“I know I’m a good father,” he said. I could imagine his posture, puffing out his chest, probably pointing to it, maybe looking in a mirror. “I know I am because she needs me.” I heard him take a quick breath. Ah. He was outside, smoking a cigarette and pacing.
It was my turn to point into the air, walking between the living room and the bedroom, duster in hand. I had watched him make a pouty face, pretending to cry until Mia turned to him and gave him one last hug whenever I picked her up. “You’ve manipulated her to need you.”
That pushed Jamie over the edge. I knew his ranting and yelling well. “Everyone in town talks about what a fuckin’ loser you are,” he said. “All you do is whine about stuff online, on Facebook and that stupid website you keep a diary on. You don’t have any real friends. No one’s ever going to love you and your saggy boobs.”
With that, I hung up on him. It always got worse after he turned down that road. He usually brought up how I was too fat, or too ugly, or too skinny, or too tall. The “saggy boobs” was a new one. “No one’s ever going to love you” was his favorite line. I knew how his lips curled, almost in a smile, when he said it, and I could see it even when we were on the phone. When I lived with him in the trailer, he’d call me “stupid nut job” or “crazy bitch,” but now he said those only when he really wanted me to hurt.
I finished the shower in the Porn House in record time that day, thanks to my angry scrubbing. After I wiped the floor by hand and waited for it to dry, before returning the rugs in front of the toilet and the sink, I stood out in the hallway to catch my breath. On the wall to the right of the door hung studio portraits of the family, both looking in the same direction with identical sparkles in their eyes.
I walked into the doorway of the bedroom. In some ways, this was close to the life I wanted—a sensible house with a big yard. It didn’t necessarily have to sit on high-end property with views of the ocean, but it would be nice to be surrounded by a yard and a few towering trees. I stared at the bottle of lube on the nightstand by the alarm clock and couldn’t help but wonder how often they had sex with each other.
But maybe it was the life I thought I wanted, and the life I really dreamed of was next door at the Sad House. After Jamie and I fought that day, I cleaned the Sad House for the first time in months. He’d been sick. Or in the hospital. Both of those things. From what I could tell, that guy had been married to the love of his life. Then she died too soon, and he was left alone to live out the years he needed someone to take care of him the most. The Porn House and the Sad House seemed to scream opposite life lessons, to illustrate that no matter what the circumstance, we all end up alone in some way or the other. The husband at the Porn House, masturbating while his wife worked nights or read romance novels in the other room. And the widower.
For me, being alone started not to sting as much. Mia and I had become a team. I loved not having to worry about if the other adult we were with was having fun or stressed over their bored sighs, obvious signs that they wanted to leave. I never had to ask anyone what they wanted to do for dinner. We could get ice cream for dinner without worrying if the person at home would feel left out or judge me as a parent.
Our studio had its downside. But it was our space. I could rearrange furniture any way I wanted, at any time. I could leave it messy or obsessively clean. Mia tap-danced and jumped from the couch to the floor without anyone telling her to be quiet. When I’d first started working as a maid, I thought I’d spend my days in longing or envy. At the end of the day, I went to a place I not only called home but that felt like it. It was our little nest that we’d fly from someday.
When I finished the Porn House, I tried to carry all my supplies over to the Sad House in one trip. Outside, it was damp and misting rain. It was weather that grew mold. Weather that made my skin creep with mildew or moss.
I opened the sliding glass door with my pinky because my hand held my tray of supplies. The door led to the kitchen, and as soon as I entered, I smelled the familiar wood chip and aftershave smells of the Sad House. I was about to set down the tray when I turned around and screamed.
His face was covered in open sores. I immediately regretted screaming; I wanted to cry. He’d never been there during a clean, and I’d never met him. And now I’d screamed at the sight of his face, which showed obvious signs of how much he’d been struggling.
“I’m so, so sorry,” I said, nearly dropping my tray, the tote bag of rags, the garbage bag filled with used rags.
“No, no, I’m sorry to startle you,” he said. “I was a little slow to get up this morning. I’ll get out of your way. I was just on my way out.”
I moved away from the sliding glass door so he could get by. Neither of us offered to introduce ourselves or shake hands. I watched him walk into the side door of the garage. From the window, I watched as his beige Oldsmobile pulled out of the driveway and away. I wondered where he went, where he felt he had to go for those few hours.
The kitchen looked the same as it always did, except for a few dishes in the sink and on the counter. The bar at the end was stacked with medical bills, instructions for medications, and hospital release forms. Lonnie had said, when she called to tell me to go to the Sad House that week, that the woman from the Porn House had been looking after him—maybe because she was a nurse, or because he just didn’t have anyone else.
The covers on his bed were pulled back like he’d left them when he’d gotten up that morning. The other side was still made, almost exactly like I’d left it the last time I cleaned, the decorative pillows still in their places. The sheets were speckled with blood. I pulled back the covers all the way and carefully pinched the corners of the sheets to pull them toward the center, then took the cases off the pillows, stuffing everything into one case. On my way to set them on the washing machine, I went through the bathroom. There were several drops of blood on the floor, a new rail installed by the toilet and in the shower, and a seat in the bathtub.
Before she died, the wife collected rocks, birdhouses, and nests, lining them up by the windows in the living room. They’d spent a lot of time traveling in Central or South America. The wife had been a teacher. I imagined her bringing the little dolls and artwork from their travels to decorate her classroom or to show them to her students. I wondered if she taught them Spanish.
The Sad House seemed like it had been a vacation house, or an empty nester’s way of not mourning vacant, stagnant rooms no longer filled with children. They’d had two sons. One had passed away, and the other lived in the area but never seemed to visit. I often wondered if he’d lost them all at the same time, if maybe his wife and son were killed in an accident, and grief tore his other son away. I made up stories based on artifacts I saw around the house—photographs, notes scrawled on paper, a framed card with a cartoon illustration of a naked man and woman holding hands that read “Cabin Rules: Save water. Shower together.” The Sad House seemed frozen in time—projects half done, artwork still waiting in the walk-in closet to be hung on the wall. His wife’s list of projects was still tacked to the corkboard in the kitchen on now yellowed paper. Get new hose. Fix latch on gate. I imagined her pulling weeds from the flower beds outside, then coming in to grab something to drink from the kitchen, jotting that down before returning to her work. Underneath it was a receipt she’d signed for landscaping. There wasn’t a date.
Just halfway through my six-hour workday, I let out a big sigh and hooked a spray bottle onto the pocket in my pants. I sprayed one rag lightly with vinegar water and stuffed it in my other pocket to use for dusting. Then I grabbed another one for wiping anything that needed to be sprayed. But the Sad House never got dirty.
The various medications in the bathroom seemed to increase every time I cleaned. I moved them to wipe the counter under them before turning around to move to the bathtub. There was that wicker shelf. I’d opened the boxes with the ashes purely out of curiosity the first time. Since then I couldn’t help but revisit them occasionally to see if
they were still there. I wondered if he’d spread some of them but kept these for himself. I wondered if it comforted him to have them there, behind him, while he combed his hair.
On the bar by the kitchen, the stack of photos had been partially hidden by the paperwork from the hospital. I looked for clues in the photos, thinking I’d see something different. But they were always the same—people standing next to grills full of burgers and fish and the Sad House man standing, proudly, with children dressed in red, white, and blue holding their sparklers high. Everyone puts on a smile for pictures, but the man beamed in his, like a child holding up the first fish he’d caught. He’d done everything right. All these trinkets and photos pointed to a person who’d successfully accomplished the American Dream. Yet here he was, alone.
He never left notes or cards on the counter for me. I didn’t expect him to or think it necessary for him to spend any extra money on a tip or holiday bonus for me. It seemed weird to think of it this way, but the man had given me another gift. The Sad House made me look at the small space I shared with Mia, at the room we lived in, and see it was a home, full of love, because we filled it. Even though we didn’t have nice cars or a house on a bluff above the beach, we had each other. I could enjoy her company, instead of living alone in a place filled with her memories. My struggle with loneliness, for companionship, still tugged at me, but I wasn’t alone. Mia saved me from that.
19
LORI’S HOUSE
Summer started to wane, and the sun set slowly, filling the evenings in our studio with pink, orange, and purple instead of heat that left our bedsheets soaked with sweat. Mia started falling asleep before nine again, leaving me to sit at our little kitchen table. On those nights, I listened to the cars speeding by on the freeway and the neighborhood boys talking from their perch on the curb below, smoke from their joint wafting into my windows. I sat, too tired to read a book, with my day planner open in front of me instead, an attempt to memorize the twenty clients I rotated in weekly, biweekly, and monthly schedules. Most of the houses took me three hours to clean, and I usually had two or sometimes three houses a day.
Being a thirty-two-year-old single mother with several tattoos, I never felt like Mia and I fit into the conservative niche of our surroundings. Mia wore her monkey costume or tutus for days, her hair a disheveled mop of curls on her head. Walking through grocery stores, we were a sharp contrast to the well-put-together stay-at-home moms. Passing them in the cereal aisle, glancing at their large, sparkling wedding rings, staring at their toddlers dutifully in tow, their clothes unstained, their hair still smartly pulled into the ponytails and barrettes from that morning.
One woman, though, glanced in my direction, and her face turned to a warm smile. I recognized her as one of my mom’s old friends but didn’t remember her name. She asked how we were doing and where we lived. When I told her, she asked if Mia went to the day care behind Madison, the elementary school where I’d spent a few short months in second grade before my family moved to Alaska. I shook my head.
“I’m a little limited to where she can go,” I said, waiting for the confusion to show on her face before I explained. “The preschool would need to take a state grant I receive for childcare, and private schools don’t accept it.” I’d called local Montessori and other private schools, offering to barter the tuition for cleaning services, but none accepted. Mia would have greatly benefitted from the more enriching environment of a real preschool instead of a day care. I tried to make up for it by reading to her for at least thirty minutes every night.
“Grandma Judy’s day care is through the YMCA, and I’m pretty sure they would accept the state grant,” the woman said.
“Grandma Judy?” I asked, picking Mia up after her third attempt to hide under my skirt. The woman reached to gently touch Mia’s cheek, but Mia turned away to look over my shoulder and stiffened.
“She runs the day care. She really is like a grandma to the kids,” the woman told me. “My kids still visit her sometimes. The center is in one of those outbuildings behind the school, but Judy’s so great it’s almost like they’re going to Grandma’s house.”
A week later, Grandma Judy did welcome us with loving arms. On one of our first meetings, she pulled me into her office so we could sit and get to know each other. Maybe she caught me on a rough day, or at a time when I felt so helpless and overwhelmed, but as I sat in her office talking about our daily life, I began to cry. Judy handed me a tissue and said, “You’re a wonderful mother. I can tell. And I know a good mother when I see one.” I looked at her, sniffled, and realized that no one had ever told me that before. Those words were all it took for Grandma Judy to feel like family.
With Mia spending the day in a supportive environment, I felt better about being away from her to work. I took on as many houses as I possibly could, filling gaps in the company’s schedule with my own clients. I charged double the wages I made at Classic Clean. For a month that summer, the bills were paid. Mia and I were an inseparable twosome, singing to Sufjan Stevens’s “The Perpetual Self” or, as Mia called it, the “Uh-Oh Song.” Everything is lost! Uh-oh! We called it our happy morning song, making sure to listen to it before going to our respective places, and feeling pretty great about it. We had a routine. As fall started, I braced myself for adding a full load of online classes, for losing sleep. When school was in the mix, I drank a large cup of coffee in the evenings so I could finish homework. On the weekends, I studied. When classes began, I knew I would be exhausted, but in my mind, school was the most important work. It was the work that would get us places.
Pam and Lonnie estimated the time to clean a house based on their own speed. But they were middle-aged women and not in the greatest shape, and I’d become a ninja. After several months of working full-time, I had to find a belt for my pants. I couldn’t keep weight on if I tried. If I finished a house faster than the allotted time, they’d tell me to slow down. If clients suddenly had bills that were less than the original quote, due to my shorter times, they’d come to expect that same amount. I had to keep with the expected times out of fairness to whoever eventually replaced me.
For some houses, that meant that I had time to stop and thumb through books sitting on nightstands or kitchen counters. I began looking through the rapidly growing stashes of alcohol, hidden chocolate, unopened bags from the mall that remained untouched for months. I became intrigued by understanding how people coped. I snooped because I was bored, and, in a way, it became my own coping mechanism.
I started to love the houses that didn’t echo in vacancy. I appreciated my Friday mornings with Henry. I never snooped in houses where I wasn’t invisible, where my name was “Stephanie” instead of “cleaning service” or even “MAID” on their calendar. And I never looked through the stuff of clients I met on my own outside of Classic Clean. We had a mutual respect for each other, and over time, some became friends. The snooping was like uncovering clues, finding evidence of the secret lives of people who seemed like they had it all. Despite being wealthy and having the two-story houses of our American dreams—the marbled-sink bathrooms, the offices with bay windows looking out at the water—their lives still lacked something. I became fascinated by the things hidden in dark corners and the self-help books for hope. Maybe they just had longer hallways and bigger closets to hide the things that scared them.
* * *
Lori’s House was built just for her and the people who knew how to care for her Huntington’s disease. She spent most of the day in a cushioned chair directly in front of the TV. She could hardly speak, but her caregivers seemed to be able to understand her. Her limbs had minds of their own; her legs occasionally shot straight up in the air. Lori’s caregivers fed her, cleaned her, and helped her to the bathroom. While I dusted the TV and the shelves filled with photographs, Lori watched me with dark, alert eyes.
Every other Tuesday, I spent six hours in her house. It was large and had been designed by her husband, who had a loft apartment upstairs whe
re he slept on most weekends. Lori had a rotating staff of caregivers, but Beth always seemed to be there on the days I was. She offered me coffee, and while I rarely accepted, we would often chat while I cleaned.
On the morning before my second or third time cleaning Lori’s House, the DVD player Travis bought Mia for her birthday broke. Mia started crying and kicking it from her car seat. We’d come to heavily rely on that thing during our long hours in the car. I’d listened to Elmo sing about ears and noses easily a hundred times. When I got to Lori’s House that morning, I was a ball of nerves and rushed to get all my supplies into the master bathroom, a room bigger than my entire apartment.
I had to hide from Beth in that room while I regained some composure. It was the only space on the main floor with a door. The bathtub had windows all around it, and I had to climb into the tub to get the sills clean. You can’t even replace it started repeating in my head, strong and fierce. My body tucked into itself, and I sat, gasping, holding my knees, and rocking. The DVD player didn’t even cost a hundred bucks, but I couldn’t afford to buy a new one. That thought triggered a spiral of all the other things I could not provide for my daughter: a decent house, a family, her own room, cupboards full of food. I hugged my knees tighter, not bothering to wipe the tears from my face, and started whispering my mantra to interrupt the negative swirl of fear that encased me. To comfort, to stop the downward spiral from going to a place of true panic.
I love you. I’m here for you. I love you. I’m here for you.
When I was homeless, a therapist had first introduced me to the idea of mantras; only then it’d been phrases like “nobody dies from a panic attack,” or to envision my daughter swinging and match my breath with the speed of the pendulum. None of that worked. What my mind needed to know was that someone was there to make it all better. That summer, through gritted teeth, I’d decided that person was me, not a man or a family, and it would only ever be me. I had to stop hoping for someone to come along and love me. I had to do it myself, ducking my head and barreling through anything life brought.
Maid Page 17