shrugged.
“He left the ranch to you.”
“Yeah.”
“So, what do you need me for?”
“I don’t want it.”
“Why not? You weren’t too keen when your parents sold your family ranch. I always thought you’d go back to ranching once you quit the circuit.”
Dillon shrugged. He and Jamie were close but there were some things you didn’t admit, even to those closest to you. “Nope. Too much work.”
Jamie gave him a look of doubt, but it didn’t matter whether Jamie believed him or not. “I need you to help me figure out how to get rid of it because I’m not keeping it.”
ANXIETY ACCOMPANIED GLORIA on her monthly visit to her father’s place. When she was still ten minutes away, the familiar symptoms reared, fire ants swarmed just beneath her skin, making her itchy and irritable. A tightness in her chest made breathing difficult and swallowing almost impossible. As she drove, she had to consciously remind herself to take slow, easy breaths so that she didn’t hyperventilate.
Gloria found a spot to park two blocks from her family home in Oak Park. It had been years since she parked in front of the house; she was too embarrassed. As always, it took her a few minutes to work up the courage to get out, to overcome the urge to just drive away and never come back. She grabbed her handbag, positioned her sunglasses and hat, hoisted the bag full of frozen meals and got out of the car. She locked it and pointed herself in the direction of the house and commanded herself to walk.
Even after all these years of the house looking as it did, the sight of it still shocked her. In her mind, her family home looked as it did when her mom was still alive, back when she was thirteen. Pretty flowers in boxes and pots out front. The yard tidy, though it may have had one too many birdhouses and garden gnomes. The inside filled with treasures, her mom’s collections, but always neat. Always welcoming.
She stood at the gate and stared. The shock and revulsion of the state of the yard hitting her hard—as it always did—like a sledgehammer to the gut. Bikes, old appliances, tires, toilets, garbage bags with unknown contents piled into small mountains, stacks of paint cans, lawn mowers, hundreds of broken and faded pink flamingos, wheelbarrows, thousands of broken plant pots, an ancient trampoline twisted and positioned on its side as if it had been tossed there by a tornado. In some places the trash was piled as high as the six-foot fence. In others it was only a few feet deep. There was not one blade of grass visible and the path between the gate and the front door was becoming narrower and narrower every time she visited.
Then there was the smell.
Gloria placed a hand over her mouth and nose, tears leaking from her eyes as she squeezed her way through the channel of junk to the front door. The porch, where they used to sit on hot summer days, was overrun, as well. Broken furniture, umbrellas, a shopping cart, dented trash cans.
Oh, God.
Gloria went to ring the bell, but the doorbell had been disconnected and wires hung ragged from the gaping hole. She pounded on the door.
“Dad?” Pound, pound, pound. “Dad, it’s me. Open up. It’s Gloria.”
She kept her face to the door, afraid to turn around, embarrassed to be associated with whatever the hell this was. All of the overwhelming feelings of shame and humiliation from her late teens surfacing. Never wanting to be seen here. Never bringing friends home—not even Daisy—never having a serious boyfriend for fear of what he’d think.
The fire ants migrated to her belly and chest.
Pound, pound, pound.
Her father was home. She knew he was. He’d become nocturnal, staying ensconced in his den of trash by day, only emerging at night to complete his weekly circuit of Dumpsters, searching for perfectly good things that other people threw away.
“Dad!” she shouted, hating that she was creating a scene.
A bolt slid, then another, then a series of chain locks unlatched and the door opened a crack. Her father’s watery blue eyes stared, large behind his glasses. “Oh, Gloria-Rose. It’s you. What are you doing here?”
Such a good question. Swallowing down the bile that rose in her narrowed throat, she held up the grocery bag. “Meals on Wheels,” she said with a fake smile.
Her father’s smile was genuine and his watery eyes teared up in delight as if she didn’t do this every single month. The sight broke Gloria’s heart.
“You’re such a sweetheart. Come in. Come in.” He opened the door wide and Gloria was greeted by a wall of stuff. Mostly newspapers, fliers and old books, piled from floor to ceiling, creating a wall of paper goods on either side. Her father lived in a massive fire trap. A coffin of stuff.
“Oh, Dad.” How the hell did he live this way?
“You’ll have to go in first so I can lock the door.”
Gloria shook her head. She couldn’t do it, the piles were claustrophobic. “Can we visit outside today, Dad? I’m not feeling so good.”
He gnawed on his lip, rubbed his face and adjusted his glasses, all nervous behaviors that had worsened over the years. Before he had a chance to answer, a siren came from down the street, growing closer. Her father’s already pale face went ashen. “Get inside, Glo. Now.”
She shook her head and held her dad’s hand, uncertain about what was going on, but having a sense that she needed to be here for this.
The cruiser stopped outside the gate followed by a city truck with a logo for Health and Public Safety on the door.
“Those bastards,” her father muttered beneath his breath. “Why can’t they just leave me alone?”
Two uniformed officers emerged from the cruiser. There was no mistaking the revulsion on their faces as they took in the house and yard. “Mr. Andrew Hurst?” the bigger of the two officers asked as he tried to make his way to the door, having to walk sideways in places.
“Who wants to know?”
Gloria squeezed her father’s hand. Her vision going spotty as the anxiety and panic took over.
“Cook County Sheriff’s Department. You’re under arrest.”
* * *
GLORIA SAT AT her desk, staring blankly at the computer screen. She should just go home and sleep except she couldn’t, her father was there, “working,” which meant he was calling lawyers and writing angry letters to the justice department about his civil rights. If he wasn’t doing that he was likely yelling over the phone at some poor city clerk about the injustice he was facing.
The injustice he was facing? How about the injustice she was facing? Her whole life savings, all seventy thousand, had gone to pay his fines: five years’ worth of fines for public nuisance. If he hadn’t been able to pay, he would have been facing jail time.
So, bye-bye nest egg.
