Be My Neat-Heart (8 page)

“It's a support group for those who want to live up to their potential and desire to reflect God more fully in their lives. I started the group for several of my clients who realized that the disorder in their lives isn't the reflection of God they want to represent to the world. Then clients who don't want to ‘fall off the clutter wagon' joined us. Now it's evolved and I've begun to give classes on organizing one's environment. For some, the classes are important. For others it's simply a time for fellowship, encouragement and support.”

“Disorganized Anonymous?” There was incredulity in his voice.

“Something like that. I think of it as a way station for the terminally cluttered. Maybe you and Molly should come together.”

I'd said it facetiously, of course.

That is why I was so amazed when they walked into the meeting room together later that night.

T
rue to their disparate personalities, Molly aimed for a front-row seat but Jared grabbed her elbow and steered her into the last row of chairs and sat there brooding like a dark storm cloud.

“Who's that?” Margaret Wheaton, our pastor's wife, whispered. “I should greet them.”

“Go ahead and try but don't get bitten,” I muttered to myself, but Margaret heard me.

“What's the problem?”

“No ‘problem,' really. It's just a situation I can't figure out.” When Molly and Jared were in the same room he was like a caged lion, pacing miserably and obviously trying—and failing—to control his impatience and discontent. Yet he kept coming back for more.

He certainly could have scampered off by now and left Molly and me unchaperoned. I'd begun to sense that he wanted this for Molly almost more than Molly wanted it for herself. It was as if he had more at stake in the organizing of Molly's life than she. Odd—and very puzzling.

Determined to talk with them after class, I began to think
about the icebreaker I would use tonight to begin the class. The toilet paper vs. Kleenex tissue question, I decided. I asked everyone to 'fess up to what was in their purses and pockets. If anyone admitted they were using toilet paper because they hadn't put tissue on the grocery list
again,
it would be a perfect segue into my plan-your-menus-and-make-grocery-lists-in-advance speech. I'm on a personal mission to stamp out all toilet paper used for public blowing. Professional organizers have pet peeves, too, you know.

 

“I had no idea how remiss I've been in the menu-planning department,” Jared said dryly as we left the church together. He'd dozed off a time or two during the evening and not surprisingly had hesitated to join in to the spirited easy-to-cook meal discussion that erupted. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why he was even there. In fact, he was beginning to make me angry. He looked like an octopus in a pool of goldfish, sitting there, trying to make himself inconspicuous while the ladies in the class feasted their eyes on the only male they'd ever seen cross the threshold of this gathering.

“That was fun!” Molly chortled. “I took notes.” Her hands were full of old church bulletins. She'd taken her notes on the white spaces of the programs, making for an interesting written design snaking around the paper.

Mental note: Have Molly start carrying a notebook.

“I'd like to come again if you don't mind, Sammi.” Molly's tone was serious.

Jared looked at her sharply.

“I know it sounds crazy—especially to you, Jared—but keeping order is very difficult for me. It feels good to hear what others with my problem do to keep from getting themselves into trouble…er…making messes. It's a relief, in a way, actually, to
know I'm not an idiot or the only disorganized person on the planet. I try. I really do. It just never
looks
like it.”

“Don't worry,” I assured her. “I couldn't run my business or make a living if you were all alone in this. And you are
not
an idiot.”

“Good to know.” Molly impulsively threw her arms around me and gave me a hug. “Gotta go, you two. I promised my friends Linda and Melody I'd meet them after the meeting. They're picking me up.” Within seconds a car pulled into the lot and Molly jumped in. She waved out the window as the car sped away.

That left Jared and me standing in the parking lot, half staring, half glaring at one another. Despite my sense that Jared rode roughshod over Molly's life, I felt a strange reluctance to simply get into my car and drive away. Oddly, although minutes ago he'd seemed desperate to escape, it now seemed that he felt the same disinclination.

“Coffee?” he finally ventured.

I couldn't remember a time when I'd wanted coffee more. Every fiber of my being was yearning for a cup of hot java—at least that's to what I attributed the strange sensation I was feeling—the thought of strong, hot coffee just drawing me in.

Jared could be, I discovered over a turtle mocha, quite charming. As long as his sister's name did not come up, that is.

Every time the conversation edged near Molly or clutter or anything to do with either subject, Jared's eyes turned dark and brooding and I felt him drift away. More than once I snatched him back from the jaws of his own personal pit and discovered that as long as we didn't get near the topic of Molly we could have a surprisingly pleasant discussion.

It was a warm and windless night. As we left the coffee shop I inhaled deeply, breathing in the aroma of freshly cut grass. The moon was brilliant and voluptuous in the inky sky.

“Want to walk?”

“Now? Us?”

He glanced around. “I don't see anyone else. It's too nice an evening to waste inside, don't you think?” He nodded toward the winking glints of moonlight reflecting off the nearby lake.

“I love the nighttime,” I commented as we strolled.

“Not everyone does,” he commented.

“It's like God wraps us in a soft, dark velvet cushion and keeps us safe when we're most vulnerable. When I was a little girl, I used to think the moon was God's peek hole down to us and every time a cloud went by and blocked the moon, it was Him blinking.”

“What about the nights you couldn't see the moon?”

“I just assumed He was peeking down at someone else far away. I didn't have much comprehension of the rotation of the earth back then.”

“It's a nice thought.” He was silent for a long time before he said, “I never liked the dark much. I thought it was boring. I had to go to bed. My mother told me that if I'd had my own way, I would have slept only at the darkest part of the night and awakened with the sun.

“Molly,” he continued, “always thought she was missing something if I was up and she was still sleeping. Of course, she was so high maintenance even then that I was never quite sure if I was glad she was up to follow me around or wished she'd sleep until noon.”

“She loves you a great deal,” I ventured.

“And I love her.” The statement sounded like a burden. “But, Ms. Smith, I'm not going to let that get in the way of what needs to be done.”

So much for warm and fuzzy brother/sister relationships.

Every time I thought I might be able to like Jared Ham
ilton, he pulled another rug out from under me. I put another black check mark against him in the tally I'd begun keeping in my head.

M
olly called my office on Monday, giggling.

“What's so funny?” She certainly is sunny, considering all that's going on in her life.

“I eavesdropped on Jared and his friend Ethan last night. They were talking about
you.
”

Oh, puleese! Spare me!

“I don't want to hear this.”

“It's all good…well, fairly good, anyway…and I thought you'd want to know.” Supposing that she was correct in that assumption, she dived into her story.

“Ethan asked Jared how he likes you.”

“Molly, don't go there.”

“No, this is good. Really! Jared dodged the question by telling him that
I
liked you and that's enough. Of course, that's not what Ethan wanted to know. He feels responsible for the two of you meeting. He's taking an interest in your relationship.”

Terrific. Just what Jared and I need when we're butting heads—onlookers.

“Jared thinks you don't like him and that you are suspi
cious of his motives with me.” Molly laughed. “Can you believe it?”

It wasn't exactly a newsflash.

“He says you don't trust him because he's threatened to fire me.”

Well, duh!

“And Ethan nailed my brother to the wall with that one. He told Jared that he just doesn't like the idea of you thinking of him being the ‘bad guy' in my life.”

All this was giving me a big headache. I was hired by these people to get them organized, not be one of the stars in their ongoing soap opera.

“I think Ethan's right,” Molly continued. “My brother isn't accustomed to being out of favor with a beautiful woman.”

A beautiful woman? Me?

“Molly, I don't need to know this.” I felt as though I was in junior high again, playing that obnoxious “He said, she said” game.

“Jared tried to deny it, but Ethan told him that if he couldn't see it, he should get himself a white cane and a seeing-eye dog. ‘She's incredible,' Ethan told him, ‘that blond hair like spun sugar and those eyes! Big, blue, mesmeric…she's not just beautiful, Jared, she's
riveting.'”
Molly giggled. “Isn't that fabulous?”

“Sounds like I should start batting my eyelashes at Ethan,” I joked, not wanting to let her know she'd really flummoxed me with this. I am not in the habit of thinking of my looks at all—and never as beautiful. Nordic, yes. Beautiful, no.

“Jared said the same thing, but Ethan wouldn't give in. He told my brother that he is accustomed to women flirting with him. And because you don't fall at his feet, Jared's ego is bothering him. I think it really stunned Jared to hear that.”

It certainly stunned me. My cheeks felt as though they were on fire. This was too much information.

Molly didn't seem to hear me. She was having too much fun developing this fantasy of hers. “Then Ethan and Jared went to play racquetball.”

“What a relief,” I muttered.

“And Ethan told me later that Jared
slaughtered
him.”

“What are friends for?”

“I know what's going on when Jared does that. He's frustrated. Ethan came too close to my brother's true emotions talking about you like that.”

Deluded, deluded, deluded. This girl is completely deluded.

Molly added sagely, “Just wait. You'll see.”

I didn't say it aloud, but I decided then and there that I was
not
hanging around to find out.

I
f men were shoes, Jared Hamilton would be waffle-stompers, treading over everybody and everything to get to his personal destination. If women were shoes, Molly would be a pair of soft, fluffy bedroom slippers that keep getting lost. And I would be stilettos just waiting to grind a heel into the top of Jared's hiking boots.

“Why? I don't get this, Molly. You'll have to tell me why.”

I had her alone for once. Jared was forced to tend to business in his own office while we painstakingly sorted through the jumble in Molly's. “Your brother is a stalker. He's been after us since the first day we started to work together. Doesn't he trust me?”

I don't have much in the way of ego because I know that only God can take credit for whatever I might do right, but Jared is getting on my nerves, the few I have left. I'm going crazy being observed hour after hour by him as his sister and I try to make headway through Molly's muddle.

The woman is sweet, precious, generous, giving and completely without organizational skills. I don't doubt for a
moment that she has the intelligence to learn them, but she just doesn't seem to care.

Neatness is not even a blip on Molly's radar screen of desires. For her it ranks right up there with wanting a root canal or ingrown toenails.

Jared, on the other hand, thinks that a pile of magazines is an eyesore, a stack of papers on a desk an anathema and a disorganized office a deadly sin.

And I thought
I
was exacting!

“Don't be too hard on him, Sammi. He's doing what he thinks is best for me, that's all.”

“But you're a grown woman. Why can't
you
do what's best for you?” I sat back to study her and was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “Molly?”

“Jared's right. I'm incompetent.”

Unbidden anger flared in me. “He told you that?”

“No, but he thinks it. So whatever Jared wants, I'll do.” She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. “Anything.”

Jared Hamilton had his poor sister hopping and dancing to his wishes like she was a marionette and he, a puppeteer.

“Have you considered that Jared may have some issues of his own?” I ventured.

“Jared is a successful man, highly regarded in business,” Molly huffed. “He didn't get here without careful planning and hard work. He has to be meticulous and exacting in order to be where he is.”

“Why do you defend him?” I asked gently.

“Because you can never imagine what he's put up with from me. Never. I love him. He's the best brother in the world.” And that was the end of that subject. Molly was willing to turn herself inside out to make her demanding brother happy.

Because I'm the hired help, it doesn't matter that I can't see the reason why.

 

I groaned when the doorbell rang. Just out of the shower, I'd decided to test the self-adhering curlers that Wendy gave me. They were the size of soup cans and, Wendy said, perfect for creating a smooth, sophisticated hairdo. She'd also given me a facial mask, cucumber and seaweed, I think, or maybe it's grass clippings and zucchini. I'd put foam separators between my toes so my pedicure could dry, whitening strips on my teeth and my softest, coziest and least flattering red-and-gray sweats. I glanced in the mirror. With all the bright colors and distorted features, I looked like some little kid's worst nightmare, worse, even, than a clown doll, the kind that lurks in children's closets and gives them scary dreams.

I shuffled toward the door, keeping my toes wide spread and my neck stiff so as not to upset the precarious pyramid of rollers. Not only was my face beginning to harden, my teeth squeaked and the facial mask was beginning to smell very earthy. Not flower petals and fresh breezes earthy, either. More like barnyard-and-compost-heap earthy. Wendy must have bought all this stuff on sale.

“Who is it?” I inquired at the door, but my mouth wasn't moving well because of the rock-hard mask. I was also paralyzed by my reluctance to take off the whitening strip until my thirty minutes were up. My words came out more like a breathy “whoiszit?”

I peered through the peek hole but all I could see was a sweatshirt-clad shoulder with a bit of the Timberwolves logo on it. It had to be Ben, the all-time, number-one Timberwolves fan. I reached to open the door. Ben wouldn't notice if I dressed myself in garbage bags secured with duct tape.

“Hullocominimmm….” My mumbled greeting ended sharply. “Jrd?”

“Sammi? Is that you?”

Jared Hamilton peered into the two peek holes in my facial mask that I'd left for my eyes. His nose wrinkled as he got a whiff of the facial's “earthy scent.”

I whipped off the whitening strips and opened my mouth wide, cracking the concretelike facial into bits. “What are you doing here?”

He bent over to pick up a few of the shards of green facial mask that fell to the floor. “Your face is breaking. Do you want me to pick it up?”

I spun to run to the bathroom to chisel off the rest of the mask but forgot that my toes were swathed in foam rubber. The rubber stuck to the hardwood floor, pitching me over the back of a white canvas-covered chair and face first into the seat cushion. I teetered, feet in the air, for a moment before righting myself. As I did so, I saw the imprint of a minty green face on the seat of the chair—my own sort of death mask imposed right onto the cushion of the newest piece of furniture in the house. The term death mask is appropriate. I was dying from a case of terminal embarrassment. Mortified by my lack of dignity and even my lack of balance, I staggered to my feet in a vain effort to recover my poise.

That, of course, didn't happen. My curlers abandoned ship, sprang loose and pulled from my hair. I could feel them dangling around my shoulders like decorations on a Christmas tree. Then, one by one, they tumbled out of my hair and onto the floor.

The horrified expression on Jared's face said it all. All there was to say, at least, until he started laughing. And laughing. And laughing.

I scuttled, crablike, toward the bathroom and didn't come out until I'd found my normal skin color, my hair and my pearly white teeth. Then I returned to the living room where Jared was on his hands and knees with a bucket, a rag and cleanser carefully removing my visage from the seat cushion.

He looked up, half worried and half laughing. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Thank you for asking,” I answered with as much dignity as I could muster.

“This is going to come out, but it will take a little work. I didn't want to spread the stain, but if you just blot it like this…”

“Thank you. I can do it. Cleaning is one of my specialties, you know.”

How am I ever going to live this down?

He unfolded himself and stood up, eyeing me cautiously, as if he didn't know what to expect to happen next. He had the right to be nervous.
I
certainly was.

“I see I caught you at a bad time—during your beauty ritual.” He said “beauty ritual” as though referring to the horrific and mysterious procedure the Egyptians used to embalm mummies.

“My friend Wendy gave me some new products to try and…”

“You don't have to explain. I grew up with Molly, remember? I'd challenge any woman to come up with something my sister hasn't already sprung on me, Sammi. No need to be embarrassed.”

He'd managed to say exactly the right thing to make me feel better. I looked up at him with a thankful smile and saw his expression had turned into one of complete, unadulterated horror.

Jared stared over my shoulder toward my bedroom door. He lifted one hand and pointed to the opening.

“What on earth is
that
?”

I turned to see Zelda yawning and stretching in the doorway, her skinned and skinny body writhing in bliss, her gigantic ears quivering with pleasure. To the uninitiated in the world of hairless cats, it must have been a sight to behold.

“That's my cat, Zelda. She's a sphynx. We're playing spa night. I just gave her a bath and cleaned her ears with oil. She's feeling frisky.”

Wrinkled skin is highly desirable in the sphynx breed and Zelda is show-cat perfect. Her little muzzle is exceptionally wrinkled, as is the skin between and around her shoulders. Her head is longer than it is wide, her skull rounded but with a flat forehead and prominent cheekbones. Of course, if one didn't know the breed, that might seem a little creepy. She also has very large ears, startling, wide-set lemon-shaped eyes and a whip of a tail. Her hind legs are slightly longer than her front so she always looks like she's walking downhill. What's more, a sphynx's paw pads are very thick and their toes long and slender so Zelda appears to be walking on air cushions. A large female, Zelda is almost ten pounds of luxurious, exotic, alien-looking feline.

Jared gawked at her, dumbstruck. Zelda stared back at Jared with disdain. He had no distinguishing features whatsoever to make him interesting to her, no catnip mouse on his lapel, not even a large, semitransparent set of ears. She turned to give him a full view of her bony behind, flicked her tail and, ignoring us both, sat down to bathe herself.

“Is it supposed to look like that? What happened to its hair?”

“Shhhh.” I put a finger to my lips. “Don't say anything to hurt her feelings. Besides, I don't think she sees any blue ribbons on you, either.”

He glanced around the room as if looking for someone or something sane or normal. Finding no one, his gaze came back to me.

“Is that really a cat?” His brows furrowed. He looked particularly handsome when he was perplexed.

“What else could it be?” Hopping on one foot and then the other, I pulled the sponges from between my toes.

“A cross between a fruit bat and a Chihuahua? A chemistry experiment gone wrong? Doctor Frankenstein's dirty little secret?”

“Would you like to pet her?”

He recoiled slightly. “What does it feel like?”

“
She
feels like the chamois you use to wash your car, only she's nice and warm.” I moved toward Zelda and bent to pick her up. She immediately began to purr and knead her paws into my arm.

Jared put out a tentative hand to touch her and drew back quickly. “She feels like a suede jacket that's been lying in the sun.”

“Good analogy.” I scratched Zelda behind the ears. “Hear that, sweetie?”

Zelda yawned so widely that I believed that had Jared looked, he could have seen the inside of the tip of her tail.

At that moment, Imelda came trotting out of my room with the decimated Manolo Blahnik in her mouth. She went right to Jared, put her paws on his chest as if to show him the doggie pedicure I'd just given her, hot pink and purple nails, faux rhinestones and all.

“What kind of a zoo do you have here, anyway?”

“Yours truly included?” I asked sweetly, knowing that at the moment I was looking every bit as weird as my beloved pets.

“No, I didn't mean…I…” Jared looked to me for help.

I thrust Zelda into his arms. “I'll be back in a minute. I have to brush my teeth. I think I have chips of that facial in my mouth.”

It was actually closer to five minutes by the time I'd rinsed my mouth and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. When I returned to the living room both Zelda and Imelda were on Jared's lap.

“You got their
Good Housekeeping
seal of approval, I see. That's not easy. Good going.” I dropped into the chair across from him.

“Thanks. I think.” He looked at me, puzzled. “Somehow I never thought of you…like this.”

I glanced around the room as if seeing it for the first time. Sleek, Danish modern furniture, maple floors, bright, modern art posters, sculptures Wendy had made in some of her funkier phases and baskets everywhere to corral clutter and keep it out of site. And Zelda and Imelda, of course, both living, breathing forms of contemporary art.

“What does ‘like this' mean?” I asked.

“Untraditional? Arty? A little crazy?”

“That's me in a nutshell,” I agreed amiably. “Now, what are you doing here?”