TAKING OUT THE Garbage

“Ok, hot shot. What should we do now?” Fear looked directly at Monique and tapped her foot. She expected an answer.

“Nothing yet, we just wait.” Monique said. Her voice echoed against the bare walls. All the paintings had been removed. Their absence produced a strange geometric pattern of light colored horizontal and vertical rectangles against the dingy tea colored walls.

“Wait? Wait? Disappointment was wringing her hands and openly sobbing.
“I want chocolate covered cherries in a big fucking box covered in velvet,” Disappointment said. “I want music and black tie galas and a cruise to St Barth’s and… .” Fear cut her off.

“You want, you want, want, want, want, that’s all I’ve heard for decades, you hear me decades.” Fear was now screaming at the top of her lungs. “You’d have to be an idiot to enjoy kicking yourself all day.”

“Just shut up you ninnies, I’m thinking.” Monique said. “Yeah, we have to wait, we bide our time. I’ll think of something. Girls, this sucks but remember this, we are finally free and what ever happens next will be an improvement that’s for sure. And I promise you, I will see to that.”

Fear rocked back and forth, holding onto her knees for dear life. Disappointment clung to her dog, Divina, and buried her face into the dog’s silky fur.

Wait, wait, sure wait, but for what? That was the question.

Throwing things out was his specialty.

Ellen was going to need him. Now that the Un Husband had left her with thirty years of trash and the Good Doctor was fired — Jed was going to be her man.

Friday was garbage day. Today was Friday. Nothing was the same, nor would it ever be the same again, she thought, but Friday meant Jed would come, and she needed him, now more than ever.

Ellen sat on the floor in the middle of empty, waiting, hugging Divina, once their dog, now, Ellen’s dog. The movers had come and just made their last trip to her new little rental on the other side of town.

“Dust bunnies,” she muttered.

Ellen eyed the fireplace. It was in need of a good cleaning, she thought, as she got up from the floor. Ellen half-heartedly swiped at the mantle with a crumpled piece of newspaper, left over from the reams of paper used to wrap the clever country accessories that once made a decorative statement.

There was hardly anything left except for the stuff in the basement.

“Divina, I can’t face it.” She said, as she sat down again. The dog followed her every move and curled up beside her.

A huge dumpster half blocked the driveway. Ellen knew it would eventually be filled with the piles of crap from downstairs, but how was she supposed to go through everything? How to know what was important and what was not? What to save and what to toss? Save it all? Was anything really that important? Throw it all away? It felt like she had done that with her own life.

There had been the ping pong table, the beloved ping pong table. His beloved ping pong table. Ellen hated that ping pong table with all her heart.

Ping.

I’m divorced, she thought.

Pong.

Divorced. I’m not married. I’m alone. I’m single.

Divina shifted her warm body closer. Ellen’s thoughts bounced back and forth.

I’m going to sleep alone and wake alone. Cook alone and eat alone. Yikes, what about my banana bread, my chicken fricassee? Bread? How do you make chicken fricassee for one? I’m going to be 56 years old and now what? The kids are gone. He’s gone, thirty years of marriage, done.

He took Ruby, she thought. Poor Ruby. Divina picked her head up sensing Ellen’s thoughts as if audible. Ellen could feel the dog’s body tense against hers. Divina never liked Ruby much. Divina was gentle and good natured and no match for Ruby.

The snuff bottles, gone, all gone. Her grandfather’s snuff bottles. She kicked herself for leaving them in the Florida house. What else did she forget? Why had she let the Un Husband get away with that? Did it matter? Ellen tried out each of these thoughts over and over and all she could come up with was, holy shit, now what?

He had left without so much as a goodbye, which irked her more than any of it.

Apparently, unconditional love had a shelf life.

Divina’s ears picked up the sound of scrunching stones on the driveway.

“Hey yo, what’s up? What happened here? There’s a ten yarder blocking my truck.”

Ellen turned to see Jed’s big, imposing shape in the open doorway, baseball cap on backwards. He was tall and backlit by the bright sunlight. A small, diamond- encrusted cross dangled from one ear. Dainty and elegant, it stood out against his dark skin and seemed out of place next to his bulky gray hooded sweatshirt.

“Oh Jed, Thank you. I don’t know how I’m going to manage. I have the entire basement to contend with. I’m, I’m… ,” she paused. It was hard to say out loud. “Divorced.”

“Whoa, easy.” Jed said. “I thought the garbage looked a little weird the last few weeks. That sucks.” It seemed to Ellen that her sudden display of tears caught him off guard.

“You noticed my garbage?”

“I’d say let’s do it one step at a time.” Jed side-stepped the question. “Let’s take a whack at the big stuff and whittle our way down. I say, let’s suit up and show up.” His chocolate-colored eyes twinkled with a soft, and knowing light.

Jed worked for the local sanitation company, and she and the Un Husband had been on his route for years. Rain or shine, hot or cold, Jed showed up dutifully, every Friday, except the time when he was laid up with broken bones because of a motorcycle accident. During those months off the route, garbage pick-up just wasn’t the same.

Jed represented the working under belly of the Hamptons, part of the workforce that went largely unappreciated by the summer throngs in their expensive rentals. Not many paid attention to how his crew raced around town, mostly in the early morning dark, gathering the constant debris from summer parties and high living.

Ellen wandered back to the fireplace and picked at the stucco faux finish above the mantle. A chunk fell off and landed on the dog. Some Interior Designer, she thought. I wonder if my other jobs held up like this?

When she and the Un Husband found the sprawling contemporary, it had needed work. She had installed textured wallpaper in the main great room that softened the vaulted space and matched the background of the antique linen draperies. All the local antique dealers were friends. She had given them tons of business over the years, and Ellen had filled the place with a zany, but cozy mix. Some friends, ha. None of them had come through when it came time to buy them back or at least resell them. Couches left over from designer showcases, colorful ceramics from just the right era, a color palate that evoked sea and sky, all of it perfect, all of it, tastefully hid the shoddy construction. It was the cheap street in the south of the highway neighborhood. But in a place where south of the highway meant you were someone, it was their prime spot on the big monopoly board of whose who and whose where in the Hamptons.

“ It looks pretty awful now doesn’t it? The mantle is Formica.” Ellen’s eyes swept across the empty room.

“Whew, you made short work of this place. Where did all the stuff go?”

“Across town, north of the highway. I’m renting.” She added with a sniff.

Unlike the rest of the world, in the Hamptons, South meant up and North meant down.

“Well,” Jed said, if you’re up to it, “I have a few free hours.”

The basement was cavernous. It stretched the full length of the house.

The Un Husband had been a meticulous man. File boxes lined the walls, each one marked with black felt pen, labeled and dated. Ellen shuddered as she tiptoed past them as her mind moved backward, following the dates, 2000, 1990, 1980, 1970. She felt like the kid she had been, literally traveling at highway speed toward her destiny.
Fresh from college, Ellen and her boyfriend were heading out to Long Island. Early Sunday morning meant no traffic. It would be years before the Long Island Expressway would undergo construction. It was 1972, and the tunes on the radio sang of hope and social freedom. Ellen shimmied to a track of All You Need Is Love as she took a drag from a joint and passed it to David.

It would be ten years before they would think snorting coke at dinner parties with their friends was cool. David had just gotten his draft number, which he proudly displayed on his new license plate. He wasn’t going anywhere. His uncle would see to that. That war, far from the western hemisphere, seemed to Ellen and David to only call those with no hope or connections.

In what felt like a bold and rebellious move to them, she and David had decided to get married. Who else got married? None of their friends were getting married. With flawed thinking about what to rebel against, they had decided on a June wedding, at their parents’ friggin country club, no less. Most of their friends balked at the idea but showed up for the free food. Their world was a culture of communes, shacking up, long hair, smoking grass, free love, and a general dislike for anything that smacked of adult behavior.

To find a boyfriend all you had to do was sign up for a peace march.

Ironically, they got a flat tire. Perhaps it was a sign from God too subtle for them to notice.

“Are you sure all of this stuff goes?” Jed said, as he opened the rusty bilko doors that led to the outside. A cold blast of air, spewing yellow and brown leaves, filtered down the steps. The weather had turned.

She didn’t answer.

Ellen crouched in the corner of the basement, shadowed by sagging shelves, stacked with old shoeboxes filled with family photos. With torn and curled edges, the faded images of a young family had been stored away, forgotten.

Jed’s large calloused hand touched her shoulder. For a big man, his touch was gentle. A box of pictures spilled onto the concrete floor as she lurched forward with surprise.

“Taking inventory? That’s a good sign,” he said quietly. “That’s an important step.”

“What?” Ellen barely heard his words. “Jed, I can’t. I just can’t. A step? Where?”

“Ever hear of Twelve Step?” Jed said. “I’ve seen plenty of people, all kinds of people, hit rock bottom. It takes courage and faith. It takes a willingness to give it all up.”

Ellen was confused. She had always considered herself to be a good Jew, with her own homemade version of spirituality. Ten Commandments sure, but steps?

Steps only reminded her of how many times she would have to climb back and forth from the basement and how many steps to the dumpster.

Confused or not, what was in front of her now was stuff she needed to get rid of. “Take the king size bed. I’m not going to need it. I paid the landscapers in TV’s and bicycles. It’s all that’s left.”

“Hey, you’ll get it back,” he said. “You can do it.” “The divorce settlement was yesterday,” she said. “I pretty much threw in the towel. Hell, I gave him the towels. I must have been out of my mind.”

Ellen and the Un Husband had been in therapy for years, supposedly saving the marriage. The Good Doctor was just the last in a string of therapists and psychiatrists.

Dr. M. had a posh, uptown office. Its medical book-lined shelves indicated competence and his tweed jacket reminded her of her English Lit college professor, the one she had had a monster crush on.

“Why don’t you just wait until he fucks up again? I’m recommending Lexapro.”

Ellen was dumbstruck.

“Excuse me?” Ellen didn’t think she heard him correctly. “That’s your advice? Gee Dr. M., if you think it will take pills to live with him, don’t you think I’m on the wrong track? The last affair almost killed me, but you think I should hang in there for another couple of years, at two hundred and seventy five an hour, what, so you can watch him finish me off?”

“Trust me, you’re as depressed as anyone I’ve ever seen come into this office.”

He stood up and wrapping his arms around her, whispered as he pulled her close, “I’ve always been attracted to artistic women.”

Well, that was one thing the Good Doctor had been right about. Ellen was an artist. Her life had always been a flowing series of creative incarnations, and it came in many forms, interior design, painting, acting, writing, cooking and jewelry. In the last few years she had created fanciful earrings, made with gold wire and colorful gems, hoping the ancient power of the stones would ease her pain. Now oils gave her pleasure and focus. But a deeper part of her knew her rage and terror had begun to show up in her paintings. Ellen had named one small painting Expression and Beyond. It sounded classier than calling it Help, I Want to Kill Myself. It had hung in a corner of her bedroom. Vibrating with passion, the fury of vermilion and a raging cad yellow tinged with the envy of sap green formed a face in mid-scream.

Now it lay in a corner of the basement.

As Jed hauled pile after pile outside, Ellen sifted through the debris of her life and touched each and every item before willing it to the dumpster. Once in a while she would come across a doll, a favorite book, a medal or award that had been part of her son or daughter’s childhood. Ellen found a tattered corner of her daughter’s baby blanket. Once blush pink, now dingy gray, she carefully wiped each precious item with the fabric, before placing it tenderly into large Tupperware containers.

She made treasure boxes, time capsules, to be saved for her children and for their children, to remind them of the life she could barely remember. It felt like her mind had closed itself as a form of triage. There was only so much pain one could withstand at any given time.

Ellen staggered a bit as she got up from the concrete floor. Her knees were red and crushed from leaning on them.
“When was the last time you slept?” Jed asked.

“Sleep? Sleep? Last night I dreamed of tearing and swooshing down a mountain on a toboggan covered in baby clothes and dog hair, wearing a bloody wedding dress. But thanks for asking.”

Yet, her family home needed to be ‘broom clean’ for the new owners, and Ellen and Jed kept going.

It took eight dumpsters to discard a lifetime.

Jed was a friend. He did the heavy lifting.

RULE NUMBER ONE: Be Careful what you wish for, you just might get it.