Normally, such a display in the living room with the curtains wide-open and two women present would have disturbed me greatly. Today, it was the least of my concerns. In fact, since my goal was to dispose of the housekeeper anyway, this might be a fortuitous opportunity.
The reflection in the glass lifted its chin, straightened its shoulders, and pretended to be oblivious to the lack of attire. “I’m quite fine here on my own.”
“We can see that.” Deborah blinked, delivering a bug-eyed look my way.
The housekeeper turned her gaze toward the sofa, the corners of her mouth tugging.
I pressed onward. What choice did I have? “I am not an incompetent. I do know how to make a sandwich or pour a bowl of cereal. I’ve no need of someone. I don’t want the trouble of it. I like my privacy.”
The housekeeper continued investigating the floral print on the sofa and then moved her gaze to the gold sculptured carpet Annalee had wanted to replace for some time now. I should have let her do so when she asked. What had been the point of my stubbornness?
“I don’t think someone coming in a few hours a day, twice a week, is going to drain your privacy too much.” Deborah pursed her lips with another glance at her watch. “Besides, her daughter needs the work. Silvia’s right: There isn’t much for teenagers to do in this neighborhood. Too many adults and college students are taking the jobs.”
“It isn’t my responsibility to employ the neighborhood.” The man in the glass looked less appealing now, less certain of himself. Annalee would have been disappointed in him. She was always the first to purchase Girl Scout cookies or donate books and supplies for after-school programs at the church. Last year, she’d even started volunteering with the free-lunch program in the Summer Kitchen, where they fed the homeless and downtrodden. Had she heard the sad story of this housekeeper’s daughter, she would have invited her to dinner
and
given her a job.
But I was never as good a man as Annalee hoped. I didn’t want the girl.
“Let’s give it a try for a few weeks,” Deborah negotiated. “If you don’t like it in, say . . . a month, then we’ll think about something else. Meals on Wheels, maybe.”
“I do not need charity. I can afford to buy my meals anywhere I want.” A poor choice of words in front of the housekeeper. Now she’d certainly be looking for valuables.
Deborah’s lips curved in a sly fashion, as if she’d known that would be my response. “True . . . and so it won’t be any burden to give a teenager a few hours’ work a week, will it? Mom would have liked the idea.”
“Don’t bring your mother into this.”
“Well, she would have.”
“I am not your mother.” Therein lay the heart of the problem.
The color drained from Deborah’s face, and she swallowed hard, then checked her watch again. “No, you’re not.” Moisture gathered in the corners of her eyes, and I knew I’d finally landed a blow through the armor. The victory felt hollow.
“I’m still against it,” I said, and I could feel the man in the glass dissolving like a sand castle overtaken by a determined tide. “But I suppose I have no choice.”
By mutual consent we let the argument die there. After a quick tour of the house and an explanation of cleaning duties, for which I put on pants, Deborah left and the housekeeper stayed. Exhaustion had seeped through my body by then—I am convinced that hospital stays do more harm than good, in general—so I stationed myself on the sofa in the front parlor. Long rays of light angled from the leaded glass over the tall west windows and pressed through the transom above the door, chasing rainbows around the room. I watched the housekeeper pass through the beams of light as she came and went, the rainbows sliding over her clothing and skin. She had a Mediterranean look about her, I decided—Greek or Italian, perhaps, with a slight curvature to her nose and eyes a greenish hazel color that seemed eerily bright against her skin. She smelled like cigarette smoke. I didn’t like her, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. She went about her work, crossing the room without looking my way.
“Be certain you leave things as you found them,” I instructed when she passed by with Pledge and a dust rag, stopping to spray and wipe a set of shelves where Annalee kept a collection of tiny glass birds gathered in our travels.
“I will.” The answer was neither accommodating nor particularly harsh, but conveyed a resignation to our situation.
“I’ll be checking through the house after you leave.”
She muttered something.
I’m sure you will
, I thought she said.
“I have an excellent memory. I’ll know if something isn’t where it should be.”
Mumbling another reply, she picked up a bird and began rubbing it with the dust rag.
“That’s
furniture
cleaner,” I pointed out. “It contains wax. It will leave a residue on the glass.”
With a huff, she set down the bird and dropped the dust rag on the table, then turned on her heel and exited the room, her arms stiff at her sides.
I decided that she was singularly unpleasant, which was undoubtedly part of Deborah’s plan. My daughter intended to irritate me with this woman’s invasion, and now her daughter’s, three days each week until I finally acquiesced to being sent away with the old and useless.
Her plan wouldn’t work. Deborah should have known that I am nothing if not a man of resolve. I could outlast this hard-faced woman. And the teenage daughter would be easy to dissuade. Youth and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery. I’d have my house to myself again in no time.
In an odd way, it was refreshing to have a mission in life, a challenge once again.
Leaning back on the sofa, I watched the filtered light paint splotches of color on the ceiling, and I contemplated plans, designed them as I would have an engineering schematic, considering first the end goal, and then slowly calculated what sorts of components might be needed. I was, after all, a member of the Hughes Aircraft team that built
Surveyor 1
, the first American spacecraft to soft-land on the moon. This was a small matter compared to navigating thousands of miles into space.
At some point during my mental calculations, and after telling the woman that several areas of the house were off-limits, including my study and the unused bedroom at the end of the upstairs hall, weariness overtook me, and I nodded off. When I awoke, the prisms of light were gone from the room. The housekeeper was leaning over the sofa and shaking me.
“Mr. Al-ford? Mr. Al-ford? I need to leave now. Mr. Al-ford, are you all right?” She mispronounced and generally eviscerated my name, while apparently attempting to confirm that I was alive at the time of her departure.
I held my eyes closed longer than was necessary, just to see what she would do. She leaned so close that I felt her breath rustling the wispy hairs that were all that remained of what, in my days at Cape Canaveral, had been a thick head of hair, cut in the requisite flattop style. I smelled fresh cigarette smoke.
“Mr. Al-ford?”
I sat up so quickly that she jumped back and slapped a hand to her throat, then stood watching me, wide eyed. “The pronunciation is Al
-vord
. Alvord, from the original Saxon. There is no ‘F’ in it. That shouldn’t be too difficult to remember.”
Her chin pulled upward and back, and she blinked, seeming to have been rendered speechless by my sudden awakening.
“See that your daughter knows how to pronounce it, too,” I instructed, then scooted forward on the sofa in order to push to my feet, so that I could lock the door when she left. “And there’s no smoking in this house. See that your daughter knows that, as well.”
Backing away a few steps, she angled herself toward the door. “My daughter doesn’t smoke.”
“I find that, these days, parents have no idea what their children do.”
She snorted and began fishing through her purse, looking for her keys, I supposed. Apparently I’d made her uncomfortable, and she was in a hurry to be gone, which was as it should be. “I went outside for the cigarette,” she muttered into the purse.
“Fine lot of good that does. It lingers in clothing.” It occurred to me that, since she hadn’t driven here, she couldn’t be looking for her keys. Perhaps she was waiting for me to offer some monetary compensation for the day’s endeavors. “I won’t be paying you, if that’s why you’re hovering in my front room. Along with the rest of my life, my daughter has taken over my checkbook.” Deborah felt the need to begin monitoring the accounts after I’d purchased from some wandering Girl Scouts their entire load of cookies as well as the wagon, on the promise that they would tell other neighborhood children I’d stolen their goods, and that this was no longer a safe place to conduct door-to-door sales.
“I was looking for my bus pass.” She stiffened, showing obvious irritation. My strategy was working.
“Perhaps you’ll have better luck finding it on the way to the bus stop. It’s time for me to lock up my house for the evening. Pull the front shades before you go.”
Cocking an eyebrow, she took in the slanting afternoon sun outside the window. In the entry hall, the clock was just chiming four. “Kind of early, isn’t it?”
On the street, a school bus roared by, and I heard children chattering. “I don’t like to be bothered. I have work to do.”
Shrugging, she took the long pole with the hook on the end, circled the room, and hurriedly lowered the shades. “I’ll get the rest on my way out. You need anything else?” She uttered the last words with a note of exasperation, as if I were intruding on her time.
“Take the mail from the box and put it inside the front door. On the table to the left, not the one to the right. And don’t consider slipping anything from the stack. I’ll be watching through the window, of course.”
“Table to the left,” she ground out, then started toward the entry hall again, shaking her head and grumbling to herself. She paused before turning the corner and disappearing from view. “I left a sandwich plate for you on the counter. Your daughter wants to make sure you eat.” The words had the sound of having been forced out between clenched teeth.
“I don’t like sandwiches,” I said, which quite conveniently was the straw that broke the camel’s determination. She forwent pulling the rest of the shades and didn’t bother to bid me a fond farewell on her way out. Nor did she pick up the mail.
I sat back in my chair, self-satisfied, calculating that there was a fair chance of her not showing up at all next week. Surely she could find work in more welcoming places. Not a bad bit of progress, particularly considering my weakened condition. Tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep in my own bed, I’d make short work of the teenager, if she bothered to come at all.
Smiling to myself, I rested my head against the sofa cushions. Outside, I could hear the children chattering, and the low, dragging cadence of the neighbor’s mentally handicapped son, Teddy—a perpetual child in an adult body. Annalee had developed a particular bond with him. He brought starts of flowers and tiny seedlings to her, and she baked cookies and tea cakes and sent them to Teddy and his parents. From time to time, he still left potted plants on my porch. I brought them inside and put them upstairs with the rest of Annalee’s growing things.
Thinking of the plants reminded me that I should go through the house and check to be sure that the housekeeper had properly taken care of everything and hadn’t absconded with any valuables in the process. If anything were missing, or the plants had been left too wet or too dry, it would be a strike against her. A deficiency I would most definitely be compelled to mention to Deborah . . .
Something flitted through my mind, fast and featherlight, like the prismatic rainbows slipping over the housekeeper’s skin. I’d been dreaming before she’d awakened me. I’d been in a large room with dark, richly paneled walls on all sides. The delighted squeals of children rang in the air, rising like bright butterflies, fluttering upward through the cavernous space. The sounds danced about the heavily polished wood railing on the second-story gallery and echoed along the arch-shaped ceiling, where a fresco sky and clouds had been painted among ornate gold-leafed cornices.
The room was filled with prismatic light—tiny rainbows that were bright in my memory now. I chased them as they moved, tried to capture them. Two little girls ran ahead of me—girls in starched white dresses, flyaway red hair bouncing over their shoulders. Reaching the bottom of a wide staircase, they rounded the corner, their white patent-leather shoes
click-clack
ing against the hardwood floors as they scrambled up the stairs. Hands slapping flat against the oak steps, the girls attempted to capture the beams of light beneath their palms, only to find that the rainbows squirted away each time, disappearing over their wrists and fingers.
Squealing with delight, they turned back to look for me, their faces nearly identical—the same small, pursed lips, round cheeks, wide eyes the fathomless blue of the ocean. “C’mon, Willyyyy!” Their voices echoed in my mind. “Willyyyy! C’mon!” The girl closest to me took a tumble then, and came careening down the stairs in a tangle of fabric and hair and skin. The moment stretched in my mind—her body falling, rolling, the other girl screaming, a baby crying, glass hitting the floor, then shattering, someone running across the room.