The Cleaner

by Paul Cleave

  The relief is short-lived, and within a few seconds I start to feel rotten. I cast my eyes down and watch my feet as I walk. Yep. Feeling bad. Feeling blue. Things didn’t go as they should have, and I ended up taking a life. I pause on the lawn and pluck a flower from a rosebush. I hold it to my nose and smell the petals, but it can’t bring a smile to my face. A thorn pricks my finger and I put the wound into my mouth. The taste of blood begins to replace the taste of Angela.

  I put the flower in my pocket and make my way to her car. The sun is still out, but lower now, shining directly into my eyes. The day has cooled so maybe the heat I feel isn’t from the sun, but is inside me. I want to smile. I want to enjoy the remaining day, but I can’t.

  I have taken a life.

  Poor Fluffy.

  Poor pussycat.

  Sometimes animals have to be used as tools. It’s not my place in this crazy, mixed-up universe to question that. Still, I can’t help but feel sick for breaking the little cat’s neck.

  I climb into Angela’s car and have to drive over the front lawn to avoid the stolen car in the driveway. It’s a nice ride-a couple of years old at the most. I wish I could keep it. The picture-perfect home that represents a picture-perfect family life grows smaller in my rearview mirror. The manicured lawn I can no longer smell looks like a miniature-golf course as I glance back at it. The rose from that lawn is warm in my pocket. I pass three or four parked cars. People are walking up driveways and arriving home. Two old women talk over a low fence about whatever it is old women face in life. Another old woman on her knees painting her mailbox. A young boy delivering the community paper. People are at home here, and they are at peace. They don’t know me and pay no attention as I drive past their windows and out of their lives.

  Technically we’re approaching the middle stages of autumn, but nobody has told Mother Nature, so we’re all still experiencing the heat of summer. It hasn’t rained in over a month. None of the trees are getting ready for the winter and losing their leaves. Some of those leaves right now are rustling above me in a light breeze, attached to a line of birch trees that grow from the sides of the road and make an arch overhead where fingerlike branches interlock. Birds are at play up there. In the distance, I can hear lawn mowers closing out the afternoon and starting the evening. This is going to be a beautiful night. It’s going to be the type of night that makes me glad to be alive. The type of night New Zealand summers are famous for. Just not normally in April.

  Finally I begin to relax. I turn on the car stereo and hear the same damn song that was playing in Angela’s house. What are the chances? I hum along, singing my way into the evening. My thoughts turn from Fluffy to Angela, and only then does the smile come back to my face.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I live in an apartment complex that would be worth more if sold as scrap. Because of its location, it will never be torn down and replaced because a new apartment complex isn’t going to fetch any more rent. It isn’t exactly the worst part of town, according to those who live here, but it is according to everybody else. It’s barely habitable, but it’s cheap, so that’s the trade-off. The complex is four stories high, covers the best part of a block, and I live on the top, giving me the best part of a very poor view. In total I think there are maybe thirty apartments.

  I see none of my neighbors as I make my way upstairs, but this is neither bad nor uncommon. I find myself dwelling on poor Fluffy as I unlock the door and walk inside. My apartment has two rooms. One of these is a bathroom, and the other a combined everything else. The fridge and stove look so old I doubt carbon dating would identify an age. The floors are bare and I have to wear shoes all the time to avoid splinters. The walls have cheap, dark gray wallpaper so dry that it crumbles a little bit more every time I open my door and create a draft. Several edges of it have peeled away and hang like flat tongues. A set of windows runs along one wall where my view consists of power lines and burned-out cars. I have an old washing machine with a noisy spin cycle, and hanging on the wall above it is a dryer that’s just as loud. Along the window is a line where I hang my washing during the summer. Currently nothing is hanging on it.

  I own a single bed, a small TV, a DVD player, and some basic furniture that’s sold in a box with assembly instructions in six different languages. None of it sits straight, but I don’t know anybody who would visit to complain. Select romance paperbacks that I’ve read are dumped on my sofa. The covers are full of strong-looking men and weak-looking women. I throw my briefcase on top of them before checking my answering machine. The light is blinking, so I push play. It’s my mother. She’s left a message telling me about her powers of deduction. She believes that since I’m not home, and not at her place, it means I have to be on the way to her place.

  I said earlier, “God rest her soul.” I didn’t mean she’s dead. She soon will be, though. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not a bad guy or anything, I would never do anything to harm her, and I’m disgusted at anyone who would think otherwise. It’s just that she’s old. Old people die. Some sooner than others. Thank God.

  I glance at my watch. It’s already six thirty. It’s starting to get dark. I make room on the sofa, stretch my arms out behind me, and try to relax. Think about what’s best for me. If I don’t go to my mother’s for dinner the results will be disastrous. She will ring me every day. Nag me for hours on end. She is unaware I have a life. I have responsibilities, hobbies, places I want to go, people I want to do, but she doesn’t see it. She thinks I live just to sit around my apartment waiting for her to call.

  I change into some more respectable clothes. Nothing too flashy, but slightly better than casual. Don’t want Mom insisting on buying my clothes for me like she used to. She went through a stage, a year ago, of buying my shirts, my underwear, my socks. Sometimes I remind her I’m more than thirty years old and can do this myself, but sometimes she does it anyway.

  On the small coffee table in my small living room, in front of the small sofa that looks like it belongs in some hippie recording studio, sits a large goldfish bowl with my two best friends inside: Pickle and Jehovah. My goldfish don’t complain. Goldfish have memories of five seconds, so you can really piss them off and they won’t remember. You can forget to feed them, and they’ll forget they’re hungry. You can pull them from the water and throw them on the floor, and they’ll flap around and forget they’re suffocating. Pickle is my favorite; I got him first-two years ago. He is an albino goldfish from China, with a white body and red fins, and is slightly bigger than the width of my palm. Jehovah is a little smaller, but she’s gold. Goldfish can live up to forty years, and I hope to get at least that out of mine. I don’t know what they get up to when I’m not watching them, but so far no little goldfish have appeared.

  I sprinkle in some food, watch them rise to the surface of the bowl, and watch them eat. I love them dearly, yet at the same time I feel like God. No matter who I am, no matter what I do, my goldfish look up to me. The way they live, the conditions they live in, when they get dinner-these things are all up to me. I like having that responsibility.

  I talk to them while they eat. A few minutes go by. I have talked enough. The pain of killing Fluffy is nearly gone now.

  I head outside. The sun has completely gone now and the streetlights are on. A few of them on my street are busted. Tomorrow it will get darker earlier by a minute, and the same every day after that until we break through winter. Or perhaps winter won’t come this year. I walk to the nearest bus stop. I wait for maybe five minutes in the warm evening air before a bus finally comes along.

  Mom lives in South Brighton near the beach. No green lawn out here. Like the plants, it matches the shade of rust that visits every metal surface exposed to the salt air. Grow a rosebush and the entire block goes up in value. Most of the homes are sixty-year-old bungalows that are struggling to hold on to their character as the paint flakes away and the weatherboards slowly rot.

  All the windows are clouded over with salt. Wooden joinery
is stained with dead pine needles and sand. Patches of sealant and plaster block up holes and keep the insides dry. Even crime out here has its downside-when you weigh in the cost of gas it takes to get here against the value of anything you might find in any of these dumps, it’s hardly worth breaking into somebody’s house.

  It takes thirty minutes for the bus to get to Mom’s house. When I get out, I can hear the waves crashing against the shore. The sound is relaxing. This is the only benefit to South Brighton. It is a minute’s walk to the beach from here, and if I still lived in this suburb, I would walk that extra minute and just keep on swimming. At the moment it feels like I’m standing in a ghost town. Few houses have their lights on. Every fourth or fifth streetlight is busted. Nobody around.

  I suck in a deep breath of salty air while standing at the gate. My clothes already stink of rotten seaweed. Mom’s house is in as much disrepair as any other house in this neighborhood. If I came around here and painted it, her neighbors would probably kick her out. If I mowed the dry lawns, I’d have to mow everybody’s. Her house is a single-story weatherboard dwelling. White paint, now the color of smog, falls from the warped boards and settles in the yard alongside the dusting of rust from the iron roof. The windows are held in place with both cracking joint compound and luck. A real-estate agent would call Mum’s house a great investment for the handyman.

  I walk up to the door. Knock. And wait. A minute goes by before she finally ambles to it. It sticks in the frame and she has to pull it hard. It shudders open and the hinges squeak.

  “Joe, do you know what time it is?”

  I nod. It’s nearly seven thirty. “Yeah, Mom, I know.”

  She closes the door, I hear the rattle of a chain guard, and then the door swings back open. I step inside.

  Mom will be sixty-four this year, but looks a good ten years older. Or a bad five. She’s only five feet two, and has curves in all the wrong places. Some of those curves stretch out over others, some are heavy enough to tighten the wrinkles in her neck. Her gray hair, she keeps pulled back into a tight bun, but at the moment she’s wearing something over it-one of those old hairnets with curlers tied into it that for some reason makes me think of black-and-white movies and women smoking cigarettes. She has blue eyes so pale they are nearly gray, covered by a pair of thick-rimmed glasses that may, with a lot of luck, one day come into style. On her face are three moles, each of them with a dark hair that she won’t cut. Her upper lip is cultivating a soft line of fuzz. She looks like she belongs in a nursing home as the head matron.

  “You’re late,” she says, blocking the doorway while adjusting one of the curlers in her hair. “I got worried. I nearly called the police. Nearly called the hospitals.”

  “I was busy, Mom, with work and everything,” I say, relieved she didn’t file a missing person report.

  “Too busy to call your mother? Too busy to worry yourself about my breaking heart?”

  I’m all she has left. My dad died a few years ago, and I’ve always considered him to be the lucky one. It seems the only thing Mom has to live for is talking. And complaining. Luckily the two go hand in hand for her.

  “I said I’m sorry, Mom.”

  She clips me around the ear. Not hard, but enough to show me her disappointment. Then she hugs me. “I made meatloaf, Joe. Meatloaf. Your favorite.”

  I hand her the rose I picked from Angela’s garden. It’s slightly crushed, but Mom’s expression is priceless when I hand over the red flower.

  “Oh, you’re so thoughtful, Joe,” she says, taking it to her nose to smell.

  I shrug. “Just wanted to make you happy,” I say, and even for an optimist like me that’s always been a pretty ambitious goal. Her smile is making me smile.

  “Ow,” she says, pricking her finger on one of the thorns. “You give me a rose with thorns? What sort of son are you, Joe?”

  Obviously a bad one. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  “You don’t think enough, Joe. That’s always been your problem. Along with always being late. I’ll put it in water,” she says, and steps aside. “You might as well come in.”

  She closes the door behind me and I follow her down the hallway to the kitchen, passing photographs of my dead dad, a cactus that has looked dead from the day she got it, and a seascape painting of a place my mother would maybe like to visit. The Formica-top table has been set for two.

  “Do you want a drink?” she asks, putting the rose into a glass.

  “I’m fine,” I say, tightening my jacket. It’s always cold in this house.

  “The supermarket has Coke on special.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Three dollars for a six pack,” she says. “Here, I’ll find you the receipt.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I said I’m fine.”

  “It’s no hassle.”

  She wanders off, leaving me alone. There’s no way to say it nicely, but my mother is getting crazier by the day. I believe her that Coke is on special, yet she still feels the need to show me the receipt. A few minutes go by where all I can do is look at the oven and microwave, so I spend the time figuring just how awkward it would be to fit an entire person into either one of them. When she comes back, she has also found the supermarket flyer advertising the Coke.

  I nod. “Three dollars, huh? Amazing.”

  “So you’ll have one then?”

  “Sure.” It’s the easiest option.

  She serves dinner. We sit down and begin eating. The dining room connects to the kitchen, and the only view I have is either of my mother or the wall behind her, so I watch the wall. Some of these appliances here went out of date when electricity was invented, and the rest not long after. The linoleum floor looks like it was made from Kermit the Frog after he was hunted down and skinned. The dining table is the color of bananas. The legs are cold metal. The chairs are padded and wobble slightly when I move. Mom’s has been reinforced.

  “How was your day?” she asks. A tiny piece of carrot is stuck on her chin. One of the moles there looks as though it’s trying to skewer it.

  “Good.”

  “I haven’t heard from you all week.”

  The meatloaf is a little dry, but I don’t dare add any more gravy to it in case my mother thinks I’m unhappy with it. “I’ve been busy with homework.”

  “The job?”

  “The job.”

  “Your cousin Gregory is getting married. Did you know?”

  I do now. “Really?”

  “When are you going to find yourself a wife, Joe?”

  I’ve noticed that old people always chew with their mouths open, so you get to hear the food slopping against the roof of their mouth. It’s because they’re always about to say something.

  “I don’t know, Mom.”

  “You’re not gay, are you, son?”

  She says this while still chewing. Like it’s no big deal. Like she just said, “That shirt looks good on you,” or “Nice weather we’re having.”

  “I’m not gay, Mom.”

  In fact, it isn’t that big a deal. I have nothing against gay people. Nothing at all. They are, after all, just people. Like anybody else. Now it’s people I have something against.

  “Huh,” she huffs.

  I pause with a forkful of meatloaf inches from my mouth. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The meatloaf goes back onto the plate. “What, Mom?”

  “I’m just wondering why you don’t ever bring a girl around.”

  I shrug.

  “Men shouldn’t be gay, Joe. It’s not. .” she searches for the word, “fair.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  She seems happy to let the subject go, and I’m happy to let her. We eat in silence for a minute, which is all my mother can handle before talking again. “I started a jigsaw puzzle today.”

  I’m not brave enough to tell her I’ll alert the media. Instead I go with, “Uh huh.”
r />   “It was on special. Down from thirty dollars to twelve.”

  “Bargain.”

  “Here, I’ll find you the receipt.”

  I add more gravy to my dinner and try to eat quicker while she’s gone, knowing that eating quickly doesn’t necessarily mean a quick escape, but also knowing it’s worth a shot. I watch the clocks on the microwave and the oven, and I race them against the clock hanging on the wall, but they all drag along at the same pace. It doesn’t take Mom long to find the receipt so I figure she must have kept it aside to show me. She waddles over with the advertising flyer as well. I do my best to calm my excitement.

  “See? Twelve dollars.”

  “Yeah, I see.” The flyer has Chockablock with Entertainment written across it. I wonder what the person was thinking when they wrote that. Or what they were on.

  “That’s eighteen dollars. Well, actually it was twenty-nine ninety-five down to twelve dollars, so that’s eighteen dollars and ninety-five cents.”

  I do the arithmetic as she talks to me, and quickly see she’s off by a dollar. Best not to say anything. I’m figuring if she realizes she saved eighteen dollars and not nineteen, she’s going to take it back. Even after she’s done the puzzle.

  “It’s of the Titanic, Joe,” she says, even though the picture in the flyer is of a large boat with the word Titanic stenciled across its helm. “You know, the boat?”

  “Oh, that Titanic.”

  “A real tragedy.”

  “The movie?”

  “The boat.”

  “I hear it sank.”

  “Are you sure you’re not gay, Joe?”

  “I’d know, wouldn’t I?”

  After dinner, I offer to clean up, even though I know what she’s going to say.

  “You think I want you around here to be my maid? Sit down, Joe. I’ll clean up. What sort of mother won’t take care of her son? I’ll tell you what sort-a bad mother, that’s who.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “I don’t want you to do it. Now go and wait in the living room.”