Mrs. M laughs. “No. I’m on a corporate sabbatical. You give the company sixty-hour weeks for ten years and eventually they give you six weeks with pay. It’s an incentive to waste ten years of your life so you can get a month and a half to do what you really want.” As she talks, she roots through the crisper drawer in her refrigerator. Finally, she finds what she’s looking for—a cigarette.
“Sweet.” Roger would take a big trip or something.
“I tacked on a few weeks of overdue vacation. Only now I don’t know what I’d like to do.” She flips on the electric burner. “That’s the thing about ten years of sixty-hour weeks. You forget what you really wanted to do, like have a baby or maybe go to Italy and see Brunelleschi’s dome.”
As she bends over the orange coils of the stove to light the cigarette, the sickeningly sweet smell of burning hair tinges the air.
“You’re burning your hair.” Roger puts down his coffee cup.
“Oh,” Mrs. Mackey says without alarm. She laughs and waves a hand in front of her face. With the lit cigarette dangling from two fingers, she turns toward the kitchen window and pulls up the chunk of burned hair to examine it in the light. Then she grabs a pair of poultry scissors from the butcher block and chops off the ends. Hair sprinkles into the sink.
Mrs. Mackey is the first client to treat Roger like a real person, instead of like Cleaner Robot Guy. She asks where he lives and how the traffic was driving to her house. Her disheveled state is sexy—like she just got out of bed or she’s about to go to bed. Heat prickles in Roger’s cheeks as he tells her about his uneventful commute.
As they talk, she leans over the sink and blows smoke out the kitchen window. “Sorry,” she says, waving at the smoke. “I don’t really smoke. It’s just temporary. Everything is kind of temporary right now.” She runs water over the cigarette, shudders, and tosses it in the trash. “My husband just moved out.”
“Oh, sorry.” There’s a long silence. No kids? Roger wants to ask. “I’ve been to Florence,” he says instead. “It’s cool. That dome took, like, twenty-eight years to build.” He pulls on the soul patch on his chin, which he trimmed down from a goatee last night, out of boredom. It probably wasn’t such a good call, because now his skin feels raw and bumpy. Suddenly he wishes he didn’t look like such a geek.
“Really? I’m going to research that trip today.” Mrs. Mackey doesn’t say this with much conviction. She lingers at the window. “You like cleaning?” she asks.
“Yeah.” Funny, Mrs. Mackey is probably the only person Roger would admit this to. Chipping petrified toothpaste out of sinks and scrubbing burned spaghetti sauce off stoves kind of sucks, but at least these are tasks you can finish, unlike his portfolio, which he can’t seem to complete. Besides, he’d rather scrub toilets than sit in a cubicle doing some shit marketing job. And he sure as hell doesn’t want to have to be an assistant at wedding shoots. His friend Devon has a great-paying job doing spreads of fancy houses for an interior design magazine. He’s got a sweet apartment in the city. But Roger doesn’t want to shoot throw pillows and dream kitchens, either.
“I’m a photographer,” he tells her. “I went to a fine arts college.” He rolls his eyes. “Haven’t found a real job yet.” What he really wants to do is black-and-white portrait photography. To him, people’s faces present the most interesting landscapes.
“A photographer? Really?” Mrs. Mackey makes it sound like Roger said he was a rocket scientist. “I’d love to see your photos.”
“Yeah, well. I’m having a hard time finishing my portfolio. A little trouble with procrastination and perfectionism. Bad combo.” When Roger first graduated, he got a job at a newspaper working with the police beat reporters. A hyperactive gag reflex prevented him from taking very many pictures, though. He’d arrive at the scene of a major-injury traffic accident or a shooting and wind up doubled over, hurling into the gutter. “This is nothing,” the police beat reporter would tell Roger, all annoyed. That Pall Mall–parched asshole got Roger moved to the food section. Then he had to shoot crème brûlées and heads of cauliflower. Cheese Danish glistening with shellac. Next thing, Roger was laid off. “Last hired, first fired,” the assignment editor said.
“Maybe I can help you,” Mrs. Mackey offers. “If you give me your résumé, I could look it over and make some suggestions.”
“Okay, thanks.” Roger is suddenly uneasy with this attention. He reaches for his vacuum and bucket of cleaning supplies. Some people want you to use their stuff—this one lady insists he use only vinegar and water and this bogus environmentally friendly spray that cleans jack shit—but he likes his own arsenal of products.
“Listen, Roger . . .” Mrs. M’s voice drops with seriousness. “I need to show you the laundry.” She says this as though the laundry is a dead body in her backyard.
“Sure.” What’s the big deal? He follows her down a hallway to a dark warm room at the back of the house. There are two baskets of towels and stuff. She opens the cupboards over the washer and dryer to show him an impressive array of liquid and dry detergents, stain removers, special soap to kill dust mites, fabric softener, bleach for colors, bleach for whites, spray bottles, dryer sheets, lint removers.
“Wow, great.”
“I’m trying to wean myself off the laundry.” She hangs on to the cupboard knobs.
“Some people don’t like strangers, especially a guy doing their laundry. But I’m happy to do it.” Roger hears his voice shake a little. Why does Mrs. Mackey make him nervous? “Either way.” Shit, maybe this lady is better off working those sixty-hour weeks. Roger can’t put his finger on it, but something isn’t right about Mrs. Mackey. Maybe it’s allergies, but she looks like she’s been crying. She’s got this vulnerability that’s sweet and freaky at the same time.
“Anyway . . .” Mrs. Mackey looks at the baskets of laundry. Roger likes how her nose curves inward between her eyes then swoops up on the end. A ski-jump nose. If he could shoot her portrait, he’d have her stand under the soft bulb of the laundry room light, which creates shadows in her hair. “In my next life, I’m going to have a life.” She pats Roger’s arm absentmindedly and pushes past him out of the room.
Roger tosses in the laundry soap first. His girlfriend in college, Elissa, showed him this. Soap, water, clothes. After they graduated, Elissa went to law school and met another guy. Only she didn’t tell Roger until he flew cross-country to visit her. She thought it would be better to tell him in person. Great. She could have saved him the fucking airfare. Her calmness just made him feel worse. “Don’t do this to yourself,” she said. He smashed her English teapot against the wall. “What are you even doing here?” he yelled. “What about your art?” She had majored in painting. “You’re selling out!” God, Roger sounded so pompous. He slept on the lawn in the quad that night, then flew home to do a three-hour shoot of a bowl of cream of pumpkin soup for the fall food spread. Roger had barely slept the night before. He felt high, he was so tired.
“Did you shoot the soup?” the art director asked him in the hall that afternoon. Like the soup needed killing! He burst into hysterical laughter. Shoot the soup! Laughing, laughing, laughing, then coughing, then choking. Tears ran into his mouth. Fucking tears. He fell to his knees, afraid the art director might see, afraid he might puke. “Man, it’s all right,” the art director said, pounding Roger on the back.
Usually you can get a person’s whole story from cleaning their house. Mrs. Mackey’s whole story is under the sink in her master bath, where Roger finds a crazy stash of medical stuff. The first thing he sees is a red sharps container, like they have at the hospital. He can see through the thin plastic that the thing is nearly full with used needles. Maybe she’s diabetic. But there are vials of stuff that aren’t insulin. He picks one up. GONAL-F. He turns to close and lock the bathroom door, then switches on the fan. He never takes anything from people’s medicine chests, but he always likes to look—a fascination he’s ashamed of, yet compelled by.
Sitt
ing cross-legged on the floor, he peers into cupboard. There are boxes filled with little ampules of Pergonal, for intramuscular injection only. Ouch. Jesus. Another box has ampules of Gonal-F. Some ampules hold a white powder, and the others sterile diluent. Roger unfolds the packet insert. Gonal-F stimulates ovarian follicle production in women . . . Jesus. Mrs. Mackey must feel like a science experiment. That’s got to suck. No wonder she’s such a space case. There’s a whole array of other stuff in the cupboard—progesterone capsules, syringes, alcohol swipes, Band-Aids, pregnancy test sticks. What the hell? How do you not get pregnant? Now that her husband moved out, what’s Mrs. Mackey going to do with all these drugs?
Roger finally closes the cupboard door, feeling a little sick, as though he ate too much junk food. He cleans the sink, toilet, and shower, which are pretty much clean already. He dusts the books on the built-in bookshelves beside the toilet. The Mackeys read everything from Shakespeare to This Old House magazines. One stack of books is turned with the spines facing the wall. He stands on the toilet to reach them. A gray coating of dust makes him cough. New Technologies for Treating Infertility. The Fertility Book. Resolving Infertility. God, there’s a how-to guide for everything these days. Next thing you know, somebody’s gonna write a book on how to take a crap. It’s sad the way the books are turned toward the wall, as though that’s all Mrs. Mackey had the energy for. He finishes dusting them and hides the spines again.
Back in the bedroom, he wipes the lamp shades and the night tables. Mr. Mackey couldn’t have left too long ago and he probably hasn’t left for good, because his nightstand is still stacked with podiatry journals and mystery novels. A film of dust floats at the top of a glass of water on his side. Maybe their separation is only temporary. Roger hopes so, for Mrs. Mackey’s sake. Or maybe not. Maybe her husband’s an asshole.
He smooths the already neat comforter and fluffs the pillows, pausing to contemplate peeling back the covers. Last week Roger started putting little stuff in people’s beds: an acorn, a page of junk mail, a strand of string. Trash. You could say he’s putting trash in people’s beds. Because they’re so oblivious. If people were more observant, maybe they’d appreciate fine arts photography.
He figures it was kind of gay, but he used to do extra stuff for clients. Make that little triangle with the toilet paper. Cut flowers from their yards and leave them in a vase on the kitchen table. Clean out the fridge. But no one noticed. If they did, they didn’t say anything. So maybe they’ll notice these details. At the Rowinsons’, he snuck three tiny pinecones from the yard into their bed. Those two couch-potato workaholics need to get closer to nature. The Waxmans’ sheets are always so unrumpled and perfectly tucked in; you can tell there’s not a lot of action in that bedroom. He stuck a couple of red rose petals under their pillows. The Carters’ place is so dark it looks like a funeral home, so he slid a page from a magazine with an ad for a skylight between their sheets. Roger pictures that barge Mrs. Carter exploring the cold sheets with her toes. She’d be all, “What’s this?” pulling out the skylight ad. “How’d this get here?” And her husband would shrug, all annoyed. “How the hell should I know?”
He sneaks back to Mrs. Mackey’s living room and pulls a page of sheet music from the piano bench to slide between her covers. A Chopin prelude. He imagines her tiptoeing through her dark house with the sheet music, wearing the long white nightgown that hangs from the hook on the back of her bathroom door. He pictures her seated at the piano, her small square fingers slipping between the keys.
When he’s finished cleaning the house, Roger finds Mrs. Mackey sprawled on a blanket under a tree in her front yard. She’s surrounded by a laptop, books, pads, and pens. Instead of using any of the stuff, though, she’s lying on her back staring at the sky.
“My office,” she says, sitting up as Roger approaches. There’s a fancy home office in the house with a big desk and a complicated-looking chair.
“Nice,” Roger says. Mrs. Mackey might even be nuttier than old Mrs. Warrington, whose dining room table is piled with empty tin cans she obsessively washes and collects. But, hell, Roger figures if somebody shot him in the ass with all those needles, he would be whacked, too.
Mrs. M grimaces at the tree branches above her. “The city’s coming to cut down this beautiful oak.”
“Why?”
“It’s dying.”
“Really?” Roger looks up. The tree is gnarly—all bent and twisted. It’s cool that Mrs. Mackey thinks it’s beautiful. “It seems okay.”
“On the outside. But it’s all rotten on the inside.”
“I can relate to that.” For some reason, Roger feels comfortable telling Mrs. Mackey this.
Mrs. M turns to him, wrinkling her little nose and smiling in a sweet way that makes him want to lie under the tree with her.
“Will you want service weekly?” he asks. “You can check out the house and let me know.”
“I’m sure everything’s great. Go ahead and come next week. Thank you, Robert.”
“It’s Roger.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. How rude!” Mrs. M smacks her forehead.
He’d like to shoot her like this, while she’s backlit, the sun making her messy hair glow around her face. Roger points to The Iliad. “I hated that book in college.”
“Oh, I know.” Mrs. Mackey sits up on her knees. “Me, too. But this is a new translation.” Her eyes widen as she stares at her house. “I’ve been thinking of my husband’s lover as Helen of Troy, but frankly that’s giving her way too much credit.” She looks at Roger. “You know what I mean?”
Roger nods. He has no fucking idea what Mrs. Mackey means, but she looks at him so hopefully that he keeps nodding. Roger glances around the neighborhood. It’s empty, except for gardeners. “Nobody’s ever home in these nice neighborhoods, are they?” he asks her.
Mrs. M shrugs. “We’ve all got to go to work to pay the mortgages.”
“Are people happy here?” Roger immediately regrets this sophomoric question.
“Ha, is that the impression you get from cleaning people’s houses? You can clean up the dust bunnies and coffee rings, but you can’t sweep away the unhappiness?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, maybe you could invent a product. Cuts grease and malaise!”
Roger laughs.
“Bleach away your husband’s lover!”
Ouch. Roger can’t think of anything funny to say.
Mrs. M nods and looks across the street at her neighbors’ place. “These houses are nice. Some of them come with swimming pools. Some have fancy kitchens and whirlpool bathtubs. None of them comes with happiness, though. None of them comes with babies.”
“Those amenities are sold separately.” Roger steps into the shade, then crouches beside Mrs. Mackey on her blanket.
“Ha. That’s right.”
“You know, my English prof said that supposedly Hemingway once wrote a six-word short story. It went, For sale: Baby shoes. Never used.”
Mrs. M turns to him. Her expression is somewhere between stunned and grateful. “Oh, I . . . that’s . . . Sometimes you don’t need many words, do you?”
“Yeah, well, nobody knows for sure if he wrote it.” Maybe Roger has upset her. He should probably go. He stands up.
“Bring your portfolio and your résumé next time. I’d love to see your work.” Mrs. Mackey smiles. Man, those little teeth!
“Thanks.” Roger tilts back his head to study the oak. “That’s a total bummer about your tree,” he says, trying to make her feel better. Dude, I’m sure. He sounds like a fucking surfer.
“Have you finished your graduate school applications?” Roger’s mother asks during her monthly phone call to him that night. She always tries not to sound pushy or judgmental. Roger’s got to give her credit for that. Per usual, Roger mumbles on about how his portfolio isn’t finished.
“Let me know if you need help with money, sweetie,” she says. “To free up your time for those applications.” But Roge
r won’t ever ask her for money. She probably has hardly enough for retirement. He wants to get a scholarship. Make her proud and relieved.
After they hang up, he crawls into bed with Letterman and a beer. His hands are raw from cleaning. Creases and cracks are starting to bleed in places. Real sexy. Not. The cool beer bottle soothes his sore skin.
He imagines it’s him on Letterman.
“Great stuff,” Dave says, holding up Roger’s portfolio of photographs.
“Hey, thanks,” Roger replies. (Picture this: a planet where people gush over fine arts photographers, not just actors and models.)
“And you’re sleeping with that doll Elinor Mackey?” Dave asks. “How’s that going?”
Roger beams at the audience. “Awesome.”
10
“Choose a couple horses and bet low, babe,” Gina’s date Barry says in his cheerful growl, grinning and tossing a few twenties through the window to the bookie at the racetrack. “It’s always just for fun when the stakes are low.”
Gina studies the horses’ names overhead—Proud Athena and Hang-Tough Harry—savoring the realization that this is what she likes about being with Barry: the stakes are low. She doesn’t love him. It’s never occurred to her that not loving someone could feel good. With Ted, the prospect of losing him nearly crushed her. Afraid of scaring him away, she always tried to play down her affection, to suppress the irrepressible joy at just seeing him. It made her feel silly, like a puppy locked in a car.
After she and Barry place their bets, they move on to the concession stand. Barry buys vats of popcorn, hot dogs, peanuts, Milk Duds, bottled water, and beer. The cashier hurries to fill the order, calling Barry “sir.” Something about Barry instills this respect in people, making them scramble to wait on him. Maybe it’s his combination of designer clothes and self-confidence.
Gina watches as Barry pays the young man and shoves five dollars into the tip jar. Even though it’s Saturday, Barry’s dressed sharply in pressed slacks and a collared knit shirt. His dark hair forms a U-shape on his forehead, a sheen of perspiration dotting the pink balding patches on either side. His nose is small and bulbous. While he’s not really Gina’s type, he’s got a Tony Soprano sexiness that she knows many women find irresistible.