A Manual for Cleaning Women (34 page)

“There he is!” Ruth whispered, pointing at red-faced Julius. Gold chains, a too-tight single-breasted blue suit. He must have been chewing Clorets gum, his teeth were green.

“You’re crazy!” I whispered back to her.

Ruth had picked the Chapel of the Valley because the undertakers were our favorites. Dr. B.’s patients died often so almost every day some mortician came to get him to sign the death certificate. In black ink, the law required, but Dr. B. persisted in signing them with a blue pen, so the morticians had to drink coffee and hang around until he came back and signed them in black.

I waited in the rear of the chapel, wondering where to sit. Many Hadassah women had come; it was crowded. One of the chapel’s morticians appeared next to me. “How lovely you look in gray, Lily,” he said. The other one, with a boutonniere, came up the aisle and said in a low mournful voice, “How good of you to come, dear. Do let me find you a nice seat.” I followed the two men down the aisle, feeling rather smug, like being known in a restaurant.

It was a beautiful service. The rabbi read the part in the Bible about the good wife being more precious than rubies. Nobody would have thought that about the old woman, I don’t think. But I believed the eulogy was about Ruth and so did Ephraim and Julius, the way they were both gazing at her.

On Monday I tried to reason with her. “You are a woman who has everything. Health, looks, humor. A house in the hills. A cleaning woman. A garbage compactor. Wonderful children. And Ephraim! He is handsome, brilliant, rich. He obviously adores you!”

I told her the group was steering her in the wrong direction. She shouldn’t do anything to upset Ephraim. Thank her lucky stars. The M.P. were just jealous. They probably had alcoholic husbands, football-watching husbands, impotent or unfaithful ones. Their children carried beepers, were pierced, bulimic, drugged, tattooed.

“I think you’re embarrassed to be so happy, are going to do this so you can share with the M.P.s. I understand. When I was eleven an aunt gave me a diary. All I wrote in it was: ‘Went to school, Did homework.’ So I started to do bad things in order to have something to write in it.”

“It’s not going to be a serious affair,” she said. “It’s just to pep things up.”

“How about me having an affair with Ephraim? That would pep me up. You’d be jealous and fall madly in love with him again.”

She smiled. An innocent smile, like a child’s.

“Ephraim would never do that. He loves me.”

I thought she had dropped the affair idea until one Friday she brought in a newspaper.

“I’m going out with Julius tonight. But I’m telling Ephraim that I’m going out with you. Have you seen any of these movies, to tell me about them?”

I told her all about
Ran
, especially when the woman pulls out the dagger, and when the fool weeps. The blue banners in the trees, the red banners in the trees, the white banners in the trees. I was really getting into it, but she said, “Stop!” and asked where we would go after the movie. I took us, them, to Café Roma in Berkeley.

She and Julius went out every Friday. Their romance was good for me. Usually I got home from work, read novels and drank 100-proof vodka until I fell asleep, day in day out. During the Love Affair I began to actually go to string quartets, movies, to hear Ishiguro or Leslie Scalapino while Ruth and Julius went to the Hungry Tiger and the Rusty Scupper.

They went out for almost two months before they did You Know What. This event was going to occur in Big Sur, on a three-day trip. What to tell Ephraim?

“Oh, that’s easy,” I said. “You and I will go to a Zen retreat. No phones! Nothing to tell because we’re just going to be silent and meditate. We’ll sit in the hot springs under the stars. In the lotus position on cliffs overlooking the ocean. Endless waves. Endless.”

It was annoying not to be able to go out freely those days, to screen my phone calls. But it worked. Ephraim took the children out to dinner, fed the cats, watered the plants, and missed her. Very very much.

On the Monday after the trip there were three big bouquets of roses in the office. One card said, “To my cherished wife with love.” Another was from “Your secret admirer,” and one card said, “She Walks in Beauty.” Ruth confessed that she had sent that last one to herself. She adored roses. She had hinted to both men that she loved roses, but never dreamed they’d actually send any.

“Get rid of the funeral arrangements right now,” Dr. B. said, on his way to the hospital. Earlier he had asked me again to fire her and again I had refused. Why did he dislike her so?

“I told you. She’s too cheerful.”

“I usually feel the same way about cheerful people. But hers is genuine.”

“Christ. That’s really depressing.”

“Please, give her a chance. Anyway, I have a feeling she’s going to be miserable soon.”

“I hope so.”

Ephraim stopped by to take Ruth to coffee. She had done nothing all morning, had been on the phone to Hannah. I could tell the main reason he had come was to see how she liked the roses. He was very upset about the other ones. She told him one was from a patient called Anna Fedaz, but then just giggled about the secret admirer. Poor guy. I watched jealousy hit him smack in the face, in the heart. Left hook to the gut.

He asked me how I had liked the retreat. I hate to lie, really can’t stand lying. Not for moral reasons. It’s so hard, figuring it out. Remembering what you have said.

“Well, it was a lovely place. Ruth is very serene and seemed to adapt perfectly to the atmosphere there. I find it hard to meditate. I just worry, or go back over every mistake I ever made in my whole life. But it was, er, centering. Serene. You and Ruth run along now. Have a nice lunch!”

Later I got the scoop. Big Sur had been
the
adventure of Ruth’s life. She knew she wouldn’t be able to tell the M.P.s about doing You Know What. Oral S. for the first time! Well, yes, she had done Oral S. to Ephraim, but never had it done to
her
. And M-A-R … “I know it has a
J
in it somewhere.”

“Marijuana?”

“Hush! Well, mostly it made me cough and get nervous. Yes, that was very nice, Oral S. But the way he kept asking, ‘Are you ready?’ made me imagine we were going somewhere and ruined the mood.”

They were going to Mendocino in two weeks. The story was that she and I were going to a writers’ workshop and book fair in Petaluma. Robert Haas was to be the writer-in-residence.

One night in the middle of the week, she called and asked if she could come over. Like a fool I expected her, didn’t understand that it was a cover, that she had gone to meet Julius. So when Ephraim phoned I could honestly sound cross because she still hadn’t arrived, was even crosser the next time. “I’ll have her call you the minute she gets here.” After a while he called again, this time furious because she was home now and said I had not given her the message.

The next day I told her I wouldn’t do this for her anymore. She said that was fine, that they were starting play practice on Monday.

“You and I are in a flower-arranging class on Fridays, at Laney. That’s it.”

“Well, that’s the last one. You’ve been so lucky he hasn’t asked any specifics.”

“Of course he wouldn’t. He trusts me. But my conscience is clear now. Julius and I don’t do You Know What anymore.”

“Then what
do
you do? Why go to all this secrecy and trouble to
not
do You Know What anymore?”

“We found out that neither one of us is a swinger type. I like You Know What with Ephraim much more, and Julius isn’t that interested. I like the sneaking around part. He likes buying me presents and cooking for me. My favorite thing is to knock on a motel door in Richmond or somewhere and then he opens the door and I rush in. My heart beating away.”

“So what do you do then?”

“We play Trivial Pursuit, watch videos. Sometimes we sing. Duets, like ‘Bali Hai’ or ‘Oh, What a Beautiful Morning.’ We go for midnight walks in the rain!”

“Walk in the rain on your own time!” Dr. B. shouted. We hadn’t noticed him come in.

He was serious. He stood there while she packed up all her
Bon Appétit
magazines and Trivial Pursuit cards and her knitting. He told me to write her a check for two weeks’ pay, plus what we owed her.

After Dr. B. left she called Julius, told him to meet her at Denny’s right away.

“My career is ruined!” she sobbed.

She hugged me good-bye and left. I moved out to her desk, where I could see the waiting room.

Ephraim came in the door. He walked slowly toward me and shook my hand. “Lily,” he said, in his deep enveloping voice. He told me that Ruth was supposed to have met him at the Pill Hill Café for lunch, but she never showed up. I told him that Dr. B. had fired her, for no reason. She probably had completely forgotten lunch, had gone home. Or shopping, maybe.

Ephraim continued to stand there.

“She can find much better jobs. I’m the office manager, and of course I’ll give her a good recommendation. I’ll really miss her.”

He stood there, looking at me.

“And she will miss you.” He leaned in the little window above my desk.

“This is for the best, my dear. I want you to know that I understand. Believe me, I feel for you.”

“What?”

“There are many things I don’t share with her as you do. Literature, Buddhism, the opera. Ruth is a very easy woman to love.”

“What are you saying?”

He held my hand then, looked deep into my eyes as his soft brown ones filled with tears.

“I miss my wife. Please, Lily. Let her go.”

Tears began to slide down my cheeks. I felt really sad. Our hands were a warm wet little pile on the ledge.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Ruth loves only you, Ephraim.”

Let Me See You Smile

It’s true, the grave is more powerful than a lover’s eyes. An open grave, with all its magnets. And I say this to you, you who when you smile make me think of the beginning of the world.

—
Vicente Huidobro,
Altazor

Jesse threw me for a loop. And I take pride in my ability to size people up. Before I joined Grillig’s firm, I was a public defender for so long I had learned to assess a client or a juror almost at first glance.

I was unprepared too because my secretary didn’t announce him over the intercom and he had no appointment. Elena just led him into my office.

“Jesse is here to see you, Mr. Cohen.”

Elena introduced him with an air of importance, using only his first name. He was so handsome, entered the room with such authority, I thought he must be some one-name rock star I hadn’t heard of.

He wore cowboy boots and black jeans, a black silk shirt. He had long hair, a strong craggy face. About thirty was my first guess, but when he shook my hand there was an indescribable sweetness in his smile, an openness in his hazel eyes that was innocent and childlike. His raspy low voice confused me even more. He spoke as if he were explaining patiently to a young inexperienced person. Me.

He said he had inherited ten thousand dollars and wanted to use it to hire me. The woman he lived with was in trouble, he said, and she was going to trial in two months. Ten counts against her.

I hated to tell him how far his money would go with me.

“Doesn’t she have a court-appointed attorney?” I asked.

“She did, but the asshole quit. He thought she was guilty and a bad person, a pervert.”

“What makes you think I won’t feel the same way?” I asked.

“You won’t. She says you are the best civil liberties lawyer in town. The deal is she doesn’t know I’m here. I want you to let her think you’re volunteering to do this. For the principle of the thing. This is my only condition.”

I tried to interrupt here, to say, “Forget it, son.” Tell him firmly that I wasn’t going to do it. No way could he afford me. I didn’t want to touch this case. I couldn’t believe this poor kid was willing to give all his money away. I already hated the woman. Damn right she was guilty and a bad person!

He said that the problem was the police report, which the judge and jury would read. They would preconvict her because it was distorted and full of lies. He thought I could get her off by showing that his arrest was false, that the report of hers was libelous, the cop she hit was brutal, the arresting officer was psychotic, evidence had definitely been planted. He was convinced that I could discover that they had made other false arrests and had histories of brutality.

He had more to say about how I should handle this case. I can’t explain why I didn’t blow up, tell him to get lost. He argued passionately and well. He should have been a lawyer.

I didn’t just like him. I even began to see that spending his entire inheritance was a necessary rite of passage. A heroic, noble gesture.

It was as if Jesse were from another age, another planet. He even said at some point that the woman called him “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” This made me feel better about her somehow.

I told Elena to cancel a meeting and an appointment. He spoke all morning, simply and clearly, about their relationship, about her arrest.

I am a defense attorney. I’m cynical. I am a material person, a greedy man. I told him I would take the case for nothing.

“No. Thank you,” he said. “Just please tell her that you’re doing it for no charge. But it’s my fault she got into this trouble and I want to pay for it. What will it be? Five thousand? More?”

“Two thousand,” I said.

“I know that’s too low. How about three?”

“Deal,” I said.

He took off one of his boots and counted off thirty warm hundred-dollar bills, fanned them out on my desk like cards. We shook hands.

“Thanks for doing this, Mr. Cohen.”

“Sure. Call me Jon.”

He settled back down and filled me in.

He and his friend Joe were dropouts, had run away from New Mexico last year. Jesse played the guitar, wanted to play in San Francisco. On his eighteenth birthday he was to inherit money from an old woman in Nebraska (another heartbreaking story). He had planned to go to London, where he had been asked to join a band. An English group had played in Albuquerque, liked his songs and guitar playing. He and Joe had no place to stay when they got to the Bay Area, so he looked up Ben, who had been his best friend in junior high. Ben’s mother didn’t know they were runaways. She said it was okay for them to stay awhile in the garage. Later she found out and called their parents, calmed the parents down, told them they were doing fine.