The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs

by Christina Hopkinson

  At dinner, I put newspaper under everyone’s chairs as instructed and then whip the sodden pages into the bin afterward, along with the wet wipes that I have to use to get my toilet bowl “shiny shiny,” and the dying plant that Ursula gave me as a Christmas present (gee, thanks). Then I have to empty the bin because it’s so full of the fruits of my labor, as well as the moldy contents of the fruit bowl. I want to throw Joel in there, too, when he comes home and tells me to “chill.” Using funny teen-speak laden with irony doesn’t make it OK, husband of mine.

  Day 2. The house doesn’t look much better than it did before. I find I am spending so much time trying to create a nice-looking Golden Notebook that I don’t have time to get myself looking “nice ‘n’ pretty” for the day. I spend the day at work, juggling the yet again reduced budgets and revised crew lists, before coming home and attempting to purify at least one of my household zones. Before collapsing exhausted into bed at night, I have to tidy the living room and kitchen, lay the table for breakfast and plan what I shall be cooking for that meal. Sugar-laden cereal, as it happens. My woman’s work is not done even when I finally get to bed, for I must reflect on my day’s achievements and write a list of all that I have to be thankful for, as well as making time to share with my “dh”—short for “dear husband.” I think this last exhortation might be a euphemism. Either way, I don’t do it. Nor do I fall asleep, as ordered, “with a smile on my face.”

  Day 3. What I am asked to do: fertilize the plants, write outstanding thank-you notes, buy the groceries, balance my check book and change dead lightbulbs in the cooker hood. I must tell each member of my family that I love them, and one thing that I think is awesome about their personalities. I must tell myself that I love me, and find five things that I think are awesome about my personality.

  What I actually do: scream.

  Stop it, stop it, stop! You stupid idiotic women! Leave me alone, stop hassling me, why are you on at me all day long? For Christ’s sake, stop nagging. Does it really matter if I haven’t shampooed the carpet on a Thursday? You’re all flaming crazy. Fuck this, fuck this, fuck this (I just know the ClutterNoNo ladies would not like their home executive to be such a potty mouth).

  I put my head in my hands. Luckily I haven’t given my hair the ClutterNoNo requisite “perfect blow,” so it doesn’t matter that I’m mussing it up. I am filled with both admiration and pity for Alison. No wonder she’s always in such a foul temper. She’s being electronically nagged all day long. And what’s more, she’s acquiescing. I will go mad, madder than before, if I keep this up.

  I find the unsubscribe button and then declutter my email inbox of every single last reminder, all 103 of them, from that source of 1950s pinny-wearing nonsense. I breathe out. They’re right about one thing, those ClutterNoNo ladies, it does feel wonderful to expunge unwanted crap.

  I open up The List, which has been ignored these last three days. It is so neat and lovely. I want to kiss the screen. What the ClutterNoNo people failed to suggest was that husbands, or “darling ones,” took any part in this home executive efficiency. The List, on the other hand, does. I shall, I think, patent it and set up a website for everyone in my position to sort their lives out as a rival to ClutterNoNo craziness. And who knows, taken to its ultimate conclusion, The List might involve me throwing out the biggest piece of clutter of all.

  6

  The Yellow Toothbrush

  “Shit.”

  “Mommy, you can’t say that,” admonishes Rufus.

  “Actually I can, because it’s not an expletive, it’s a factual description of the situation.” He looks puzzled. “Why, why, why, do people let their flaming dogs poo all over the roads? It’s disgusting,” I shout, at nobody in particular, perhaps hoping to catch some recidivist dog owner. Or a recidivist dog, I suppose. “Oh, god, it’s all over the buggy wheels. And your shoes, Rufe. Why did you not look where you were going?”

  “It’s not my fault.”

  “No, I know it’s not. It’s the fault of those flipping dog owners.” I raise my voice once more. “And it’s my fault, I suppose, for being in such a hurry to get you to school on time that I didn’t check where we were going.” Joel says I’m obsessed with dog poo. In truth, all mothers are obsessed with dog poo. We walk with an internal radar system that is constantly beep-beeping along the streets, ready to scream at our children to stop right where they are as we pull them into the road and into the path of a speeding car just to avoid smearing shit all over the buggy wheels. Joel, too, might become obsessed with excrement if he ever had to use a pencil to dig it out of the grooves of a sneaker or clean it from the axles of the buggy wheels.

  For some inexplicable reason my dog waste radar failed me this morning. “Shit, shit, shit,” I mutter.

  Not only has the dog shat in the middle of the pavement, but also in the exact midpoint of our journey from home to school. I’m frozen for a second, then I spin the buggy 180 degrees and drag Rufus too hard by the arm to get home to deposit a pair of shitty school shoes in the sink, where they’ll remain until I get home from work.

  “But I don’t want to wear those sneakers,” he wails.

  “Why not? I thought you loved these sneakers. They light up when you walk.”

  “They’re for babies. Gaby baby Gaby baby.”

  Gabe retaliates with a blood-drawing swipe. “Oh, god, I’ve got to cut your nails.” Rufus reacts as if he has been slashed with a machete.

  “I’m sorry, darling, poor you, but get these sneakers on. It’s these or slippers. Or bare feet.”

  He wails some more.

  “Please, I don’t have time for this,” I say as I use an old yellow toothbrush to dig out the shit from the buggy wheels, while trying to hold my breath.

  He wails even louder when he gets a late card at school. They’re zero tolerance about punctuality, though the fact that some bastard’s tied his muscly dog to the school gate is apparently fine. I want to do a DNA test on the scary-looking Staff cross that’s blocking our way to find out whether it matches the crap accumulated on the pair of shoes sitting in our kitchen sink, the crap that is getting harder and glueier all the while. I bet it is the same dog. I want to find out where its owners live and rub their noses in the fly-covered shit on the street. Or post one of Gabriel’s diapers through their letterbox. When he’s got diarrhea.

  Smiley Kylie, the PTA big cheese, comes up to me with her characteristic glow of good will. “Don’t forget it’s the Year 1 cake sale later today. You can leave any contributions in the PTA cupboard,” she says brightly.

  “Some of us work,” I growl at her. I swear I hear her mutter “Bitch” under her breath.

  “No worries,” she says brightly.

  I run, using the buggy as a sort of Zimmer, and try to drown out the sound of Gabriel telling me he wants to walk. He starts crying. People look at me as if they’re about to call social services. I don’t even go into Deena’s house, but deposit Gabriel on the doorstep as if he were a catalog purchase. Much like the average courier, I’m tempted to ring the bell and not even wait to see that someone’s there to take receipt, but instead just leave both Gabriel and a “While you were out” card. I say, “Here he is,” thrust a bag of clean pants at the ever-fragrant Deena and peg it to the office.

  There are no buses, as ever. I would get a late card if my office issued them. I am still, of course, earlier than most of my colleagues, but this won’t stop them looking at me and muttering “Part-timer” when I leave on the dot of 5:30 p.m.

  Even standing squashed on the bus, I feel like I can breathe for the first time since 6 a.m. I do this briefly and try to run through the day that awaits me. I’ve only got as far as 11 o’clock in my head before we arrive at my stop and I run to the office. There, I am immediately assailed by a constant stream of questions and whines from the incoming masses.

  “Mary, you’ve got to shave 5 percent off this budget. I don’t care where from, I’ll operate the camera myself if I have to.”


  “Why aren’t we getting per diems for while we’re away? It’s not fair. Like, are we supposed to pay for our coffees and lunches out of our own money?”

  “Oi, La Roux, this schedule is a nightmare, we’re never going to get everything done on time. It’s like a piece of science fiction. And I’ll be the one who gets blamed.”

  No, you won’t, I think to myself. I’ll be the one who gets blamed. That’s what I am, a blame-sponge, the here that the buck stops at, a whine-magnet.

  “Isn’t it exciting?” Lily says to me.

  “What?”

  “That filming finally starts this week. Such a buzz.”

  The filming is a buzz and it is a relief to have a commission in these straightened times. I force myself to feel proud of the production, even if it is a rather hackneyed panel game show based on knowledge of celebrity magazines, to be broadcast on the outer reaches of the satellite listings. When filming starts, it is the play finally being performed to an audience; it’s like the process of decorating a house after the boring bits involving foundations, repointing and joists; it’s the race being run after hours of training. Sadly, now that I work as a backroom girl, part-time and with my regular hours, I’m part of all the build-up without the adrenalin payoff. I wonder for the umpteenth time whether there is any way I could go back into the hot seat of being a producer-director, or whether it would mean too much time away from my boys and an even greater proportion of my time, when I finally did get back to the house, on all the boring admin instead of playing with them.

  “I feel like all my babies have grown up,” I say of the runners, production secretaries, directors and producers, “and now they must flee the nest and go out into the world. Run free, little ones.” I’ve wiped the metaphorical bottoms of the crew, I’ve weaned them and trained them, and now they’re off into the university of life as lived during production. They’ve left me behind and now, just like students in freshers’ week, they’ll be getting drunk, getting high and getting off with one another. I’m hoping that they’ll also be getting the job done. If they don’t, I’ll be blamed.

  “Are you not coming to filming on Friday night?” asks Lily. “Go on, we’ll all get so wasted afterward.”

  “Not on the hospitality budget I’ve drawn up.”

  “Spoilsport.”

  I am the boring one now. I wasn’t always. It was on a production much like this that Joel and I met. We flirted, then we didn’t, then we got together. Well, that’s the abridged version. The more complicated one has a cameo role for Mitzi. But when we finally did get together, I loved him so quickly and so fearlessly. I never had to worry that he wouldn’t call or that he would go off me. Joel’s confidence allowed him to love and to be loved generously. I wore his frayed sweaters and his warm smile. At the age of 27 and a half, I had my first true love. I carried in my stomach that wonderful feeling of always having something to look forward to. I wanted to scrawl his name onto my bag and walk with my hand in his jeans’ pocket. I felt 17. No, not 17 again, not like I did when I was really and truly 17, for that was miserable and insecure and angst-ridden. No, I felt 17 like one is 17 in the movies: flushed with love, optimism and possibilities.

  I don’t know how we got any work done. We partied with our friends from the office, enjoying their audience to the perfection of our love; they were our own Greek chorus, speaking of what a great couple we were. Then we’d go home where we’d have sex for hours, our sessions elongated not by complicated tantric moves but by the fact that we couldn’t stop talking. I loved the stories from his bohemian childhood, he found my tales of Northern respectability equally exotic. We’d go to bed talking and then wake up talking. Mouths made for talking, kissing, smiling.

  “Go on—can’t you just, like, get a babysitter?” I am snapped out of my reverie by Lily.

  “But Lily, a babysitter’s not there the next day when I’ll have a hangover and two hyperactive boys.”

  “Well, just get a babysitter that stays the night, then.”

  “Maybe.” As if.

  My hands seem to carry with them the stench of turd, however hard I scrub at them, Lady Macbeth–like. I think of ways to blame Joel for this morning’s debacle. If he had taken Rufus to school instead of leaving me to drop off both him and Gabriel, it would never have happened. Well, it might have happened, but at least it would not have happened to me. If men like him shared the maternal angst about dog shit, then maybe laws would be enforced and dog owners properly punished. If I hadn’t had to wipe up his endless rings of milk from the kitchen counter after breakfast then I would not have been in such a rush this morning.

  I decide to nip out to the shop to buy chewing gum in the vain hope that making my mouth minty fresh might finally expunge the aura of dog shit that clings to me.

  It’s then that I see her, Cara, walking—no, gliding—down the street toward me. I wish that I could have bumped into her on the way back from the shop, mouth fully minted, rather than on the way there. But then I would have had gum in my mouth and I’d hate to have to talk to Cara while chewing gum; it would be, I imagine she might say, so déclassé.

  It’s too late for me to duck into one of the alleyways that riddle these old industrial streets, so I concentrate on looking ahead so that I can act surprised when I get near her. Or should I catch her eye now and give her a warm smile until we are near enough to speak? But then that would be warm smiling for a very long time and I’m not sure my facial muscles would cope. I ponder all these things until we are upon one another.

  “Good morning, Mary,” she says, kissing me on both cheeks, not sullying the gesture with any fake “mwah” noises.

  “Hello, Cara, what are you doing here?”

  “It’s where I live and work.”

  “Of course. I’m just going to the shop.”

  “Good.” She always has a look of amusement on her face. I wish I found the world wryly amusing instead of verily irritating.

  I plug the gap with a garbled, “How’s Becky?” I feel intrusive, like a tabloid reporter, for asking a question that would be innocuous to anyone else.

  “How do you think she is?” she replies.

  “Great.” Why’s she asking me?

  “Well then, she’s great.” Her expression remains the same.

  “My office is really near here.” I sound so eager, so keen to impress the cool girl from the year above.

  “I think I knew that already. We should have a drink sometime.”

  “We should. That would be great; yes, definitely, let’s do that.” Oh, god, let’s not, what would we talk about? I can’t even manage a straightforward conversation on the street. I can see how Mitzi might be her friend, but not how on earth Becky can be her girlfriend. Her lover. In theory I think I know what they might get up to, but they are so different I can’t even imagine them sharing a kitchen, let alone a bedroom. It’s a same-sex relationship, but they come from different planets.

  “I like your coat,” she says and touches its sleeve.

  “Really? This old thing.” I laugh, though I’m not sure what the joke is or who it’s on.

  “I must go,” she says. “I’ve got a brunch meeting.” I picture her in a fashionable restaurant with eggs Benedict and a glass of champagne that she sips, not glugs.

  “Bye, then.” I walk away and then break into a trot. This is pathetic. She is my best friend’s girlfriend. She is not prime minister or a top brain surgeon. I am a grown-up; a mother of two; I have a good degree and oversee budgets that run into the hundreds of thousands and I have never once made a major mistake in my professional career; I can order about “talent” without offending them; I can even manage Gabriel’s tantrums in public, for god’s sake. Pathetic, I repeat to myself.

  I’m thinking about my day, half sublime half grime, as I lie in bed that evening with the computer, updating The List, which is hurtling toward a healthy total early in the month.

  I check the code for the first of the day’s misdemeanors.
Subsection A [kitchen] number 16) Never clears out the sink gunk. I hate that one, it reminds me of when James Herriot puts his hand up a cow’s vagina and pulls out a calf. I think maybe I ought to just add a point for that one every day, since it’s unlikely he’ll ever find his way to digging out the slime.

  I cast my eyes around the room. Subsection C [laundry] Leaves dirty underwear mummified into duvet. Oh, and also, D [bedroom] number 4) Leaves balled-up tissues on the chest of drawers. He always puts these germy rags on the side. Actually, that’s unfair, he doesn’t always leave them on the chest of drawers. Sometimes he leaves them in his trouser pocket so that they can go in the washing machine and leave little white ball-bearings to stick to everyone else’s clothes. Which, of course, is another point on The List.

  “You’re spending a lot of time holed up with the laptop,” says Joel.

  “Not really.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” I give my best imitation of Rufus on being asked what he did at school today. “Stuff. The Internet sometimes. We really should get that wireless connection sorted. I wish our whole lives could be wireless,” I say, feeling depressed by the spaghetti junction lying behind the TV. It’ll be me that sorts it out. As well as chief home executive, I am also home IT consultant. And head of accounts, personnel and internal communications.

  “Are you having one of those virtual affairs?”

  “What? Of course not.”

  “I was joking, Mary. As if.”

  “Why’s it so unlikely? Do you think no one would want to have an email liaison with me? I could be having an affair online.”