I cleaned the same woman’s house for eight years. Before leaving, she asked me to come back one last time without my cleaning supplies
The first time Mrs. Whitaker called me, I was standing in a grocery store parking lot in the rain, crying in a bag of frozen peas.
I wasn’t crying because of the peas. I was crying because I had exactly forty-one dollars in my checking account, a nine-year-old daughter waiting in the car, and a husband who had moved three weeks earlier and taken the right vacuum cleaner with him.
This is the part I remember the most. The void. Of all the things to take. I was starting a cleaning business, and he knew it, and he vacuumed.
I had spent this afternoon sticking handwritten advertisements on every billboard in town. The library. Laundry. Coffee. The cork board near the grocery store exit, next to
posters of lost cats and the guy selling firewood. I wrote each ad by hand on a card, in my best handwriting, with small detachable tabs at the bottom.
HOUSE CLEANING. Honest, reliable, thorough. References available. Call Carly.
The references were two neighbors and my former boss at the dental office where I had worked at the front desk before Willa was born. It wasn’t much. But it was true.
My phone rang while I was loading groceries into the trunk. I almost didn’t answer. I didn’t recognize the number and thought it might be Darren’s lawyer.
“Hello?”
“Is it Carly? The house cleaner?” It was the voice of an older woman. Crispy and careful. The kind of voice that seemed like it had never been said once “uh”
“Yes. Yes, it’s Carly.”
“My name is Margaret Whitaker. I saw your card at the library. I have a house on
Linden Street. Four bedrooms, three bathrooms. I need someone once a week. Are you available on Thursday?”
I was available every day of the week. I was available at three in the morning if she wanted. But I tried to come across as a professional.
