Лоуренс Блок - Catch and Release

“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.”

“Don’t tell me it was like this.”

“It wasn’t filthy, and everything was in a semblance of order. But she never threw anything out, and the newspapers were packed in orderly stacks until they reached clear to the ceiling, and so were old clothes and everything else you could think of. Including empty jars, peanut butter and otherwise. She soaked off the labels and scrubbed the jars clean, but she kept them all, along with just about everything else that came into her hands.”

“Good grief.”

“I don’t know that you can call it a disease, but it’s certainly a disorder. I understand the FBI profilers divide serial killers into organized and disorganized, and I suppose you could distinguish between Dolly and the woman in Swedish Haven in much the same way, and—”

“John? Thelma? Excuse me, but there’s something you ought to see.”

“What is it, Arnie?”

“Well, it’s a cat.”

“There’ve been a few of them running around. What’s so special about this one?”

“Well, for one thing, it’s running days ended a while ago. A couple of years, would be my guess. Come on, you’re not gonna believe this.”