Lawrence Block: Dolly's Trash & Treasures

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.”

I wondered whatever happened to that cat. It was a gray tabby, and I can remember the sound it made when it purred. Although I guess all cats make the same sound, pretty much. It’s a comfort, hearing them make that sound, which I guess is part of the reason I always liked having animals in the house.

I thought it probably wandered off. They come and they go. But something must have happened to this one, and then it just turned up again.

“It’s like an archaeological dig. You go down another stratum and you’re in another year.”

“And if it’s a truly productive site, sooner or later you unearth a dead cat.”

“Did you hear what she said? She always wondered what happened to that cat. You know what it looked like?”

“A cartoon cat.”

“Exactly! Like Wiley Coyote when he falls off a cliff and flattens out on the pavement. Or like Tom when Jerry outsmarts him—”

“Which is all the time.”

“—and he gets run over by a steamroller. Then he picks himself up, fills out again, and gets back into the game.”

“Without having learned his lesson. But I’m afraid this cat’s not going to fill out again.”

“No.”

“I wonder how it died. And when.”

“I hope you’re not going to order an autopsy.”

“No, hardly that, but they didn’t come across it until they’d moved a whole mountain of junk. It must have been there for years.”

“Unless it dug its way under there and died.”

“Why would it do something like that?”

“Maybe it knew it was dying, and how else could it make sure it got buried? You know what else I was wondering? I was just — oh, hang on a minute. Arnie, is there a problem?”

“A problem? It’s all of it a problem, isn’t it? The thing is, well, I don’t know if you need to know this, or if you even want to know it, but the boys just found another cat.”

It was the little calico.

Except I should say she. All calico cats are female. It’s genetic, and you’ll never find a male one. How many people know that?

They think I’m stupid and ignorant, but I’m not. There are a lot of things I know that most people probably don’t. All white cats with blue eyes are deaf. Born that way. Genetic.

How do I know? Well, I sure didn’t learn it in school. There’s a book about cats, a very good book, and there’s a chapter in it about genetics. One gene decides if a cat is Siamese or not.

I’ve got the book here somewhere. Unless one of them threw it out, one of these geniuses with his name on his shirt so he won’t forget who he is.

That calico cat, she was always Little Debby’s favorite. Of course all of the children liked all of the animals, that’s the way they were brought up, but that calico, Little Debby was crazy about her.

“That woman in Swedish Haven?”

“She was remarkable. The way the inner and outer lives were at such utter variance.”

“Right, but here’s my question. How many cats did she have?”

“Not a one.”

“Seriously? I thought they all had a house full of cats.”

“She didn’t have any, living or dead. Unless you count china cats.”

“She had those?”

“Oh, plenty of them. She collected them. And patterned glass, and travel books, and postcards and matchbooks. All of them carefully organized and neatly displayed, except that there was such a profusion of clutter that you couldn’t really see any of the displays. But they were all there, and all in apple-pie order.”

“Your organized lunatic, as opposed to your disorganized lunatic.”

“Except they’re not lunatics, or at least not all of them. Something goes wrong in their wiring, or maybe it’s a way to come to terms with a horrible childhood, or—”

“Oh, shit, everybody had a bad childhood.”

‘Well, I have to say nobody molested me, or locked me in the closet for a week at a time. While some of the cases we get—”

“All right, point taken. Mine wasn’t that bad, either. I used to say I had as miserable a childhood as the next braggart, but it was way short of being that kind of nightmare.”

“I just hope there aren’t any more dead animals. Because the good news is that we’re making real progress here.”

“Well, give the dead cats some credit.”

“What do you mean, John?”

“Ever since the first one turned up, she hasn’t been kicking up a fuss. Haven’t you noticed? Instead of putting up a fight every time somebody wants to throw out the 1972 World Almanac , she stays locked into her own private world and leaves the men alone. It makes a big difference.”