by Jen Mann
“Yup,” he answered. He always answers “yup,” and it drives me bonkers. How hard is it to say “Hello”? But there was no time to dwell on my betrothed’s annoying habits—I had important business.
“It’s me,” I said.
“Yup.”
“Listen, we have a problem. I can’t find the ring bearer’s pillow.”
“Yup.”
“Stop saying ‘yup’!” I yelled. “This is important!”
“Well, what do you want me to do?” he asked impatiently.
“I need you to look in the front hall closet. On the top shelf there is a plastic grocery bag. Look inside there and tell me if the pillow is in there.”
“I can’t do that right now,” he said. “I’m kind of busy.”
Are you fucking kidding me? Who tells his bride on her wedding day that he’s too busy to help her locate a very special and important item?
I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to fight on my wedding day—we had a lifetime for that. “Well, when do you think you can look?” I asked as calmly as I could.
“I dunno. In a couple of hours.”
“We have to be at the church in a couple of hours,” I whispered, working extremely hard to control my emotions. I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him. “I need you to look now, because if it isn’t there, I have some other ideas where it could be.”
“Why didn’t you bring it to your mom’s last night?” he asked.
“I thought I did. It didn’t make it into the bag. That’s why I need you to look. Now.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, I’m busy right now. It will have to wait awhile.”
“What the hell are you doing that is so important?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“I’m making my mother a sandwich,” he replied.
I held my breath and willed the blood vessel throbbing in my temple not to explode. I waited for him to tell me that his mother was in some kind of low-blood-sugar coma and needed a sandwich right away in order to live. I waited for him to tell me that in addition to her low-blood-sugar coma, she had fallen down the stairs and broken both of her arms and both of her legs and so she could not possibly make that lifesaving sandwich for herself.
“She’s hungry and she won’t be able to eat again until the reception later tonight. It’s a big day for her, too, and she needs some food before we leave for the church.”
“Mm-hmm,” was all I could manage before I hung up the phone and started screaming. “Motherfucker!”
My mother came running. “What’s wrong?”
“He is making his mother a sandwich,” I seethed, barely able to talk. “A fucking sandwich. I haven’t even had breakfast, but God forbid his mother misses a meal!”
“Okay, okay,” my mother soothed. “What did he say exactly?”
“He said he can’t look for my pillow because he’s too busy making his mother a sandwich!” I wailed. “He said it was a ‘big day for her, too.’ What am I doing? Who am I marrying? He’s choosing his mother over me!”
“Calm down.” My mom stroked my expensive hairdo. “Tell me where you think the pillow is and I’ll go over there and look for it.”
I gave her a list of five or six potential spots where I shove important shit and then promptly forget about it.
“Jen, you know this is sort of your fault, too,” my mom said.
“How do you figure that?”
“Well, it’s the day of your wedding. You should have located this pillow long before now. You’re not even sure where it is, and you’re upset because Ebenezer won’t drop everything and go look for it. You didn’t keep track of your stuff.”
“Who cares?” I cried. “He won’t help me because he’s too busy helping his mother! I am going to be his wife after today. Aren’t you supposed to choose your wife over your mother?”
“Look, who knows what he’s thinking? I’m just telling you, this is your fault, too. Now, I will go over there and find the pillow. In the meantime, you’ll probably want to get out the flat iron. Your hair is a little … messed up.”
I looked in the mirror and saw that my hair was all jacked up and my veil was askew. “Son of a bitch. He’s going to ruin my pictures, too!”
“Fix your hair. I’ll get the pillow and I’ll meet you at the church.”
I can’t remember why my mom and dad were going to the church earlier than I was. Probably to set up something that I thought was very, very, very important and needed to be done before I got there. All I remember is they threw on their wedding clothes and headed over to my house to dig through my closets while my future husband made his mother a delicious ham and cheese sandwich.
After they’d been gone for a bit, my mother called me. “I’m not finding it in any of the places you told me to look. Is there anyplace else you shove stuff?” she asked, clearly exasperated.
“I don’t think so. Did you look in the plastic bag in the hall closet?”
“Yes.”
“The hatbox in the storage room in the basement?”
“Yes.”
“The shelf in the garage where I keep extra toilet paper and paper towels?”
“Yes.”
“Under the guest room bed?”
“Yes.”
“The trunk of Ebenezer’s car?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. I was sure it would be in one of those places! Those are all of my good spots. Where could it be?”
“I haven’t looked in the master bedroom closet yet.”
“No!” Ebenezer and I both shouted at the same time.
The master bedroom closet is where we keep our … equipment. It’s where I hide that naughty box of goodies that must be destroyed before my mother comes over to clean out my belongings if I’m ever hit by a bus.
“I’ll look there,” I heard Ebenezer say.
“Well, that certainly got him off his butt,” my mom said, surprised. “I haven’t seen him move that quick since I got here.”
I sighed. He did love me. Either that or he was terrified of what his mother would say when my mother passed out after finding our collection of “love enhancers.”
Ebenezer and my mother turned that house upside down and never did find that pillow. I cried for about an hour, ruining my gorgeous Mademoiselle-inspired makeup. My dramatic eyes now looked like something the editors might call “homeless person chic.”
Aunt Ruby arrived to pick me up to take me to the church and was shocked to see me in such a mess.
“I lost your pillow!” I sobbed hysterically.
Aunt Ruby wiped the (obviously mislabeled) waterproof mascara from under my eyes and dried my tears. She jammed my veil back into my crispy hair and smoothed it down for me.
“Who cares?” she said. “It’s just a pillow. It’s no big deal.”
“He made his mother a sandwich,” I whispered.
“What?” Aunt Ruby asked.
“His mother. He made her a sandwich instead of looking for my pillow.”
“But you’re the one who lost it,” Aunt Ruby said.
“Yes, but—”
Aunt Ruby cut me off. “Today you are marrying your best friend and the love of your life. You need to let the sandwich thing go.”
“What about the pillow? What will the ring bearer carry?” I whined, pulling a tissue from my wedding emergency kit.
Aunt Ruby looked around. It was the end of October, and my mother takes holiday decorating very seriously. Christmas may be her favorite, but Halloween is a close second, and the house was brimming with fall decor. “What about this pumpkin?” she asked, plucking a small gray metal pumpkin with a handle from a sea of ghosts and goblins. “He’ll look adorable with a pumpkin. Everyone will love it!”
Aunt Ruby was right. Everyone thought the pumpkin bucket was the cutest thing they’d ever seen.
When I finally got a chance to be alone with Ebenezer, I couldn’t resist letting him know how much it bothered me that he’d chosen his mother over me.
“How was your mother’s sandwich?” I asked him later that night on the dance floor.
“I never got it made. I had to go and hide your naughty toy box from your mother.”
I wasn’t making a horrible mistake marrying him. He chose me and my vibrator over his mother and her sandwich.
I love my cleaning lady just a little bit more than I love the Hubs. No, that’s not true. I love her a lot more than I love the Hubs, and I’m not afraid to tell her, or him.
Neither the Hubs nor I is a terrific housekeeper, so our first six months of wedded bliss were not very blissful. We didn’t have much practice in the co-homeowning cleaning routine. We spent a stupid amount of time arguing over whose turn it was to sweep the kitchen or clean the toilets. After fighting for weeks and watching our house dive-bomb into a dusty death spiral, we knew we had to take action.
I decided to do what my mother did when I was a kid and didn’t want to clean the house. I made up a chore chart. I divided up all of the cleaning responsibilities, and every week each of us would have new jobs to do around the house. I tried to be fair. For instance, one week I’d clean the toilets and he’d mop the floors. The following week he’d clean the toilets and I’d mop the floors. I tried to spread the “good” jobs and the “bad” jobs around as evenly as possible.
The chart worked for the first week—the week I was the one assigned to scrub the toilets. But, of course, when the next week came and it was his turn to polish the thrones, the Hubs announced he didn’t like my chart. He argued that he didn’t have much “experience” cleaning toilets or mopping floors (as if I’d put myself through college working as a janitor or something) and didn’t think he’d do a very good job. Rather than do a shitty job on the toilets twice a month, he thought I should clean the toilets and mop the floors every week while he focused on his natural talents: taking out the trash and running the vacuum on an as-needed basis.
As you might imagine, that conversation didn’t go very well. I think it ended with me saying to the love of my life something along the lines of: “Go fuck yourself, Hubs. I’m sorry you’re such a delicate flower, but I’m not built for domesticity any more than you are.”
After that lively debate, we decided the chore chart was never going to work. But we had to do something. The situation was becoming desperate. The floor of our bedroom was rapidly disappearing under piles of laundry, I found myself contemplating buying new dishes just to avoid washing the ones in the sink, and I had stopped using the master bathroom because the Hubs refused to take my advice to sit to pee.
Our constant fighting was quickly getting out of control, and we were starting to throw around the phrase “marriage counseling.” I’ve always thought marriage counseling and renewing your vows are the kisses of death for a marriage. You rarely see a couple come through counseling unscathed. It can’t be good for your marriage to sit in a drab office in the middle of a lifeless strip mall telling a stranger that cleaning toilets is a blow to your masculinity. And don’t even get me started on the vow renewals! It started with celebrities. There would be an item in the tabloids hinting about trouble in paradise, and suddenly they’re doing a ten-page photo spread in People magazine showcasing their romantic and inspiring vow renewals on some Hawaiian island. Six months later, they’re back on the magazine cover because—surprise!—they’re getting divorced. This phenomenon is now creeping down into the peasantry. I’ve seen several of my friends plan elaborate, bank-breaking vow renewals in the tropics. Then we find out a few months later that he’s been a serial cheater since they got married. He’d promised to change his ways, and renewing their vows was supposed to make him monogamous. Long story short, you will never hear about me and the Hubs renewing our vows. We’re both too cheap to spring for a shindig like that when the possibility of divorce attorneys is on the horizon. We’d rather save our money so there will be more to fight over.
Anyhoo, now you can imagine my fear when marriage counseling was suggested. I was terrified. We were only six months into our marriage and already we were looking at bringing in the equivalent of hospice for our marriage. Something had to change, but what? One particular messy, angry day it hit me like a ton of bricks. We didn’t need a chore chart or marriage counseling. What we needed was a cleaning lady!
When the Hubs agreed to move to Kansas from New York City, one of the conditions he negotiated was a lawn service. Spending his Saturday afternoons mowing the lawn and trimming bushes sounded like a nightmare to him. Plus, he really sucked at that sort of thing. If we let him take charge, our lawn would be all crabgrass and patches of dirt. With the Hubs on mower patrol, we’d never get a note from the homeowners’ association telling us our grass was too long, but we might get some notes asking us to re-sod the whole yard, because it was such a damn pit. Having the lawn guy freed up the Hubs’ schedule for some much needed nap time and kept our lawn lush and beautiful.
A cleaning lady could go into the same category as the lawn guy. Between the two of them, we could save our marriage!
I was worried, though. Cleaning ladies aren’t cheap, and the Hubs hates to part with his money. I would have to tread lightly if I wanted to do this right.
That night when the Hubs got home from work I said to myself, Be smooth, Jen. Then I blurted out, “We’re on the brink of ruin! Our marriage is in trouble and unless you want to get divorced before our one-year anniversary we need to hire a cleaning lady. Soon. Like this week!”
The Hubs thought about it for half a second before he said, “You know what? You’re right. Okay. Let’s do it.” We take our marriage vows very seriously, and we’ll do what it takes to keep the spark alive, even if it means hiring people to do the labor we have no desire (or skill set) to do. “It makes sense, Jen. We don’t try to fix our furnace when it goes out—we call a pro. We don’t change the brakes on the car—we call a pro. When we need our house cleaned, it just makes sense to hire a pro.”
And just like that, the decision was made. Now I had to find someone. I wasn’t sure how to go about the process. I looked at Craigslist, but those people could be serial killers for all I knew. I couldn’t trust an online ad. I needed a referral from someone.
The first place I asked was at the neighborhood pool. I thought it would be a good place to start. I knew that lots of the neighbors had cleaning ladies. I had seen them show up during the week hauling their mops and brooms out of hatchbacks. I approached a group of women sunning themselves by the baby pool, and I asked, “Hi there! I was wondering, do any of you have a cleaning lady you could recommend?”
Brandy sat up on her lounge chair and said, “We’ve had our maid for twelve years and she’s fabulous. She’s like part of the family.” Ugh. Of course she calls her cleaning lady a maid.
“I’m not really interested in a maid. I just want a lady who will come a couple of times a month to clean,” I said.
“I understand, Jen. My maid only comes a couple of times a month.”
“Oh, I just thought since you called her a ‘maid’ that she lived with you, like Alice on The Brady Bunch or something.”
“God, no. I would never want Martina to live with me.”
“But it sounds like you like her. Can I get her number?”
“Oh, sorry. Martina only works for me and my stepmother. We all prefer it that way.”
“Oh. So you don’t have a recommendation for me. Your … maid … has enough clients.”
“Yes, that’s true. I was just letting you know how invaluable a maid is. I hope you find a good one.”
“Thanks.”
Teri chimed in from the seat next to her, “Well, I can tell you who not to hire! I’ve been through ten housekeepers in six years. I am so picky when it comes to housekeepers. None of them clean my house as well I clean it myself. It’s infuriating to look behind my washer and dryer and see dust bunnies. How hard is it to pull them out once a week and vacuum back there?”
“You’re supposed to vacuum behind your washer and dryer?” I asked. S
hit. Those tasks weren’t even on my chore chart!
“Jen, when you get lint and dust collecting back there, it’s a major fire hazard! You probably don’t pull out your fridge, either, do you?”
She took one look at the utter confusion on my face and waved me away impatiently. “Actually, you’d probably be just fine with any of the ten I’ve fired. It doesn’t sound as if you care that much about your house. If you want their numbers, call me tonight and I’ll give them to you.”
Lynn, who was floating on a raft in the baby pool, said, “You don’t even have kids. Why do you need a cleaning lady? Kids are the ones who make a mess. It seems strange that you need a cleaning lady.”
“Well, we both work,” I said, trying to make that my excuse.
“Don’t you work from home?” she asked.
“Yes …”
“You just need a system. Every day take a one-hour break from your work to do something around the house. Have your husband do it, too. Between the two of you working two hours a day, your house should sparkle!”
“Yeah, it’s just that I sort of hate systems, and we’d prefer to pay someone who is good at cleaning and stuff.”
“Well, I can’t imagine having a stranger clean your house,” said Cindy, joining the conversation. “It’s like having a stranger raise your children. That’s your house. It’s your mess. How embarrassing for some woman to come into your private, personal space and have to clean up your filth.”
“Okay, then. Thanks, ladies, I’m going to check Craigslist and take my chances with the serial-killer cleaning ladies.”
After a little more asking around, I found Rosa. In order to afford her, the Hubs and I vowed to forgo travel and entertainment and only eat out at restaurants with buy-one-get-one-free coupons and dollar menus. It was a small price to pay to quit yelling at the Hubs and see my bedroom floor again.
Rosa was wonderful. Not only did this woman clean my toilets and mop my sticky kitchen floor, she wasn’t afraid of any dirty job. One day I was sobbing over brand-new baby Gomer. I was trying to breast-feed him and I couldn’t get him to latch on. He and I were both crying hysterically. Rosa came to see what all the noise was about. “I think I have to call my La Leche League mentor,” I sobbed. “I need some tips to get him to latch on.”