He’s silent for a moment. “Did that sound as stupid as I think it did?”
“No. There’s—there’s something about it. Something…” I lean forward a little, and salt spray blows up over me, the ocean raining gently onto my skin. “I don’t know what it is, though.”
“Me either,” he says, and leans forward too. I watch water spray across his hands, drops catching on his wrists and running over his palms, his fingers. And so we sit there, together, in silence, and watch the ocean roar.
We ride the ferry back from the island the same way we did to it, in silence standing on the deck, only this time we stand at the opposite end and watch the island fade smaller and smaller. He asks me if I want to stop and get something to eat as we’re driving back to the grocery store and for a second I’m tempted, think of his face as he sat looking at the ocean, about how he didn’t bullshit me with some story about what the view meant to him, about what it being there meant for the world, for me. He just said he liked it, and I like that.
I like him. And I can’t. I shouldn’t. “I’ve got to get home.”
“Okay,” he says, and we turn in to the grocery store parking lot. “Do you need a ride?”
“No. I’m fine.”
He nods. “Well, I…thanks for coming with me.”
I look over at him. The sun is just starting to set and it’s caught his hair, gleams off it. “I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Oh yeah?” He grins.
“Now who’s the question person?”
He laughs. “I’ll see you later, Dani.” I look at him for a second, the strangeness of being called that and the even stranger rightness of it washing over me. Then I get out of the car.
He waves before he pulls out onto the road. I watch him drive away and when he’s almost out of sight, far enough away so I figure he can’t see me, I let myself wave back.
16
Mom’s waiting for me when I get home, sitting on the sofa eating soy crackers and grinning. I smell the reason for her grin as soon as I walk into the house.
“Pizza!”
“Yeah,” she says. “I think I remember a certain someone liking it.”
“You thought right.” I sit down and eat two slices.
“You want any?” I ask when I’m done, looking at the six remaining slices.
“Maybe later.”
I laugh then, and she says, “What? I might.”
“Uh huh. I’ve never seen you eat pizza, you know. That’s not normal.”
“I’m plenty nor—” She breaks off, coughing.
“Did you take more cough medicine today? I’ll go get it and—”
“Later. Right now we need to talk.”
So we talk, or rather, she does. It turns out she spent the day checking maid services.
“Here,” she tells me, and hands me a piece of paper with an address on it. I recognize it as being right outside Heaven. “This is the one we want. You’ve got an interview tomorrow.”
“So do you want me to drive you or—wait. I’ve got an interview?”
“I’ve been out a lot, been seen a lot, and this is a small place, baby.”
“You just don’t want to clean toilets.”
Mom laughs. “Maybe. But I also know the job will go better if you do it.”
I look at her, unsure of what to say. It’s not that I don’t know that I’m pretty good at what we do—how could I not be? It’s been my whole life, is my life, even if I’ve spent a lot of time wishing it wasn’t. And to hear her say that a job will go better if I pull it, to know she trusts me that much…well, that should make me happy.
It doesn’t. It makes me wonder what’s wrong. I mean, I know Mom believes in me, in what she’s taught me. But I also know who’s the best at everything in this family. I know we both know that. And it isn’t me.
“Quit looking at me like that,” she says. “You’d think I’d never said anything nice to you before.”
“It’s not that. It’s—”
“Go upstairs and bring the folder with all the papers down, okay?”
“Mom—”
She shakes the box of crackers at me. “You know, these are really good.”
I sigh, knowing that’s all I’m going to get out of her, and go upstairs. As I’m looking in her room for the folder I can hear her coughing again.
“You really need to take more cough syrup,” I say when I’m back downstairs. She makes a face at me and I make a face right back, then go into the kitchen and grab the bottle off the counter—right where I left it this morning. I knew it. I make her take another dose, holding the folder just out of reach until she does.
“Quit it,” she says, swatting at the folder. “You have the soul of a cranky old person, you know that? I swear, next thing you’ll be telling me to pick up my room.”
“Don’t tempt me.” I hand her the folder. She flips through it and then stops, pulls out two things and hands them to me.
Fake social security card and driver’s license, all you need to become someone else long enough to hold a shitty job. I look them both over. “Rebecca, huh? Twenty years old. You know, one of these days I’m going to end up being someone who’s my actual age.”
“Only you would complain about being young,” Mom says, and takes the cards away. “Social security number?”
I tell her. She nods. “Driver’s license number and address?”
I tell her and she hands them back. “Good.”
She tests me again during the night, waking me up four times to ask me my new name, social security number, and address. I am good at memorizing names and numbers quickly, just like I’m good at reading maps. I wonder what use any of it would do me if I didn’t run around stealing things. Probably not much.
My interview—with a company called Maid to Order—is in the afternoon. It lasts longer than I thought it would and by the end I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get offered a job.
I’m glad about that. I shouldn’t be, but I am because I don’t think this place is good for me and Mom. Things don’t feel like they usually do. I don’t feel like I usually do. There’s Greg, for one thing. I haven’t told my mother everything—or even anything—about him although I know I should. A day spent with a cop isn’t something to skip over, even if he did just want to show me a view.
I still can’t get over that. He wanted to take me to the island just to take me there. He wanted to spend time with me.
I fold my hands together and look down at them resting in my lap, wait for the guy I’m talking to, Stu, to tell me, “Thank you,” in the way that means, “That was half an hour I’ll never get back.”
“So I’ll just get the tax forms, then.”
I look up and Stu is holding out a hand for me to shake. “Oh,” I say, and remember to tack on “Great!” at the last second.
Looks like I got myself a job.
By the time I leave, having filled out a bunch of forms and agreed to take a drug test at some facility an hour away in the morning—and yet I have to be at work by eight—I’m a brand-new employee. I even have a bright yellow uniform (cost subtracted from my paycheck, which, at the pitiful amount I was quoted, means I’ll be making exactly squat) to show for it.
Mom is really happy, gets a kick out of the uniform, and even cancels a date with Harold to take me out to dinner. We go to some place she read about in a magazine, an hour away and in another state, and she’s positively beaming by the time we’re seated. I can’t remember the last time I saw her smile like this for anything other than our fence counting out money.
“What’s going on?” I ask, and she shakes her head, looks over at the table next to us, and smiles at the people sitting there—two guys, both clearly very happy to have her smile at them.
“I’m just happy, baby. And hey—” She taps my menu. “You should be happy too.”
I look at her and she is looking back at me, still smiling but with a question shading her eyes.
“I am,” I say,
and tap her menu back. “What are you going to have?”
Two hours later, after a lot of flirting with the guys at the next table (Mom, not me) and a pretty crappy piece of fish followed by a very good chocolate mousse, I find out why Mom is so happy.
“Here,” she says when we’re in the car on the way back to the house, and hands me her purse. “Inside, zipper pocket.”
I click on the overhead light. Inside the pocket is a newspaper clipping, an interview with Mrs. Donaldson. She talks about her community activities, donations and fund-raisers and all that stuff. Mention of her children, and I smile when she describes Allison as “joyful.” Then the reporter asks about her anniversary party, and Mrs. Donaldson makes a very bad joke about celebrating marriage by serving dinner to 120 people.
“One hundred and twenty?” I ask. With an average place setting of three forks, a couple of knives, and two spoons…that’s well over eight hundred pieces, and that doesn’t even start to count serving trays and who knows what else.
“I know, baby. I knew this town was going to be good to us. I just knew it.” Mom turns up the radio and starts singing along.
That’s what she’s so happy about. Silver. Of course. I don’t know why I even wondered. But she’s right to be happy. We’ll be set for a long time after this.
I wait to feel happy too. I know I won’t, not over this, not over silver, and I don’t. I never do.
The less said about the first day of “work,” the better. Let’s just say that the rich leave as much junk lying around as everyone else does only they have a lot more rooms to leave it in. Also, if I ever see another marble shower—requiring special cleaner that smells so bad it makes my head ache and my vision spot green—it’ll be too soon.
After our last house the crew I’ve been assigned to drives back to the office to hear a “motivational speech”—it seems Stu is big on those—and get tomorrow’s assignments. Me, Joan (smokes a lot and very bossy), Maggie (saving every penny for her family back home; I thought that was nice the first eighteen times I heard it, then it got annoying), and Shelly (pregnant, and prone to discussing every symptom of morning sickness in graphic detail) are going to clean Williams, Sherrill, Stone, and Donaldson.
Donaldson. I knew it was coming, I did, but I just—I didn’t think it would be so soon.
Mom makes a face when she picks me up. “You smell like—God, what is that?”
“Marble cleaner. They’re sending me to the Donaldson house tomorrow.”
“Baby, that’s great! I know we’ve got a floor plan, but still. Learn as much as you can about the security system because the next time you get sent back, we’ll do it.”
Yes. Sounds great. Sure thing. “I can’t do it.”
“You can’t do it?” She looks away from the road, looks at me. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I met the daughter, remember? Allison. At the party. She introduced us. If she sees me at her house—”
“Oh baby, you talked to her for what, two minutes? And besides, girls like that don’t notice maids. People only see what they want to see. You know that.”
“But…”
“But what?”
But there’s something else. I didn’t tell you this before, Mom, but I’ve been to the Donaldson house. Allison invited me. I’ve talked to her for more than two minutes. I met her before the party. I’ve hung out with her. I’ve never done that with anyone we were going to rob before. I’ve never done that with anyone before.
It doesn’t matter. That’s what Mom would say. It doesn’t matter. What does matter are the houses and what’s in them.
“Nothing,” I say. “I’ll do it.” I have to. All I’ve ever known is taking things and moving on. And so when I see Mrs. Donaldson the next afternoon, walk into her house with the rest of the maids, I’m not surprised when she doesn’t notice me. I stood two feet away from her just days ago and shook her hand, but then I fit in, wasn’t standing holding a bag of cleaning supplies and a vacuum. It’s just like Mom says. People only see what they want to.
17
Joan and I have to clean the second floor (the Donaldsons, like a lot of rich people with huge old houses, don’t use the third) and when we get there we go our separate ways. Shelly and Maggie clean together, but Joan has made it real clear that she does her thing and I do mine. It’s fine with me and I head through the rooms Joan told me to do, dust and disinfect and vacuum. I also check for alarm sensors.
There’s one sensor in the master bedroom, in a closet by what I can only describe as the most obvious safe ever, and that’s it. I go downstairs and ask Maggie if she has an extra container of bathroom cleaner in order to check the windows. All of them, every single window and all of the outside doors I pass, have sensors. There’s even one on a tiny decorative window high up on the kitchen wall. This is not a house Mom and I could easily get into without an in, that’s for sure. But then we have one. Me.
I go back upstairs and turn on the vacuum. I push it around the floor, thinking about the silver. Getting it shouldn’t be a problem. Stu’s too cheap to buy supply bags, and so everyone has to buy one of those generic black duffels they sell at discount stores. I bought two, and the second one is still wrapped in the plastic it came in. It’ll be easy to stick it into my regular bag and bring with me.
The only problem I can think of might be noise; silver clattering together definitely sounds different from jars of cleaning solution, but silver, good silver, is usually stored well wrapped. Another problem solved.
Getting it out of the house definitely won’t be a problem. In the two days (it feels more like twenty) I’ve been Stu’s poorly paid wage slave, four maids from different crews have just up and quit, three of them walking out in the middle of cleaning a house. That’s the beauty of shitty jobs. No one expects you to stick around, and so when you leave no one thinks anything of it. By the time someone notices the silver is gone and the police get around to checking who was in the house and all that stuff, I’ll be a blur in everyone’s mind, “what’s-her-name who quit.”
However, all the sensors mean good security, and that means there might be a surveillance camera set up somewhere. I go back downstairs to find the security control panel so I can check. It’s not by the front door and I head toward the back of the house. Maggie and Shelly are cleaning and I move past them quietly, slip into the dining room, and look around for the silver. It was in here the other day but I don’t see it now. Damn. I’ll have to look for that too.
The security panel is in a walk-in pantry right off the kitchen, and the Donaldsons have themselves a pretty good system. It’s got a battery backup in case the power goes out or is cut, which is something most people don’t bother with, never mind that cutting the power to someone’s house isn’t that hard. But there’s no camera, and that’s excellent news.
Now I just have to find the silver. I head back into the kitchen. All the drawers and cabinets hold brand-new-looking appliances and ordinary flatware. Now what? I look around to make sure no one is watching and make another slow circuit through the dining room.
Still nothing. If it’s not here or in the kitchen, where can it be? I have to find it fast. Shelly and Maggie will be done soon, plus I still have one room to clean upstairs. At least I didn’t get stuck with the downstairs. Dusting that walk-in pantry would be a pain in the ass and—
That’s it. The pantry.
The silver is there. I can tell because I recognize the shape of the boxes on the top shelf. I lean against the wall, relieved, and then pull one box down and look in it just to make sure.
I’m right, and the silver is wrapped in pouches, just like I thought. I pull out a piece—it turns out to be a fork—and look at it. Early nineteenth century, definitely made before 1840. Engraving of some kind at the bottom, maybe a family crest. Very nice. I look a little closer at the engraving. It looks like some sort of bird. I turn the fork, trying to figure out exactly what the crest is.
“It’s an eagle.
I know it doesn’t look like one, but it is. Or at least that’s what my mother says. Isn’t it ugly?”
Allison. Damn! I almost drop the fork but manage to shove it into the box and back on the shelf.
“I’m really sorry,” I mutter, careful to stay turned away from her. “I was dusting when the box fell off the shelf. I promise it won’t happen again.”
“Don’t worry about it. You should probably be on a stool or something so you don’t hurt your back reaching that high. Do you want me to get you one? I think there’s—”
“No, it’s fine. I’m done in here anyway,” I mumble, then duck my head and walk quickly by her.
I go back upstairs, careful not to move too fast, to act like everything is fine, and start dusting the last room Joan told me to clean. That was close, too close. What if she’d recognized me? I suppose then I wouldn’t have to worry about her talking to me anymore—I’d be just a maid and like Mom said, girls like her don’t notice maids.
But she did. She didn’t know who I was but she acted just like she has every time I’ve seen her. She talked way too much. She was nice. She even offered to get me a stool. And I’m going to steal—it doesn’t matter. She said the silver was ugly, plus her family has money, won’t go broke because it’s gone.
Telling myself this doesn’t make me feel much better.
I sigh and glance around, wonder if anyone will be able to tell if I don’t vacuum the room, and then realize Allison is standing in the doorway.
“So were you gonna say hello?” she says.
“Hey,” I say cautiously. “You saw me…”
“When you came in. I saw you get out of the car. Did you see me?”
I shake my head. Oh, this is so bad.
“I didn’t think so. I waved, but you didn’t wave back. I would have come to say ‘hey’ sooner but I had to listen to my mother discuss her stupid party and then I ran into someone in the kitchen who’d just had a bunch of silver fall on her head.”