At the foot of the Montclair hills women in Toyotas wait for their maids to get off the bus. I always get a ride up Snake Road with Mamie and her lady who says, “My don’t we look pretty in that frosted wig, Mamie, and me in my tacky paint clothes.” Mamie and I smoke.
Women’s voices always rise two octaves when they talk to cleaning women or cats.
(Cleaning women: As for cats … never make friends with cats, don’t let them play with the mop, the rags. The ladies will get jealous. Never, however, knock cats off of chairs. On the other hand, always make friends with dogs, spend five or ten minutes scratching Cherokee or Smiley when you first arrive. Remember to close the toilet seats. Furry, jowly drips.)
The Blums. This is the weirdest place I work, the only beautiful house. They are both psychiatrists. They are marriage counselors with two adopted “preschoolers.”
(Never work in a house with “preschoolers.” Babies are great. You can spend hours looking at them, holding them. But the older ones … you get shrieks, dried Cheerios, accidents hardened and walked on in the Snoopy pajama foot.)
(Never work for psychiatrists, either. You’ll go crazy. I could tell them a thing or two … Elevator shoes?)
Dr. Blum, the male one, is home sick again. He has asthma, for crissake. He stands around in his bathrobe, scratching a pale hairy leg with his slipper.
Oh ho ho ho, Mrs. Robinson. He has over two thousand dollars’ worth of stereo equipment and five records. Simon and Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, and three Beatles.
He stands in the doorway to the kitchen, scratching the other leg now. I make sultry Mr. Clean mop-swirls away from him into the breakfast nook while he asks me why I chose this particular line of work.
“I figure it’s either guilt or anger,” I drawl.
“When the floor dries may I make myself a cup of tea?”
“Oh, look, just go sit down. I’ll bring you some tea. Sugar or honey?”
“Honey. If it isn’t too much trouble. And lemon if it…”
“Go sit down.” I take him tea.
Once I brought Natasha, four years old, a black sequined blouse. For dress-up. Ms. Dr. Blum got furious and hollered that it was sexist. For a minute I thought she was accusing me of trying to seduce Natasha. She threw the blouse into the garbage. I retrieved it later and wear it now, sometimes, for dress-up.
(Cleaning women: You will get a lot of liberated women. First stage is a CR group; second stage is a cleaning woman; third, divorce.)
The Blums have a lot of pills, a plethora of pills. She has uppers, he has downers. Mr. Dr. Blum has belladonna pills. I don’t know what they do but I wish it was my name.
One morning I heard him say to her, in the breakfast nook, “Let’s do something spontaneous today, take the kids to go fly a kite!”
My heart went out to him. Part of me wanted to rush in like the maid in the back of Saturday Evening Post. I make great kites, know good places in Tilden for wind. There is no wind in Montclair. The other part of me turned on the vacuum so I couldn’t hear her reply. It was pouring rain outside.
The playroom was a wreck. I asked Natasha if she and Todd actually played with all those toys. She told me when it was Monday she and Todd got up and dumped them, because I was coming. “Go get your brother,” I said.
I had them working away when Ms. Dr. Blum came in. She lectured me about interference and how she refused to “lay any guilt or duty trips” on her children. I listened, sullen. As an afterthought she told me to defrost the refrigerator and clean it with ammonia and vanilla.
Ammonia and vanilla? It made me stop hating her. Such a simple thing. I could see she really did want a homey home, didn’t want guilt or duty trips laid on her children. Later on that day I had a glass of milk and it tasted like ammonia and vanilla.
40–TELEGRAPH — BERKELEY. MILL AND ADDIE’S LAUNDRY. Addie is alone in the laundromat, washing the huge plate glass window. Behind her, on top of a washer is an enormous fish head in a plastic bag. Lazy blind eyes. A friend, Mr. Walker, brings them fish heads for soup. Addie makes immense circles of flurry white on the glass. Across the street, at St. Luke’s nursery, a child thinks she is waving at him. He waves back, making the same swooping circles. Addie stops, smiles, waves back for real. My bus comes. Up Telegraph toward Berkeley. In the window of the MAGIC WAND BEAUTY PARLOR there is an aluminum foil star connected to a flyswatter. Next door is an orthopedic shop with two supplicating hands and a leg.
Ter refused to ride buses. The people depressed him, sitting there. He liked Greyhound stations though. We used to go to the ones in San Francisco and Oakland. Mostly Oakland, on San Pablo Avenue. Once he told me he loved me because I was like San Pablo Avenue.
He was like the Berkeley dump. I wish there was a bus to the dump. We went there when we got homesick for New Mexico. It is stark and windy and gulls soar like nighthawks in the desert. You can see the sky all around you and above you. Garbage trucks thunder through dust-billowing roads. Gray dinosaurs.
I can’t handle you being dead, Ter. But you know that.
It’s like the time at the airport, when you were about to get on the caterpillar ramp for Albuquerque.
“Oh, shit. I can’t go. You’ll never find the car.”
“Watcha gonna do when I’m gone, Maggie?” you kept asking over and over, the other time, when you were going to London.
“I’ll do macramé, punk.”
“Whatcha gonna do when I’m gone, Maggie?”
“You really think I need you that bad?”
“Yes,” you said. A simple Nebraska statement.
My friends say I am wallowing in self-pity and remorse. Said I don’t see anybody anymore. When I smile, my hand goes involuntarily to my mouth.
I collect sleeping pills. Once we made a pact … if things weren’t okay by 1976 we were going to have a shoot-out at the end of the Marina. You didn’t trust me, said I would shoot you first and run, or shoot myself first, whatever. I’m tired of the bargain, Ter.
58–COLLEGE — ALAMEDA. Old Oakland ladies all go to Hink’s department store in Berkeley. Old Berkeley ladies go to Capwell’s department store in Oakland. Everyone on this bus is young and black or old and white, including the drivers. The old white drivers are mean and nervous, especially around Oakland Tech High School. They’re always jolting the bus to a stop, hollering about smoking and radios. They lurch and stop with a bang, knocking the old white ladies into posts. The old ladies’ arms bruise, instantly.
The young black drivers go fast, sailing through yellow lights at Pleasant Valley Road. Their buses are loud and smoky but they don’t lurch.
Mrs. Burke’s house today. Have to quit her, too. Nothing ever changes. Nothing is ever dirty. I can’t understand why I am there at all. Today I felt better. At least I understood about the thirty Lancers Rosé Wine bottles. There were thirty-one. Apparently yesterday was their anniversary. There were two cigarette butts in his ashtray (not just his one), one wineglass (she doesn’t drink), and my new rosé bottle. The bowling trophies had been moved, slightly. Our life together.
She taught me a lot about housekeeping. Put the toilet paper in so it comes out from under. Only open the Comet tab to three holes instead of six. Waste not, want not. Once, in a fit of rebellion, I ripped the tab completely off and accidentally spilled Comet all down the inside of the stove. A mess.