cuckoo

This rain.

It’s given over to a low-level sort of sadness that is not necessarily unpleasant. It’s reflective. It’s kind. It gives me a bit of time to rest without the sun blazing through the windows and begging me to come out come out wherever I am.

And something tells me that I’m not doing this day right at all. I should be tucked away in my bedroom with all the covers on and the ceiling fan turned to high.  I should have the lights dimmed and candles lit and a nag champa incense stick burning in a teak holder on the dresser. Instead I am in the office, which is paused and messy in mid-organization, and am taking a break from making copies of pertinent paperwork to write this. I am having an affair with my responsibilities; I am fucking my writing instead.

I had a bad week, confidence-wise. I have stalled on two projects and am full of trepidation even thinking of starting another. I am falling into old patterns. Maybe there is nothing wrong with that; we leave in a few days for Ohio, then another few days until Florida, and then the summer will be fading away so maybe I should just spend this time before I start school to rest. I will be moving so fast soon. I might regret not hiding under the covers when I had the chance.

**

Many of the homes I cleaned belonged to those of well-off, elderly couples. Their homes were full of tasteful art, bronze sculptures, and ancient rugs woven out of soft fine thread. These clients were often home, which I didn’t mind. They might sit in their study and read, or wait in the kitchen drinking coffee at the table until I was ready to sweep and mop the marble floor or scrub out the porcelain sink with a sponge and some Comet. If we crossed paths I would usually smile and comment on some of the books I had noticed laying on one of the end tables or how much I liked the new oil painting in the hall. I tried to ignore the beige plastic “Life Alert” alarm buttons that were hidden underneath their beds; I didn’t want to think of these kind and refined people as being impermanent.

Several of these couples lived in upscale condominiums, built in the fifties, when condominium meant “large apartment” instead of “cookie cutter townhome with baby-crib-size backyard”, as tends to be the case today. These condominiums were time-stamps, the lobbies were full of brass (on the stair rail, on the elevator, on the doors), crystal chandeliers, and jungle murals rivaling the skill and depth of Rousseau paintings. The carpets were in jeweled colors; the garages were in the basement and a valet was on staff to park the many Lincolns and Rolls Royces that had been bought with cash and cared for like children.

**

Also, have you seen it yet? It is a work of genius, sent straight from heaven and the angel’s name is Wes Anderson. I mean it:

Sisters

I used to clean houses for living. A very small living, but one nonetheless. I have many stories from that time. I’m not sure how many will swim to the surface, but these women paid me a visit today, so I’m sharing…

They were among our weekly cleanings. Sisters. Beautiful sisters. One sleek and fine and smart, like a chocolate covered cherry. The other vapid, powdery, flaky like a biscuit. They were sisters married to identical twin brothers, so they shared the same silvery-prim mother-in-law, who happened to pay their cleaning fees weekly. We cleaned for the mother in law as well. She was beautiful, truly beautiful, and whether time had treated her well or a man with a needle we weren’t sure. Her bathroom was one of the rooms I scrubbed and shined weekly, and it was full of the seductive balms, creams, serums, and potions that I drooled over at the mall but of course couldn’t afford on my cleaning wages. I was learning to be a makeup artist during those sweaty years as a cleaning girl (for girl I was, only 23).  This was back when I didn’t know that a hobby didn’t have to be a career, that I could enjoy something without letting it swallow me up. I admired the mother in law’s collection of cosmetics, and I loved being surrounded by shiny silver bottles and jars with French script printed all over them. Her home was like her: sleek, shining, clean. We barely had to swipe a cloth or run the vaccum; the place was an immaculate palace already. Her daughter in law’s respective homes were lovely, but on much smaller, more modest scales. We guessed that the mother in law had paid for their mortgages as well, as the twin sons both worked twin construction jobs and their homes were most likely in the $300,000 range. Modest and beige as they were, they still had the soaring ceilings and jetted tubs of the common American mini-mansion, and those do not come inexpensively.

Each sister had one small, ebony-haired boy a piece, both around two years old. Had they planned their pregnancies to the minute, we wondered? Did they agree on identical positions with the identical twins they had married? I wasn’t sure which of the sisters was the elder, but I guessed the smooth as glass one, the one with her life together. Her home was all clean lines, sky-blue and brown. Her black hair was cut short and angular, showing off her small features. The confectionery one’s home was all red and purple, the same colors I had in the apartment I shared with my fiancée. Her hair was long and wavy, thick and shining almost blue. That perfect shade.  The sisters were born in the Philippines, but had apparently lived in the States for most of their lives.

You never saw or heard about their mother. Was she alive? Was she close? Was she still in the Philippines? How was it that the grand matron of their twin husbands had taken over their lives entirely? Often she was there when we cleaned their homes. We cleaned them every Wednesday, and as they lived just a few streets from the other in the same beige development, there wasn’t enough of a break between their presence, which we lamented in the car ride over.  The mother in law’s home we cleaned on Thursdays, and it took all day, large and white carpeted as it was. So for two days of the week the entire odd family was our working life.

The twin husbands we never saw. They were blonde, tight muscled, golfers or rowers or tennis players, I can’t remember at the moment. They were sunshine and America. They were Myrtle Beach and outlet malls. They were coated in sand. The sisters were like shining jewels against their husbands’ skin. They fascinated me.

The sweet as sugar sister had a shopping addiction. She would lay on her white leather sectional with a pad of paper and pen and her phone clutched in one tiny, manicured pink hand. A can of Diet Coke sweat in the other, pink and white striped straw bobbing up and down as she sat up higher, seeing something she liked. Her berry-colored Juicy sweatsuit showed off her tiny, curvy figure, which was sexy even as she reclined for the entire two hours that we cleaned, her thumb the only thing moving as she flipped  channels occasionally in between shopping networks.  The shows that schlepped makeup and skincare were her favorite programs, and in the mahogany floored entryway we’d typically spy three or four packages stacked up, clean black and white graphics beaming, whispering promises of fewer wrinkles and sweet smelling skin. I admired the gluttony, greed, and sloth that she incorporated into her daily life, at 23 these were the things I aspired to as well. Her little boy would usually be padding around his soft blue room, babbling to himself in a two year old chirp. I felt a bit sorry for him, even though his Grandma was usually there plying him with snacks and stiff, perfume clouded hugs.

The smooth as a river rock sister, the blue one, the grey flannel Anne Taylor slacked one, she spent her days striding in practical yet beautiful heels (I guessed she was about a size four or five shoe) and talking on the phone. Her own raven-haired two year old boy was usually at her hip, and as she spoke into the phone to clients (she did something financial-advising related part time from home) she would take little moments to lower her head to his, to pat his little back. She was so tiny that she would look like a doting thirteen year old baby sitter, if not for the professional clothes and the velvet low voice she used with her clients. The mother in law was usually at the pink sister’s home, not this one’s. Maybe she felt this one didn’t need her. Maybe she felt she didn’t need to keep an eye on her.

One week our manager informed us that we wouldn’t be cleaning for the sisters any more, only for the mother in law. Apparently she had decided that they should be cleaning their own homes, that they had enough time and their homes were small enough that they could handle it. Maybe she didn’t feel like paying the $200.00 for their cleanings, maybe they had pissed her off as a united cold front, maybe one of them cheated on one of the twins…my co-worker and I fantasized a big fight at Sunday dinner, the tiny sisters grabbing their tiny sons and slamming the big oak door behind them as they left.

We continued to spend all day at the mother in law’s home on Thursdays, lemon-oiling the cabinets and rubbing noxious Brasso onto her brass banisters. The beautiful sisters we never saw again, but we saw their tiny boys grow less tiny in the family photographs that lined their grandmother’s long mirrored dressing table. For some reason, I started scooping out tiny bits of her body butters and dabbing minuscule drops of her Lancome Absolue serum under my eyes.