Clutter
He went to his friend's house. He had not been inside the house in years and
it had changed. It was once a lovely place, filled with fine old antiques,
well-tended. Flowers in pretty vases, airy and clean. French doors leading
out to a little screened sitting room in front, separate from the wide and
open front porch.
This time he found it to be a wreck. The kitchen appeared to be a disaster
area and smelled like one. There were numerous cigarette burns on the den
carpet. Most were around a chair where she always sat. It did not take a
mystic to see that she had, under a constant load of drugs and alcohol,
dropped many a cigarette. Why she had not burned up was beyond
comprehension.
The rest of the house was almost as bad. If there were holes burned in the
carpet they were not visible. There was too much clutter to see the floor,
except for a path through the rooms. Clothes, old boxes, this and that lay
scattered everywhere. The only uncluttered surface in the bathroom was the
toilet seat. The sinktop, floor, every surface was covered with medications,
cosmetics, hair dryers, curlers, towels, washcloths.
Her bedroom was similar, although the bed itself was uncluttered. The
vanity, chest of drawers, another chest were all piled high with clothing.
Much had fallen to the floor, as if to join the pile of unironed laundry.
He did not go upstairs. It had been her main domain back in the years when
her mother was still alive. The old woman had vegetated in the uncluttered
bed until being moved to a nursing home to die, victim of a stroke. The
upstairs had been the center of clutter in those days, with the strewn
matter and cigarette burns. The bed there had been well used in those days,
both by him and others.
Of course he knew her personal life was in disarray. All the years he had
known her it had been in disarray, even if the house had not.
There was no way it would ever be otherwise. It was her fate.
