Carly —
Supplies are under the sink. Please do not use bleach on the kitchen floor; it’s original. The guest
towels are the white ones with the blue stitching. The towels for me are the plain gray. Please don’t move the photographs on the piano. I’ll be back around one.
— M.W.
I followed every word of that note like it was the law.
I cleaned that house harder than I have ever cleaned anything in my life. I scrubbed the grout in the upstairs bathroom with a toothbrush. I dusted the tops of the doorframes. I washed the
baseboards on my hands and knees. I cleaned the inside of the oven, which I’m pretty sure hadn’t been cleaned since the Carter administration.
When I dusted the piano, I lifted each picture frame, wiped underneath it, and put it back down in
exactly the same spot. I lined them up with the little dust outlines so they wouldn’t move even a quarter of an inch.
There were a lot of pictures. A young couple on their wedding day, in black and white. A little girl
with pigtails on a swing. The same girl in a cap and gown. A tall man with a kind face and a bow tie, holding a fish and laughing. I figured that was Mr. Whitaker.
At noon, I was hungry. I had packed a peanut butter sandwich and an apple. I looked around
that big, beautiful kitchen with its checkered floor and its round table by the window.
Then I went out and ate my sandwich in my car.
It didn’t feel right to eat in her kitchen. It was her kitchen. I was the cleaner. I didn’t want her to
come home and find crumbs, or think I was making myself too comfortable. So I sat in the front seat of my old Honda with the engine off and ate my sandwich and looked at the oak tree.
I did that every Thursday for eight years.
Mrs. Whitaker came home at 1:15 that first day. She walked through the house slowly. I followed her. She didn’t say anything. She ran one finger along the top of the piano. She looked in the upstairs bathroom. She opened the oven.
She stood looking into the oven for a long time.
Then she closed it and turned around.
“Thank you, Carly,” she said.
