It’s easy to feel alone inside these walls.
When I came back here there was no sign of Mr. M, and no note, either. I suppose that some of my uneasiness is that I have no instructions from him as to supper, as to tomorrow, as to anything. Supper. I threw a roast in the oven. Not a very big one, but large enough that Tish, he and I can all have a hot meal, and there will be ample food leftover for the weekend. And tomorrow is the weekend. Saturday, and it will be my first day on ‘short’ hours. I do NOT have the cleaning people coming. In fact, they won’t be here until Monday, when I’m having them do a general clean. I’m figuring that the place will need it. As far as I know, all that’s required of me tomorrow is the usual morning routine and to make sure that there’s enough food for Mr. M to tide him through the next two days.
He’s on his own.
And I think that’s what’s bothering me. That thought makes me sit down at the kitchen table with my last cup of coffee for the day. Because it’s quiet, because I’ve done everything that I can do here, right down to the chocolates on the pillow, I have a moment to think hard, which is something I’ve been too busy to do. In fact, it’s something that I’ve tried not to do.
This morning left me more unsettled than I thought. The rage. I’ve never heard anger in that way. Blatant and out there. I’ve lived a life that’s far from being sheltered, but there was never a lot of screaming going on. I wasn’t permitted to express myself like that as a child and it’s carried on throughout my life. I didn’t react that way in my marriage, not even when it all fell apart. Not even when I wanted to.
Now, I’m supposed to ignore it, I know I am. I know that the screaming was none of my business, and that what caused it is none of my business. What my business is, is to make life as easy and comfortable as possible for Mr. M, no matter what I think, because what I think doesn’t matter. But I’m nervous about leaving him on his own. Nervous the way I was when I walked in on him sleeping, and I wasn’t sure if he was just sleeping. And I’m coming to a realization that I don’t want to have; that this is something more than just a housekeeper’s job. That I’m tremendously overpaid for doing more than just making sure this guy gets three square meals a day and a clean bed to sleep in.
I feel incredibly stupid now, mulling this all over. Stupid and more than a little greedy. It was the money that decided this job for me. Money, or the lack of it, has been deciding most things for me for a lot of years. This was definitely the money. The money and the free room and the exceptional neighborhood.
I look out the window. The view is the same spectacular view I saw the first day I was here. I look at the room I’m in, the rooms I can see from my particular vantage point. Space. Clean, livable, space. The smell of good food cooking assaults my senses. The smell of the cleaned rooms, even of my cigarette, it’s all around me. Every creature comfort is here, and for me, well, there’s a snug little set of rooms at the foot of the backyard where my daughter is busy completing a homework assignment. An assignment from a school that is involved with its students, the student’s families, and that’s strong academically.
I still can’t settle it inside myself that this was something I could walk away from.
“Hi.”
I didn’t hear the door open. What a sight I must be, sitting here idle, when I should be doing something. Anything.
“Hello.” I get up automatically to get him some coffee, to get him whatever it is he might what. “Drink?” I ask him.
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I have to bite the end of my tongue to not answer Shi with, ‘yeah, Frangelico on the rocks’. That would be a nice end to this miserable day. Something sweet. Something sweet and cold that would take me away.
“Is there any Redbull?” I ask.
“Yes, I found a case of it in the garage,” she tells me, and she turns to get it from the refrigerator for me. She doesn’t have to do that. What she does is more than enough. Way more. She hasn’t even been here that long and things are different around here.
Shi was a big part of my lunchtime conversation with Juliette. By the time we cut out for some food, Juliette wasn’t as mad at me as she was, and we were able to have, like, a normal afternoon, for the most part. She took me to a place where I had to eat healthy shit, but it wasn’t too bad and I wasn’t about to argue over that, we’d argued enough.
Anyway, we talked about Shi. Juliette told me that in the little time she’d been there, Shi’d, like, already saved me I don’t know how many hundreds of dollars. In food alone, much less in odd bills here and there. Said the house never looked better, that she was getting value from the cleaning people. Made me think about what this lady was doin’ around here, which is a helluva lot more than most other people have done. Then Juliette, real sneaky like, she starts to remind me about how many people quit this job. Or how many I had to fire. Like I don’t know. But it did make me aware of it, that Shi is calm and quiet, and I really DON’T know that she’s in the house half the time. She’s never been in my way. Like today. She made some breakfast then left. Went and fixed up the bedroom, and then really left, instead of hangin’ around and listening to me go ballistic.
I don’t feel like she’s in my privacy. Not at all. I don’t think that she’s snooping around, either. I mean, she finds stuff in strange places, she tells me. She moves it. She hasn’t taken anything that I can tell. She’s not monitoring my phone. She won’t even STEP into the office. Damn.
So Juliette let me know, in a nice way, that nice way that she CAN let me know something, that it might be a smart idea on my part not to be Alex McLean, high maintenance pain in the ass, with this person. At least as much as I can. And when Shi hands me the drink I wanted, the drink I even preferred, as if she, you know, magically whipped it up out of thin air, I’m thinking that Juliette probably has a point here.
“I didn’t know if you were expecting supper, so I’ve cooked something and I hope you don’t mind if Tish and I share this,” Shi says. Not in a funny way, not like she’s asking me expecting me to say ‘yes’, or ‘no’, but as if she’s telling me what the plan is and that it’s a good plan. It IS a good plan.
“I wasn’t, but this is great.” I check out the oven, open the door, and let the warm air out onto my face. Meat. I like meat. I know I’m not supposed to, that red meat ain’t any good for you, but man, I do like it. This smells good, too. It’s all brown in there and I realize that I’m not just a little thirsty, I’m a lot hungry.
“It’s still got about half an hour to go. I can make you a salad, or some carrots, or...” She breaks off talking and looks at me, the chuckles. “... or not.”
“I grazed at lunch,” I tell her.
“I’m going to make something, though,” she says, and she starts to pull plastic bags out of the fridge. In them are itty bitty vegetables. They look like miniatures of the real thing, shit, they don’t even look real. And there’s a bag of green stuff, and a bag of brown crumbly things. “You don’t have to eat any of it if you don’t like it.”
“I think I’ll leave it up to you,” I tell her. I’m not going to argue with Shi at ALL. So far, everything she’s made has tasted good, including that rice-y stuffing last night. In fact, I think that it’s better if I just get the hell out of the kitchen.
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Something’s shifted in Mr. M’s mood. He’s not exactly what I would call upbeat, but the person backing out of the kitchen right now isn’t the person who came into it this morning. At this moment I don’t feel wary about the upcoming two days. He seems much calmer, and not very gloomy at all.
Gloomy. That’s the adjective I’ve been fishing for in my head. He’s very gloomy.
I prepare some baby vegetables and a spinach salad with warm bacon dressing. I know he’s not going to want it, probably won’t even like it, but I don’t care. I’m cooking to my tastes, and I would never be so presumptuous in another setting, but seeing as I don’t get much in the way of direction, I’ll just be my own Spielberg as far as food is concerned. Besides, he eats enough crap as it is. The entire box of doughnuts was gone this morning. Two days and he ate a dozen doughnuts. Not that I didn’t get him another dozen, it’s his funeral, but I’m going to at least give the man a decent supper.
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I ate spinach. Raw, warm spinach covered with bacon bits. It was sort of a dare. I mean, if a little girl can eat it, I can eat it, right?
I’m back on the patio tonight, dogs all around me, full belly, watching the sunset again. The sunsets here are out of this world. They seem to take forever. I haven’t been out here at this time of day in I can’t remember when, and now I’ve done it two nights in a row.
It’s Friday night. This is always a hard night for me. Not that every night’s not ‘Friday night’, it feels like that on the road. One, long, continuous Friday night. But I’ve been off the road for over two years and this feels like a Friday night of the highest order. The air is just right, all warm comin’ up from the beach. The color of the sky is purplish, and the first few stars are out. Somewhere out there, hell, right here in my own section of the town, there are parties gearing up, clubs opening, movie premiers, all sorts of damn things going on and I’m sitting on my patio, alone.
Not quite alone.
Tish is down in the pool, splashing around, and Shi is down there, too, not splashing around. We ate dinner together again. Nice. Small talk. Nice. The food was great. It was the best part of my day. But now it’s that twilight time that gets to me without fail. That, that best part of the night, the BEGINNING of the night, when I should be out and about. But I’m not, I’m here.
That should be enough. This should be enough for any person, and instead of being able to sit here and enjoy it, I’m wrecking it with all this anticipation inside of me, as if something more should be happening, something MORE should be going on.
After lunch with Juliette I went to an appointment. My other shrink. I have two. This one isn’t the one who prescribes the meds. This is the one that I go to and sometimes do a group thing with. Today it was just a one-on-one, though. I talked about my, what did he call it? My ‘outburst’ today. Seems that, even though it was a real overreaction, it was better to get it out rather than keep it in. Then we had to talk about it, well, I had to; he just listened. I told him that I’m afraid to sing. Sounded stupid when I said it. It’s not like I just break out into song every once in a while, I do. I sing in my car, to the radio. I sing in the shower, sometimes. I do. But this was about working singing, what I do for a living. Well, what I DID for a living, ‘cause right now, I’m not doin’ anything. And we talked a little bit about that, too. Not enough. On Monday I have another appointment, right after AA, instead of right before it, like today. An extra one.
He says I need to do a little more work, a little, I don’t know, some kinda therapy. I have a feeling it’s gonna be with crayons again, a self-portrait thing. I hate that, I hate playing with crayons like I’m some two year-old. I hate drawing me.
Damn, there they go, Tish and Shi, into the house. And it’s Friday. Too early to go in.
Shi reminded me about the weekend, too. I forgot that she wouldn’t be around for most of tomorrow and almost all of Sunday. That sort of sucks, so when she asked me about using the pool on the weekend, if Tish could have a friend over, I was like, ‘yeah, sure’, because it’s a lot better sittin’ here watchin’ someone than it is sittin’ here watchin’ nothing.
And she DID remember the Krispy Kremes.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
