Cleaning Up New York

by Bob Rosenthal

  Sanford comes to work in the early afternoon. He has a lot of little jobs to do and some touch-up work. Sanford has the gossip! Brumbough and his wife have been separated and now Brumbough has this new apartment and is fixing it up for her return. Sanford and I launch into our work. We each have a radio. He listens to FM rock and I listen to AM country. Our paths cross and recross; working with similar levels of enthusiasm and skill, we inspire each other to become silly. We discuss the Herr from head to toe and agree on how disagreeable he is. Brumbough is out and we are in. We can’t understand why the Herr had his study painted dark brown. It is already a dark room but painted brown creates the atmosphere inside a chocolate cake. The Herr’s father comes by and hangs around. The father is very sweet and speaks German with Sanford. The Herr’s father starts putting the Herr down. We all express our feelings about the stupid brown paint. Sanford and I work through the afternoon, then I duck out for some sandwiches. I go down the back elevator and through the service entrance. The basement is huge and clean. There is a locker room for the employees and various corridors that twist and curve, finally leading to a secret staircase and through an ironwork gate; there is the street.

  Sanford is a beautiful worker. He is careful about each drop of paint. He reconditions every surface before he paints it and seems to have a myriad of skills unknown to me. He works slowly and patiently. His head, like my head, is above his work. As we work on together, we find it possible to completely communicate and have a good time and still work on our different projects. Sanford is exhausted from working every day for three weeks inside this vacuous apartment and I am dizzy from working since 7:00 AM. Sanford and I stumble around in heavy professional manners and continue into the night. The Herr returns and works hard to get in both of our ways or to get one of us in the other’s way. Brumbough gives out conflicting orders, which slow down the pace of the work. The Herr complains about how slow we are. I finally finish up at 9:00 PM. I am faint and robot-like as I change a light bulb in the ceiling before I go. I receive a $45 check and more baloney about how he will see if his wife likes my work, etc. He tells me to call him for their decision. I tell the Herr if he wants me, he can call me.

  Leaving Sanford to work alone in the doomed apartment is one of the toughest tasks I’ve ever had to perform. It is plain cruelty that Sanford must labor on with the hideous Herr. Sanford looks at me as one who is standing on the deck of a sinking ship, watching the last lifeboat heave away. We shake hands and agree, “Work is hell!” Physical brothers, we’ll meet again in the next world. The joy I feel at my release onto Fifth Avenue buoys me up above the street and Central Park, into the cloudy subway. I wonder how to find my way home again.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Kitchen

  Much has been written about cooking and eating. The kitchen takes care of the body’s inside. Here we are actively working on sustaining our existence. Cooking is substantive whereas cleaning is not. But, alas, the more cooking you do, the more cleaning there is to do. Cleaning maintains the outside of the body. There is a choice involved with cleaning that is not involved with cooking—that is, the choice whether to do it or not. I realize some people choose not to eat but I doubt they do very much cleaning either. You can eat a lot and still not clean much.

  Since we have established that you probably have eaten, let’s assume there are some dirty dishes left over from the meal. No one is pushing you to do the dishes (I hope) but sooner or later you’ll do them. Hot water is a key to easy dishwashing. Cooking grease and organic stains are soluble in water, heating the water just quickens things up. Soap also aids the process by making the food particles slippery so they don’t cling to each other or to the dish. Rinse and let dry.

  Clean the stove with cleansing powder and a pail of hot water. Wipe down the surface with the powder and a damp cloth or sponge. Wring the cloth and wipe the surface to rinse it. Use a dry cloth to make the thing gleam. Don’t forget those little pans that pull out under the burners. The oven can be cleaned the same way. Leaving ammonia in a shallow pan inside the oven overnight will loosen baked hard grease and make oven cleaner unnecessary. I hate spray oven cleaners because one stray whiff can knock you out. I think the brush-on kind is better and safer providing rubber gloves are also in use. A stove looks lightweight when its knobs and handles shine; the body gleams, no longer earthbound.

  Ammonia and hot water will clean the outside of the refrigerator but it is not recommended for the inside. Baking soda in hot water is enough to clean the inside refrigerator walls and shelves. Wash with the baking soda solution as you would with soap and water. To speed up defrosting the freezer, I use pans of warm water. Often the water heats up the metal freezer walls just enough so that the ice can be lifted away in large sheets. Some people say it is not good to use hot water in this connection. I haven’t seen this process harm a freezer yet, but if one has any doubts about it, don’t try it. Be especially careful if you use any tool to loosen the ice. It is very easy to puncture the freezer wall and create a giant repair bill.

  Formica and similar countertops can be cleaned with cleansing powder. Hot water and ammonia will suffice most of the time. Clean the sink as discussed in the last chapter. Finish off by mopping the floor, slowly walking out of the kitchen backwards.

  Joanne’s floors need to be reclaimed from the depths of dirt and dullness. She is the closest friend to ever hire me. Joanne lives in the apartment above Shelley and me. I sit at my desk and look up at the ceiling, which is the floor I’ll soon be scrubbing. I roll a joint and leave for work.

  Joanne has black curly hair, an ingenious Jewish face, grace of movement; she is a dancer. She is the first welfare mother to employ me. We sit on the bed and smoke in the sunlight, talking about how to work through the myriad piles of Joanne’s clothes and papers. Joanne explains what a well-ordered system it is and that she knows where everything is. Unfortunately that is beside the point because it is the floor we are looking for. It is too lovely just to sit in the window light and smoke. The phone rings. Joanne leaves the room to answer the phone. I hear her say, “Oh Bob’s here. We’re going to wash the floors and he brought some grass!”

  Joanne walks back into the room and the phone rings again. Joanne turns, leaves. She says, “Hello [short pause]. This phone call is for Bob!” That’s odd, I muse as I get up on my feet. But, Joanne is still talking, “Oh, you mean why don’t you!” I sit back down. I ponder that the person called for me but will be satisfied to give me a message. Joanne returns and says that both calls were from her odd and poetic-natured old-lover. He called back to say, “Why don’t you sleep with Bob?” Messages from elder, (young) poets must be taken in the light of the playful Gods. Yet this one struck me a shivering blow. Joanne says, “I don’t vamp my girlfriend’s boyfriend.” I steel my body to act, for with love it is better to do than to think. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness / so we clean it up.” Frank O’Hara and Bill Berkson wrote that in 1962. In 1975, we do it.

  I toss myself into hauling furniture, vacuuming, scrubbing and mopping. I clean relentlessly, madly charged with sexual shock. Before I clean the kitchen floor, I pull out the refrigerator to wash the spot it stands on. When I finish the kitchen floor, I’ll be done. I start to push the refrigerator back against the wall. But Joanne wants to clean the rear of the appliance. I leave the refrigerator sitting on the unwashed square in the middle of the floor. I contemplate that spot. Is it my calling card? Is it a weak point or just the thing undone?

  Shelley and I are at Joanne’s; we are drinking Jack Daniel’s. Joanne’s friend Connie comes over. We talk about cleaning; cleaning is mentioned. Connie needs her floors done; she can see how good Joanne’s floors look. It must be peculiar to socially ask someone to clean. Over drinks, Connie asks, “What do you like to eat?” When!? “Do you tell the ladies what to make for your lunch?” What lunch? “What do you like to steal?” Ahh. “You’re supposed to.” OK, we’ll do it. We take a drunken cab to Chinatown.

  Con
nie lives in Greenwich Village. I love to walk from the East Side to the West Side. It makes me feel smart. I come to Connie’s building about noon. Her two-and-a-half-room apartment looks into a couple of directions where many angles converge and diverge. “It’s like a fortress, you can see all the approaches.” The bedroom is small and the kitchen is just a spit in the ocean. The living room is large, enhanced by a brick fireplace and natural wood floors with an inlaid design in one corner.

  We sit down at the table and have coffee. Connie has soft, small features on a broad face. She looks modeled in clay with an inner core of sparkles. Connie is a waitress in a midtown hotel where the work is not too hard and the tips are pretty good. We both are fascinated by our jobs. We both enjoy meeting peculiar people. We look at each other. We both decide to go back to school. I decide to get to work.

  As I start in on the bedroom, Connie buzzes around me picking up magazines and moving things. I laugh and tell her to relax. Connie says she can’t relax and settles on washing the dishes. Finally she goes out so I can clean a really loathsome area around the refrigerator without embarrassing her to death. Connie comes home, another satisfied customer. I didn’t steal from Connie because it doesn’t occur to me to steal from a friend, besides there is nothing to steal. I figure Connie’s original offer of buying something for me to steal will always be valid.

  Joanne often talks of her friend Lucy. Lucy makes jewelry and runs her own business. Shelley and I meet Lucy and a buyer from Texas at a party. Lucy and I talk about Houston, Texas, which I have been to, once. Lucy communicates in a manner more direct than conversation; what is being said is not what we are talking about. This is probably because Lucy has been reincarnated so often. Maybe I’ll figure out what we really said in some future lifetime of my own. Maybe I’ve already known Lucy, which could explain why the light conversation about why there are no sidewalks in Houston left a deep impression on me. Lucy and the buyer drive Shelley and me home. He and Lucy sit in the front seat and Lucy does more of the driving. We are driving up Sixth Avenue in the Village. The road curves but we are driving straight for the curb. The buyer reaches over and pushes the steering wheel causing the tires to turn and the car to glide around the curve. We are out of control and safe.

  Joanne tells me that Lucy wants me to clean for her but is too embarrassed to ask. With Cherry gone, I need a new customer and Lucy seems to be a person perfect to work for. I call Lucy up but our schedules conflict for two weeks so we make a date for after that. Lucy says if I get a cancellation to let her know. I do get a cancellation and I call Lucy up to make a new date for Thursday. All is set. Thursday morning I am home writing about cleaning houses. I have to call up Evelyn Berkson to confirm a date for the next day, Friday. The phone rings, I am nervous and rushed—I know that is Evelyn calling me.

  Hello.

  Hello, you are coming to clean today, I have to go out for awhile but I’ll be …

  No, we talked about Friday.

  What?

  I’m supposed to work for you tomorrow.

  I’m sure we said today.

  Remember originally I said Sunday and you said couldn’t I come sooner. So I said Friday.

  No, we were talking about a week from Friday and you called to switch it to today. I was looking forward to it.

  Remember you told me to call you today to find out whether you needed me or not.

  No, I didn’t; you were supposed to.…

  Is this Lucy?

  Yes, of course!

  I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else.

  I thought I was going insane.

  I’m really sorry. Now what was it again?

  OK. Let’s start over.

  Finally I get the right message and Lucy says, “Maybe I should have said who I was.” I say, “You see, I thought it was the other person when the phone rang.” “So you just didn’t let anyone else come in.” “Yup, that’s it.” We both like to get through.

  Lucy has a large apartment on West End Avenue in the Sixties. I walk by Julliard as I head towards the Hudson River. Lucy’s apartment is high up and overlooks a fair-size chunk of the Hudson. There is a long thin kitchen, a large dining and living area, three bedrooms and two washrooms. The floors are wood parquet. The entire apartment is strewn with tiny pieces used in making jewelry. Each room is big so there is a lot of space to cover. The apartment needs between seven and eight hours of cleaning every week. I start in the kitchen and spend over three hours washing it from head to toe. Lucy comes in and solicits my opinion on the colors to make two silver human legs that create a walking necklace.

  It is early evening; Lucy is going out with friends and I am finishing up. We make a date for next week. I mention that I may come earlier in the day because I might not have to work in the morning. Lucy says, “Yes, you do your own work.” The hidden imperative in Lucy’s statement makes me involuntarily say, “I am writing a book now.” “Is it going to be published?” “No, well, I don’t think so.” “Why not?” “Because of what it is about, you see it is about cleaning.” “Oh, it is about all your ladies.” “Yeah.” I shrug my shoulders and toss my hands into the air. Lucy walks out to meet her friends. I call out, “But I don’t know if I can fit you in, in one day.” “Well, you had better.” “OK. I will.” “It had better be outrageous.” “It will be, I only write the truth.”

  Lucy likes the way I clean and I am satisfied myself with the difference in the apartment. Lucy will be a terrific boss because she is in tune with the cosmos and wealthy enough to easily afford my work. Before I leave, I have to change the light bulbs in the kitchen. I climb up on a stool and unscrew the knob that holds up a plate-shaped light fixture. Something tells me I am going to break it but I don’t comprehend the message in time. The fixture doesn’t slip off like I thought it would so I change my grip to the edge to give it a pull. As soon as I touch the edge, the glass jumps away from the ceiling. I start to hear that message about breaking the glass very clearly as I bobble it a few times before it backflips and dives toward the floor. The noise of the plate exploding across the clean linoleum floor pierces my heart. This is the first thing bigger than a drinking glass that I’ve broken while on the job. I attribute my fumble to exhaustion and unclear thinking. I write a note that Lucy will never find even though it is out in the open. She will already know what it says as soon as she sees the lights. I sweep up the glass bits with a damp cloth and realize that Lucy won’t care as much as I do and she may even be glad since the glass plate was ugly.

  CHAPTER 8

  Special Jobs

  These are tasks that need to be done less often than regular cleaning. They either require more energy or they require renting equipment or both.

  Washing windows can be especially irksome if you want to wash both sides. Assuming that you can get at the glass, the secret to good window cleaning is to clean it twice. Ammonia in warm water is terrific for washing dirt off the windowpane. Wipe the window down and then wipe dry. If you have some window-cleaning product like Windex, use it the second time around. Window-cleaning products work best on a clean surface, they eliminate streaks left from the first cleaning, and they leave the glass bright and polished. A half-cup of cornstarch mixed in a pail of water will also polish the glass; however, one must rub vigorously to polish off the dried-on cornstarch. Remember to use a clean cloth that will not leave lint on the glass or use newspapers to see the world clearly.

  You can shampoo a rug if it is colorfast and you have a rug shampooer. The shampooer is easy to rent from a hardware or grocery store. The shampoo is clear and works chemically. The carpet need not be soaked in it. It is best if the fiber is standing up stiff, lightly brushed with the wet shampooer. It is good to brush the rug with a stiff brush while the shampoo is still damp. Brush all the fibers in the same direction so that they will dry properly aligned with the other fibers. When the rug is dry, vacuum out the shampoo and dirt.

  To buff a paste-waxed floor by hand is a very grueling procedu
re. I recommend the use of a waxer and buffer. This machine can also be easily rented. Paste wax is not difficult to apply by hand. Rub it evenly with circular motions. Or apply it with the machine. You place the coarse papers over the brushes on the machine and put some wax on the floor. The machine picks up the wax and spreads it out. After half an hour, you buff the floor using the brushes. The machine should just float across the floor as you merely steer it. Wax doesn’t have to shine to be properly applied. Paste-waxed floors should have patina—that is, a surface appearance of something grown beautiful, especially with age or use.

  Ben Cunningham no longer lives in his home. He is in a nursing care facility in New Jersey. Patsy can only afford to have me come once a month. While I work, Patsy takes the bus to visit Ben. She goes practically every day. Cleaning up the same rooms without Ben around impresses upon me a stillness, a sense of waiting. Every time I see Patsy, we talk about how Ben is doing. Of course, there is no hope of Ben recovering his health, but there is the constant wish for him to not be irritated.

  It’s a gray winter afternoon; I am cleaning the living room. I am alone as usual and Patsy will not be back until late in the evening. The doorbell buzzes. I turn off the vacuum and buzz the person in. I open the front door and peer down the stairs. The advancing footfalls call up to me, “Mailman!” A brown package held by a hand precedes the actual vision of a postman. “OK,” I say and step out of the doorway to take the package. The door shuts and clicks behind me. I know the door just locked behind me. I’m crestfallen but quickly cover it up in order to graciously receive the package and not embarrass myself. The postman descends. I grab the doorknob and twist it with unusual authority and hope. The door is locked. I take stock of my resources. I have a dusting rag in my back pocket and a package. Inside the apartment is my shirt, my coat, my check, some rags on the floor, and the vacuum cleaner sprawled out like a corpse. No one else in the building is at home and I can’t open the lock with my uneducated attempts at squeezing a plastic ID card between the door and frame to move the bolt. I don’t have enough money to take the subway home. I just sit dejectedly on the top stair, my arms across my knees and my head hanging down into my stomach.