DECLUTTERING

“There’s something else here!” Mia tugs on the pile of old man clothes in the musty closet. It collapses, dusting her dark, curly hair in a waft of mould and dust. She emerges clutching a brown-paper wrapped package, shoe-box sized.

“Did you have to do that?” asks her mother, Charlotte. “I’d just cleared that space.”

“It’s addressed to Grandma, but it doesn’t look like it’s ever been opened.” Mia turns it over and over in her hands, shakes it, picks at the string.

“Could you just focus, Mia? We need to at least get the clothes out of here before Goodwill closes.”

“I can’t tell who it’s from, the sender address is all blurry. But it’s definitely Grandma’s name, and it rattles.”

“Just grab those bin bags, will you? I don’t know if any of this is saleable. Perhaps we should wash it all to get the mustiness out before we give them away?”

“Ohhh, that’s gorgeous.” Mia holds up a dress made of shining sequins with a low swooping back “I never knew Grandma had anything like this. Can I keep it?”

“Why not? She was pretty hot in her day, so she always told me. Frequently. But she had to settle down when she got married, that’s what you did in those days. Had kids, gave up all the fun.”

“Like you, Mum? Don’t you have any fun anymore?”

Charlotte shakes her own curly head at her daughter. “I do, because I never took that bargain. I thought it was a crummy one. And I told your father so, and he agreed. But we both plan to do some extreme kicking up of heels when you go to college, let me tell you.”

Mia stares, imagining this idea with horror. Old people kicking up their heels! “Ergh. The underwear goes out, right?”

Charlotte is back to stuffing bin bags with old coats and trousers. “Yep. No one wants that.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to keep it all? Then we wouldn’t have to pick and choose.”

Charlotte shakes her head “Even the underwear? And where would we put it all?”

“Storage unit?”

“And you’d pay for that would you, for a lot of old stuff, more than half of it rubbish?”

“Vintage?”

“Not even. Look, here’s the list of things that have a valuation, from back when your Pop went into the nursing home. See if you can find them all.”

Mia takes the list, and the package, still rattling it curiously from time to time. She finds the seed pearl necklace, the cameo brooch, the engraved silver tray and the gold and ruby ring, which for no obvious reason brings tears to her eyes, remembering it on Grandma’s finger. The most valuable thing on the list is :

“A pair of famille rose white ground vases featuring peaches and peonies (Yongzheng four-character mark in iron red and of the period (1723-1735). 6in (15 cm) high.”

“What’s a “famille rose” vase Mum?” she asks.

Charlotte waves at the mantelpiece. “There it is. Be careful.”

The vase is a beautiful thing in gold and pink and red, an intertwining pattern growing around it with clusters of peaches on one side and a group of peonies on the other.

Charlotte comes over “You have to hold it firmly, don’t let it slip. That’s what Pop always told me.”

“Wow, it’s gorgeous,” Mia breathes carefully in case it breaks.

“The peaches mean fertility, and peonies are for wealth. I think it was a wedding present, for good luck, I guess. Pretty fancy compared to everything else they had. Mum never said who it was from.”

They admire it for a while, then Mia asks “Where’s the other one? It says a pair on the list.”

“I remember it did have a pair. I haven't seen the other one for a long time. Maybe it broke? What a shame. I suppose that’ll drop the value quite a bit.”

“Is that all you care about?”

“Look at the estimate. Frankly, we could use the money. For your college fees, among other things.”

Silenced temporarily, Mia makes up a new box and wrapping paper for the valuables, then finds herself picking at the mystery package again. The old brown string is twisted tight and wadded with dust. It’s obviously never been opened in all the years since it was tied. Finally, she takes a knife from the kitchen and cuts it, pulling the paper away and opening the lid.

The inside is packed with cotton wool. Nothing seems to rattle. Mia burrows into it with her fingers, looking for anything else she can find. Surely this can’t be all? A sharp piece of pottery stabs her finger, then another. She pulls all the cotton wool out, to find seven broken pieces of porcelain altogether.

“Mum!” she shrieks “It’s the other vase. It was in that box. But it’s all smashed up.”

Charlotte takes the one of the pink and white pieces gently. “What a pity. I wonder how that happened?”

“We can fix it. I’ve got superglue at home.’

“No, it needs a professional. But I don’t know if it’s worth it.”

She starts putting the pieces together into a rough shape.

Mia rustles around in the box some more. “There’s a letter!”

It’s just a card, really, very short, in sharp stabbing handwriting.

“Dear Sal,

I’m sending this back to you, even though you threw it at my head, because I know you treasure it as you do not me.

With love,

Terence"

“She threw it at his head? Way to go, Grandma.” Mia is impressed.

“I don’t remember ever hearing about a Terence. How strange.”

“I wonder why she never opened the parcel?”

“Leave it, can’t you? We need to finish emptying these closets.” Charlotte gets up abruptly.

Later, while Charlotte takes a carload of the better clothing to the Op Shop, Mia is left to keep sorting. The bedrooms seem very empty, with ugly stains showing on the old fitted carpet, while the kitchen remains chaotic with random objects spread across every surface.

Mia looks back at the puzzling box.

A mystery package, from a mystery man. A package that was never opened.

She pulls out one of the boxes Charlotte set aside for looking at later. One is full of plastic photograph albums, reddened pictures of strangers grouped together and smiling for the camera. Several of Pop with his thin face and fair hair, looking crumpled as he always did, even as a young man with hair on his head.

There’s Grandma in a pillbox hat with a silly-looking veil flung back, swinging on Pop’s arm as they come down the steps of a church. She’s looking straight at the camera, confident and sassy, not like the small, hunched figure of recent years. Her eyes seem so bright.

Lots of photos of Mum and her little brothers on the beach waving buckets and looking sunburned and sandy.

Under the albums are some home video tapes, but the packets crumble in her fingers and it’s impossible to read the scribbled descriptions.

Charlotte comes back, sighs at the new mess, dumps the decayed tapes in a bin bag. “No way those will play. Pity she didn’t get them transferred years ago. That’s how it is, the past goes, and it’s gone. No point dwelling on it.”

There are some bundles of letters, yellowed and water-stained from a long-ago accident. None of them are from the mysterious Terence.

At the very bottom, a small black and white album with pictures of Grandma as a child, wearing an Alice band, riding a bicycle, posing in the shining fishtail dress. “Look Mum, there’s that dress!”

Charlotte smiles. “I remember her showing these to me, once. Your Pop wasn’t very keen on memories. He was more like me, a chucker-outer.”

As she’s closing the album and putting it away, a small loose photo slides out . It’s black and white, of a man leaning on a car smoking a cigarette.

Charlotte draws a breath.

Mia turns it over. In looping writing on the back is one word “Terence”.

“It’s him! It’s the mystery man.”

She pulls her phone out and zooms in to see the details. A striking face with dark curling hair looks back at her, rather arrogant, one eyebrow raised.

“Are you okay, Mum? You’ve gone all funny-looking.”

“I saw this man once. Mum was really angry with him that he came to the house. He was wearing a suit, all fancy. Not like any of the people we usually saw.”

“So, you met him? What was he like?”

“I don’t remember much. He patted me on the head and I was annoyed, because I didn’t like to be treated like a baby, even though I was one, practically, of course. He said “You know I can’t keep away.” But my mother said “You have to. Go.”

Mia stares at the photo some more. The face looks somehow familiar. That curling hair, those dark eyebrows.

“He did go away. I asked her why she was so cross, but she said “That’s grownups business, not yours.” I guess he must have come back sometime later, because I remember the two vases from before that, but not afterwards.

“Woah. Was Grandma having an affair? That’s pretty wild.”

Charlotte puts her hand over her mouth. “Oh my. Oh, poor Mum. Was she?”

“How mental is that, if she was.” Mia starts to laugh.

Charlotte looks again at the photo and pulls at her own dark, curly hair, her square chin, her dark eyes. “Oh, lord. This is why I never wanted to ask.”

“Totally mental.”

“It explains so much. This wasn’t a happy house then. There were lots of late-night seething conversations. Doors slammed. Voices raised.”

“You think Pop and Grandma were unhappy?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It got better later, when I left home and it was just the boys. Then after the boys grew up, my parents started travelling everywhere, cruise ship after cruise ship. “Sailing away from life” Mum used to call it. Maybe this was why.”

“And she never said anything about Terence?”

“Never.”

“You know, this box was with Pop’s things. Not Grandma’s.”

“You’re right. It was.”

“So maybe she never knew it was there. Pop took it and hid it. Why would he do that? Why not throw it away?”

“Who knows? It’s all ancient history now.”

“But we should find out.”

Charlotte shakes her head. “That story’s over. It’s done and gone. Let it rest.”

She turns away so that Mia doesn't see the tears in her eyes.

Mia’s dark curls bob as she fiddles the pieces of pottery into their ancient shape. “I never thought of Grandma as a person before. She was just Grandma. So many questions we didn’t even know enough to ask.”

“And answers she never would have given.”

The daughter and grand-daughter go back to clearing away the past.