Bruce nodded and turned to Angie. “So you’ll really stay here if I do that?”
Angie nodded. She leaned over Swoosie and tentatively embraced Bruce. Swoosie decided she’d had enough togetherness and leaped off the couch.
Michael hooked Swoosie back onto her leash. “Okay, I need to check in with work, so I’m going to head home.”
“Mom, can Bruce give you a ride home? I need to go to the mall and get some different clothes if I’m going to be working on cleaning.” It was great to finally feel useful.
Angie was still holding Bruce’s hand. She smiled. “Yes dear. That would be lovely. Thank you for helping us. We’ll stay here and talk some more.”
Jan turned to Michael. “Do you and Swoosie want a lift? Or does she need more running?”
Michael smiled. “A ride would be great. I’d like to see what’s up at work sooner, rather than later. Swoosie has been a pretty good girl today, so I’ll give her a break.” He handed Jan the leash. “Let me go grab my running shoes and then we can head out.”
Jan gave her mother a hug. “Mom, I’ll set everything up as far as the cleaning. I really want you to try to make this marriage work this time. Bruce deserves it. And you deserve it, too.”
Michael took the leash back from Jan. “Let’s go make the jump to hyperspace, baby.”
Jan rolled her eyes. “It will take a few minutes to get the coordinates from the nav computer. I don’t know how to get to your place.”
They walked out and Michael closed the door behind him. “No problem. I’ll direct you. And we’re outta here! Here we go, Swoosie. Strap yourself in; it’s time to hit light speed!”
Jan opened the rear door of the car for Swoosie and grinned at Michael. “Fixing your parents’ marriage ain’t like dusting crops, that’s for sure.”
“Don’t get cocky, kid. That marriage ain’t fixed yet.”
He was probably right. But at least for now, they had a plan.
Jan dropped Michael off at his house, which was a cute bungalow located two blocks from the beach in Del Mar. Before he went inside, they exchanged phone numbers, so they could coordinate what they now referred to as The Great Sandini project.
After a stop by the mall for shorts and t-shirts, Jan went to work trying to find a cleaning company that would work on a large, sandy project on short notice. Her mother would be looking for any excuse to escape this marriage. The current state of the house was something Jan could actually do something about and she was determined to make sure it was clean by the time she returned to Alpine Grove.
The following day at Bruce’s house, Jan met Michael as well as Evette, of The Maison Maid. Evette was a stout gray-haired woman wearing a classic black-and-white French maid’s uniform that looked decidedly uncomfortable.
“Evette, thank you for coming today,” Michael said. “This is my father Bruce. It’s his house.”
Evette waved her hand toward her vacuum cleaner, “Monsieur, I can tell you are not familiar with the exciting world of vacuums. I am thinking yours must be an inferior model. But this machine I have here is the finest machine. It uses a water-filter system to keep the particles out of the air.”
Jan bent to look at the famous vacuum. “Is running sand through this going to be a problem?”
Evette shook her head. “Nonsense. It will work on the most difficult dirt. Wet dirt cannot fly! It will even pick up sand, which can ruin your carpet, you know. The sharp edges of the petite crystals cut the carpet fibers, so when you run the vacuum across it, you are picking up pieces of the rug instead. That is why you have a worn traffic area. It is because that is where the carpet is now missing! My machine is one that picks up sand. So you will not have to buy new carpet! I can give you more information, since I also sell this fine machine. I love to show it off.”
Michael looked at Jan, then back at Evette. “Thanks Evette, but I think we’ll see how this goes first. New carpet wouldn’t be such a bad thing. The green shag is looking a little tired.”
“Hey, I bought that carpet!” Bruce said. “It was expensive.”
“In 1979,” Michael said. “Why don’t you take off, Dad? Aren’t you meeting Joey and Dave at the cafe?”
Bruce nodded. “Okay. Fine. I’ll leave you to it. Make sure nothing happens here.”
Michael patted his father on the back, “No worries, Dad. We’ve got it covered.”
Jan turned to Evette. “Where would you like to start?”
Evette swiveled her head, looking around the living room. “I think here would be good.”
“Okay. Michael and I are going to deal with the kitchen, then.”
Michael raised his eyebrows. “We are?”
“Yes. We are.”
Evette started unpacking a wide range of complicated vacuum attachments from a case, and Michael followed Jan into the kitchen. Jan pointed at the stove. “So I’m curious. How many kitchen fires have happened in here?”
Michael peered at the blackened stove hood. “I lost count.”
“My mother isn’t good with fire, either. Maybe we should give them a six-pack of smoke alarms as a belated wedding present.”
“Good idea. I’d be happy to go off to the hardware store and get some.”
“Nice try,” Jan said. “See that green stuff on the wall and the ceiling? That’s your first project.”
Michael leaned toward the wall to examine the offending green spots. “I think this dates from Dad’s kale smoothie phase. He had blender issues.”
Jan stood on tiptoe to get a closer look. “I’m guessing the brown spots are peanut butter?”
“Yeah, that was the protein shake era. Maybe late 80s?”
“That’s disgusting. It’s all yours.”
Michael turned his palms upward. “Why me? What are you doing?”
Jan opened the cabinet under the sink and pointed at the dark space. “This. I don’t know what that yellow slime is under there, but I bought industrial-strength rubber gloves especially to deal with it.”
“I think Mr. Clean is rolling over in his grave.”
“Mr. Clean is not dead,” Jan said. “He’s concentrated. Now he’s Ultra Mr. Clean. Did you know that his first name is Veritably?”
Michael paused in his vigorous wall-scrubbing. “Oh come on. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“In the sixties, there was a contest to give him a first name.”
“They had a contest to name the bald guy?”
Jan smiled, sat back on her heels, and wiped her forehead with her wrist. “I don’t make these things up. Truth is stranger than fiction.”
A screeching noise came from the living room. Evette shouted, “Merde! Mon Dieu!” and then a long string of unintelligible French phrases.
Michael dropped his sponge into the bucket and looked at Jan. “That didn’t sound good.”
They both went into the living room and found Evette crouched over her vacuum cleaner, looking distressed. “I think there was a sand dune here in the living room. And it has hurt the motor of my fine machine. I must go take it to the shop and have it fixed tout de suite!”
“What about cleaning the rest of the house?” Jan asked. The sand level appeared to be unchanged.
Evette stood up and put her fists at her sides. “I cannot risk any further damage to the machine! This is très horrible!”
Jan looked down at the machine, which was apparently no longer fine. “I’m sorry. You said you could do it and the machine was up to the task.”
Without another word, Evette gathered up her many implements and left, slamming the door behind her.
Michael turned to Jan. “That went well. Now what?”
Jan bent down to examine the edge of the carpet. “I think your Dad used a staple gun to put down this carpet. It’s coming up here at the edge.”
“Dad has never been much for home improvement.” Crouching next to Jan, Michael grabbed the edge of the carpet with both hands and yanked upward. A flurry of dust and sand flew into the air w
hen the carpet released from the floor. Michael dropped the carpet as they both started coughing.
Pausing to gasp for air, Jan bent over and peered at the floor underneath the carpet. “Look at that! There are wood floors under there.”
Michael crouched down again. “I think it’s quarter-sawn hardwood. Wow. I forgot that’s what the floors used to look like before the shag arrived.”
Jan turned to him. “Those floors are gorgeous and this carpet has gotta go. Evette and her fine machine have proven that the green shag won’t ever get clean, so there’s no great loss. Start pulling.”
“I think my dad is going to consider this messing with his stuff.”
“But my mom loves hardwood floors.”
Michael shrugged. “Okay. But only if it means I don’t have to clean peanut butter off the ceiling anymore.”
“Fine. I’ll deal with the kitchen. Apparently choosy dads choose Jif, too.”
Michael laughed as he ripped up another section of carpet. “Apparently.”
A few hours later, Jan walked into Michael’s old bedroom and held up her hands at him. Each finger had a plastic tape dispenser looped on it. “How many rolls of tape does one man need?”
Michael shook his head and pointed to the large black garbage bag in front of him. “Chuck the dead ones. Tape that doesn’t stick anymore has gone beyond its useful lifespan.”
“Judging from the packaging, I’d say cellophane tape lasts about ten years. That’s good to know. It looks like you’re making progress in here.” He was sitting on the floor surrounded by piles of yellowing papers. The soles of his bare feet were sandy and blackened with dirt.
“Yeah, when I moved out, Dad just pretty much just closed the door to this room,” Michael said, picking up a book and moving off the floor to sit on the bed. “Here’s the book I was reading. It was still sitting on this shelf next to my bed.”
Jan leaned over him to look at the cover. “The Two Towers? Tolkien?”
“Yeah, I could never get through it, although I tried for almost a year. I set it aside and put it on that shelf. And there it has stayed.”
“So you never found out how the Lord of the Rings ends? That’s sad.” How could anyone not finish a book?
“I was okay with it. No book should be that boring.”
Jan sat down heavily on the bed next to him, holding her dusting rag in her lap. “I appreciate you taking off work to deal with this mess. It’s a lot easier with both of us, since you know more about your dad’s important stuff than I do.”
“It’s okay. Something is going on at the agency. They told everyone to take a couple of days off because there’s some type of audit. I haven’t taken a vacation in a long time. It feels strange to not be at the office.” He smiled at her. “Not that this feels like a vacation, by the way.”
Jan chuckled. “Oh come on. There’s a lot of nostalgia here.”
“Yeah, it’s just one big trip down amnesia lane.”
“Wow, quoting Dead Poets Society? With Robin Williams and Robert Sean Leonard? I loved that movie.”
Michael turned and looked into Jan’s eyes. “It amazes me how you get every pop-culture reference. I have never met anyone like you.”
Jan giggled nervously. “I know. I’m unusual.” The gold flecks in his brown eyes glinted in the afternoon sun streaming in through the window.
He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. A jolt of surprise and desire shot through Jan’s body. She had kissed Steve countless times, but the feel of Michael’s lips on hers wasn’t like anything she’d ever experienced. Shouldn’t she feel guilty? This was wrong for so many reasons. Yet she placed her hands on his broad shoulders, closed her eyes, and reveled in the sensations anyway.
Michael pulled away first and they stared at each other for a long second. “Well, that certainly wasn’t a chaste sisterly kiss.”
“You started it.” And he was really good at it.
“I suppose I did,” Michael laughed. “But now who sounds like a ten-year old?” He stood up and the book fell off the bed onto the floor. As he put the book back on the shelf, he said. “I guess we should get back to work.”
Several hours of cleaning later, Jan collapsed on the living room sofa. “I’m done. I can’t clean anything else. Or move.”
“Just one more thing,” Michael said. “We need to move the shag carpet out of the front yard. Dad may be a slob, but he does have a few standards.”
Jan groaned as she levered herself up off the couch. “All right. But that’s it.”
“Hey, I think we really deserve a treat after this long sandy day of grime. How about I take you out to dinner tonight? There’s a great Indian restaurant not too far from here.”
Jan looked down at herself. “I’d need to go back to my mom’s place and shower and change. I can’t let anyone see me looking like this.”
“I suppose you have looked better,” Michael said, looking at her appraisingly. “Maybe we can do that another time and just get a pizza instead. That might be easier.”
“Yes. Pizza.” Jan closed her eyes and leaned her head back on the sofa. “Mmm. Pizza.”
“Let’s move the carpet. Then I’ll call in the pizza, go get Swoosie, pick it up, and come back here. It would be good if you could stay here in case my dad comes back. He may freak out when he sees that the carpet is gone.”
“That would be an awkward conversation, particularly since I barely know him. You need to hurry back, so I don’t have to go through that explanation. But I suppose maybe he won’t notice, either.”
“Believe me, he’s going to notice. Come on, get up.”
“Fine,” Jan said as she used both hands to push her body up off the sofa. “Let’s get this over with.”
Later, Jan and Michael were eating pizza at the newly cleared-off dining room table. Swoosie was resting her muzzle on Michael’s thigh, supervising the consumption and hoping for a handout. He slipped her a small piece of crust. The dog wagged her tail as she snuffled it down.
They all looked up from the meal when Bruce walked in the door. Swoosie ran over to Bruce to say hello. Bruce looked around in confusion as he stooped down to pet the dog. “What happened?”
Michael stood up. “Hi Dad. We cleaned.” He waved his arm toward the room. “It looks better. And it even smells better.”
“What did you do?”
Jan stood up and walked around the table next to Michael. “The cleaning lady broke her vacuum, so we had to clean everything ourselves.”
Bruce looked down at his feet. “What happened to the floor?”
Michael walked over to his father. “After it killed Evette’s vacuum, we took a closer look at the carpet and we determined it couldn’t be saved. It’s next to the garbage cans in the back yard.”
“My mom loves hardwood floors.” Jan said. “And look, they are beautiful. Wood floors like these are hard to find. It might be made from the type of old-growth timber that you don’t see anymore. Look at the gorgeous grain.”
“I can help you refinish the floor if you want, Dad,” Michael said. “It will be great.”
Bruce sat down on the sofa. “Your mother picked out that carpet. She loved that green. It wasn’t too long before she got sick.”
Michael sat down next to his father and put his arm around him. “I know, Dad. But the carpet was so full of sand, we couldn’t get it out. Ripping it up wasn’t much fun, either. I have sand in crevices I’d rather not talk about. It’s like I went surfing and had a really bad wipe out.”
Bruce turned his head to survey the room again. “The place sort of looks like it did when I bought it. Maybe that’s not so bad. Those were some good times.”
Michael smiled. “And you’ll have good times again with Angie, I’m sure. So how was your day? Did you meet up with the guys?”
Bruce’s face lit up. “Yeah, we had some fun. My buddy Dave is the best. I love that guy. We got some coffee and then hung out at his place. Played some poker. Watched the game. D
rank some beer. It was a great day.”
“I’m glad. Jan and I will clean up our pizza, then we should head out. Maybe you could call Angie and let her know the place is clean.”
Bruce nodded. “I will. Thanks for doing this. We’ll see what she thinks.”
Jan and Michael put everything away, collected Swoosie, and said goodnight to Bruce, who still looked sort of sad. As Jan closed the door behind her, she said, “Maybe I’m just tired, but I’m wondering if we did the right thing. I feel a little bad for him.”
“Don’t. He’s been in a sort of emotional limbo since my mom died years ago. He never even went out on dates with anyone. Your mother is the first person I know about. That’s why their wedding was a surprise. Maybe he’s finally moving on.”
Jan leaned on the side of her rental car and faced Michael. “I hope so. He seemed so sad. It’s weird, because before, I only knew him as the guy with the purple hair and blue jumpsuit.”
“All of his troubles didn’t go down the drain.”
Jan smirked. “Oh please; that’s not the Toilet King song; it’s the Roto-Rooter jingle and you know it.”
Michael smiled. “Just checking to see how tired you really are.” He reached over and tucked a wayward curl behind her ear. “I was serious about dinner, too. I’ve got tomorrow off because of that audit at work. Do you have plans? If I have to take vacation time, it would be nice to do something fun.”
“I should make sure my mother doesn’t need anything. That’s why I’m here, after all.” Jan grimaced. “And gosh, what could be more fun than cleaning up detritus from the late 70s?”
“I’m sure I can think of something.”
After that astonishing lust-inducing kiss earlier, Jan was pretty sure he was right.
Angie assured Jan that everything was fine with Bruce and encouraged her to go out and have a good time. “You never do anything fun. Live a little!” Although Angie’s comment about her lack of social life was a little insensitive, Jan was secretly relieved not to be spending more time with her mother and her crystals. Unfortunately, being with Michael was becoming more complicated. She was starting to enjoy being around him a little too much. Shouldn’t she be mourning the loss of her relationship with Steve more? Going out and having fun with Michael (whatever that meant) seemed somehow sacrilegious.
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