Wednesdays were two houses in the new development out by the highway. Fridays were a real estate office and a woman named Tiffany who liked her throw pillows arranged in a very specific
zigzag pattern.
And Thursdays were Mrs. Whitaker.
She was never my biggest client, and she wasn’t my highest-paying. But she was the one I could always count on. The Garcias canceled when they went on vacation. The real estate office cut me back to every other week when the market slowed down. Tiffany fired me once over the throw
pillows and then hired me back a month later.
Mrs. Whitaker never canceled. Not once. Not in eight years. Even when she went to visit Susan in Oregon for two weeks at Christmas, she left a note and a check on the counter.
Carly — I’ll be away. Please come as usual. The plants need water and the house needs someone in it. — M.W.
I came as usual. I watered the plants. I dusted the piano. I didn’t know what she meant by the
house needs someone in it. I thought maybe she was worried about burglars.
The divorce was final in my second year of working for her. Darren moved to Columbus with his girlfriend and started seeing Willa every other weekend, and then once a month, and then mostly
on birthdays. Willa stopped asking when he was coming. That was harder to watch than anything he ever did to me.
In the third year, Willa had her first real asthma attack. We spent a night in the emergency room. The bill came three weeks later, and it was more money than I made in two months. I sat at my
kitchen table with that bill in front of me and put my head down on the table and didn’t lift it for a long time.
That Thursday, I must have looked terrible. Mrs. Whitaker was home. She came into the kitchen
while I was mopping the checkered floor.
“Is Willa all right?” she asked.
I stopped mopping. I hadn’t told her anything. “How did you know something happened?”
“You’ve mopped that same square three times,” she said.
I looked down. She was right.
So I told her. Not everything. Just that Willa had asthma, and we’d been to the ER, and she was
okay now, and they gave her an inhaler.
