by E J Kindred
“I know, but—” Tears ran down my face for the second time, but now they were tears of happiness. “But it’s too much, Grandma. I can’t accept it.”
“Sure you can. Think of it as keeping me from worrying about you.” She gave me an unconvincing sad look. “It’s not nice to make old ladies worry, you know.”
Leave it to Grandma Natalie to make me laugh in spite of my tears.
“See,” Joe added. “A different perspective.”
“I hate perspective.” I wrapped my grandmother in a big hug. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you.”
She put her hands on my shoulders and held me at arm’s length, tears in her eyes. “You can’t,” she said. “You’ll owe me big time forever.” She let go of me. “Now let’s get into this fancy rig and go get something to eat. You’re buying.”
The next Thursday morning, I walked through the Wentworths’ side door and came face to face with the lady of the house.
“You’re late.” She stood in my way, arms akimbo, glaring.
“I’m an hour early,” I said. “You have a lot of company coming, so I thought—”
“Oh, so you’re padding the bill?”
I was silent for a moment. “I’ll come back.” I stepped away from her and grabbed the door handle.
“Never mind. Go check the assignment board and get to work. Do the guest suite first. They’re coming in a day ahead of the others.”
After she’d gone, I went into the kitchen. Mo was leaning against the counter, trying not to laugh. “That woman could give a person whiplash. Go left. Go right. Sit down. Stand up.” She mimicked Elise’s voice well.
“Stop,” I said in a stage whisper. “She’ll hear you.”
I checked the white board where Elise wrote the daily schedule. She was an imperious little diva, but an organized one. Each staff member had a column showing the day’s assignments. Sure enough, the guest suite was written under my name, along with other tasks. The list was longer than usual, making me wish I’d come even earlier.
“How much of the clan will be here?”
“Mary isn’t coming,” Mo said. “but all three kids will bring their families.”
“Mary?” I still had trouble now and then keeping track of everyone.
“First wife. She and her husband are going to Tahiti or somewhere with sun and sand, but Carl the Third and the twins will be here with their families, so I count twelve people, if everyone shows up. Carl and his wife and kids are driving down from Seattle later today.”
Carl was the oldest of the doctor’s offspring. He’d visited a few times before, and I’d gotten used to hearing him called Carl the Third, as if he were royalty. The twins were his sisters, younger by two years.
“Hence the rush order on the guest suite.”
“Theresa, second wife, and her husband and daughter and the daughter’s fiancé will get here tomorrow. Melissa lives here in town.” She counted on her fingers. “Eighteen? And that’s if nobody else tags along. No wonder Number Four’s in a tizzy.”
I reread my list on the white board, then focused on Mo. “Can you imagine all of your husband’s former wives and their kids showing up at the same time? It’d be a miracle if she wasn’t tense.”
Mo snorted. “Don’t tell me you feel sorry for her. She’s raised tension to an art form. I’m pretty sure she’s worried about being on next year’s invitation list when she’d much rather hold court as lady of the manor.” She turned back to the vegetables she was prepping and chopped onions at lightning speed.
I jotted down the day’s assignment on a scrap of note paper. Nobody would say Elise Wentworth wasn’t difficult, but I sensed something desperate in her demeanor, an underlying insecurity she couldn’t quite hide.
“I thought I told you to start on the guest suite.”
She also had a talent for appearing as if by magic.
“On my way,” I said, intentionally not looking Mo’s direction.
I spent the rest of the day on the upper floor of the big house. The suite had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a central seating area with a wet bar. I opened windows, despite the early December cold, to clear musty air from rooms that saw little use. I put fresh linens on the beds and towels in the bathrooms, cleaned and dusted every surface, and swept and vacuumed every floor. Lupe came in with vases of cut flowers and baskets of fruit and candies, which made the suite feel festive.
After the guest suite, Lupe and I gave the same treatment to half a dozen other bedrooms and four other bathrooms. We vacuumed hallways and stairs. We pursued each mote of dust with laser focus, knowing Elise would find every missed speck. We put more vases of flowers and fruit baskets in each room and candles and other decorations on the accent tables decorating the upstairs halls.
“Damn, Lupe,” I said, when we took a lunch break in the kitchen. “When did this house get so big?”
She gave a weary sigh. “I’m glad Christmas is only once a year. I mean, I think it’s nice of Doctor Wentworth to get his family together at the holidays, but my feet hurt, and we still have the downstairs to do.”
“At least you don’t have to cook three meals a day and snacks for half the known universe,” Mo said. She put big mugs of hot coffee on the table for Lupe and me, followed by thick turkey sandwiches. She sat down across from us with a sandwich and coffee for herself.
“As if you don’t love it,” I said.
Mo laughed. “True, but it can be exhausting. The good news is that most of the dishes the doc and Elise asked for can be made ahead, so it’s not so bad.”
“Let me know if you want help, okay?” I said. “I know my way around a kitchen.”
She beetled her eyebrows at me. “You actually think I’m letting you touch my knives? No way. Off limits. Not happening.”
“Hey, I can wash dishes or something.” I tried to look offended, but I must have failed because Mo and Lupe both laughed out loud. “But you’re cooking for a lot of people for what—three days? I’m offering to help.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll put you to work scrubbing floors. That,” she said, “I know you know how to do.”
Lupe and I spent the rest of the day dusting and vacuuming the already spotless lower floor of the big house. We’d finished putting the cleaning stuff away when the doctor’s son and his family arrived.
Carl the Third was in his late thirties, a doctor in Seattle. He was taller than his father and had broader shoulders, but there was no mistaking the resemblance. I couldn’t decide if his overweening attitude was the cause or the result of his work as a surgeon. His wife was also a doctor, a pediatrician, and they had two teenage boys who gave off a studied air of disaffected youth.
The doc and Elise met them at the door, and Lupe showed them to the guest suite and adjacent rooms. Mo had prepared a platter of light snacks, and the doc opened his liquor cabinet for the adults.
When the long day was over, I stopped by the kitchen on my way out.
“Need a hand with anything?” Just for fun, I extended a finger toward Mo’s knife block, as if to touch one of the shining implements, only to retract it when she favored me with a mock glare.
“No, hon. I have it under control, for tonight anyway. Are you serving this weekend?”
“No,” I said. “Just cleaning up after the crowds. I think Lupe is on laundry duty. But once everyone is here, if you need help setting tables or plating or whatever, call me.”
She surprised me by giving me a long hug.
“I will. As I said before, I think it’ll be okay, but if Number Four spins out of control and decides to change the menu or something, I might take you up on that. The doc let me bring in two students from the culinary school in Portland to help while the whole gang is here.” She handed me a travel mug from which the aroma of her excellent coffee wafted. “See you tomorrow.”
By the time I arrived at the Wentworths’ the next day, chaos reigned. The rest of the doc’s family had arrived. Cars wer
e parked haphazardly in the driveway and on the front lawn. The gardener, Orlando, who was surly on his good days, was almost comically purple in the face as he marched around the grounds with his fists clenched, glaring at the tire tracks on his otherwise pristine lawn. I was glad to see he wasn’t armed. I hoped it never occurred to him that he had ready access to hedge clippers and all manner of other sharp tools that could make short work of the tires currently wreaking havoc on his meticulously groomed landscaping.
I went inside through the side door, as usual, and detoured through the kitchen to check the assignment board. Mo had prepared lunch for what sounded like a thousand people. She waved hello and got back to work, instructing the two culinary students who had been pressed into serving duty. She put scoops of raspberry and lemon sorbet into dessert dishes and garnished the perfect orbs with edible flowers. Each sorbet dish went onto a plate, to which she added three shortbread cookies, cut into wreath shapes. The students took the beautiful desserts to the dining room as fast as Mo could prepare them.
I said, “That would go faster if you’d let them help you.”
“No way,” she said, once the servers had left the kitchen. “Presentation is everything. I’m not about to let amateurs mess up my homemade sorbets and beautiful little cookies.” She handed me a cookie and made shooing motions with her hands. “Now beat it. I imagine there’s all kinds of messes waiting for you.”
My assignment for the day was general cleaning, so I went into the dining room to make sure the guests had what they needed.
“Annie!” Doctor Wentworth greeted me as if I were an old friend, rather than the part-time cleaner of toilets and organizer of closets. “Come in and meet the family.”
He stood at the head of the dining table, holding a glass of iced tea. He lofted it in the general direction of the crowd in the room. “Hey, everyone,” he called out, “come and meet Annie.” He drew me into the room by my elbow. “Be extra nice to her while you’re here. She’d never say it, but she’s the one who keeps this place going.”
I protested, sure my face was as red as the holiday poinsettias on the dining table, but he ignored me. A barrage of introductions ensued. Fortunately, I’d either met or seen most of the doc’s extended family before, but I still hoped there wouldn’t be a pop quiz when he was finished.
Once I escaped the gaze of everyone in the room, I busied myself tidying the table and filling water glasses. A nearby sideboard held pitchers of cold drinks, an ice bucket, and a large coffee urn, along with a canister of sugar and a pitcher of cream to replenish the table.
“Annie?” The doctor’s second wife, Theresa, added two used plates to the stack I’d collected from the table. “Need a hand?”
“Thanks, but I think we’re all set.” I was as impressed as I was surprised by her offer. After all, she was a guest, but I saw a considerable intelligence and a good sense of humor in her eyes. “Besides, I’m supposed to take care of you, remember? Can’t have the doc think I’m slacking.”
She squeezed my arm for a moment. “No,” she said in a conspiratorial tone, “that wouldn’t do at all.”
As they ate dessert, swooning over the fruity sorbet and delectable cookies, almost everyone, the adults, anyway, seemed to go out of their way to call me by name and thank me whenever I refilled a coffee cup or offered some small service. For the most part, the teenagers kept to themselves, especially Carl the Third’s two boys. People could say what they liked about the doctor’s predilection for serial monogamy, but he did know how to surround himself with intelligent, pleasant people.
When I had a moment to stand back and observe the room, I was struck by the incongruity of it all. In his home, the doctor had two former wives—one of whom was accompanied by her current husband—and their several offspring and his newest wife for what he considered a family event. I was impressed by his ability to pull it off and even more impressed at his apparent lack of self-consciousness about it.
The real surprise was Elise. She was charming and outgoing and made sure to speak to everyone. She was thoughtful in her requests of the serving staff and of me. At first, I thought perhaps I was seeing the Elise the doctor met and married, but every once in a while, she’d purse her lips or shoot a withering glance. She somehow managed to maintain the façade after someone asked whether her jewelry had been found.
“No,” she said with a sorrowful face. “The police said they’re working on it, but the detective they assigned doesn’t really care. Fortunately, it’s insured, but Carl had it made for me.” With that, she gave her husband a sad smile that, to me, seemed contrived. “I’d much rather have it back than collect the insurance money.”
After lunch, I helped clear away the dessert dishes and clean up the dining room. Once the room was in order, the doc and his son hauled an enormous fir tree into the living room and positioned it in a corner near the windows. Over the next two hours, the doc and his extended family decorated the tree and drank hot chocolate. More than once, the doc insisted that I add a glass ball or a strand of tinsel to the tree. I was a little embarrassed to crash the family event, but I enjoyed participating. Shadow instantly turned any holiday decorations in my apartment into cat toys, so I had to get my Christmas tree fix from others.
After the tree was finished and the multi-colored lights were twinkling, the guests all disappeared to other parts of the house. The quiet was a relief that allowed me to work in peace.
“Where’d everyone go?” In the kitchen I slid a tray of hot chocolate mugs onto the counter near the dishwasher. “I didn’t think that many people could vanish so quickly.”
“They’re with the master of grand gestures,” Mo said with a laugh. “The doc rented a bus, if you can believe it, one of those big cruise coaches, and he’s taking everyone out to the beach later this afternoon. It might be December, but darned if he isn’t show off the Oregon coast to anyone he can. I think they’re touring Cannon Beach this time, or maybe Tillamook.”
“Yeah, but aren’t they from here? It’s not as if they haven’t been out there before.”
Mo lifted her hands as if to say “I don’t get it, either” and turned back to rinsing dishes and loading them into the washer. “You’d better enjoy the quiet while you can. They’ll be back in time for dinner, or at least the doc said they’d be.” She stretched her back and yawned. “It’s been a long day, and we’re nowhere near done. How was it in there?”
“Surreal, actually. The doc introduced me as if I were part of the family instead of the help. He always finds ways to surprise me. And get this. Theresa asked if she could lend a hand. She seems nice.”
“She’s a good person,” Mo said. “I was sorry to see her go when they divorced, but when she visits, she always comes in to chat.”
“She was the second wife, right? I almost need a wall chart to keep track of everyone.”
Mo snickered and I said, “What?”
She checked to make sure the coast was clear. “You know how we call Elise Number Four?”
I got it. “Oh, no, they don’t call her Number Two, do they?”
We looked at each other and the giggles set in, followed by uncontrollable laughter. I had tears running down my face and Mo was gasping for air.
“Oh, that would be so wrong,” she was finally able to say, trying to catch her breath.
I grabbed a tissue from a nearby box and dried my face, little hiccups of laughter still bubbling up. I hadn’t laughed like that since before the explosion and fire at my dad’s shop. It felt damn good.
Chapter Three
The rest of the weekend was a blur of family meals and house-cleaning, keeping up with the Wentworths. Lupe and I cleaned bathrooms and changed linens and joked that we almost wore the vacuum cleaner out. In between meals, Doctor Wentworth provided excursions and entertainment for his family, including special events for the younger set. I was amazed at how much he could cram into one weekend, and everyone seemed to be having a good time.
Mo was
right; the days were long. Every night when I went home, I was awake scarcely long enough to apologize to my cat, check the mail, and eat the dinner Mo sent home with me.
My other clients had been kind enough to let me adjust their cleaning schedules around the doc’s family gathering, but I still stopped by the Brownlees’ home on Saturday and Sunday mornings to vacuum and dust and try to teach Hal how to load the dishwasher.
Ada was still using her wheelchair some of the time, and Hal still nattered at her whenever she walked instead, even though she was careful and used her cane. What she was not allowed to do was clean her home or do much cooking. She liked it that way, which was fine with me. I was no great shakes in the cooking department, but I could prepare vegetables and make a salad and pop a chicken or a roast into the oven without too much fuss. I organized sandwich fixings for them and made sure there were cans of soup or chili to heat in the microwave. I enjoyed the Brownlees immensely. Their good-natured bickering was exactly the antidote I needed to counteract Elise’s demeanor, which could vary without warning from icy to enraged.
On the last day of the Wentworth shindig, I arrived during lunch to find Mo, obviously exhausted, sitting in the corner of the kitchen with a coffee mug nearby.
“Remind me never to have company, okay?” She took a drink of coffee.
“You live here,” I said, happy to tease her a little. “You always have company.”
She groaned. “Don’t remind me. Actually, it’s not too bad. Having rooms above the garage means I have a quiet place to escape to.” She stood, stretching her back and yawning. “After this weekend, I might not come out until January. They don’t need me to cook. Let ’em eat cake. Hey, that reminds me,” she said with renewed energy, “want to see tonight’s dessert?”
She motioned me to follow her to one corner of the kitchen where a covered cake plate sat safely out of the way. With a dramatic wave, she lifted the stainless steel dome from off the plate to reveal a fourteen-inch round three-layer cake. The top was decorated with candied pecans and tiny flowers and leaves painstakingly made from colored icing. The aroma of cream cheese frosting made my mouth water.