Page 100 of Good Days Bad Days
“I don’t know. Your mother wouldn’t like it.”
“Mom, do you care?” I ask, aware that she isn’t following our conversation.
“You both talk too fast. You always talked too fast. I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“There,” I say, gesturing to Betty, who is starting to look irritated. I roll the stool down to the end of the bed and loudly whisper to my father. “Nowpleasetell me what happened to my sister.”
Greg glances at Betty, then back at me. He picks up the remote for the mounted television, clicks through the local stations until he finds a game show that captures Betty’s attention, and then he sits on the edge of the bed right in front of me.
“If I tell you this, do you promise to leave your mother alone and never mention it again?” he asks, which doesn’t exactly make me feel great.
“Oof, ouch. I promise to never come back, if that’s what you want. You’ve got the crew and the contract; you don’t need me.”
“No. No, that’s not what I mean. I want you to help. I want you here. I never wanted to upset you, but they promised they’d fix the house so your mom can come home again. With the money from the show, I could get her a full-time nurse. She always wanted to live out her last days in that house.”
I hold back a groan. “You’re moving her home? Dad, she’s gonna flip when she sees the stuff is gone, and then she’ll start hoarding again. Don’t let them fix the house only to have it ruined again.”
“This is the clearest I’ve seen her in a long time, and these bursts are happening less and less frequently. I want her to be somewhere familiar when things really go downhill. I want her to spend her final days in our home.”
“You really do love her a pathological amount,” I say, envious he never loved me that way.
“I do love her. I do. And I know we failed you as parents, Lottie, but I tried. I swear I tried. Not hard enough, but I did. Back then, the social worker arranged a hard clean of the house, and they started to do exactly what Dino’s doing now. But halfway through, your mom had a total breakdown, and I was afraid ...”
“Afraid of what, Dad?” It’s hard to imagine something more terrible than losing his child.
He bites at a hangnail and then rubs a thin spot on his jeans. “You don’t know this, but my mom took her own life after my brother died.” I slide back a bit, shocked by the revelation. “And your mom—well, remember how Dino said that’s common for people dealing with your mom’s affliction?”
“Wait, your mom was a hoarder too?”
“No. No. Not at all. But I knew what it was like to lose someone that way,” he says, being careful not to say the wordshoarderorsuicide. “I was afraid of it happening again. You were safe in foster care, and whenever I talked to you—you said you were happy and fine. I thought ... I thought a different family would be better for you, at least until your mother got better.”
“I was lying,” I say, sadness swelling in my throat and tears burning my eyes. “I wanted to go home. I prayed for it and begged for it every single day until I turned eighteen. Then I realized—you weren’t coming back and so I had to let you go. I had to let my hope go. I wasn’t OK. I don’t think I’m OK now, believe it or not,” I add with sarcasm. Nothing about my behavior lately seems like that of a totally stable woman.
“I see that now, but your mother read your book. I told her not to, I thought you’d say something about how you were raised or about the house and your mother and me. As much as it would’ve hurt to read those sad truths, I think it hurt her worse to be erased.”
“I was erased, Dad. You both erased me from your lives. For what? For a house full of junk? I never wanted to be like her, so I used to throw everything out if I’d had it longer than a year or two. I did the same with relationships, ditching them before they could do it to me. And then my own kid—I let her go live with her dad without putting up a fight. Turned out like you guys after all.”
Greg’s brow furrows. He pats my head and gives me his signature shoulder squeeze.
“Oh, honey. No. You’re not like us—at least, not in that way. You have to understand that your mom had a reason for being like that with the house.” He refers to her hoarding disorder in generalities again. “You saw her books and her show. Every woman who watched her show wanted to be her, and every man wanted to marry her. She was all that, until ...” He glances at Betty, who is completely absorbed in the TV show. I think I know what he’s going to say. It’s starting to make sense, at least a little.
“The thing with Laura?” I ask, bringing up the topic of my sister again.
“Yes,” he replies, pausing again to ensure Betty’s not listening. “It was a fire. It burned her house to the ground and took her husband and baby with it. A ... a furnace malfunction.”
I raise a skeptical eyebrow. “I heard something far more—upsetting,” I go on to share what Taylor, the waitress, told me and then ask, “Is that what it was? Murder?”
Greg’s face is pale, and he looks miserable, as if an ancient worm lodged in his stomach is trying to climb its way up through his esophagus and into the light. He peeks over at my mom and then back at me and blinks slowly, staring at the speckled hospital tile as he finally—finally puts my desires in front of my mother’s.
“She called me the night it happened, crying and asking for my help. Her husband was a real piece of work—my old boss at WQRX—and I knew he was bad news. Your mom and I were ... close. So, I drove to Janesville, but when I got there, the whole place was on fire and she was the only survivor.”
“Did they conduct an investigation?”
“Yup. Never found any evidence against her. Don and the baby died from the smoke, and Betty was only spared ’cause she was waiting outside for me to arrive. But it was in all the papers. She lost everything, her family, her house, her job. She got me, which doesn’t seem like a fair trade on her part.” He lets out an odd kind of chuckle at the self-deprecating comment.
“But when we started over, I couldn’t bear to ask her what really happened that night. I just couldn’t. Whenever it came up, she’d freeze or break down and—why dig it up? Why make her relive it all? I simply wanted to fix her life at that point, start over. We built the house. Got married. Then you came around, and it all seemed good. At first it was a bag or two of supplies, a box of clothes she’d bought or made. Then it started to get out of control, like a snowball rolling down a hill, and then it was too late and—we lost you, too.”
His voice cracks and he wipes at his nose with his shirtsleeve. I wonder how long he’s been holding this inside. I have to give him credit, as basic and trusting as his retelling is, it’s also the most open I’ve ever seen him. He’s obviously been wearing blinders for so long that he’s lost the ability to see clearly, but the fact that he’s trying helps.
