“Helping Mom in the kitchen.”
I crouched down on the floor next to Lee, in the pile of stuff. The dresser drawers were all pulled open, more things spilling out. “So what’s the plan today?”
Lee looked down at the piece of fabric in his hands, reciting in a monotone, “Go through everything. Decide what to donate and what to throw in the trash. Decide what we’re keeping. Clean up as we go.”
Staring at Lee’s side of the room and the carnage that had erupted around his dresser, I said, “That sounds like more than a day’s work.”
His mouth twitched. “Here’s hoping. Hey, check these out.” He held up the thing in his hands—a teeny-tiny pair of swim shorts. “Age six to seven.”
“Holy crap. When was the last time you cleared your shit out?”
“Me?” he scoffed. “I bet you five bucks you’ve got a training bra in your dresser.”
“I’m gonna take that bet, because there is no way I’ve left stuff here that’s that old.”
He grabbed a towel from the pile, holding it up as I got to my feet. “And look! Remember this one?” The towel was covered in a giant picture of Mater fromCars.“We got it for Brad that year, but then I puked on it after I bet Noah I could eat more ice cream than him.”
I laughed, remembering. “Didn’t he eat, like, eight ice creams?”
“Nine,” Lee corrected me. “Believe me, that memory is seared into my brain forever.”
I laughed again, peeling myself away from Lee’s stuff to go through my dresser. I opened the top drawer. A few T-shirts, a bikini I left here last year, a bottle of sunscreen, some tangled headphones, and a whole lot of sand.
I started going through the T-shirts. Most of them were old graphic tees—one was a hand-me-down from Noah that I’d definitely stolen from Lee at some point. Holding it up in front of me, it was still a little on the big side. I folded it back up and placed it carefully on my bed, starting the “keep” pile.
The second drawer was more T-shirts, some shorts, a sundress I didn’t even remember but wasdefinitelytoo small for me now. I found a snorkel and put it on to pull a face at Lee—and found him wearing the teeny-tiny swim shorts on his head and the Mater towel tied around his neck like a cape, sending me into a fit of giggles.
All of my drawers were half empty. I found a book, some earrings, old rope bracelets and anklets. A few odd playing cards and a Ping-Pong ball, whichreallybaffled me because I didn’t remember us ever having Ping-Pong here. A couple of towels I’d used for the last few years that, now that I was looking at them with a critical eye, were scratchy and starting to become threadbare. They smelled like summer: like sea salt and sand and lemonade.
I clung to them for a minute before adding them to the trash bag in the middle of the room.
When I finished sorting out the bottom drawer, I bent down to make sure I’d gotten everything and ran my hand around inside. Sand and bits of fluff brushed against my fingers, and then, right at the back, caught on the drawer, a piece of fabric.
Oh my God, I thought suddenly,thatwas why this drawer always jammed when I tried to open and close it—which, in turn, was why I’d just found so much crap in it that I’d never bothered to clean out before.
My fingers scrabbled at the fabric and I knelt down to tug on it, grunting as I felt it finally break free, and fell backward into my donation pile. (Which consisted of one dress and a pair of shorts that had never fitted me right but I’d always thought were cute.)
“Ha!” Lee crowed as I straightened back up to look at the offending garment. “I told you, Miss High-and-Mighty! ‘I don’t have anything old in my dresser’!”
I threw the now-broken training bra at him, knocking the swim shorts off his head. “That so doesn’t count.”
“Uh, yeah it does. Five bucks, Shelly.”
I poked my tongue out at him—and then took a second to assess his progress. I didn’t think I’d done too bad. The keep pile was pretty small—most of the stuff I’d gone through had only been good for the trash, but it hadn’t taken me very long.
Lee, however, didn’t seem to have made any progress.
“Is that all your trash pile?” I asked, although I had a sneaking suspicion I already knew the answer.
“None of this is trash, Shelly. You take that back.”
“Those sweatpants have holes in them, Lee.”
He held them up, examining them more closely. “They’re artfully distressed. It’s fashion. Somethingyouwouldn’t understand.”
I rolled my eyes. “Lee, come on. I know this isn’t fun, and the whole cleanup thing sucks, especially because ofwhywe’ve gotta do it, but it’s just some old clothes.”
“They holdmemories,Elle.”
