Perched on a low bank above the creek was an English country cottage built of stone, so English, in fact, that I suspected it had been standing there since 1750, built by one of our founding fathers. Two pairs of windows flanked a central door, all facing away from the water, which was another clue that the cottage hadn’t been built in the twenty-first century, where water views sold at a premium. The road ended at a covered carport, but there was no car in the drive. ‘I guess she’s not home,’ Ruth said. She looked as crestfallen as I felt. ‘Do you suppose we should come back later?’
‘Come on, Ruth,’ I hissed. ‘Moment of truth.’
As we approached the cottage, we could hear a conversation going on inside. ‘She is home,’ I said. ‘Oh, ye of little faith.’
‘Do you think Lilith has company?’ Ruth wondered as we climbed the brick steps that led up to the front door. ‘If so, where are the cars? Are we to assume that everybody walked? Not very likely.’
My sister and I paused on the narrow porch, listening, straining our ears. Men’s voices in heated discussion.
I leaned to one side and peeked through one of the windows, but the curtains were drawn and no light shone through from the room inside. ‘I think she has the TV on,’ I said after a moment, feeling foolish. I tapped Ruth on the arm. ‘Knock, silly.’
There was no answer.
‘Maybe she can’t hear you over the blare of the television.’
Ruth knocked again, harder this time, and as we stood on the doorstep gaping, the front door swung slowly open. ‘Ooops,’ she said.
I pushed against the door with the flat of my hand, but it wouldn’t open more than a few inches. ‘Something’s blocking it from the inside,’ I said, beginning to get worried.
‘Let’s try around back,’ Ruth suggested, and headed off at a trot.
When I caught up with my sister, she was waiting for me by the back door. It stood wide open.
‘She could be in trouble,’ I reasoned. ‘We should probably go in. Agreed?’
When Ruth nodded, I stepped inside.
Lilith’s back door opened on to a narrow passageway which was piled nearly to the ceiling on both sides with cardboard boxes. Fearing an avalanche, we picked our way carefully through the tunnel, expecting it to lead to the kitchen.
It did.
One look at what lay ahead made me stop so suddenly that Ruth crashed into me from behind. ‘Oh my God!’ I said. ‘How can anyone cook in this place?’
Like the hallway we’d just passed through, the kitchen was littered with boxes, some stacked, others leaning haphazardly against one another, their contents spilled, mingling with the contents of the box below. By the light of a single bulb in an overhead fixture designed for six, we could see that every surface – the kitchen counters, the stovetop – was littered with stuff with a capital ‘S.’ A mountain of newspapers, magazines and junk mail in the corner could have hidden a kitchen table, but it would have taken a forklift to tell.
I picked a pile of mail off the top of – what? – a toaster oven? – relieved to see that it was addressed to Lilith Chaloux. In 2006. We were definitely in the right house, I thought with relief, but where was Lilith?
I stepped carefully around a collection of Fiestaware mixing bowls – brand new – nested on the floor. I opened the oven. Inside I found hundreds of frozen food cartons – Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, Amy’s Kitchen, Linda McCartney – washed, folded flat and stacked.
Ruth peered over my shoulder. ‘What the hell is she saving those for?’
‘I’m afraid Lilith’s a hoarder, like those people on reality TV.’ I closed the oven door, wiped my hands on my jeans. ‘How can people live like this?’
‘Oh my God,’ Ruth said, indicating some Styrofoam containers stacked six high that were filled with – she peeked into the one on top – unopened bags of Oreo cookies. Ruth held up a grocery store receipt. ‘Can you believe it? These cookies were purchased on special in 1992.’ She squinted at the receipt. ‘Thirty packages of them.’
Lilith had kept a path clear between the refrigerator and the microwave, and from the microwave to the sink. Otherwise, it would have been impossible to move around the room.
I opened the refrigerator. Aside from a carton of eggs and a half gallon of milk two weeks past its sell-by date, all it contained were a dozen bottles of Veuve Clicquot Brut and ten 250g cans of Royal Beluga caviar.
That was a stumper.
I must be Alice, I thought, well and truly trapped on the other side of the looking glass.
At a signal from me, Ruth began to wade through the clutter toward the front of the house, stepping high. ‘This is downright dangerous,’ she complained, side-stepping an old typewriter table that was listing to starboard under the weight of a dot matrix computer printer and maybe a decade’s worth of telephone books. ‘Lilith could be in trouble.’
‘Is anybody here?’ Ruth yelled as she disappeared around the corner.
I hurried, bucking and weaving, to catch up. On the way, I popped into the living room and discovered why the front door refused to budge when we pushed on it. Over time, boxes from QVC and HSN had been stacked, still unopened, around the door. Plastic mailers from L.L. Bean and Lands’ End had been piled on top, adding to the accumulation. At some point, the piles had collapsed, partially blocking the entrance.
To my right, under the window, a sofa and chair were heaped with unopened boxes from Amazon. And if you needed to reach the front door, like in an emergency, you’d have to first clear a path through the forest of light bulbs, toilet paper, paper towels, and batteries still in their plastic shopping bags from Target that were strewn over the carpet. Either that, or hire a guide.
I hurried as fast as I could after Ruth, kicking aside boxes of envelopes, paper clips and three-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks as I went. I was surround by evidence of Lilith’s aborted attempts to tame the chaos – Rubbermaid tubs in all shapes and sizes, nested Tupperware containers (still nested), space bags, desktop organizers – purchased with every good intention for $19.95 plus shipping and handling, from companies that advertised on late-night television that their amazing products were ‘Not available in stores!’
I found my sister standing in front of the bathroom at the end of the cluttered hall, looking bewildered. Boxes loomed over her dangerously, like the walls of the Grand Canyon. She raised both arms. ‘There’s a bedroom on each side. Nobody’s here,’ she reported, ‘but the TV is sure on.’
The television in the bedroom was cube-like and huge, a model so ancient that I expected it could receive Howdy Doody, I Love Lucy or Bonanza direct. On the screen, though, modern-day Lynx News social commentator Candace Kelly, every Titian hair perfectly contained, was nattering on about some girls who had been turned away from their homecoming dance because the school found their dresses unsuitable. ‘Does everybody watch Lynx News?’ I wondered.
‘Why don’t we turn it off?’ Ruth suggested.
While Ruth floundered around the bedroom looking for the remote, I watched the crawl at the bottom of the screen where I learned that ‘Hiccup girl’ had been charged with murder and L’il Wayne was ready to party after his release from jail; pseudo-news that ran the gamut from ‘What the hell?’ to ‘Who cares?’
‘You’ll need to send out a search party for the remote, I’m afraid.’ Ruth waved an arm, taking in the piles of clothing draped over every available surface, including the bed, some still wearing their price tags. ‘And good luck even reaching the TV. My bet? She leaves it on all the time.’
‘Where the hell does she sleep?’ I wondered, backing out into the hall and pushing open the door to the second bedroom. It, too, was chock-a-block with unopened boxes containing God only knew what. If there was a bed in the room it would take Lewis and Clark, maybe Sacajawea too, to find it.