Time was running out and this needed to be done. I would rather it be me who did it and not Mr. Cole. But I was smart about it and had made a phone call before coming in here because no way I could tackle this on my own. And, if I were to be honest, being alone with my mother’s things made my stomach hurt and my skin crawl.
I looked around the absurdly large walk-in closet and couldn’t keep the grimace off my face. My mother must have had a busy summer swiping Mr. Cole’s credit card. She certainly hadn’t had this much stuff when we’d first moved in. She could have given out fifty lap dances a day and she still wouldn’t have been able to afford half of this fancy crap.
I found it interesting that nothing in here belonged to Marcus. Had she kicked him out of his own closet when we moved in here? Where were his things? Who put up with nonsense like that? I didn’t think any amount of sex with my mother had been worth getting kicked out of your own space and then paying for her to refill it with brand new things for her. Then again, I’d yet to have sex so what did I know. I could be wrong.
Mr. Cole had not said a single word to me about what he planned on doing with my mother’s things. It’s like he either didn’t think about it at all or he was expecting her to come back any day now. I hoped he didn’t think about it at all because no way would she be magically appearing on the front stoop three days from now.
Besides, I didn’t want him to have to deal with her stuff, not with everything else he had going on. I had nothing going on and she was my mother, my responsibility. I could take care of it.
I picked up a red, high heeled shoe with a delicate looking ankle strap. We wore the same size shoes. That didn’t mean I wanted to keep them for myself. I didn’t want anything of hers and planned on donating it all to a second-hand store. I threw the shoe on to the floor, close to where I had gotten it from.
After shaking open a large black garbage bag I had found in the pantry, I tied a corner of the bag around the doorknob to the closet door. It would be easier to work with rather than dragging it around behind me or picking it up off the floor and having to shake it open every time I wanted to stuff something in there.
I latched onto the first piece of clothing I saw and ripped it off the metal hanger. The hanger clanked loudly against the bar and the other metal hangers around it. I didn’t even know you could still buy metal clothes hangers, I thought it was plastic or nothing. I didn’t even think you could get the wooden ones anywhere. Why was I standing here holding in my hands a dress that had belonged to my mother and thinking about whether or not you can buy metal or wooden clothes hangers anymore?
It was official, I had gone off the deep end and completely lost my mind. What in the hell was the matter with me lately? I felt so far from my normal self that it kind of scared me. The past month, my emotions had been all over the place and I didn’t feel very stable or sane. Was this part of the grieving process? If so, it sucked. I craved stability and desperately wanted to feel some semblance of normal. Which was stupid because I had no clue what normal even consisted of.
The dress I held in my hands was a deep, dark, wine colored red. The material soft and slinky. I held it up for further inspection and couldn’t hold in the small laugh that escaped me at what I saw.
The dress screamed Vivian Kimber, only a better quality.
I held the dress up in front of me, taking stock. She and I had been almost the exact same size.
The dress had two-inch-wide shoulder straps. The skirt hit just above mid-thigh, making the length indecent. The front was so low-cut half of my bra would have been showing were I to actually wear the expensively offensive thing. I couldn’t remember ever having seen my mother wearing this dress.
I let it drop to the carpeted floor instead of stuffing it into the black garbage bag.
When Addison walked into the closet twenty minutes later, six more dresses had joined the dark red one in a pile on the floor. The garbage bag remained empty and where I had hung it on the doorknob. Every single dress I had dropped to the floor, my mother had never worn and all of them still had their price tags attached.
“Abel should be here with boxes soon,” Addison told me from his place in the doorway.
I held the dark green dress clutched in my hands up for his inspection.
“Do you think this is my color?” I asked him quietly.
“Do you honestly want to wear her clothes?” He shot back immediately.
I shook my head. No, I absolutely did not want to wear anything that had belonged to that woman. Her clothes ranged from the ultimate stripper to slutty Stepford wife. I didn’t think either would suit me very well.
“Why do you need the boxes?” He asked in a serious voice. “You don’t actually want to keep any of this stuff, do you, Ariel? We should get rid of it all. No reminders of her. A fresh new start for you.”
Throw it all away… so much waste. All of it, a massive waste.
When I didn’t answer, he pushed it. “What are you going to do with all this stuff? Her stuff?”
“Salvation Army?” I responded and shrugged. “Goodwill? Whatever second-hand store that’s closest and takes donations. I don’t have a preference. Mr. Cole is going to be all moved out in less than two weeks and all this needs to be gone before then.”
“Just throw it away,” he insisted.
“No.”
He really needed to stop pushing me on this.
Angry, I balled my fist around the green dress, clenching it in my hands and wrinkling the material.
“If you aren’t going to keep it then why do you care where the fuck it goes?”
I clutched the dress to my chest as I tried to slow my breathing. My entire body trembled and the lights on the ceiling flickered briefly, off then back on.