on bus benches. My friends kind of dropped me because I stopped going places with anyone. But their lives were so shallow.”

“So you never stole a car and rammed a bunch of parked cars while high on drugs?”

She laughs. “Well, I did steal a car.”

“Is that why your parents still don't let you drive?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I not only stole one of their cars, which was worth about 16,000 bucks, I sold it for 800 bucks.”

“Did your parents press charges?”

“No. They threatened to, but they couldn't bring themselves to do it. But they did want me to suffer a little.”

“Which is why you're helping me clean the high school all summer.”

She laughs. “It was either this or paint restrooms and outhouses in state parks.”

I put my arm around her. “I'm glad you chose to clean the school.”

She punches me lightly. “Me too.” She looks at me. “That first day I recognized you as someone from my planet.”

“And which planet is that?” I ask.

“The Planet of Damaged Souls. We're both looking for lost pieces of ourselves, the image missing in the mirror,” she says.

“My mirror is shattered.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“What do you mean?”

“I found out my real father is dead and couldn't find my mother,” she says, “but let's seriously see if we can find your father.”

“What if we don't?”

“Then you'll be no worse off than you are now.”

The next few days it does rain, so we do more cleaning inside the building. It rains so much it feels clammy inside even with the AC running full blast. “I think we can breed mosquitoes in here,” Earl says, as he and I traipse through the boys' locker area. It's always kind of dank in here anyway, but it's even worse with the football players steaming it up every afternoon for showers after practice. Today we're here because the coach had told Earl the water in one of the showers wouldn't shut off.

“These damn automatic faucets waste more water than the old-fashioned kind,” he mutters. “But people are too damn lazy or stupid to turn water off and on and flush their own toilets these days.”

I'm dying to take a shower myself. It's been a couple of days, but now that I know Earl is suspicious of my living arrangements, I don't mention it.

After that, we finish cleaning the art room, and it takes all morning to scrub the counters and set up the tables and chairs. By lunchtime the sky has cleared and it turns out to be a nice day. Earl tells us to take a full hour for lunch. “You kids should be able to enjoy a little bit of summer.”

I hold Shelly's hand as we walk to my car. “He really is a good guy,” I say.

“Yeah, but don't let that be common knowledge, or he'll grind you into little pieces. He likes that kids are scared of him.”

I laugh and nod. “Let's do a picnic somewhere,” I say.

Shelly and I order a drive-thru lunch at Wendy's and drive over to Graham Park. We find a vacant picnic table in the shade, and I guide her to the bench. We sit next to each other, our bare legs touching as we unwrap our chicken sandwiches and french fries.

“If every day were like this we'd be a happier species,” she says.

I nod as I chew. I close my eyes and notice a fresh, loamy fragrance, the epitome of summer where the world is an okay place. Winter seems a million years off in the future. “It's a good day to be alive.”

It doesn't take us long to eat, so we move to a spot in the sun and lie in the grass. The sun is like a warm hand on my face. Shelly rests against me and I stroke her hair, sun-warmed and vanilla-scented.

My phone buzzes. I want to ignore it and enjoy my moment with Shelly, but it's my sister. I never ignore Annie's phone calls. “What's up? How was band camp?”

“Great.” she says. “Wish I could go back. But that's not why I called. I was scrounging around in my room for a book to read and found a box marked ‘Michael.'”

I sit up. “Really? What's in it?”

“It looks like a bunch of papers and some old pictures,” she says. “It smells kind of rank, so I have it all on the back porch to dry out.”

Everything in my mother's house has an odor. Even if Annie found “clean” clothes, she'd have to air them out.

“I'll stop over after school.” After I hang up, I tell Shelly, “Annie found a box of papers in the house with my name on it. There may be clues to my existence inside. I'm stopping by after school to pick it up.”

“Can I go with you? I'd love to see what's in the box.”

I pretend I don't hear her and say we need to head back to school. I stand up and help Shelly to her feet. As we walk to the car, she says, “Okay, so what's up with your house? Why are you so cagey every time I ask about going to your house?”

“Uh . . .”

“This is the part of your story you're withholding from me, isn't it?”

I sigh. “Yes.” I guess now it's my turn to reveal my dirty truth. We stop at my car, and I take her hands in mine. “Before you agree to go there with me, there's something I have to tell you,” I say.

“About what?”

“My darkest, grisliest secret,” I say. “And what I have to tell you may change how you feel about me. It might . . .”

Shit. I don't think I have ever said the words
my mother is a hoarder
out loud to anyone. But I want Shelly by my side when I discover what Annie found. Besides, I kind of owe her the rest of my story now.

“Are there bodies buried in the basement?”

“I wish that was all.”

“Is there something grotesque about your mom?” she says. “Is she a circus freak with two noses? A nudist? Are there wild animals in the house?”

There may be dead animals under all the piles. I study Shelly's face and replay all our conversations in my head, only in fast forward. Has she ever said anything judgmental? I don't think so. She accepts things as they are. And she lived in places with bed bugs.

“My house . . . shit,” I say. “This is hard.”

“Say it!”

“My mother is . . . she's the reason I live in my car. I didn't get thrown out of the house after I got expelled. I chose to leave long before then.” I open her car door, walk to my side of the car, and slide in.

“Wait. You lived in your car in the winter?”

“Yeah. And believe me, it wasn't easy. Every once in a while if the temperature dropped below zero, I'd spend the night at Jeff's. I'd text him and he would sneak me into his basement since his stepmom doesn't like me. Or I'd go to the bus station or the waiting room of the ER.” I shrug. “There are infinite ways to survive.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it.” She says, “So why did you move out?”

I take a deep breath. “Remember that day we were at your house watching
The Big Hoard
?” She nods. “The reason I got up and left the room wasn't because I'm squeamish. It was too hard to watch because my mother is a hoarder.” It burns to say those words aloud.

“Oh,” she says, as if she's disappointed. “Okay.”

“She lives in disgusting filth,” I say. “From the outside it looks like normal people live there, but inside.” I shake my head. “The stench is indescribable, and the stacks and stacks of junk are . . . suffocating. You can only get the front door open about a quarter of the way.” I snap my seatbelt. “I never take people to my house because I don't want anyone to see it.”

“But it's not your fault.”

“Yeah, but shit. It's my address. It's where I'm from.”

“Do you worry her hoarding might be contagious?”

“Maybe. I mean, look at how I live now. I trash pick and never turn down free castoffs.”

“But that's out of necessity,” she says. “You have to survive.”

I run my hands through my hair, start the engine, and pull out of the parking lot. “The house is a giant mess inside. You know how Earl grumbled about all the crap in the art room? That was minimalism compared to what is inside my mother's house. Hell, my sister has moved out to the back porch. She only goes inside to use the bathroom or the kitchen.”

“Where will she live in the winter?”

“I may have a roommate in the Blue Whale.”

“Oh my God,” Shelly says.

“Yeah, a couple years ago Jeff's dad finally talked his wife into letting them take Jeff in after it got so bad.”

“That's so sad, Michael. I'm sad for you and your family.”

“Yeah, but you can't tell anybody. I'm eighteen now, so I don't matter, but if Children's Services knew, Annie would be screwed and probably be living in foster care. And I don't think that . . .”

After a beat, Shelly asks, “What?”

“I think if Annie got taken away, it would send Mom over the edge. She loves us in her weird, whacked-out way.”

“Your mother needs help, though, doesn't she?”

“Yeah, but she doesn't see it,” I say. “She's aware she has too much stuff, but Mom always justifies it with, ‘I can fix that and give it to so and so' or ‘that will be worth a lot of money someday.' And if you try to throw anything out, she goes ape shit.”

“If she has so much, how does she notice?”

“I don't know, but believe me, she notices if something is missing. Annie and I have to dispose of shit carefully when she's at work. Like one or two things at a time. Stuff buried underneath.”

“Why do you think she does it?”

“I don't know. I think after Bob got shot, she just sort of snapped.”

Shelly closes her eyes and listens, and I continue. “She got married again when I was in sixth grade and we moved into the townhouse where she still lives. After Tomas moved out, she started holding on to things. People at her job started giving her things. They felt sorry for the single mom, and they'd give her castoffs of clothes or furniture, then she'd make almost daily trips to Goodwill or go trash picking. At first, it was cool. We had lots of not too terrible toys and clothes that we got for free. But then crap started to accumulate. And even when we outgrew things, Mom freaked when we tried to throw them out.” I cringe at the memory as I turn the corner to the school driveway. “Within two years the house was a total mess.”