For a minute or so, it looked like he was taking us by the river, and I got excited, but then he turned down a street. He parked the Bronco in front of a small, rectangular house with white siding. The front porch was painted a grayish blue and it was cluttered withfurniture. He got out of the Bronco and walked up the front walk to the door, and I followed along, feeling kinda nervous because he’d taken me to his house.
He opened the front door, and there was this immediate, unbearable smell. A musty odor layered over another odor that smelled a lot like shit.
And then I saw it all.
Piles and piles of just…stuff.
Books, newspapers, magazines, clothing, furniture all mixed together in a kinda dusty, musty stew of just…things. I followed Shane through a sorta pathway through it all and looked down to see I was stepping on old pizza boxes, papers, and plastic bags. Everything crunched under my feet. We turned the corner and Shane stopped.
I didn’t see the woman at first, sitting in a green armchair that was so nestled into the mass of things, she practically blended in like a chameleon. She had one swollen foot propped up on a crate. Across from her, sitting on a stack of dirty buckets, was a small TV with vertical lines waving through the picture.
“Hi, Grandma,” Shane said, leaning over to kiss the woman on her wrinkled cheek. He handed her the bottle of pills. He glanced over at me. “This is a friend of mine. Ethan.”
Her white-haired head turned from Shane to me, her eyes huge behind her glasses. She smiled a toothless smile at me and lisped, “Oh, I see. I see. Nice to meet you.”
Shane picked up a trash bag next to the chair and the smell got worse. I watched him go over to another EasyChair, this one brown, with an old man sitting in it. The old man’s head was tipped back, his mouth open, and he was snoring.
Shane told me it was his grandpa as he picked up another trash bag. His cheeks were all red and he didn’t look me in the face when he said he’d be right back. He disappeared through a cavern of stuff, and I turned to look around me again. In one corner, it all went up to the ceiling, and there were water stains up there, huge ones. Behind me, crates of knickknacks, clothing, and cans of food were piled on top of what I guessed to be the dining room table. It was all so overwhelming, the anxiety I felt just looking at it all was making me get all shaky.
When Shane came back, he led me through another pathway into another room, the kitchen, where every surface was covered, except for one small spot. That was the spot Shane used to open some microwave dinners, punch holes in the film with a fork, and pop them into a microwave. While they cooked, he turned to look at me, his expression pensive. I couldn’t stop looking around. It all seemed so unbelievable. There was a pain in my stomach, like someone was punching me in slow motion.
I watched Shane put the microwave dinners on a tray, and arrange silverware, two glasses of water, and some pills all nice and organized. I watched him take them to his grandparents, waking up his grandfather, to eat.
Once that was done, he had me follow him through the kitchen, and down a hallway to the back of the house. He opened a closed door to reveal another room, but this one was clutter-free. Neat as a pin, in fact. Nothing on the floor. The bed neatly made. Glade Plug-ins in the sockets, a sticky strip to catch flies hanging in one corner, and a chest of drawers. It was like a breath of fresh air. There were some posters on the walls of the Smashing Pumpkins and one of Nirvana. I walked in and turned to look at him standing by the door. He seemed so nervous. I didn’t know what to say. I thought I might cry.
Silently, he shut the door, walked into his bedroom, and sat on the bed. I sat down next to him. I felt calmer being in here. Less overwhelmed. And then I saw that he was trying hard to keep the chaos out. I looked over at him. He looked over at me. He was trying to keep his space free of what was out there.
I asked him if Everett had ever seen his home.
He said no. Not the inside.
But he’d let me see it.
His home. The significance of it hit me like a ton of bricks. The meaning behind it, the fact that it must have been incredibly hard for him to allow someone in here. And here I’d been hoping he would take me to the river to make out. I felt stupid.
I slipped my hand into his, threading our fingers together. He squeezed my hand. I squeezed his. We sat there for a few minutes. Itwas all quiet except for the TV. It sounded like his grandparents were watchingBonanza.
After a couple of minutes, Shane said that his grandma has a sprain. He said she fell trying to walk around in that pile of stuff, so he was trying to make sure she stayed off her foot.
I asked him then why he was showing all this to me. Why not Everett? (I didn’t ask that last question, but I was thinking it)
He said, kinda quiet, “I don’t know.” And then he said, “Maybe because I trust you.”
That slow-punch feeling in my stomach was starting to fade. It was being replaced with butterflies. With words I was afraid to say. With all kinds of emotions I didn’t know how to name.
Then he looked over at me, his eyes all misty. “Are you going to tell anyone?”
I thought about all that stuff outside of his room. I thought about how it was kind of suffocating. I couldn’t understand how he could live with it. How anyone could. Then I thought about how Shane got the pills and made his grandparent’s food, cleaned up after them, and did everything for them.
It all came together. Shane taking care of his grandparents in this pile of trash. The times he missed out on things or left school early. He didn’t want anyone to take him away from them. They needed Shane. If Shane was taken away, they’d probably go to a nursing home, and the closest one is in Boonville.
I promised him I wouldn’t tell anyone. Not ever.
Then Shane started talking about his mom and dad, all quiet and slow. He told me his mom’s in a home up in Watertown. He said she started having spells after he was born where she’d sort of forget where she was or who she was. I’m gonna try to remember how he said it. “My grandparents told me she’d do weird stuff, like paint chocolate pudding on my face and drive around the block with me in the backseat for hours. When I’d cry, she’d plug her ears and sing really loud, or she’d just start laughing. She’d leave me alone in places. One time, she left me alone in a shopping cart in a Wade’s. Another time it was in her car. The cops got called, and I was taken away from her and my grandparents had to look after me and my mom until they couldn’t handle her spells anymore. So, they put her in a home.”
He told me he’d never really known his dad and that he’d been in prison for most of his life for scamming people. He said he knew people at school would say it was murder or Mafia shit, but his dad was just a lowlife. A deadbeat. He said his grandparents were the only family he’d really known, and he wanted to take care of them.
I understood. I understood everything. What all of this meant to him and to me. I put my arms around him and held him. He put his arms around me and held me back. We laid down on his bed with our arms around each other, and we laidthere for a while. I’m not sure for how long. I wanted to kiss him again, but I also didn’t want to be insensitive.
