Page 9 of Good Days Bad Days

“To be honest, I don’t really care what she thinks. I care what you think, Dad. Can’t you see how bad things are in here—how dangerous they are?”

“Well, not . . . not really. It always served me and your momma well.” His tone is infuriatingly calm.

“This has served you well?” I ask, gesturing to the room and the hall full of junk. I knock into a tower of papers, and it cascades onto the bed and floor. “Damn it.”

Heat flashes up my neck and cheeks, bringing angry tears.

I try to hide them as I go to collect the pages, but as I crouch, I see bulging black garbage bags stuffed under the bed.

It never ends. I toss the last few pages I can separate from the clutter on the floor onto the bed with the rest of the papers.

“I can’t do this,” I sniff and say mostly to myself as I make a stack at the foot of the bed.

“I understand, sweetheart. I know it can be overwhelming.”

“No, Dad. No. It’s not because it’s overwhelming.

It’s because you want to pass everything by Mom, and I didn’t sign on for that.

On the ‘good days,’ she’ll say no to everything, and on the ‘bad ones,’ she won’t even remember us.

” A ball of stress in my chest grows with every word.

I’m starting to wonder why I’m even here.

“This is serious. We have people from the county coming here tomorrow. We need a plan or you’re going to lose the house.

What do you think Mom will think about that? ”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he says, sitting on an empty spot by the pillows propped against the headboard.

I take a deep breath and remind myself I made my dad a promise—if he’s willing to clean out the house, I’m willing to help him. He might not see how messed up the situation is, but I know how to work with demanding clients and sell them on my vision.

I don’t want to bring up all the abandonment issues I’ve struggled with, and I don’t want to fight. I only want to help free my dad of the burden of this house. Maybe then I’ll ask him why he let Mom keep him from me for so long.

“How about this?” I say. “We’ll start in here and I’ll get information about hiring a cleanup team. I’ll have a better idea of what’s required when we talk to the social worker tomorrow.” I talk to him like he’s one of my clients and there’s a whole TV crew here.

He picks at the cuticle on his left thumb. He has a cut; it’s brownish red with dried blood. His nail is yellowed, and his hands look nothing like the ones that pushed me on the tire swing in the backyard or held my hand as we walked the lakeshore path to his antique shop a block off Main Street.

“You always have good ideas, hon,” he says, avoiding eye contact.

By “always,” he must mean on Second Chance Renovation since he has no way of knowing how good or bad my decision-making skills are as an adult.

“All right, well then, should we get started?”

“Sure thing,” Dad says, leaping off the bed like I asked him to go for a swim off the dock on a hot summer night. He brings over a collection of grocery-style boxes and plastic bags as though they’ll be sufficient for the tons of clutter and garbage surrounding us. It’s a start.

He digs in on the other side of the room and I take the stack of books at the end of the bed, place them in the box, and then grab another.

My third trip to the bookshelf leads to another scattering of paperwork.

I can identify some of the items: my birth certificate, my mom’s social security card, a ribbonlike name tag with her name printed on it in faded gold lettering, a driver’s license with my mom’s maiden name and an address in Janesville, Wisconsin.

At the bottom of the pile is a picture of a dark-haired woman holding a small baby that I think is me.

On the white border in my mother’s handwriting is a name—Laura.

“Dad,” I call out to him as he goes through a pile of ancient newspapers on the opposite side of the room. “Did Mom live in Janesville? I thought she grew up in Madison.”

“Oh, yeah. I think so.” His response is vague and distant.

“Should I keep it? The license?” I ask, his slow and incomplete replies filling me with anxiety.

“I think so. That’s where your mom keeps all the important things. We can ask her the next time we visit.”

The next time we visit. With my back turned to my father, I roll my eyes. I enjoyed my visit with my mother today, which is super weird to admit to myself, but I don’t know if I’ll be making that trip again. If we have to run every decision past Betty, I’ll be in Lake Geneva for an eternity.

“What about this picture? Mom called me Laura when we left. Is this her? And this award here, too. Has mom’s name on it.

Is it also important?” I hold out the black-and-white photo and black-and-gold ribbon.

He puts on the bifocals hanging from his shirt collar and takes them off almost immediately.

“Yes. That’s your mom’s roommate from college.” He steps back with a shrug. “I didn’t know her well.”

I inspect the picture again, but when I attempt to ask why she might remember Laura but not me, I realize he’s moved into another room.

I gather the interesting belongings and put them in an empty box, already gaining more insight on my enigmatic parents from a quick dig into their hoard.

I don’t know, maybe I’ll visit Betty again and bring the box.

It’d be more effective than my father showing her the items, plus, it’s unlikely he’d even tell me if she remembered anything after looking at them.

My dad is a quiet man, a shy man, the kind of person who nowadays would’ve been prescribed medication for social anxiety, like my oldest, Olivia.

Could that mean I get my outgoing personality from my mom?

What do I get from my father, I wonder? What brought two such opposites into this strange, unhealthy symbiotic relationship that’s led to this overloaded house and parentless daughter?

My father surely won’t tell me, and my mother can’t.

If it meant a clean house and a new start, I’d throw out every item in this place without a second thought.

But if I must indulge my mother’s illness and my father’s infuriating codependence, then I suppose learning more about them is an unintended bonus.

I take in the walls of belongings surrounding me, towering above my head, encompassing me like an embrace.

Perhaps the only answers are within these walls, waiting for me to find them.