Miraculously, beautifully, the rat/thing became confused or epileptic. It had what I can only assume was a heart attack. Twitch, twitch, twitch, the little body shaking while the skinny whiskers tapped the air.
And then it died.
Automatically, it rolled over on its back and floated in the oil slick on the surface. I watched, mesmerized. And very gently, it bumped against the side of the tub and then drifted back out to the center.
I said out loud, “Mom? Are you okay?”
Then suddenly mortified by my inhumanity, my seemingly instinctive knowledge of how to kill, I left the bathroom and went back to the porch to breathe fresh, cold air. How had I known that would work?
What was wrong with me that I couldn’t have simply placed one of those humane, nonkilling traps in the tub and then freed the thing outside, in a patch of grass, like a human being instead of a killing machine?
I was filled with sickness, as though I’d just killed somebody and had their body in my tub, limbs waiting to be removed with my mother’s good carving knife. I truly was Jeffrey Dahmer’s long lost twin brother.
I decided to throw on some clothes and go downstairs and have an espresso. I needed to get out of the apartment.
Only in Manhattan can a person go downstairs and find a market that serves espresso twenty-four hours a day, along with bags of freeze-dried peas and squid, for snacking.
After I got my coffee, I leaned against a STOP sign and sipped, pretending it was a normal day and I was only up this early so that I could go running and not because I’d just been on a killing spree.
Across the street was a hardware store, and it occurred to me that I would need to go to this hardware store as soon as it opened. I needed a pair of industrial rubber gloves so that I could remove the rat/thing from the tub. I also needed steel wool to clean the tub.
I returned to my apartment and checked on the rat/thing. It was still dead, the air in the bathroom now warm and moist and toxic.
I turned on the television and watched a little QVC.
As I watched the host demonstrate the George Foreman grill (which actually does seem incredibly easy to clean), I thought about how I would remove the rat/thing from the tub. I wouldn’t be able to touch it, not even with industrial rubber gloves. I figured that what I could do was remove all the paper towels from the role and then flatten the tube and use this to lift the rodent. Of course, I would wear the rubber gloves while I held the tube.
This turned out to be an excellent system of removal. Although feeling the unexpected weight of the creature at the end of the tube made me queasy. But I was able to hoist it out of the water, dripping, and then place it into a paper-sack–lined shopping bag.
It made a heavy, wet “smack” sound as it hit the bottom of the sack. I willed myself not to focus on the sound, because I knew if I did, I would pass out, then throw up and choke. So I steeled my brain and thought instead of very happy thoughts: the luscious glass of a Leica fifty-millimeter lens, the clean smell of a new air conditioner, green M&Ms.
As I learned forward to depress the drain switch, my seven-hundred-dollar Armani glasses slipped off my face and into the water. No splash, just a plunk.
I paused, looking at their distorted form on the bottom of the tub.
Then I reached into the water with my gloved hand and removed the glasses, placing them into the sack along with the rat/thing. There would be no possible way I could ever wear them again. Not after they’d made contact with the infected water.
I peeled off the gloves and placed these as well in the trash bag, which I then secured at the top and brought downstairs to the curb.
After a quick trip to the store, I returned to the bathroom and filled the tub with four gallons of bleach and hot water and let it sit while I called in sick to work and watched daytime television for the next five hours.
Then I used an abrasive cleanser and a sponge to scour the entire tub as well as any of the tiles that would have been within visual range of the rat/thing. I wore normal yellow kitchen gloves for this, as my biohazard level was lower. Next, I used an S.O.S pad, which stripped some of the porcelain away. I wished I could have scrubbed ALL the porcelain off, as it was all rat/thing infected now. Forever. The rat/thing’s soul was in my bathtub, and I’ d just signed my lease for another year.
I wanted to cry, and I wanted to move. I wanted to move into a thirty-story Upper West Side apartment building even if it cost me my entire paycheck. I did not belong in the East Village with the “live-and-let-live” animal-loving NYU students. I belonged uptown with the surgically youthful moms who paid two thousand dollars each year to an exterminator to insure they didn’t have so much as an ant in their kitchen.
I called a friend who dates a plumber, and the plumber called me back (I paged him) and told me the most horrifying thing I had ever heard in my life: “Vermin sometimes climb up into the plumbing and get trapped in the shower head.” Which meant that I may have been showering, may still be showering, may someday be showering with piping-hot water filtered through a dead rat, without even knowing it.
This meant, naturally, that I would be unable to take a shower again for the rest of my life. Only sponge baths with Evian.
I now associated my entire bathroom, all cleaning products, and my eyeglasses and the distinctive smell of Raid with the rat/thing. Worse, I would think of it every time I showered for the rest of my life. I would be standing under the stream of hot water, and I would be checking my skin for hairs and whiskers. I could never take a bath again, either. Not with the very real danger of seeing a rat slip out the faucet into the tub of bubbles. These things happen to people “all the time,” the plumber said.
Also, I would now probably become sick with hantavirus.
I knew that one of the identifying traits of serial killers is that many of them tortured animals as children. The difference, I needed to believe, was that I was no longer a child. This had to count for something.
After a horribly long day, I needed a mental break. I threw on my parka, with the raccoon fur around the hood, and I went to see a movie.
But what to see? Something sweet and stupid and harmless. At the movie theater on Second Avenue and Twelfth, a title caught my eye. I thought, That seems good. Jodie Foster and a puffy, friendly farm animal, a butterfly.
I unzipped my jacket and headed inside to see a movie I’d heard the name of but knew nothing about. It was called The Silence of the Lambs.
DEBBY’S REQUIREMENTS
T
he year I snuck an interracial lesbian couple into the background of an American Airlines commercial, I was feeling particularly flush. (The dykes had been a real coup, considering the client told me, “No white, white bathing suits; no black, black people.”) I’d just been promoted from senior copywriter to associate creative director. With this promotion came a fat raise and the loss of the measly four hours a week I had to myself. Now, I would be expected to live at the office. I knew some copywriters who actually slept there several nights a week, talking full advantage of the shower in the men’s room. Now I would never have time to clean my apartment. As it was, I was reduced to taking one Sunday a month and just scooping everything into trash bags. But even this Sunday would be taken from me.
So I decided I would treat myself to a cleaning lady.
In Manhattan, the idea of hiring a cleaning lady is not as bourgeois as it might be in Harrisburg. New Yorkers regularly drop off their laundry to be washed and folded. So why wouldn’t they have somebody else scrub the inside of their toilet bowl?
I approached my friend and former blind date Brad, the heir to a fortune made from Saturday morning cartoons. His grandfather had created a character that got its own show, then its own lunch box, then its own studio. So having been raised with housekeepers, Brad was very experienced in these “domestic matters.” And because he was agoraphobic and never left his apartment, he would know firsthand how good the cleaning lady really was because he’d follow her from
room to room, watching her clean while he ate sunflower seeds. In the two years I’d known him, he’d already gone through eight different cleaning ladies.
“Call Debby,” he said. “She seems pretty good so far.”
“Pretty good, huh?” I said. “I want really good.”
Brad said, “Well, she’s a grandmother, and she doesn’t stink or anything.”
I liked the idea of a grandmother cleaning my apartment, especially one who didn’t trail a nasty vapor. Perhaps she even smelled like lilacs or, better yet, spray starch. I decided to take Brad’s referral. It beat looking through the Yellow Pages under “Cleaning Lady,” which would undoubtedly bring a transvestite in a French maid’s uniform to my door.
“I’m not like Brad,” I told Debby over the phone. “I won’t need you to come every day. Just once a week. Is that too little for you to even be interested in?” For all I knew, she was a three-day-minimum housecleaner.
“Oh no,” she laughed. “That’s normal. I don’t have any other client like Brad. He wants me there seven days a week including holidays. Believe me, you could serve clams casino off Brad’s bathroom floor.”
She had a pleasant, friendly voice without an accent. This was a relief, because I knew from experience that I wouldn’t be able to learn even “hello” in another language.
Oddly, I found myself lowering my voice on the phone, trying to sound mature and calm, like I was talking to a blind date.
She was uncomfortable giving me even an estimate over the phone. “You say it’s a studio with a little bedroom attached,” she said. “But I’ve seen some studio apartments that are as large as houses. Everybody’s idea of size is different.” Tell me about it, Debby.
We agreed that she would stop by my apartment the following Saturday to see how large it was and how many hours it would take to clean, in order for her to set a fair price.
That morning, she buzzed my intercom promptly at ten. Because I lived on the third floor of a walk-up building, I always had a little time to prepare myself for visitors after they buzzed. But nothing could have prepared me for Debby. While not technically a dwarf, the top of her head was level with my nipples. I’m six-one, so this would have made her about four and a half feet tall. And she was awfully young to be a grandmother. Was it even possible to be a grandmother and still be in your thirties? She had a powerful build, like a compact pit bull. And despite her limited height, there was something intimidating about her. One might expect a woman like this to have a scrub of short, spiky hair, but Debby had a long brown ponytail that hung down her back.
“So . . . may I come in?” she asked, smiling up at me.
“Oh, of course,” I said, snapping out of it. “It’s not very big.” I immediately regretted saying this, but Debby didn’t seem to notice. Instead, she scuttled into the main room of my two-room apartment and surveyed it with the steady, calculating eye of a professional. “How often do you need to change the filters on those things?” she asked, pointing to the two air conditioners that were stuck in the wall under the windows.
Silence. “I’m supposed to change them?” I asked.
She said, “Don’t worry, sweetie. I can take care of that. Let’s see the kitchen area.”
“Well, I don’t really cook much,” I said, pointing to the L-shaped area of the room that contained counters, a stove, and a refrigerator.
She smiled at me, like I was a child. “Yes, but dust doesn’t know that you don’t cook, does it?” She was at a height where the light slanted ideally across the surface of the counter, revealing a thin layer of dust on top of three years’ worth of filth, which had bonded permanently to the laminate surface.
I was horrified, as though I’d been walking around in underwear I only thought were clean. And now had to take them off for inspection.
“And the rest?” she asked.
I led her into the bathroom, where she tucked her ponytail inside and down the back of her shirt, then leaned forward over the tub, silently appraising. “See this ring?” she said, pointing to a ring of filth that circled the inside of the tub.
I nodded, ashamed.
“This is a combination of dirt and minerals from the water. It’s not easy to get off. But don’t worry. I can make this tub look new again.”
She was incredibly positive, I thought.
Next, she fingered the caulking between the tiles on the wall near the sink. “Mold,” she said sharply. Her eyes narrowed, and she suddenly looked angry. “I hate mold.” She leaned in even closer so she could get a really good look. Then she looked up at me, while her head was over the sink. “People can get very sick from mold. If they’re allergic, mold can even kill a person.”
Here, she frightened me. Her eyes seemed to display a sort of madness, but I thought perhaps it was because I was looking down at her, and she was at such an unusual angle, with her head over the sink and her neck craned so she could face up at me.
Then she straightened and I saw her smile had been replaced with a clean, straight line. She shook her head, as though to clear an ugly thought. “Anyway, let’s see where you sleep.”
I thought it was odd that she said “where you sleep” instead of the more common phrase “bed.”
Checking to make sure her ponytail was still secured under her shirt, she bent forward and checked under the bed. “Can’t see much,” she said, rising back up. “But I have a pretty good idea,” she added, looking at me with something akin to disapproval.
She’d become chilly. On the phone and for the first few minutes, she was very friendly, perky, and optimistic even. But now she seemed darker and almost angry, as though my sloppiness was a personal affront.
She opened my closet door and asked if there were “any offlimits areas in the apartment: a box of porn, toys, anything you don’t want me to stumble across.”
I was almost unable to recover from hearing the tiny, young grandmother say the words “porn” and “toys,” but I was able to mumble, “No, you can look anywhere.”
She continued, as though reciting from a memorized list. “Any pets? Cats? Dogs? Birds?”
“No, not even a plant,” I said.
She scratched above her ear, then examined her hand, like she was looking for fleas or some sort of debris. Seeing nothing, she freed her ponytail. “Well, this is a very manageable apartment, I’d say. I would estimate that we’re talking six hours. Plus, an initial cleaning that would probably last for about twelve hours. So that’s ninety dollars a week plus one-eighty for the first week.”
I was surprised by the price because I somehow had expected it to be less. Forty dollars? Fifty? Ninety seemed very close to a hundred, and a hundred seemed extravagant. Plus, six hours each week seemed like a lot. I could understand a big, up-front cleaning, but after that, couldn’t she clean my little studio in half that time?
But she was a little person, so I felt tall-person guilt. Plus, her moods scared me, and now she was staring up at me, waiting for my answer, wondering what was taking me so long to agree. And I needed a cleaning lady, so I said, “That’s fine.”
“Terrific, sweetie. I’ll be back tomorrow,” she said. Her mood had warmed once again, and she was smiling.
Mood changes and passive-aggressive behavior—hallmarks of my own character. I couldn’t let her win at these mind games. I had to play, too. And win. I adopted a sunny, positive, and confident attitude. “Great, Debby! So Sunday will be our day. Can’t wait.”
“Yes. It’ll be great,” she said. Then added, “And before tomorrow, I’ll need you to get a few things. I have a list here. I’ll need everything on it. If you forget something, I’ll have to go out and buy it myself, and then you’ll be charged for my time in addition to the price of the item.”
She passed me a photocopied list. At the top was a title: “Debby’s Requirements.” I slipped the list into my shirt pocket and followed her to the door. “Well, Brad said you’re great, and I’m really happy you have time to fit me in,” I said. “Thanks
a lot.”
She said, “Not a problem.” And then she trudged down the stairs.
After she was gone, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Why was I so intimidated by her? Was that even it? Or was it the feeling of foreboding that I couldn’t shake, like something bad was happening. Like I was about to step onto the electrified third rail of the subway tracks. Maybe I was being paranoid.
I decided to go get the items on Debby’s list right away, before I forgot and she charged me eighty dollars for walking downstairs to the Korean market for a can of Ajax.
And here, on this list, is where I found my first piece of evidence that something was, if not exactly wrong, not exactly right, either.
The first item on the list: “I will require at least a dozen boxes of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda because I am allergic to harsh chemicals and prefer to make my own cleaning agents.”
Right there, I wanted to call her up and say the deal was off. If there’s one thing I am not allergic to, it’s harsh chemicals. I want to know that the blue stuff that cleans the inside of my toilet was tested—and tested again—on rabbits, monkeys, and anything else they can cram into a laboratory cage. I want the most industrialstrength cleaners, the most abrasive agents, the most corrosive solvents.
It got worse. The next item: “Because I have contact dermatitis, typical Playtex gloves are unacceptable. Gracious Home carries the one-hundred-percent cotton gloves I prefer.”
Gracious Home was the fabulously expensive housewares store uptown. It was the place to go if you wanted a seventy-five-dollar box of Italian mothballs or a three-hundred-dollar pair of cotton gloves because somebody you knew had contact dermatitis.
Item three read: “One bottle each: apple cider vinegar, Evian, inexpensive white wine (dry).”
Was she going to have a party or clean my apartment? There was a note in parentheses following this entry that read: “The vinegar is for cleaning purposes; the Evian and the white wine are for my refreshment.”
Magical Thinking: True Stories Page 7