Chapter One Kelsey #2
She was decisive and brisk. Clients saw her as a sort of bad-ass British nanny, the hip Mary Poppins of organizers.
She always made an effort to dress smartly, to look elegant, formidable even, to remind people that she was a professional and a woman of good taste.
Because the clients were often feckless, bored, and profoundly insecure, they respected a stylish person who could impose some structure onto their ridiculously messy lives.
Jane was seated on a stool at the kitchen counter, eating her lunch out of an austere bento box, when Kelsey shuffled in and announced, “Oh my god, I have the wooooorst migraine. I would take a Fiorinal but then I’ll be in bed the rest of the day, and I have so much to do.
” She leaned in to look at Jane’s lunch.
“Oh my god that is so cute! And also, like, brilliant for portion control. Is it an organizing thing?”
“Well, it’s a Japanese thing....”
“So Marie Kondo, right?”
“Not really. It’s a bento box. They’ve been used for centuries in Japan. I think they’re both practical and beautiful.”
“Like you!”
Jane blushed. She had a hard time accepting compliments and reflexively vetted all of them, even insincere ones like Kelsey’s.
So now Jane went over her mental checklist of the things she had going for her—thick hair, unblemished skin, lithe physique—but calling her beautiful seemed disingenuous.
Jane found it hard to believe anything too good about herself: Wouldn’t that lead to complacency and lassitude?
So, actually, her hair was a rat’s nest, her skin was pallid, and she suffered from that newly minted affliction, skinny fat.
Kelsey, understandably, sought to ingratiate herself, an actress-y tic driven by the desire to be liked. Jane tried to think of a rejoinder, a way to return the compliment, but Kelsey pressed on.
“Where can I get a bento box?” she asked.
Kelsey’s helplessness was astounding.
“I got mine on Amazon.”
“That food looks so good—did you make it yourself?”
Jane glanced down at her plate to remind herself what she was eating. When at work, her culinary tastes were ascetic: steamed broccoli florets on brown rice, sliced turkey breast for protein, a Pixie tangerine for dessert.
She nodded and bit into a broccoli floret. “Do you want some?”
“Oh, that is so sweet, but I’m on this meal plan and can’t have carbs or anything white.”
Nothing white. People liked to adhere to simple, often arbitrary rules.
“I hope you like what I’ve done. I made a small corner for Betty in Mr. Cuddles’s closet and went through your food pantry. I discarded a lot of expired items, and I’ll need you to approve what I want to throw away.”
“I’ll get around to them later.”
Jane had heard that before. “I recommend doing it while I’m here, because I can police you.”
“I’d love that, but I don’t want to waste too much of your time. I only have you for today, right? I’m on a budget and you were a gift from my mother.”
“I know, she was very eager to make this happen.”
Kelsey bristled. “She is so passive-aggressive. Her gifts are all about her and always with strings. She already called to see how we’re doing. I shouldn’t have picked up, because—well, now I have this raging migraine. She is such a cunt.”
Jane winced. “I’m sorry, but that word is really offensive.”
“I’m sorry too, but it’s like the only word that accurately describes my mother.”
Jane understood how parents, and especially mothers, could wreak lasting damage.
In her own family, criticism was the way love and affection were expressed.
It demonstrated that someone was paying attention.
Reflecting, Jane wondered if what she had foolishly hoped was a kind of love may have just been exasperated tolerance.
“All right then, let’s try to be efficient with the time we have left.”
“Oooh efficient, I love that!” Kelsey rubbed her hands together, miming her eagerness.
“I can tackle the refrigerator, or we can have a look at your garage, or your closet.”
“Oh god—I mean, my closet—as you can imagine—is a disaster.”
“Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t imagine that.”
Of course, Jane had imagined exactly that.
Was Kelsey’s hapless helplessness authentic, or a ploy to encourage enablers to enable her?
It was remarkable she was taking care of four children; she seemed barely capable of taking care of herself.
But Jane was a pro, a resolute warrior battling hordes of hoarders.
She could always bring at least a smidgen of order to chaos.
She’d seen some disturbing things on the job.
Closets that were literally bursting, stacks of vintage shoeboxes and heaps of rank underwear and obelisks of virgin Lululemon clawing at the ceiling.
She worried that someday one of these shrines to compulsive consumption and orgiastic materialism would topple and suffocate her.
Kelsey, steeling herself, said, “Let’s go for the closet. But first, I’ll need that Fiorinal. Do you want one?”
Jane demurred.
Kelsey’s enormous walk-in closet was stuffed with stuff. She apparently didn’t know how to use a hanger or, for that matter, a drawer. Shopping bags from luxe stores, full of clothes that had never been worn, were strewn about.
“Sometimes my mother buys me clothes to help me look like ‘less of a slut,’ ” she explained, using air quotes, “and they’re all hideous—old lady, ugly, Nancy Reagan crap—but I can’t return them.
The people at Chanel all know my mother and would report back to her and then there would be hell to pay. ”
Jane took it in. “These are valuable pieces, in mint condition. If you aren’t going to wear them, get rid of them.”
“Maybe I should put them in storage?”
“It’s not good to hang on to things. Clearing up the physical clutter helps with the mental clutter.”
“I know... but, at least my mother got me a gift, even though it’s not something I want....”
Jane understood. Her mother used to buy her clothes two sizes too small, as “motivation.” One pair of jeans became a fetish object: she’d imagine being thin enough to fit into them and then her whole world would make a dramatic pivot and her mother would love her.
Or like her. She threw all her mother’s “gifts” into a Goodwill dump when she was twenty-nine.
Not only was it cathartic, but it spurred the inception of her organizing career.
“You could donate them. Or take them to a resale place. You would make a lot of money, enough to hire me again.” As soon as she spoke, Jane was mortified. She didn’t really want to come back.
“Maybe. Sorry, I’m, like, the queen of procrastination!”
“Listen, I can’t force you to do anything, but I can give you my advice: Get rid of it. All. Of. It.”
Kelsey’s eyes narrowed. “Wait, my mother hired you—would you tell her?”
“Of course not!”
Why was Kelsey so cowed by her mother? The woman was a plastic Beverly Hills matron who had parlayed her minor celebrity as hostess of a game show on which she fingered tacky prizes into a lucrative marriage to the very best divorce lawyer in LA who had, all too predictably, divorced her not long after Kelsey was born.
“Give me a sec to think about it.” Kelsey walked over to a shelf overflowing with denim and held up a pair of jeans. “I haven’t been able to fit into these for twenty years.”
This was such a tired trope, as persistent and pervasive as a cancer.
“Did your mother give them to you?”
“No, they were part of my wardrobe on my show. I loved them so much. It’s possible I stole them; they always give you a hard time when you want to keep wardrobe.”
Almost two decades ago, Kelsey was a regular on a ludicrous teen drama about a coven of witches—good witches, pretty witches, aspirational witches—who all went to the same high school and cast spells over their boyfriends and demons.
Often the boyfriend would turn out to be the demon.
It was the kind of show that was addictive, like salted peanuts or OxyContin.
It had imprinted an entire generation of young women and their gay best friends.
Jane would hate-watch it, before “hate-watching” was a thing.
“Rule of thumb—if you’ve got the memory, you don’t need the item.”
“Actually, I don’t remember that much from back then—I did a lot of partying.
Plus I had an eating disorder, which was amaaaaaazing.
I could wear anything, but after I had the kids, forget it.
” She sighed. “I wish I still had that stamina. Of course, hard to do any of that as a single mom. I mean, I will probably never date or have any fun ever again.”
“I doubt that, Kelsey.”
“Really? I hope you’re right.”
“I hope so, too. You deserve it.”
There. She had thrown Kelsey a bone.
“Thank you, Jane, that is so, so sweet.” Kelsey seemed genuinely appreciative. “And thanks for pushing me. I need it. But right now what I really need is a Nespresso. Do you want one? Caffeine is good for my migraines.”
“That’s all right, I’ll get started here.”
“Okay, brB!”
“Be right back” meant an absence of over an hour, but Jane didn’t mind. It was easier to sort through this mess without Kelsey looking over her shoulder and whimpering. Jane was so immersed in her work that she was startled when Kelsey finally returned, cradling Mr. Cuddles in her arms.
“Wow, you are good! Ruthless, huh?”
“There’s a discard pile, a donate pile, a resale pile, and a keep pile. I made educated guesses.”
“So what should I do?”
“Why don’t you look over the donate and discard piles, make sure there isn’t anything you’ll miss.”
Jane watched impassively as Kelsey had what looked like a flash of panicked paralysis, then recovered and picked up a tattered green T-shirt, which she held to her face and inhaled.
“This will always remind me of Billy, the last guy I dated before I got married. I was wearing this the first time we met.”