The Housekeeper

by Natalie Barelli

  I don’t know how long we stay like this, but I can’t stop crying. He says it’s going to be all right. That he understands maybe some people I’ve worked for have expected this of me, and the world can be a really terrible place sometimes. But I don’t need to do this to keep my job, not here and not anywhere else, do I understand? I am not a terrible person, he says, and I’m thinking, how would you know? But I nod into his crisp white shirt. Good, he says. Don’t ever forget it. And all I can think is that I don’t remember the last time someone was kind to me like this.

  Chapter Thirty

  I didn’t need to ask for his discretion. I knew he wouldn’t mention it to Hannah, but I asked anyway. “It’s forgotten,” he said. Then he added, “Thank you for the great job you’re doing with Mia. It hasn’t been easy for Hannah. You’ve been a great help.”

  By the time I returned to my room to clean myself up, I looked like a sad clown with mascara-stained tears streaking down my face and lipstick all around my mouth. I had to wait until he left his office to retrieve my phone. The thought of him finding it before I had a chance to take it back made me want to crouch in a corner and howl. He’d think that I’d done all this to blackmail him when that couldn’t be further from the truth. When he left the house an hour later and I got my phone back, I immediately deleted the video without watching it.

  And just like that, my grand plans of revenge and redress are over. I’ve wasted almost three weeks of my life and I’m even more screwed up now than when I got here. I didn’t think that was possible.

  * * *

  It’s now been two days, and both mornings I’ve woken with the memory of my shame still flaming my cheeks. It overcomes me in random moments and makes my stomach flip. I feel dirty, unworthy. Maybe that’s why I’ve been cleaning like a mad person, pushing the vacuum cleaner until my arms ache. The windows are so clean it’s like they’re not there. It’s helped me avoid him as much as possible—which is the point, let’s face it—but once, we both arrived on the landing at the same time and I froze. He gave me a small nod and an amused smile, and a single pat on my shoulder as he passed me, like this was our secret, but it wasn’t a heavy one, and it made me want to weep with gratitude.

  * * *

  “We’re off to the Hamptons this weekend,” Hannah says. She looks awful. Her face is pale, and there’s a random shake to her, like she’s in the early stages of Parkinson’s. But that means I’ll have all weekend to turn this place upside down. Whatever it is she’s hiding, I’ll find it.

  “Where to?” I ask.

  “Patsy’s beach house. Although castle would be more accurate.” She chuckles.

  “That will be nice,” I say.

  “I hope so.” She sighs. “I always feel like I’m trying too hard around his mother. I turn into some demented cheerleader, bouncing around with pom-poms. I gush at everything, and I mean—everything. The whitewashed walls! The pale timber floorboards! The beachy vibe! The dog! And I haven’t seen her since the Instagram post, so that’s going to be interesting.”

  “Does she know?”

  “No idea. Probably.”

  “Awkward,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say.

  * * *

  I help her pack, and by that I mean she tells me what she wants to take and what Harvey wants to take and I fold everything as best I can and put it in the suitcase. She does throw me a funny look at one stage and refolds one of Harvey’s shirts. I tell her I have a cold, as if that explains why I don’t have a clue how to pack a suitcase properly.

  “Do you want to come with us?” she asks. Immediately I wonder if it’s because she wants me out of the house. Is she scared of what I might find? Maybe she just wants me to look after Mia while she’s there, so she can sun herself on a chaise lounge without the irritations of motherhood.

  I chew my fingernail and pretend to think about it. “I don’t think so, but thank you. I was thinking of seeing my mother this weekend.”

  “Oh, Louise, of course. How silly of me.”

  “That’s all right, Hannah.” This is the new me. I am very polite and very pliable.

  “Could you make some sandwiches for the trip, please? Harvey wants to take a picnic.” She rolls her eyes in a friendly-jokey fashion, then asks for ham and mustard on rye. She also wants a little vegetable puree for Mia, kale and sweet potato, in a plastic Tupperware container. I almost say to her, wait, don’t you think she’s a little young? Shouldn’t you talk to a pediatrician first?

  In the end, I just do as I’m told. I want them all out of here so I can get on with my own life. Because after this weekend all this will be over, one way or another.

  I gather Mia’s traveling bag, which is larger and better stocked than anything I’ve ever traveled with, and load everything into the back of the Bentley. I make sure Mia’s car seat is securely clicked in. She puts her chubby fingers on my cheek and laughs. I realize with a start that I might not see her again, and the thought makes my eyes swim.

  “I’ve put your picnic in here, Mr. Carter.” I lift the basket to show him. “There’s everything you need.”

  “Picnic? Right. Thank you, Louise. I don’t know if we’ll have the time for that, but it’s very thoughtful of you.”

  Okay… did I get this wrong? Or is she up to her usual weird games again? I look around for her, but she’s still inside. When she comes out, she squeezes my hand and gets in the car. When they drive off I almost wave at them before I catch myself.

  I’m inside, I’m on my own, and I’m on a quest. I begin my search with the smaller sitting room she considers an office. Her desk is a narrow antique table with thin drawers. My goal was to break into her laptop, although I didn’t hold much hope of success since I have no idea what her password might be. Not that it matters, because there is no laptop—only the power cord, still plugged in, its connector dangling loosely next to a couple of pens and an empty glass. Still, I go through the desk inch by inch, but only find a few invoices and an old auction catalog. The rest of the beige, spartan room doesn’t hold anything of interest, and I begin to feel overwhelmed with the conviction I won’t find anything, and I won’t know what she’s trying to do to me until it’s too late.

  I sit on the last step of the staircase and press the heels of my hands into my eyes. I keep going back to Hannah’s diary entries. The lies she wrote about me. How did she find out about me? She must have been in contact with the agency. Maybe she emailed them about me, something about my Social Security number. They would have replied with something like, “We don’t know who’s in your house, but it’s not Louise Martin, so no, you can’t have her Social Security number.” In which case, that evidence would be on her laptop.

  I go up to her bedroom and sit at her dresser. I rummage through her drawers one by one: makeup, hair clip, some costume jewelry. I have a vague feeling of something missing and it takes a few minutes to put my finger on it.

  The photograph. There should be a photograph of her and Harvey on a beach. It’s always there, to the left of the mirror. I look around for it, but I can’t see it. Maybe she took it with her, which seems over the top. They’re there together, it’s not like she’s going to miss him and needs his photo on the pillow next to her.

  Then I see her Montblanc pen on the floor near the leg of the dresser. I pick it up and turn it around in my hand, wondering whether I should steal it. She might think she left it behind at the Hamptons. She’d be sorry to lose it, for all her bluster that day, when she interviewed me, pretending she had no idea it was so expensive.

  Oh, this old thing? it was a present from my husband, one of many, when I gave birth to our daughter. Sweet, isn’t it?

  I repeat the words in my mind: …when I gave birth to our daughter. But that makes no sense. If she’s only had this pen for four months, how did she use it to write every entry in her diary, dating back almost a year? Because her journal begins with her wedding, and she didn’t own the pen then.

  In the closet, I pu
ll it out and flip through the pages, back and forth. There’s no doubt about it, she wrote every page with this pen. It’s the same ink, that unusual aqua shade. Barbados blue. Pretty, isn’t it? I never knew there were so many different shades of blue!

  Hannah wrote all these entries, every single one of them, in the last four months. Or more likely the last three weeks. Either way, she made it look like they spanned ten months. The wedding. Mia. Hannah’s gradual descent into some vague, undiagnosed postpartum depression. Then me. All this shit about me. All lies. All of it.

  I’m so tense that my jaw aches. In her bathroom I reach for a Xanax, but of course, they’re not there. They haven’t been there for a while. I close the door but immediately open it again so fast it bounces on its hinges. The bottle of Ambien—it’s not there either.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  I hunt through the mess that is my room, my stomach clenched. I pick up crumpled underwear from the floor and throw it on the unmade bed. I lift the mattress, then let it drop with a thud. My foot bumps against an empty bottle under the bed and sends it rolling. I crouch down and peer underneath, but there’s only a pair of dusty sneakers and a bus ticket.

  It’s here, somewhere. I know it is. I turn to my clothes spilling out of the open closet and shove them out of the way. Then I carefully inspect each shelf, running my hands along the top, but nothing jumps out that shouldn’t be there. I’m about to give up, but on the very top shelf, my fingers brush against something. I stand on tiptoes and reach farther, feeling the edge of something sharp, metallic. With the tip of my fingers, I pull it toward me. It’s the missing photo inside the pretty silver frame. The one of her and Harvey that she keeps on her dresser, but her face is scratched out, like someone has taken the tip of a knife to it.

  I sit on the edge of my bed, take the photo out of the frame and study it closely. It’s like her face has been lacerated. Obliterated. It was done with such force that in some places the tip went through and scratched the base of the frame, leaving angry score marks behind. Am I supposed to have done this? Of course I am. This is all part of the setup. I throw the whole thing against the wall and hear the glass crack.

  I turn my attention to my own dresser, which is mostly empty. The bottom drawer holds a bottle of Shiraz, half-full, a wrinkled glittery T-shirt I never wear, a bag of chips and a half-eaten candy bar. I kick it closed out of frustration, but it doesn’t go all the way in, which I hadn’t noticed before, probably because I don’t bother closing the drawers. I give it another push, but something is stopping it.

  I get down on my knees and pull it out all the way. Then I reach in the cavity. My fingers feel something in the corner. A small square bottle. I know what it is, even before I retrieve it: the bottle of Ambien that used to be in the bathroom upstairs. It contains exactly the same pills as the one I found on the floor, although now it’s almost empty.

  I close my eyes, press my fingers on my forehead. It’s like putting a puzzle together but missing half the pieces.

  It’s obvious why she’s hidden her scratched up photo in my room. At some point, in front of witnesses, she will find it. She will be shocked. She will exclaim, OMG! What is that doing here? Oh boy! My housekeeper sure hates me! But if so, why hide the Ambien in my room, too? And then the words from her journal dance in front of my eyes.

  I’ll bring you some tea, it will relax you. I was about to say no, her tea always makes me sleep.

  It made no sense to me at the time, so I just filed it away as part of the fabric of her lies, a detail she added to make it sound more authentic. But now I see it’s more than that: she’s always tired, it’s her default state. Anyone who knows her will attest to that. Except it’s a lie. She’s been pretending to be exhausted and, at the same time, sprinkling evidence that I’m feeding her sedatives. All part of the narrative. The Ambien bottle in my room is for the police to find. And I’m so angry I want to punch the wall.

  She’s not interested in me, she’s using me. For all I know, she doesn’t care who I am. Maybe she really thinks I’m just some maid called Louise who happens to work in her house. She just wants to make it look like her crazy housekeeper has taken such a dislike to her that she wants to hurt them all. But it’s her husband and her child that are the target. I’m sure of it. I can feel it. She’s going to get rid of them—while miraculously surviving herself, it goes without saying—and she’s setting me up to take the fall.

  Well, bad luck to you, Hannah Carter, because two can play this game, and I am one step ahead of you. By the time I see you again, you will be begging me to leave you alone.

  I call Dominic and he answers on the first ring. I tell him I’m housesitting for a nice couple who have gone away for the weekend. Come on over, I say. It’ll be fun. They said to help ourselves to anything we like, I say. Then I take her journal and put it in my small suitcase, along with the photograph, her Montblanc, and the sleeping pills. Later, I will take them to a dumpster somewhere, or an incinerator. Make sure they’re pulverized forever. Because if she doesn’t have those things, she has nothing.

  Dominic comes over. We play dress-up, with me in my maid’s uniform. We have great sex pretty much everywhere in the house, including in the hanging egg chair on the top terrace. Now we’re lying on the floor of the main living room staring at the clouds on ceiling, smoking a joint and I feel amazing, like everything is sparkling and new again. I take his hand in mine and squeeze it, losing myself in the clouds above and we’re like Peter Pan and Wendy, flying through the sky.

  “This is some place,” he says, taking a drag. He pulls on the joint between his thumb and forefinger, but it’s stuck on his bottom lip and it leaves a tiny shred of paper. I kiss it and lift it with my tongue. His lips taste of red wine.

  He props himself up on his elbow and gently moves my hair away from my eyes. “Come with me tonight.” He begins to fiddle with the buttons of my uniform. “I’ve got tickets to a party at the Guggenheim.”

  “Who has a party at the Guggenheim?”

  “It’s a marketing launch, a new soda brand.”

  “Soda? Sorry, I’m busy this evening. I’m washing my hair.”

  He laughs. “They’ve got an open bar.”

  “Count me in,” I say.

  But I have things to do first and the clock is ticking. Half an hour later, I send Dominic on his way with promises to catch up that evening. I’m like a giddy schoolgirl when I kiss him goodbye, standing on my toes. I’m dizzy and stoned and a little drunk, and I don’t care anymore. Everything is going to be okay. After tonight I’ll dump Hannah’s stuff, her evidence, such as it is, then later I’ll call her and arrange to meet somewhere, Dominic’s house, maybe, and at last I’ll finish what I came here to do.

  I put everything back the way it was, more or less, then take a shower and get dressed into my casual clothes—jeans and a T-shirt. I leave the uniform crumpled on the floor. Knowing that I’ll never wear it again is like shedding an old skin.

  I pull out my suitcase from the shelf and drop it onto the bed. I’m about to start shoving my few belongings into it when I think I hear voices upstairs. I wait a moment, then lean out the door and into the hallway and listen, my heart pounding behind my ears. Someone closes the front door, and I hear footsteps on the tiled floor.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Is she back? Already? I hear Mia gurgle and I run up the stairs, but it’s Harvey standing on the landing, a suitcase by his feet, holding the car seat with Mia in it.

  “Oh my God! Har—I mean, Mr. Carter! You’re back so soon? What happened?”

  He’s about to say something, but his mouth just gapes, distorted and silent.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Hannah is in the hospital,” he says at last. Then he looks down at Mia in the car seat, like he’s forgotten she was there. He passes it to me. “I’m sorry, can you take her? Take her upstairs, please?”

  So it has begun, whatever fucked-up plan she has in store for me. I didn’t know w
hat to expect, but not this, whatever this is. Harvey runs a hand back and forth over his bald head. “Look, Louise, I’m sorry, I know it’s your day off, but would you…? Mia, just for a few hours. I’ll make some calls.”

  “Of course, I’ll stay, don’t worry. I’ll take her upstairs now.”

  He nods, his eyes red-rimmed and wet with tears.

  * * *

  The first thing I do is to take Mia out of her clothes and check her body for marks, rashes, cuts, anything that shouldn’t be there. I check her temperature. I check the whites of her eyes and inside her mouth. I can’t see anything abnormal and I let myself relax. I put her into clean clothes and hold her tight, breathing her in. “If you don’t feel well, you just scream for me, okay?” I whisper. Then I wait until she falls asleep, make sure her breathing is normal, and only then do I leave the room.

  I find Harvey sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of white wine and two glasses in from of him.

  “Sorry, I need this,” he says, pouring himself a glass. “I’m going back to the hospital shortly, otherwise I’d make it a bourbon.”

  I sit down opposite, the monitor screen by my side. I push the other glass toward him. “May I?”

  He nods, fills it up. “They think it’s her heart,” he says. There’s a part of me—the awful part of me—that wants to blurt it out: They’re wrong. She doesn’t have one.

  “We’d only just arrived at the beach house. I was parking the car. Hannah said she wasn’t feeling well. She got out, complained about chest pains, and then she collapsed. My mother called an ambulance immediately.” He closes his eyes, puts both hands over his face, just for a moment.

  He takes another swig of wine. “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. You’re doing great.”