Magical Thinking (11 page)

She passed me a photocopied list. At the top was a title: “Debby’s Requirements.” I slipped the list into my shirt pocket and followed her to the door. “Well, Brad said you’re great, and I’m really happy you have time to fit me in,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”

She said, “Not a problem.” And then she trudged down the stairs.

After she was gone, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Why was I so intimidated by her? Was that even it? Or was it the feeling of foreboding that I couldn’t shake, like something bad was happening. Like I was about to step onto the electrified third rail of the subway tracks. Maybe I was being paranoid.

I decided to go get the items on Debby’s list right away, before
I forgot and she charged me eighty dollars for walking downstairs to the Korean market for a can of Ajax.

And here, on this list, is where I found my first piece of evidence that something was, if not exactly wrong, not exactly right, either.

The first item on the list: “I will require at least a dozen boxes of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda because I am allergic to harsh chemicals and prefer to make my own cleaning agents.”

Right there, I wanted to call her up and say the deal was off. If there’s one thing I am
not
allergic to, it’s harsh chemicals. I want to know that the blue stuff that cleans the inside of my toilet was tested—and tested again—on rabbits, monkeys, and anything else they can cram into a laboratory cage. I want the most industrialstrength cleaners, the most abrasive agents, the most corrosive solvents.

It got worse. The next item: “Because I have contact dermatitis, typical Playtex gloves are unacceptable. Gracious Home carries the one-hundred-percent cotton gloves I prefer.”

Gracious Home was the fabulously expensive housewares store uptown. It was the place to go if you wanted a seventy-five-dollar box of Italian mothballs or a three-hundred-dollar pair of cotton gloves because somebody you knew had
contact dermatitis
.

Item three read: “One bottle each: apple cider vinegar, Evian, inexpensive white wine (dry).”

Was she going to have a party or clean my apartment? There was a note in parentheses following this entry that read: “The vinegar is for cleaning purposes; the Evian and the white wine are for my refreshment.”

I wasn’t even halfway finished reading her list and already I wanted to fire her. “Natural-fiber broom (no nylon bristles), Handi-Wipe brand reusable wipes (no paper towels . . . think of the waste!!!!), save all your newspapers (I use them to clean the windows), lemon juice, salt, white chalk, plain steel-wool pads
(no S.O.S.), olive oil (for the care of your fine wood furniture).”

I’m willing to cut people a lot of slack, but I draw the line at a greasy coffee table. It was bad enough that she was going to be cleaning my apartment with condiments. I did not want my furniture slathered in salad dressing.

Still. With my jaw clenched, I bought almost everything on the list, including the cheapest white wine I could find. I even took the subway uptown and bought her a pair of cotton gloves for twelve dollars.

When I got home, I checked the paper to see what movies were playing the next day. Unlike Brad, I didn’t want to hang out in my apartment while my cleaning lady prepared lunch on my floor.

On Sunday at eleven, Debby arrived red-faced, and whether this was from climbing the stairs or from a morning Bloody Mary, it gave her a healthy glow. “You’re so on time,” I said with a fake smile, irritated that she had insisted on getting to my place before noon. On Sunday.

“Time is money,” she said.

Never would a cliché prove to be more prophetic.

“Well, I’m just gonna take off for the day. I figure I’ll see a movie and then go to the office and do some stuff there.”

She smiled. “Did you get the items on my list?” But her eyes were narrow, not the eyes that belonged with a smile.

I smiled back at her, but in a way that suggested I might be withholding something. “I sure did.”

“Everything?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, nodding my head.

She looked surprised. Apparently, she was accustomed to experiencing a certain percentage of rejection.

“Well, except the olive oil,” I said. “I just can’t, you know, have everything all sticky.”

She looked horrified. “Oh, no! But that’s the most important thing on the list! It’s wonderful. It’s not greasy or sticky or anything. You’ll love the way everything comes out, I promise.”

“Well,” I said, now with a little shrug and apologetic smile. “It sounds nice. But I didn’t pick it up.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I saw a little food store downstairs. I’ll just get some in there.”

I smiled. “That sounds fine.”

“But I’ll have to charge you for the time.”

“But it’s just downstairs,” I said, my smile frozen, now just the memory of a smile.

“I know that
,” she said in the weary tone one might use with a telemarketer. “But it takes away from the cleaning. I have to stop everything I’m doing, then go downstairs, then select a brand of oil, then pay for it, then put my money away and come back upstairs. It’s not like
Bewitched
, where I can just wrinkle my nose.”

She wrinkled her nose, and it made her look like one of the singing Lollypop Guild munchkins from
The Wizard of Oz
.

I didn’t want to argue with her over fifty cents’ worth of her time. “Whatever you need is fine.”

“Great,” she said, suddenly, incredibly happy. It was unnerving the way she could go from cool efficiency to sarcastic to sweet within the space of thirty seconds. I found it very manipulative and controlling. It put the other person constantly on-guard. And it was extremely intimidating, because you never knew when she was going to snap.

I made a mental note to refine these skills within myself.

Six hours later, when I returned, I was greeted at the door—and this before it was even opened—by the overpowering smell of vinegar. What were my neighbors thinking? That a douche-obsessed woman with a gigantic, three-foot vagina lived next door?

I unlocked my apartment and stepped inside and was nearly knocked over by the stink. But when I turned on the light, I was pleasantly stunned. There was an actual luminosity to the room. I could tell, even from the distance of the doorway, that everything
was utterly spotless. The floor, which was a standard-issue Manhattan-apartment parquet wood, glowed exotically. It was so generic, I’d never even noticed it before. And suddenly the grain of the wood seemed somehow illuminated.

It must have been her olive oil.

I walked through my small apartment and was impressed over and over by how immaculate everything was. Up to a certain point. Because as my eye traveled up from the lustrous floor and past the height of the doorknobs, I noticed that things didn’t seem quite so spotless. For example, the window ledges were clean even inside the corners, where nobody can ever get at the grime. And the window glass itself was as clear as air. But not the top window. It had been swiped but not polished clear, like below. There were streaks. And the mirror, too, that hung above the sofa. Here it was more obvious, a line dividing the top half from the bottom. Spotless on the bottom, filthy with fingerprints above.

I checked the bathroom. Toilet? Yes, you could proudly offer it to your guest’s dog to drink from. But not the shower head.

And when I looked very close—in between the tiles, packed into the edge between the medicine cabinet mirror and frame—there was white powder. Which could only be baking soda.

And then there was that smell. While the apartment—at least from the waist down—was clean, the vinegar was making my eyes water.

Still, I decided, it was probably worth it. Surely by tomorrow when I got home from work, the fumes would be gone. And what did it matter that the apartment wasn’t so clean up top? Most of the dirt was down low, anyway. Dirt fell, it didn’t rise.

So, I decided, Debby had done a pretty good job
considering
. Considering, of course, meaning considering she only cleaned as high as she could reach. Maybe I’d bring this up to her next time I saw her.

Then I saw her bill, handwritten and placed in the center of my kitchen counter. “Hello Augusten. I hope you find the apartment to your liking. The floors were very dry and absorbed two bottles of extra-, extra-virgin olive oil. Because of the added time applying the oil to the floor and the damage to my already bad knees, I’ve had to charge you an additional forty dollars, in addition to the twenty-three dollars for the oil and shopping time. See you next Sunday! Debby.”

Two hundred and fifty-three dollars for an apartment that was exactly half clean?

Was she insane? Grandmother or not, she was a thief.

All week long, I found myself trapped in a paradox. While I was tempted to be extra-sloppy and leave globs of toothpaste in the sink, clothes hanging everywhere, and empty food cartons all over, I knew that I would be punished for this. Debby would charge me extra. On the other hand, if I didn’t do anything, she wouldn’t know how upset I was over her bill.

I was distracted at work, obsessing over it. And in the end, I decided that at least I would bring up the issue of the half-clean mirror.

So the next Sunday, I made sure I was there, waiting for her.

Debby arrived at ten and was startled to see me standing in the doorway. She had obviously expected to find me gone for the day, so she was munching comfortably on red licorice twists. “Oh!” she said. “Hi there.”

“Hi Debby,” I said, cheerful. “I just have one little thing to ask.” I figured “ask” was the right way to put it. Make her a part of the process. Make her feel involved. I walked over to the mirror and pointed at the glass. “I noticed?” Again, raising my voice in a question, my smile firm on my face. “I noticed that the mirror looks really beautiful.”

She smiled, but then as I continued it reversed into a frown.

“But only from the center down. The top of the mirror is dirty,
Debby. And it’s the same with the windows. It’s like you only cleaned half of everything. The lower half.”

She looked at me and asked, “Are you criticizing me for being a short person?”

Instantly, a vision of myself on Court TV flashed in my mind. “No, of course not,” I said. “I’m just saying that I’d prefer it if you could clean the entire mirror, and not only the lower portion. If you have to use a chair to stand on, that would be fine.”

“Use a chair? To stand on? What exactly are you saying?” She shoved the package of Twizzlers into her jacket pocket. She clenched her teeth, and I saw the muscles in her jaw work, like she was chewing cud.

“I just mean that if you’re not tall enough to reach the tops of things, please use a chair.”

Suddenly, she smiled. “You know what? That’s a great solution. Thanks. I’ll do that.” She removed her jacket and hung it over the arm of the sofa. “Thanks for the tip,” she said, but without any trace of sarcasm.

Two could play at her devious little game. “You’re welcome. I’m glad I could help.”

And I left.

That evening, I decided to call Brad. I told him about the list and then about the bill and how she added on all this money we didn’t agree to. I told him about the weird thing with the chair. He was silent for a moment, and then he made this little spitting sound.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Nothing, I was just eating a grape while you were talking, and I spit the seed into an ashtray.”

“Watch out, Debby’s going to charge you twenty bucks for that.”

“You know,” Brad began, “I believe she’s eating things.”

I waited for him to continue, but he didn’t say anything else so I prodded him. “What do you mean? What’s she eating?”

He exhaled into the phone, like it was extremely difficult for him to hold the receiver to his ear and operate his mouth at the same time. Brad was very handsome, with dark hair and strong features. He even looked privileged. “What I mean is that I think she’s stealing food. Last night, I had some leftover Chinese food in a box in the refrigerator that I was going to eat tonight. And when I opened the container, there was only a tiny bit left.”

“Maybe you ate more than you thought,” I said.

“No,” he said. “Impossible. I portion control very carefully. I had precisely half a container left and then tonight just a smear across the bottom: a noodle or two and a tiny shrimp.”

“So what are you going to do?” I asked, curious to know if he was going to fire her over this. He was accustomed to firing the help. He might even be at a stage where he enjoyed it.

“I’m going to try an experiment,” he said. “To see for sure.”

A week later he called me back with the results. “Well, I got confirmation. Debby’s stealing food. I know for sure now.”

“What do you mean? How?”

“I ordered a container of shrimp chow fun because at least I know she likes shrimp. Then I left it unrefrigerated for two days, I hid it in the closet. Then I put it back in the refrigerator, full, and that night when I checked, it was almost empty. She called in sick the next day.”

What a brilliant idea. If I did the same thing, would she become suspicious? And would it be wrong to do it just for fun?