It’s been a long, but quick paced day. After Alex left I finished my list, scrubbed the inside of the refrigerator, and headed out to the market. I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted in the smaller markets they have in Malibu, and found myself making three trips to various locations, after dropping off perishables twice at the house.
I want to find a Costco, and I do find one up and over the hills in Westlake Village. Not far from there I find a Vons and decide that I may end up traveling to shop just for the sake of wider selections and better prices. I don’t care how many millions Mr. McLean has at his disposal, I don’t and I can’t see paying top dollar for things I can get at a discount. I also don’t see why I can’t save us all a little money by sharing some bulk items that he has storage for and we both can use.
So I went to the stores, got check cashing cards, discount cards, membership cards, and finished up with a flourish, right down to being able to find the dog food at a fraction of what he must have been paying for it.
By the time I lugged everything back to the house and took my own, smaller selection of items to my own kitchen, it was well past lunch time and there was still a lot to do. When Tish got home from her first day at school she found me in the middle of the kitchen, all the empty drawers and cabinets lined with fresh contact paper, sorting things into places that made sense to me and I hoped would make sense to Mr. McLean.
Tish told me all about her day while helping herself to some cookies from the new assortment I had bought. I stopped for a moment myself to hear about classes, kids, teachers, and the usual gossip she often brought home. Then she went back to our little corner of the universe to do some homework and I finished up with the kitchen.
Now everything seems to be in place. I bought a cooked chicken and it’s in the fridge if he wants something when he gets home. There’s also a pre-mixed salad, but I have a sneaking suspicion that greens don’t pass his lips often. I don’t care, I’m providing him with a meal if he wants it. The coffee machine is set up to brew tomorrow morning at seven. I have no idea when he gets up, if he gets up, or if he WILL get up, but the freshly ground French roast will be ready.
And I want a shower.
I’ve picked dog hair out of drawers and corners. I’ve run eight loads of laundry. The man has two washing machines and two dryers and apparently it’s beyond his scope of abilities to get the dirty clothes into them. It took me a solid hour just to find all the dirty items and sort the washables from the dry cleaning. In all honesty, I find the sheer volume of items daunting. Does one person NEED more than thirty pairs of underwear? Really? And everything has that ‘newness’ about it, as if the tags have just been torn off. The crisp shirts are crisp and the pants that are creased have single creases, not railroad tracks down the front from over-pressing. The socks show no signs of wear. That was just the dirty items. He has a closet the size of a bedroom bursting with more that DOES still have tags on them. Enough shoes to service a small village.
But try and find a roll of toilet paper before I hit the stores today and you’d be up a tree, making your own.
Sometime around five in the afternoon I gave up thinking about it. I know that if I do start thinking about it I might form an opinion about this man-child and his lifestyle and it might serve us both better if I just do my job and keep my mouth shut.
The pool looks inviting. I’m on my last round of duties for this day, until I can attack other areas of neglect in the house. I have the dogs settled on one of the upper terraces, leashed to a railing and eating their ‘dry’ meal of the day, and I want to jump into the blue coolness of the water. I wonder if Tish has been tempted, or if she’s been nose to the books since she got home.
While the dogs eat I set up some doggie gates I found in the laundry room, which seems to have evolved into an interesting catch all. I’ve made a little oasis for them in the dining room off the kitchen. That room doesn’t look as if it’s been used for eating in, but it DOES look as if it’s been abused by the animals. For the time being, in an effort to keep the kitchen a fur-free zone, I block off the dining area, carpet it with newspapers, and set up dishes with water in it for them. There are some chew toys and balls I found in the dark recesses of the laundry room that I put in there, too, and four old blankets that looked like they belonged to beasts one, two, and three.
I hope that Mr. Alex gets the point.
Alex McLean. I wonder if he’s an Alex, or an Alexander proper. If it’s Alexander, then here’s another person not living up to the potential of his name. Alexander McLean. It says something. It has some weight to it, something significant about it. Then again, maybe he is living up to its potential: he can certainly afford to live well, even if he doesn’t seem capable of wiping his own behind. I can attest to that. I’ve done the laundry.
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The lights are on in the house when Rene drops me off. I open the door and trip the alarm, setting off a siren and the dogs. I can’t remember having set the damned thing, and it takes me a minute to turn it off. The phone near the alarm panel is ringing, and it’s the local security service, checking. If I don’t respond in a certain amount of time, they send their patrol over, and even the police, but I answer the call, give the standard apology, and wonder why the dogs aren’t jumping all over me.
I find out soon enough, they’re jumping all over each other in the dining room, gated in so they no longer have the run of the house. They greet me, and I greet them, but I don’t climb the barrier and they settle down when I walk away.
What a great idea.
The kitchen doesn’t look like my kitchen. It’s shining. I know this wasn’t the day for the cleaning people. I know that, that what’s-her-name, Chevron, Sherbert, I can’t remember, but she’s done all this and I’m blown away. Everything’s been moved around, and I’m guessing it’s for her convenience, not mine, but that’s cool, ‘cause I’m not about to screw around in here too much.
I open the refrigerator because I’m thirsty, as usual, and I’m blown away again. I don’t remember ever having a refrigerator this filled since I moved out of my mother’s house. It’s packed with all sorts of things. So many that I can’t take it all in, but I open the freezer, too, and find an assortment of ice cream and frozen pizzas and all kinds of good junk food. I’m not even hungry and I want to eat something.
Instead, I go upstairs to take my meds. Night rotation. I say goodnight to the puppies and make my way through the house turning lights off or on, depending on how I like them. How I like them is lit on every stair landing so I can find my way around if I wake up in the middle of the night with the urge to eat. My bedroom doesn’t look like my bedroom. The bed is made and turned down, waiting for me, and I know that, that, shit, why can’t I remember her name? Anyway, she did this, too, because there was no one else around to do it. The cleaning people do it when they come, but they don’t do it like this. They don’t straighten my bathroom like it is now, either, with all the bottles and cans and crap in order, they mostly shove it all to the side or under the sinks.
My meds are all in a neat row. I feel embarrassed about that, that she’s seen them and lined them up. I’m even more embarrassed by the note she’s left, telling me that I need to renew some of the prescriptions, and she’d be happy to do it for me if I would give them to her so she can phone them in. I crumple the paper in my hand and make to throw it in the trash, then I try and smooth it out again. This is exactly the kind of thing I wanted someone else doing for me, and now that they’re doing it, it’s making me uncomfortable. I don’t know why that is. Maybe because she’s a stranger. On the road I have people do things like this for me all the time, but it’s people I’ve known for years, people I trust not to tell my business. I don’t know if this person is going to tell my business or not.
But who could she tell it to? Juliette spoke with me today, like she does every day. From what she told me, the final background checks on the woman, the last of the loose ends Juliette followed up on, are clean as a whistle; the woman is golden. She’s just the kind of person I need working for me: someone who doesn’t ‘know’ who I ‘am’ other than this guy in this house. She’s not a fan. She’s not from around here, it sounds as if she’s traveled more than I have. She’s from nowhere, so she doesn’t know anybody to tell anything to.
Then why is this bothering me? I spill out the three pills I need to take, and for kicks I take one of the vitamins that are on the bathroom counter along with the rest of the meds. Couldn’t hurt. Probably won’t help, but it couldn’t hurt.
I feel grubby. It was hot on the course today, and the AA meeting, where there were NO doughnuts, just some soggy cookies, their air conditioner wasn’t working and we broiled. After that Rene and I went to a Japanese restaurant and it was cool there, but it only plastered the sweat onto me. Now my skin feels disgusting and clammy, more so because she’s left windows opened up here and the breeze has a little dampness to it tonight. I go around to them, one by one, and close them up, pausing to look out at the ocean, at the lights from the houses below, lights on the beach. There are lights on in the pool house. I can see her out there, a dark shadow sitting on one of the lawn chairs.
Maybe she went for a swim. That’s sounding like a not too bad idea. I mean, I have this pool and I don’t even use it. I’m not that much for the water. I like it, but I don’t love it the way people seem to love it out here. And I’ve lived in a hot climate all my life. I don’t know, maybe I’m just used to being hot all the time. But the thought of the pool seems good, and I start down the stairs, dropping my shirt on the floor on the way and stop myself before I’m even to the second wide landing.
I’m not alone here. I can’t just strip down and jump in the pool like I might have a couple of days ago. I used to do it. Did it all the time when Sarah was here. We both did, then, on lots of nights. Just a spontaneous thing, to rip everything off and jump in the pool, then maybe relax in the hot tub part of it, and then go back and forth from cool water to hot until, well, until. I don’t want to think about that right now. Swimming would only make me think about it, about how much I miss those nights, about how much I miss having Sarah here with me. And if I start thinking about that, I’m not gonna sleep I’m gonna to be up all night, miserable, because I won’t be able to lie down in the big bed we shared alone. Sleep won’t come, or if it does it’ll come with dreams I don’t want to have, dreams that these frickin’ pills seem to help along, seem to make feel real. I’ll end up sleeping on one of the sofas at about dawn and blowing off tomorrow.
I don’t want a night like that tonight.
A shower seems like a better idea. A shower and sleep.
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He’s wandering through the house again tonight. I see him up there, sitting on one of the upper landings, just sitting on the floor, his shirt in his hands; something I’ll have to wash tomorrow, I’m sure. I’m tempted to wave, but stop myself. Not too professional. I can already see that Mr. McLean, that Alex, and I will have to get familiar enough, but there’s no reason to push those buttons. Not this soon. I need my own space, too, right now, which made my decision to choose the pool house over rooms inside the main house. I need some separateness. And maybe he does, too. I get the feeling that he’s not completely, oh, comfortable with this arrangement. I’m not sure that someone, or several someones, hasn’t given me a line of bullcrap. Because even though I’ve never worked as a domestic, I think I could recognize someone who’s had a housekeeper before, because they would be guiding ME through it, not the other way around. Instead I’m making things up as I go along and hoping that I’m not stepping on toes too many times.
He’s still there, perched like a vulture, watching. It’s time for bed.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
