Everything is dim and quiet inside. I turn on a few lights and flip the switch on the coffee maker. After I fell asleep last night I slept well, deeply. I don’t feel bad at all, although I was anticipating a slow start to the morning. No, I feel fine and begin my Tuesday morning routine of going through the refrigerator and the cupboards to see if there’s anything I forgot to buy yesterday. This is possibly the easiest house to stock in the world. I doubt that I’ll need to load the pantry any time soon, at least not with staples. Cereal and sugar and coffee seem to be the items that get used up the most. And if I buy chips, they don’t last twenty-four hours. I don’t buy them often, and Alex has never insisted they be there, so he must get the urge to eat them all in one sitting, but not the urge to eat them every day.
The laundry is up to date, except for whatever I find this morning and the load of dry cleaning I need to take. I’ve already phoned in the prescriptions and I can pick them up today when I’m out. For now, I have everything under control. The cleaning people will be in for a tidying up, and that’s about it. I’ll have plenty of time to fit in the few personal chores I want to do.
“’Morning.”
I turn from my vantage point at the kitchen window to see my scruffy boss shuffling in from the hall. He looks more like he’s had a wrestling match with his blankets than as if he’s had a good night’s sleep. I haven’t, until this moment, considered the full implications of a rainy day around here. I have doubts that Alex will be leaving the house today for anything more than his afternoon meeting, if that.
“Good morning. Coffee will be ready in a few minutes,” I tell him. I don’t offer breakfast, I know now that it’s too early for him, particularly on days like today, when he seems to have woken up under duress. Instead, I push an ashtray closer to him because I know that a smoke is what he really wants. A smoke and some peace.
I turn back to the window and I see Tish trudging up the outside steps under her umbrella. She sees me, too, and smiles, then waves. I raise my hand and wave back. I wonder if there was a time when the man sitting at the kitchen table ever smiled and waved at his mother on a rainy morning on his way to school. I wonder if the man at the table has ever smiled and waved at anyone at this hour of the day. He’s slumped over the ashtray this morning, a sure sign that this isn’t going to be the best day.
Well, at least Juliette is coming, and if he isn’t in a good mood for her, they can always spar with each other. And I’m not hanging around here today much longer after breakfast. So, Mr. Sunshine is going to have to be his own bad company today. In my mind, I reprioritize my schedule. I’m going to go find something for Alex that I think will cheer him up, or at least give him a twinge of hope that whatever has started out his day wrong will get better.
It’s looking like a French toast morning.
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I didn’t sleep good at all. I’m runnin’ on empty this morning, and to top it off, it’s raining, which just pisses me off. That and knowin’ that I have to deal with Juliette today, and I don’t have any idea what I’m gonna do about her.
I don’t want to fire her. I’m not even that mad at her anymore. Too many days have gone by and now it all seems sorta, sorta like nothing. I don’t appreciate that she blabbed shit to Sarah, and I don’t appreciate that she’s like, tryin’ to get between us and ‘fix’ things that can’t be fixed. But she’s too good at what she does for me to go off and fire her. And now I’m not so sure that she might quit. She could. I think I left that option open. If she takes it, I’m up shit creek, ‘cause I have no one to replace her. I could have Shi do a few things that Juliette does, but not most of them, and not the most important ones.
So I’m not lookin’ forward to seeing Juli at all this morning. And she’s about to drop in any minute.
And now that I’m sittin’ in the kitchen with Shi, some of the things I was thinkin’ about HER come back into my head and I feel weird. Like, I really could still use that hug. And she just waved out the window at Tish. For a second, no, even shorter than a second, for a, a, whatever you call it, I’m jealous out of my mind and I hate Shi, and worse, I hate Tish. It seems so not fair to me that there can be that kind of love and that I’m not gettin’ any of it. Anyone could see it, in the way Shi waves, in the smile on her face. Just in the way she’s standin’ at the window and the way she takes a deep, sort of sighing, breath. Like she’s satisfied. Like standin’ at the window lookin’ out through the pissing rain at Tish is the thing that makes her the happiest.
I hate that. I hate so much about that moment. I hate that Shi’s happy, that Tish is happy, and that they love each other. More than anything, I hate that I even have those feelings. And I push them away, because all that hatin’ is making me feel terrible, like I want to cry, and I don’t want to cry.
I don’t like mornings like this. I haven’t had one in a long time. I don’t remember fallin’ asleep. I know I did, I woke up feelin’ like I needed to turn over and just fall back asleep for the rest of the day. But I need to talk to Juliette, and I need to be up, to make it look like I’m functioning, ‘cause if I don’t at least look like I’m functioning on the days that Juliette is here, I know there’s gonna be trouble.
It’s like I’m gonna get a bad review or something. It’s exactly like that. And now that I know that Juliette is a blabbermouth, I think I could expect everyone from Sarah right down to my mom to know that I’m havin’ a ‘bad day’.
I kinda look at Shi, and she’s pourin’ coffee now. I don’t care if she knows I’m havin’ a bad day. I’ve had bad days since she’s been around. She doesn’t make a big deal about them. She just treats ‘em like any other day, which is kinda like how I want them to be treated. In fact, today, she’s about ignoring the fact that I’m a mess. And if I know that I’m a mess, I’m really a big fat fuckin’ mess.
“Here you go,” Shi says, and she puts my coffee in front of me, all ready to drink. Sugar stirred in and everything. And I can’t look at her, ‘cause I WILL cry.
I KNOW that this is just somethin’ that she’s supposed to do. I KNOW that she’s just the fuckin’ housekeeper, and even havin’ that thought, that she’s JUST the fuckin’ housekeeper, about turns my stomach, ‘cause she’s not. It’s been a month and she’s part of this house and my life, and my day now. I would miss her if she was gone. I would miss her and Tish, and seein’ lights on at the pool house. I would miss her cookin’ and her sarcasm. I would even miss the way she pisses me off sometimes, ok, hardly ever, but even that, because she’s been the only person, the ONLY person, who’s done this job like they fuckin’ care about it, and who treats me like a person, and who’ll give me a little bit of a hard time over small shit, and who never said much about glass in my foot and blood on the carpet.
And that she would do somethin’, even somethin’ as small as makin’ my coffee just the way I like it, and putting it in a clean cup, on a clean table, that’s enough on a morning like this, a ‘bad’ morning, to make me want to lay my head on the table and cry.
It’s not that people don’t treat me nice. They do. I’ve had years of people goin’ out of their way for me. My job is hard sometimes. Not all the time, not every minute, but it’s hard and demanding. The payback is tremendous, but you have to work hard and do lots and lots of things that you don’t want to. Still, people are nice. And my family, they were always nice to me. There was a time, though, when I really thought that they were only nice to me ‘cause I gave them jobs and houses and cars and shit. It took me a long time to understand that people who hate you will be nice to get what they can get. No shit. I know that sounds naive, and I guess it is, but it’s the truth. And when I was ‘ugly’, at my most ugly, I let just about everyone I knew know that I felt that they were using me.
It’s gonna take me years and years and years to make that right, if I ever can.
So I lost a lot of people who really cared and only a few of the people who didn’t. I’ve gone back, done the amends thing, made a lot of apologies. Some people accepted them. Some people didn’t. That’s what happens. I never thought much about what ‘happens’ after you’re lousy like that to people. ‘Cause with my job comes a lot of people who don’t really care if you shit on them, they only care about what you can do for them, or the money you can make for them, or whatever. So, I kinda got into the habit of being not too nice, of people takin’ it, and then life bein’ business as usual. And I was kind of amazed that not EVERYONE is like that. I was really surprised that the people I cared about the most were the ones that didn’t forgive me right away, if at all.
Oh, shit, I can’t be thinking about that today or I’m gonna be a complete basket case. Totally a basket case.
“Alex, are you okay?”
Oh, don’t be nice to me, please don’t be nice to me when I’m like this, ‘cause I know how not nice I am and I’m ashamed about it. I feel like shit, I’m havin’ bad thoughts, and if you’re nice to me, I won’t be able to stand it, or myself.
“I didn’t sleep too good last night,” I manage to say.
“Why don’t you go back to bed then?”
“Juliette.” My hand is shaking. I can see it. If I can see it, Shi can see it. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Can’t she come by a little later?”
“No.” No, she can’t ‘cause I wanna get this over with. In a major way. Shit, damn, fuck, this is not the day for me to be feelin’ like this. Not at all. I need to be sharp and on top of things and instead I’m fallin’ apart at the kitchen table. And I can’t seem to pull it together.
“Do you want some breakfast? Or would you rather wait and have something later, today?”
“Later. I… excuse me.” How I manage to be polite I don’t know. I get up and leave the room, and I can’t even see where I’m goin’. Up the stairs, up all the stairs, up to my room. The bed, it’s lookin’ like World War III was fought there last night. I don’t care, I just lay down in the mess and hide my face in the sheets and cry.
And I think I fall asleep. I know I do. ‘Cause someone is shakin’ my shoulder, shakin’ me awake.
“Hunh?”
“Alex, Juliette is here.”
It’s Shi and she’s bent over me. I’m twisted up on the bed, all tangled up in the sheets and blankets, but I manage to sit up. In fact I bolt up, ‘cause I’m late.
“Shit.”
“Calm down. It’s okay. She’s been doing whatever it is she does, and she just needs to see you about a few things. I think you need to sign checks. Don’t get in a panic,” she tells me.
Then she does something strange. She sits on the side of my bed.
She has my med box in her hand.
She’s smilin’ a funny smile.
“When was the last time you took your medication?” she asks me.
And I can’t remember.
“I dunno, yesterday, I guess.”
“I don’t think so. I checked, and you must have missed two or three days. You didn’t refill this, did you?” and she waves the box in front of me.
“No.”
“I think you’d better take these right now, then. I’ll get you a glass of water.”
I forgot my meds. I was feelin’ so okay, I forgot them. And Shi didn’t remind me, well, shit, it’s not her job to remind me, just her job to make sure that they’re there. I start pickin’ out the pills I need to take. I wonder if I should double dose, but I can’t remember if I’m allowed to do that. She comes back and sits on the bed again.
I feel like I’m eight years old.
“Here, drink this.” She hands me the glass. “I think that maybe it might be a good idea if I keep this in the kitchen from now on. That way you can take your pills with your meals, and it’ll be easier to remember. And if you’re going out, well, we can just make sure that you’ve got what you need.”
She smiles. She wrinkles her nose and I can see the golden freckles there and at this moment she’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life. She takes the glass from me, and her hand finds mine on the mattress. One quick squeeze and she gets up.
“I’ll tell Juliette that you’re on your way down. And I’ll make you some French toast when you’re ready.” She smiles again, another kind of smile. “I’d brush my teeth,” she says, and then she laughs and leaves.
And her laugh makes me laugh, too.
There is no possible way I can live without this woman right now.
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© 2003 Chandrah, Inc.
© 2003 (*> Baby Bird Productions, Inc.
