A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories

by Lucia Berlin

  That first roll of film made me happier than anything in a long time, even a good trial. When I showed them the prints, they all high-fived me. Carlotta hugged me.

  Ben and I went out together several times, early in the morning, in Chinatown, the warehouse district. It was a good way to get to know someone. I’d be focusing on little kids in school uniforms, he’d be taking an old man’s hands. I told him I felt uncomfortable taking people, that it seemed intrusive, rude.

  “Mom and Jesse helped me with this. They always talk to everybody, and people talk back. If I can’t get a picture without the person seeing me now I’ll just talk to them, come right out and ask, ‘Do you mind if I take your picture?’ Most of the time they say, ‘Of course I mind, asshole.’ But sometimes they don’t mind.”

  A few times we talked about Carlotta and Jesse. Since they all got along so well, I was surprised by his anger.

  “Well, sure I’m mad. Part of it is childish. They’re so tight I feel left out and jealous, like I lost my mother and my best friend. But another part of me thinks it’s good. I never saw either one of them happy before. But they’re feeding each other’s destructive side, the part that hates themselves. He hasn’t played, she hasn’t written since they moved to Telegraph. They’re going through his money like water, drinking it mostly.”

  “I never get the feeling that they are drunk,” I said.

  “That’s because you’ve never seen them sober. And they don’t really start drinking until we’ve gone. Then they careen around town, chasing fire trucks, doing God knows what. Once they got into the U.S. Mail depot and were shot at. At least they’re nice drunks. They are incredibly sweet to each other. She never was mean to us kids, never hit us. She loves us. That’s why I can’t understand why she’s not getting my brothers back.”

  Another time, on Telegraph, he showed me the words to a song Jesse had written. It was fine. Mature, ironic, tender. Reminded me of Dylan, Tom Waits, and Johnny Cash mixed together. Ben also handed me an Atlantic Monthly with a story of hers in it. I had read the story a few months before, had thought it was great. “You two wrote these fine things?” They both shrugged.

  What Ben said had made sense, but I didn’t see any self-hatred or destructiveness. Being with them seemed to bring out a positive side of me, a corny side.

  Carlotta and I were alone on the terrace. I asked her why being there made me feel so good. “Is it simply because they are all young?”

  She laughed. “None of them are young. Ben was never young. I was never young. You probably were an old child too, and you like us because you can act out. It is heaven to play, isn’t it? You like coming here because the rest of your life vanishes. You never mention your wife, so there must be troubles there. Your job must be troubles. Jesse gives everybody permission to be themselves and to think about themselves. That it’s okay to be selfish.

  “Being with Jesse is sort of a meditation. Like sitting zazen, or being in a sensory deprivation tank. The past and future disappear. Problems and decisions disappear. Time disappears and the present acquires an exquisite color and exists within a frame of only now this second, exactly like the frames we make with our hands.”

  I saw she was drunk, but still I knew what she meant, knew she was right.

  For a while, Jesse and Maggie slept every night on a different roof downtown. I couldn’t imagine why they did this, so they took me to one. First we found the old metal fire escape, and Jesse jumped high up and pulled it down. Once we were up the stairs and onto the ladder, he pulled the stairs up after us. Then we climbed, high. It was eerie and magical looking out onto the estuary, the bay. There was still a faint pink sunset beyond the Golden Gate Bridge. Downtown Oakland was silent and deserted. “On weekends, it’s just like On the Beach down here,” Jesse said.

  I was awed by the silence, by the sense of being the only ones there, the city beneath us, the sky all around. I was not sure where we were until Jesse called me over to a far ledge. “Look.” I looked, and then I got it. It was my office, on the fifteenth floor of the Leyman Building, a few floors above us. Only a few windows away was Brillig’s. The small tortoise-shaded light was on. Brillig sat at his big desk with his jacket and tie off, his feet on a hassock. He was reading. Montaigne probably, because the book was bound in leather and he was smiling.

  “This isn’t a nice thing to do,” Carlotta said. “Let’s go.”

  “Usually you love to look at people in windows.”

  “Yes, but if you know who they are it is not imagining but spying.”

  Going back down the fire escape I thought that this typical argument was why I liked them. Their arguments were never petty.

  Once I arrived when Joe and Jesse were still out fishing. Ben was there. Maggie had been crying. She handed me a letter from her fifteen-year-old, Nathan. A sweet letter, telling her what they all were doing, saying that they wanted to come home.

  “So, what do you think?” I asked Ben when she went to wash her face.

  “I wish they’d get rid of the idea that it’s Jesse or the kids. If she got a job and a house, stopped drinking, if he’d come by once in a while, they’d see it could be okay. It could be okay. Trouble is they’re both scared that if the other one sobers up, they’ll leave.”

  “Will she stop drinking if he leaves?”

  “God no. I hate to think about that.”

  Ben and Joe went to a ball game that night. Joe always referred to them as the “fuckin’ A’s.”

  “Midnight Cowboy’s on TV. Want to come watch it?” Jesse asked. I said, sure, I loved that film. I thought they meant to go to a bar, forgetting about his age. No, they meant the Greyhound bus station, where we sat in adjoining seats, each with a little TV set we put quarters in. During the commercials Carlotta got more quarters, popcorn. Afterward we went to a Chinese restaurant. But it was closing. “Yes, we always arrive when it’s closing. That’s when they order takeout pizza.” How they had originally found this out I can’t imagine. They introduced me to the waiter and we gave him money. Then we sat around a big table with the waiters and chefs and dishwashers, eating pizzas and drinking Cokes. The lights were off; we ate by candlelight. They were all speaking Chinese, nodding to us as they passed around different kinds of pizza. I felt somehow that I was in a real Chinese restaurant.

  The next night Cheryl and I were meeting friends for dinner in Jack London Square. It was a balmy night, the top was down on the Porsche. We had had a good day, made love, lazed around in bed. As we got near the restaurant, Cheryl and I were laughing, in a good mood. We got stopped by one of the freight trains that invariably crawled through the Square. This one went on and on. I heard a shout.

  “Counselor! Jon! Hey, Barrister!” Jesse and Carlotta were waving to me from a boxcar, blowing kisses.

  “Don’t tell me,” Cheryl said. “That must be Peter Pan and his ma.” She said, “Jon’s personal Bonnie and Clyde.”

  “Shut up.”

  I had never said that to her before. She stared straight ahead, as if she hadn’t heard me. We went to the elegant restaurant with our elegant, articulate liberal friends. The food was excellent, the wines perfect. We talked about films and politics and law. Cheryl was charming; I was witty. Something terrible had happened between us.

  Cheryl and I are divorced now. I think our marriage began to end because of those Friday nights, not because she began having an affair. She was furious because I never took her to meet them. I’m not sure why I didn’t want to, whether I was afraid she would dislike them, or they would dislike her. Something else … some part of me that I was ashamed to let her see.

  Jesse and Carlotta had already forgotten the boxcar when I next saw them.

  “Maggie’s hopeless. We could learn how to do it. We could travel all over the USA. But every time we start clickety clacking along, she gets hysterical. We’ve only got as far as Richmond and Fremont.”

  “No, once to Stockton. Far. It’s terrifying, Jon. Although lovely too, and you do
feel free, like it’s your own personal train. Problem is nothing scares Jesse. What if we ended up in North Dakota in a blizzard and they locked us in? There we’d be. Frozen.”

  “Maggie, you can’t be worrying so much. Look what you do to yourself! Got your shorts in a knot about some snowstorm in South Dakota.”

  “North Dakota.”

  “Jon, tell her not to worry so much.”

  “Everything is going to work out, Carlotta,” I said. But I was frightened too.

  * * *

  We checked out the watchman at the marina. At seven thirty he was always at the other end of the piers. We’d toss our gear over and then climb the fence, down by the water where it wasn’t wired for an alarm. It took us a few times before we found our perfect boat, La Cigale. A beautiful big sailboat with a teak deck. Low in the water. We’d spread out our sleeping bag, turn the radio on low, eat sandwiches and drink beer. Sip whiskey later. It was cool and smelled like the ocean. A few times the fog lifted and we saw stars. The best part was when the huge Japanese ships filled with cars came up the estuary. Like moving skyscrapers, all lit up. Ghost ships gliding past not making a sound. The waves they made were so big they were silent, rolling, not splashing. There were never more than one or two figures on any of the decks. Men alone, smoking, looking out at the city with no expression at all.

  Mexican tankers were just the opposite. We could hear the music, smell the smoky engines before we saw the rusty ships. The whole crew would be hanging off the sides, waving to girls on terraces of restaurants. The sailors were all laughing or smoking or eating. I couldn’t help it, once I called out Bienvenidos! to them, and the watchman heard me. He came over and shone his flashlight at us.

  “I seen you two here a coupla times. Figured you weren’t hurtin’ nobody, and weren’t stealing, but you could get me in a mess of trouble.”

  Jesse motioned for him to come down. He even said, “Welcome aboard.” We gave him a sandwich and a beer and told him if we got caught, we’d be sure to show there was no way he would have seen us. His name was Solly. He came every night then, for dinner at eight, and then he’d go on his rounds. He’d wake us early in the morning, before light, just as the birds were starting to whirr above the water.

  Sweet spring nights. We made love, drank, talked. What did we talk about so much? Sometimes we’d talk all night long. Once we talked about the bad things from when we were little. Even acted them out with each other. It was sexy, scary. We never did it again. Our conversations were about people, mostly, the ones we met walking around town. Solly. I loved hearing him and Jesse tell about farmwork. Solly was from Grundy Center, Iowa, had been stationed at Treasure Island when he was in the navy.

  Jesse never read books, but words people said made him happy. A black lady who told us she was as old as salt and pepper. Solly saying he up and left his wife when she started gettin’ darty-eyed and scissor-billed.

  Jesse made everybody feel important. He wasn’t kind. Kind is a word like charity; it implies an effort. Like that bumper sticker about random acts of kindness. It should mean how someone always is, not an act he chooses to do. Jesse had a compassionate curiosity about everyone. All my life I have felt that I didn’t really exist at all. He saw me. I. He saw who I was. In spite of all the dangerous things we did, being with him was the only time I was ever safe.

  The dumbest dangerous thing we did was swim out to the island in Lake Merritt. We put all our gear—change of clothes, food, whiskey, cigarettes—in plastic and swam out to it. Farther than it looks. The water was really cold, stinking foul dirty, and we stank too, even when we changed clothes.

  The park is beautiful during the day, rolling hills and old oak trees, the rose garden. At night it throbbed with fear and meanness. Horrible sounds came magnified to us across the water. Angry fucking and fighting, bottles breaking. People retching and screaming. Women getting slapped. The police and grunts, blows. The now familiar sound of police flashlights. Lap lap the waves against our little wooded island, but we shivered and drank until it quieted down enough for us to dare swim for shore. The water must have been really polluted, we were both sick for days.

  Ben showed up one afternoon. I was alone. Joe and Jesse had gone to play pool. Ben grabbed me by the hair and took me to the bathroom.

  “Look at your drunk self! Who are you? What about my brothers? Dad and his girl are on cocaine. Maybe with you they’d die in a car wreck or you’d burn the house down, but at least they wouldn’t think drinking was glamorous. They need you. I need you. I need not to hate you.” He was sobbing.

  All I could do was what I had done a million times before. Say over and over, “I’m sorry.”

  But when I told Jesse we had to stop, he said okay. Why not smoking too, while we were at it. We told the guys we were going backpacking near Big Sur. We drove down the hairpin Highway 1 above the water. There was a moon and the foam of the ocean was neon white. Jesse drove with the lights off, which was terrifying and the start of our fighting. After we got there and up in the woods it began to rain. It rained and rained and we fought more, something about ramen noodles. It was cold but we both had bad shakes on top of that. We only lasted one night. We drove home and got drunk, tapered off before trying again.

  This time was better. We went to Point Reyes. It was clear and warm. We watched the ocean for hours, quiet. We hiked in the woods, ran on the beach, told each other how great pomegranates tasted. We had been there about three days when we were awakened by weird grunts. Thrashing toward us in the foggy woods were these creatures, like aliens with oblong heads, making guttural sounds, weird laughs. They walked stiff-legged and with a rocking gait. “Good morning. Sorry to disturb you,” a man said. The group turned out to be severely retarded teenagers. Their elongated heads were actually rolled-up sleeping bags on top of their packs. “Christ, I need a smoke,” Jesse said. It was good to get home to Telegraph. We still didn’t drink.

  “Amazing how much time drinking took up, no, Maggie?”

  We went to movies. Saw Badlands three times. Neither of us could sleep. We made love day and night, as if we were furious at each other, sliding off the silk sheets onto the floor, sweating and spent.

  One night Jesse came into the bathroom when I was reading a letter from Nathan. He said they had to come home. Jesse and I fought all night. Really fought, hitting and kicking and scratching until we ended up sobbing in a heap. We ended up getting really drunk for days, the craziest we ever got. Finally I was so poisoned with alcohol that a drink didn’t work, didn’t make me stop shaking. I was terrified, panicked. I believed that I was not capable of stopping, of ever taking care of myself, much less my children.

  We were crazy, made each other crazier. We decided neither of us was fit to live. He’d never make it as a musician, had already blown it. I had failed as a mother. We were hopeless alcoholics. We couldn’t live together. Neither one of us was fit for this world. So we would just die. It is awkward to write this. It sounds so selfish and melodramatic. When we said it, it was a horrible bleak truth.

  In the morning we got in the car, headed for San Clemente. I’d arrive at my parents’ house on Wednesday. On Thursday I’d go to the beach and swim out to sea. This way it would be an accident and my parents could deal with my body. Jesse would drive back and hang himself on Friday, so Jon could find him.

  We had to taper off drinking just to make the trip. We called Jon, Joe, and Ben, to let them know we were going away, would see them next Friday. We took a slow trip down. It was a wonderful trip. Swimming in the ocean. Carmel and Hearst’s Castle. Newport Beach.

  Newport Beach was so great. The motel lady knocked on our door and said to me, “I forgot to give your husband the towels.”

  We were watching Big Valley when Jesse said, “What do you think? Shall we get married or kill ourselves?”

  We were close to my parents’ house when we got into a ridiculous fight. He wanted to see Richard Nixon’s house before he dropped me off. I said that I didn’t
want one of the last acts in my lifetime to be seeing Nixon’s house.

  “Well, fuck off, get out here then.”

  I told myself that if he said he loved me I wouldn’t get out, but he just said, “Let me see your smile, Maggie.” I got out, got my suitcase from the backseat. I couldn’t smile. He drove off.

  My mother was a witch; she knew everything. I hadn’t told them about Jesse. I had told them I had been laid off at school, the kids were in Mexico, that I was job hunting. But I had only been there for an hour when she said, “So, you planning to commit suicide, or what?”

  I told them I was depressed about finding a job, that I missed my sons. I had thought a visit with them would be a good idea. But it just made me feel that I was procrastinating. I’d better go back in the morning. They were pretty sympathetic. We all were drinking a lot that evening.

  The next morning my father drove me to John Wayne Airport and bought me a ticket for Oakland. He kept saying that I should be a receptionist in a doctor’s office, where I’d get benefits.

  I was on the MacArthur bus headed for Telegraph about the time I was supposed to be drowning. I ran the blocks from Fortieth Street home, terrified now that Jesse had died already.

  He wasn’t home. There were lilac tulips everywhere. In vases and cans and bowls. All over the apartment, the bathroom, the kitchen. On the table was a note, “You can’t leave me, Maggie.”

  He came up behind me, turned me around against the stove. He held me and pulled up my skirt and pulled down my underpants, entered me and came. We spent the whole morning on the kitchen floor. Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix. “When a Man Loves a Woman.” Jesse made us his favorite sandwich. Chicken on Wonder Bread with mayonnaise. No salt. It’s an awful sandwich. My legs were shaking from making love, my face sore from smiling.

  We took a shower and got dressed, spent the night up on our own roof. We didn’t talk. All he said was “It’s much worse now.” I nodded into his chest.