And then there’s the bottle caps, and don’t ask me how many of those I’ve got. I decided I could make earrings for the girls, they’d be cute and cost next to nothing, so I started saving bottle caps, and I bought a box of the posts you mount the caps on, and got the right kind of quick-setting glue, and no, I haven’t actually made any earrings yet, but who’s to say I won’t one of these days? With the girls run off there’s not much point in making earrings now, but who’s to say they won’t come back?
Nehi Orange, that was always Little Debby’s favorite. And somewhere I know I’ve got a pair of orange bottle caps set aside, and wouldn’t they make perfect earrings for Little Debby?
“I’m just not getting through to her. What do we have to do, throw her in the back of the Sheriff’s car and haul her off to the nuthouse?”
“John!”
“I know, I didn’t mean to use the word. I find this stressful, I admit it. I’m sorry.”
“John, let me try. Dolly, at this point you only have two choices, and—”
“Dorothy.”
“I thought you said people call you Dolly.”
“My friends call me Dolly.”
“Ouch. I gather you don’t think we’re your friends.”
“If you were my friends you wouldn’t be trying to force me out of my own house and home.”
“Oh, I love it. A home? It’s a home to vermin and unidentifiable rodents, not to a human being.”
“John—”
“And it won’t even be a house much longer either, with the structural damage you’ve got going on there.”
“John, this isn’t helping.”
“Sorry.”
“If you could just allow me to—”
“I know, I know. I won’t say anything more.”
“Now Dolly, as I was saying, you’ve got two choices, and you’re the one who has to make the decision. The first possibility is that you allow us to relocate you to a really beautiful county facility for assisted living.”
“A nuthouse.”
“No, Dolly, and if John used that expression it was a mistake.”
“A loony bin.”
“Not at all. The people are perfectly nice and the staff is wonderful. My own mother is there, as it happens, and she’s truly happy. Would I let my mother go there if it wasn’t a good place?”
“My children moved away and left me all alone, but at least they never put me in a loony bin.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“John! The other choice you have, Dolly, is to allow us to clean your house. We’ll get a crew in here to clean it top to bottom.”
“And throw out all my things.”
“A lot of what you’ve got here is trash, Dolly. We know that and you know that. Old newspapers, empty pizza boxes, paper plates with food on them—”
“I guess some of it’s trash.”
“See? If it wasn’t such an overwhelming chore, you’d throw out a lot of it yourself.”
“There’s times I’ve wanted to. But I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Well, that’s where we’ll be able to help you. We’ll bring in a full crew of trained professionals who’ve been through all this more times than you could imagine. They’ll know where to start and they’ll be able to see it through to the finish.”
“It sort of got away from me, you know. It wasn’t like this when I moved in.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t.”
“And I didn’t set out to make it like this. But, you know, I like things, and I don’t want to part with my memories. And throwing out useful things is wasteful.”
“Well, that’s true, isn’t it?”
“And if these men start throwing away all of my good things—”
“Dolly, you’ll be here the whole time. The things you want to keep, you just say so, and they’ll be put in boxes to be saved. Or if it’s too tiring, we can make some of the decisions for you. And before you know it you’ll have a clean house, a home you can take pride in.”
“It’s not so bad the way it is. And I have some wonderful things here.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“John—”
“I mean, it’s my house. I’m the only one here. Why can’t you all just leave me be?”
“Dolly, let me explain it one more time...”
All these people. There must be twenty men, all dressed alike with royal blue shirts and navy blue slacks. Their first names are embroidered in gold braid on their shirt pockets. The only names I’ve managed to read are Harry and Ben. I keep reading those two names over and over, Harry and Ben, Harry and Ben. Maybe there are ten Harrys and ten Bens, or maybe I just keep seeing the same two young men over and over. They all look the same anyway, with those white masks covering their noses and mouths. Like the air in here would kill them.
Going through my things. Picking up a Little Debby cake box or a book with the cover missing, holding it out, rolling their eyes. They don’t think I notice what they’re doing.
They’ll throw out some things I’d like to keep. I know that. I do what I can, I tell them no, I want to save this, put it in a box to be saved. And sometimes the woman talks me out of saving it, or else she agrees and they put it in a box, but how do I know what will happen to all those boxes? If I let them, they’d take everything I own and cart it to the landfill.
When your house is clean again, the woman tells me, you’ll have a much richer life. Richer without things than with them? You’ll have space, she says. And who knows? Maybe your children will come back, when they have a decent clean place to live, when they can have their own rooms again.
It would be so nice to believe that. And maybe it’s true. Maybe Calder will come back, and Tricia, and Maxine. And Little Debby. Oh what I’d give to see my Little Debby again!
“I don’t believe this.”
“You’ve never had a case like this before?”
“Never anything like this. I mean, I read about the Collyer brothers, but I thought they were the only people in the world who ever lived like this.”
“It’s more common than anyone realizes, John. I’ve heard estimates that one percent of the population has a problem with compulsive hoarding.”
“That sounds crazy. That’d be what, three million people?”
“I know. The thing is, most of the time it’s invisible. The people seem completely normal until you get inside their homes.”
“Not our Dolly. Spend thirty seconds with her and you know you’re dealing with a fruitcake.”
“John!”
“She can’t hear me, she’s in the kitchen explaining why an empty Peter Pan peanut butter jar is a priceless treasure. See, it’s glass, and nowadays they make them out of plastic, so who’d be crazy enough to throw it out?”
“I know.”
“And the rotten peanut butter at the bottom just adds to the value. Proves it’s authentic. Plus it gives the ants something to eat.”
“Oh, dear. But there are people who are almost as far gone as Dolly and you wouldn’t know it. There was a woman in Swedish Haven, and she was always immaculately groomed and clean about her person, and she walked to and from her place of business every day—”
“She had a place of business?”
“A shop, actually. She sold notions and bric-a-brac and, oh, local souvenirs. The shop was neat as a pin.”
“And I bet she sold pins, too.”
“And doilies and place mats. Until one day the shop never opened, and when her doorbell and phone went unanswered someone broke into her house and found her there. A stroke or a heart attack, whatever it was, but dead or alive she was in better shape than her house. It turned out she could have been a Collyer sister.”