by Jen Mann
“It’s okay,” Rosa soothed me and Gomer. “I don’t know what La Leche League is, but I’m here. I can help you. You need to take off your top. It’s better to just be …” She struggled to find the right word. “No shirt to do this.”
“Topless?” I asked.
“Yes. No top. It just gets in the way and makes the baby hot. Take it off.”
I agreed reluctantly. Before I could protest too much, she whisked off my shirt, and then Rosa—the mother of eight—dropped her mop, rolled up her sleeves, grabbed my boob, shoved it in Gomer’s mouth, and helped me feed him. She sat there for half an hour supervising and giving both of us encouragement. My beds didn’t get changed that day, but she earned her money.
A few years ago Rosa gave us the scare of our lives. She called and told me she was taking an extended trip to visit family in Mexico. This wasn’t unusual. She does this a couple of times a year. She goes by herself to visit her mother and leaves her husband in charge of the kids. She gave me a date five weeks in the future when she would be able to come to my house. I marked my calendar and then watched the dust bunnies pile up in the corners of the living room.
When the eve of Rosa’s return was finally upon us, I started the frantic rushing around that’s called “cleaning for the cleaning lady.” You’ve got to clear the mail off the kitchen counter, put away the piles of shoes that have multiplied by the doors, throw the dirty clothes in the hamper, and make sure every damn itty-bitty Lego and Barbie shoe is off the floor, because the vacuum is merciless. That night I was freaking out, because Gomer’s room wasn’t ready, I had to write contracts for some of my real estate clients, and my Pinterest account was in terrible shape and was begging to be updated. Before I made myself crazy, I decided to call Rosa and just make sure she was really back in the country and planning to come the next day. Like I said, my Pinterest account needed some serious attention, and if I could focus on that and put off cleaning for the cleaning lady until tomorrow night …
I called her and got her voicemail. I left her a message: “Hey, Rosa, it’s me, Jen. I hope you had a great time in Mexico. I was just wondering if you’re still coming tomorrow. If you can’t, it’s no big deal, I just wanted to make sure …” Because I’d rather read a book tonight than pick up tiny Legos off Gomer’s floor. “So, y’know. Just call me and let me know what your plan is. Thanks.”
I decided to take a break at that point, because I’d picked up a bunch of shoes and made a phone call to Rosa. Surely those tasks had earned me a break. A few hours later I still hadn’t done much except organize my Pinterest boards and try on summer clothes (if I’m cleaning up, I might as well clean out my closet, right?) and I still hadn’t heard from Rosa. It was starting to get late, and if I was going to finish cleaning for the cleaning lady, I needed to do it in the next hour or so before I went to bed. I tried her again, and she answered. “Hello?”
“Oh! Rosa, you’re there. How was your trip?”
“Hi, Jen. It was good. I’m glad to be back.”
“I bet. So, are you coming over tomorrow, then? I’m trying to get ready, but I don’t know if I’m going to make it. It’s been such a busy night,” I lied.
“Oh. Yeah. No, I’m not coming tomorrow.”
I’m not going to lie. I was a bit relieved. I could finish organizing my closet now. “Okay. Maybe Saturday, then, or Sunday?”
“No, I don’t think that will work, either.”
I was perplexed. Saturday or Sunday always worked. “Okay. Well, what do you think? What have you got open?”
“Hmm … well … nothing. I moved.”
Shut the fuck up. I had to sit down. I was feeling dizzy. “You what? You moved?”
“Well, my husband moved. So I moved, too. I came home from Mexico yesterday and he and the kids had moved to St. Louis. He put the kids in school and everything.”
Seriously. Shut the fuck up. “St. Louis?”
“Yeah. He called me and said, ‘Come here and live here with us in St. Louis.’ So I did.”
“St. Louis?”
“Yes. Have you heard of it?”
“St. Louis?”
“Yes.”
Shut. The. Fuck. Up. I felt nauseated. “Yeah, I’ve heard of it. I’m just shocked that you’re gone. I mean. Wow. Because I was planning on seeing you tomorrow.”
“I know. But I live in St. Louis now. Javier got a job in St. Louis and the kids are in school here, and I can’t stay in Kansas City alone.”
“Yes. Yes. Of course you need to be with your family.”
“I know. And my family is in—”
“St. Louis,” I finished.
“Yes. It is nice here.”
“Uh-huh. That’s good to hear. Well, I don’t know what to say except good luck, Rosa. Bye.”
“Bye, Jen.”
I hung up the phone with mixed emotions:
1. I got a reprieve. I could get back to my Pinterest boards and forget about Gomer’s room.
2. Crap, I needed to find another cleaning lady, stat. Maybe this time I’d find one who cleans behind the fridge, because ever since my conversation with Teri, the thought of what was back there had been weighing heavily on me. I mean, not heavily enough for me to pull out the fridge myself and clean behind it, but heavily nonetheless.
3. WTF, Rosa? You’ve cleaned our house for eight years—when were you going to tell me you moved to fucking St. Louis and couldn’t come tomorrow, when we were expecting you?
4. Shit, now my marriage would be in trouble. Rosa had single-handedly saved us from marriage counseling. There were kids in the mix now, and I couldn’t take any chances.
5. Was she lying to me, because my house was such a pain for her to clean and she was trying to let me down easy?
When I told the Hubs about Rosa, he immediately went to number five on my list. “Nice job, Jen. You ran her off,” he said.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You never do a good enough job cleaning up for her, and it makes more work for her. And I heard you ask her last time she was here if she ever vacuums behind the dryer.”
“Well …”
“That was probably the straw that broke her back.”
“Shit. So you don’t think she’s in St. Louis?”
“No way. Call Marci and ask if she dumped them, too.”
“I can’t. What if Marci has no idea what I’m talking about? Then she’ll know Rosa fired us. I’ll be so embarrassed.”
“You should be embarrassed. After all these years, Rosa had enough of you. She fired us. Now what are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to find someone else. Maybe Teri can give me that list of the ones she fired.”
“Well, you better do something fast. I don’t want to go to marriage counseling.”
I spent the next couple of weeks searching for a new cleaning lady. I couldn’t find anyone who clicked with me like Rosa did. Even though I was long past my breast-feeding days, every time I interviewed a potential candidate all I could think was, “Would I let this woman grab my naked boob?”
I was starting to get worried—I’d even created a board on Pinterest I called “Marriage Vow Renewal Ideas”—when one day my phone rang. “Hello?” I answered.
“Jen?” a familiar voice asked.
“Rosa?”
“Yes, it’s me, Jen. How are you?”
“I’m not good, Rosa. How are you?”
“I’m not good, either. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
“I hate St. Louis.”
“Oh. So you really did move there?”
“Of course I did, Jen. Did you think I didn’t?”
“It doesn’t matter now, Rosa. You were saying you hate St. Louis.…”
“Yes. And the kids hate St. Louis.”
“Oh.” I felt a little tingle. If Rosa hates it and the kids hate it, maybe …
“Javier hates St. Louis.”
Yes! I tried to play it cool. She’d hurt me,
but I didn’t want her to know. “Oh.”
“I come Saturday, Jen?”
Oh please God, yes. “Saturday would work for me, Rosa.”
“I can clean behind the fridge now. I know you like that.”
“No!” I cried. I’d just gotten her back—I didn’t want to rock the boat with outrageous demands and risk losing her again. “We’ll just stick with your usual routine, Rosa. Just do what you do best.”
“Okay, Jen. I see you Saturday.”
“Rosa …”
“Yes, Jen?”
I hesitated. Could I really say it? How could I not say it? I had lost her and now she was back. Had I learned nothing from all of those “Can This Marriage Be Saved?” articles I’d been using as makeshift marriage counseling for the Hubs and me during her absence? Rule number one: tell your loved one what they mean to you—out loud and often. “Rosa, I love you.”
“I know, Jen.”
With our cleaning lady situation locked down and our marital bliss revived, the Hubs and I headed into our first summer in Kansas. I’d recently started a new job at a large company selling office equipment. We didn’t know too many people who weren’t related to me, and we were looking to branch out and meet some new people, so when Maryanne, a woman in my office, invited us to her Fourth of July party, I accepted.
“Remind me again: how do you know this woman?” the Hubs asked as he drove to Maryanne’s house and I balanced a tray of deviled eggs on my lap.
“We work together. She’s in the cubicle next to me. I can always hear her on the phone wheeling and dealing. She has a lot of big accounts. It seems like every day she’s selling truckloads of Aeron chairs while I’m struggling to get my clients to pull the trigger on a box of staples.”
“Hmm. Okay. And you’re sure we can see the fireworks from her house?” The Hubs is a bit of a pyromaniac.
“Yes,” I sighed. “Maryanne lives in the neighborhood right next to the park where they shoot off the fireworks. She told me we can see them easily from her backyard. It will be so nice not to have to deal with all the crowds at the park!”
“Good, because I want to see the fireworks.”
“I know.” I sighed again. God, can he be any more demanding? I didn’t know it then, but he was actually training me on how to deal with our future children someday.
“And why did we need to get this dressed up?” the Hubs asked, tugging on his “good” (aka clean) shorts, which I’d made him put on.
“You’re not even that dressed up! You’re wearing a pair of shorts that required a bit of ironing. Relax. I’m the one in a dress! I just wanted us to look nice. Maryanne is very professional and she would be a great mentor for me at the office. I need to suck up to her a bit. I have no idea what her friends will be like, but just once in my life I would like to make a good first impression. My mother taught me that you can never be overdressed, but you can be underdressed.”
We rang the doorbell and a woman with bright red hair wearing the tiniest star-spangled bikini I’ve ever seen up close and personal answered the door. Sure, you see those types of bathing suits in Sports Illustrated or something, but they’re almost always on toned, tanned, perfectly styled, and airbrushed twentysomething models. This one was tied around a fifty-year-old piece of rawhide that had been left out too long in the sun. The only thing that didn’t sag on her body was her boobs. Her huge fake breasts looked like small beach balls glued to her chest. Holy crap!
“Maryanne?” I asked cautiously. Maybe Maryanne was on the phone closing a hot deal on an all-in-one scanner copier fax machine and this was her sister, whom she’d just picked up from the plastic surgeon’s office.
“Joslyn!” Maryanne slurred, enveloping me in a bear hug. “Of course it’s me!”
I choked on the fumes emanating from her. It was a combination of coconut tanning oil, Jell-O shots, and body odor. “It’s Jen, actually,” I corrected her.
“Right! Jen. So glad you could come! Come on in and meet the gang. You’re so late!”
“Well, you said we should come anytime. We wanted to come in time to see the fireworks.”
“Cool. That makes sense. Well, you missed a helluva day. We’ve just been playing in the pool and drinking and doing Jell-O shots and having a lot of fun. I’m sorry you missed it. But you know what? You’re here now. And now you can play! Did you bring a swimsuit?” she asked, looking me up and down.
“No. You didn’t mention you had a pool.”
“I didn’t? Oh well, yeah, I do. And a hot tub!”
“It’s okay, I don’t really like to wear a swimsuit.”
“I hear ya! You guys can totally skinny-dip. You won’t be the first naked butts in my pool!” she cackled.
“I can’t swim!” the Hubs said quickly. It was a half-truth. The Hubs is a terrible swimmer.
“Ah, whatever! Come on in!” Maryanne ushered us through her immaculate house, where professional family photos hung on the walls. A picture of Maryanne and three teenagers, all subtly color-coordinated and posing in a wheat field, hung over the sofa. Another picture of Maryanne and the three teenagers playfully frolicking together in jeans and white T-shirts hung over the piano. In the kitchen a huge photo magnet dominated the refrigerator. This one was Maryanne in her signature red power suit leaning casually against our company’s most popular color copier. When I saw that one I nudged the Hubs and whispered, “That’s the real Maryanne!”
“Sorry, Jen, but I think this might be the real Maryanne,” he whispered back, pointing at Maryanne’s tanned derriere hanging out of her thong. My eyes! Her swimsuit is a thong!
“Look who I found!” Maryanne called as we stepped out onto the patio. “It’s Joslyn and her hubby!”
A chorus of hellos rose up. I looked around the pool to see who was there. I’d heard Maryanne inviting many people from the office, and I was sure there would be someone I would recognize. But I didn’t see one face that I knew. Where is everyone? I wondered. And who the hell are these people?
We were surrounded by more fiftysomething people in teeny-tiny patriotic swimwear. WTF?
“Hi there,” a barrel-chested man in extra-small flag shorts said, smiling at me.
“Hello,” I replied.
“Want to try the hot tub? It feels great today!”
“Uh … no thank you.” I looked around for the Hubs. Surely he would not like this semi-nude man chatting up his new wife. I couldn’t see him anywhere.
“Maryanne said you forgot your suit,” Flag Shorts went on. “It’s okay, Elliot forgot his suit, too!” He pointed to a bald man lounging luxuriously in the hot tub.
“I always ‘forget’ it!” Elliot laughed.
“You’re so bad!” Maryanne squealed as she jumped into the tub next to Elliot. Before I could avert my eyes, they started making out full throttle.
“My eggs,” I squeaked. “I need to get them out of the heat before they spoil. Excuse me.”
I turned back toward the house and heard Elliot call, “Hey, Joslyn, after you put those down, come on back! I’ll save you a seat! Maryanne doesn’t mind sharing, do you, babe?”
“Nope. I’ll share if Joslyn will share,” Maryanne said.
Are you fucking kidding me? Holy shit! This was no ordinary Fourth of July party with co-workers. These people were swingers! And not hot ones. God, why are swingers always so gross? Why is it always old, fat men with ponytails and wrinkled women with fake boobs? Why can’t I just once be invited to a swingers party where I’m the hideous one and everyone else is smoking hot? It’s a pretty sad state when I’m the best-looking one at the swingers party!
I ran into the house and quickly found the Hubs hoovering appetizers off the food table. “They’re swingers! They’re swingers! Red alert! They want to have sex with us!” I grabbed the Hubs’ plate and threw it in the trash. “Stop eating their food! We can’t owe them anything. We cannot be in their debt. They will want to be paid in blow jobs!”
“What the hell are you talking
about, Jen?” the Hubs asked, starting another plate of food.
“Put down the food and listen to me! I just got invited into a threesome with Maryanne and some old douchebag who isn’t wearing a swimsuit!”
“You did? Is there anyone good for me?” the Hubs teased me.
“Shut up. This is serious. We need to go! These people might rape us!”
“No one is going to rape us. They’re too old and too drunk. We can totally fight them off. Besides, this pasta salad is delicious. I’m not leaving until you try it.” He offered me a forkful of pasta.
“I’m being serious!”
“So am I. This is fantastic! Is the grill hot out there? I want to grill up one of these brats.”
“Oh my God! Don’t go out there! They’ll invite you into the hot tub.”
“Relax, Jen. I just want to make a brat.”
“Seriously, stop eating right now! I want to leave. I am very uncomfortable with this.”
“Hold on. You are the one who wanted to come here. You told me that Maryanne is so cool and you wanted her to be your mentor. You wanted a mentor, so get mentored. I’m going to eat. Where are your eggs?”
“You’re really going to eat?”
“Of course. I’m starving. I didn’t eat much lunch, because I hoped there would be a spread like this. Just grab a seat on the couch and wait a few minutes for me.”
I sat on the couch gazing at Maryanne’s normal-looking family pictures while the Hubs stuffed his face. Where are her kids today? I wondered. Do they know their mother is a swinger?
“Joslyn?” It was Flag Shorts. “Are you coming back outside? We’ve got Jell-O shots.”
“Thanks, but I can’t. My husband needs me to stay in here with him while he eats.” I emphasized “husband,” hoping Flag Shorts would get the hint.
“I can’t borrow her for a bit?” Flag Shorts asked the Hubs.
The Hubs chewed his cud slowly and contemplated the question. You son of a bitch! “No,” he finally said. “She’s right. I need her with me. I like her to get my food for me. Joslyn, I need more deviled eggs, woman!”