I have never seen such a mountain of filth in my life.
“Holy…?” I say under my breath, reaching behind my back to shut the door. The door of my sister’s apartment. The apartment I have a key to and never use, but today I have a surprise birthday present in my arms.
The living room is blanketed with ash. Bowls of cigarette butts overflow onto tables, couches, area rugs. Candles lay weeping in their own waxy juices, spilling onto end tables and shelves. Candles everywhere–what the Hell? Who does my sister think she is? Sting?
There’s discarded dirty underwear on the floor.
Niiice. I kick it into a corner.
Glasses. Cheap cocktail glasses–the ones I helped her pick out from Tuesday Morning–pepper the room, abandoned in various stages of consumption. Smeared with lipstick and grease and nicotine and God knows what else, those glasses wink in the late day sun.
I drop the gift in a corner and yank open windows. How long has it been since fresh oxygen has seen this apartment? How long has she been marinating in here, in this shitty little box, with the yellowed linoleum and the dessicated carpet and the kitchen the size of a closet?
I walk into the kitchen. The stove has been broken for months, but C. doesn’t care. The girl can’t cook, won’t cook, thinks cooking is “boring.” My sister is single and fierce and will not fry up that bacon in the pan, that’s for sure.
She eats, though.
That’s pretty evident from the wasteland of plates, forks and bowls encrusted with vestiges of cheese, lettuce, stuff. I’m looking at days upon days, weeks of days of dishes.
She hasn’t bothered to rinse anything. Her dishes are a Rorschach of past meals–salsa, vivid orange pools of Kraft French dressing, errant smears of mustard. Jesus.
She doesn’t own a dishwasher, but that’s a moot point. Looking at the edible inkblots, I know this isn’t party wreckage I’m staring at. Every stain on every dish smacks of C.–the salads she makes when she’s barely able to bring the fork to her mouth, swimming in French dressing, full of cheese and questionable lettuce. The toast she makes and dips in mustard, when there’s nothing else in the house to eat. In the sink, her signature is everywhere.
I open the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. A large bottle of McCormick’s vodka and a few stray Otter Pops.
A girl’s gotta have priorities.
I think about opening the refrigerator but I reconsider. My vision has already been overloaded–do I really want to engage the olfactory, too? I don’t want to stomach whatever science experiment is festering in that thing.
Surely, I’ve seen the worst of it. There’s no way the bedroom can be fouler ground than that kitchen. I put my hand on the bedroom door, which is open just a sliver, and I pause. I feel kind of dirty looking in my sister’s bedroom. I mean, isn’t the bedroom the most private and sacred of places? Would this take my (already) borderline violation of privacy to a level that’s just flat-out terrible?
Then again, she did give me a key.
If you give a sister a key, will she use it? If she uses it, will she walk in the door at unexpected moments? If she walks in unexpectedly, will she stay to inspect? If she stays to inspect, will she stumble into a wasp’s nest?
I enter the bedroom and throw the windows open. It reeks of stale air and dirty clothes, but I stalk past, shutting the door behind me. A girl, any girl, deserves her secrets.
I walk back into the living room, flip the stereo on, scan the cd shelf, decide on the Gin Blossoms. I crank the volume, tuck my hair into a ponytail, and walk into the bathroom. Sleeves rolled, I locate the canister of Dow Scrubbing Bubbles and glaze the bathtub with a heavy white layer.
As the bubbles work magic, I grab two large garbage bags and go to work on the living room. She’s got an incense stand on top of the television. When did she start burning incense? I think about the cigarettes and the candles and the incense and decide I’m glad she doesn’t cook. This place is kindling.
Bottles, empty Cheetos bags, butts, old magazines, near-empty nail polish containers, socks beyond saving. Trash.
I dampen a few paper towels and swipe across the tv screen.
“Dang,” I mutter. “How do you even see anything through this?”
I find a table knife and excavate candle wax, layer by layer, singing along with the Gin Blossoms.
All last summer as if you don’t recall
I was yours and you were mine forget it all
Is there a line that I could write
Sad enough to make you cry
All the lines you wrote to me were lies
I scrub the bathtub with the only stiff thing I can find, an un-used back-scrubber from a Bed, Bath and Beyond gift basket I gave her for Christmas last year. I force the brush back and forth, focused on the hard brown ring in the center of the bathtub and the mildewed faucet. I run scalding water over and apply another coat of bubbles.
I’m not sure how to deal with the ash on the furniture and carpet. I decide to vacuum first–yes, she does own a vacuum, in impeccable condition–and then study the tables and shelves. I decide to wet a big bath towel and plunder as much ash as I can for the money. I riffle through towels in the closet. My hands fall on an empty bottle and one half-full one stashed in between the terrycloth.
Who you hiding these from, Ponyboy?
I rinse the soiled towel in the bathtub, pressing down hard until water runs clean. I wipe the bathtub again, smears of bubble and ammonia-scented air. I bash the plug into the drain, turn the water hot as I can get it, and fill.
I grab a bottle of Dawn dish soap from the kitchen and pour it into the tub, almost emptying the sucker. Bubble, bubble.
I collect the dishes, plates, silverware, glasses, bowls, cups from the kitchen and living room and place them in the bathtub until water threatens to spill onto the floor. I look around the bathroom and throw a few toothbrushes in, just for good measure.
I’m waiting for the dishes to soak when she walks in, sunglasses on, cigarette and paper sack in hand.
“Duuude!” she squeals, grinning. “What’s up?”
She scans the room.
“This is…just…wow!”
“So okay, but your dishes are soaking in the bathtub. There were too many to deal with, so I decided to wash them in there.”
She laughs and gives me a hard, quick hug. “Hey, what can I say? Remember that book we had when were little? The Man Who Would Not Wash His Dishes? That book was awesome.”
I don’t remember. She shuts the apartment door and tosses her purse on the couch. She takes the bag into the kitchen. “You want a drink? I’ve got fresh tonic.”
“A drink is a capital idea.” I go into the bathroom, pluck two glasses from the bathtub, rinse them in hot water, and bring them to her. “Strong.”
“As if there’s any other way. Lime?”
“Sure.”
She brings me my drink, takes a sip, then hands me her glass. “Wait. Hold on.”
She runs on tiptoes into her bedroom and emerges with an armful of dirty dishes. “There’s mooore!” she says in a singsong voice, laughing. She clanks them into the bathtub.
I set the drinks down. Present under my arm, I wander to the stereo and re-start the cd. Delighted, she tears into wrapping paper and ribbon. I pick up my drink, swallow and feel the burn.
The months roll past the love that you struck dead
Did you love me only in my head?
The things you did and said to me
Seemed to come so easily
The love I thought I’d won you give for free
*Lyrics from the Gin Blossoms’ “Found Out About You,” from New Miserable Experience
