The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs (18 page)

It’s not, and I can barely hide my surprise at the uninvited guest. “Hello, Alison.”

“My word, what were you doing in there? I thought you’d never answer. Am I interrupting something?” She tries to peer around the door.

“Oh, god, no. No, really no.” Does she think I’ve been inspired by Mitzi to sauce up my daytime love life? When she sees it’s an egg carton, not underwear, strewn across the house she’ll be disabused of that idea. “What are you doing here?” We know each other, but we are not friends, especially not the sort that drop in on one another unannounced. I am about to say something along the lines of “Not that it’s not a pleasure to see you,” when I realize that that would be a lie. So I don’t.

“I’ve just dropped Oliver off at a birthday party around the corner and Chris, for bloody once, is actually looking after his daughter.”

“Right. Great.” Alison is always furious about something. She even makes me feel positively Pollyanna-ish by comparison. Well, occasionally.

I hear squeals and hollers of marble-rolling encouragement. I try to open the front door a little further but find progress impeded by a scooter. I am left to look out through the small crack allowed me like a nervous old lady with a chain on the
door. Which is not unlike how I feel, faced with Alison and her permanent scowl and her ability to make one feel both pity and competitiveness in her presence.

“Actually, I come bearing gifts,” she says, waving a bulging plastic bag in my face. “You were saying that Rufus is struggling with his reading…”

“No, it’s not that he’s no good at it, it’s just that he’s reluctant—”

“So I brought you all our early reading books.”

“Won’t Grace be needing them?” Grace is a full year younger than Rufus.

“Oh no, she taught herself to read when she was three. She’s loving the
My Naughty Little Sister
books. She’ll be begging me for
Harry Potter
by the end of the year.”

I move my arm out to get the bag, but realize it is so full that I won’t be able to squeeze it in unless I open the door further. I force it open an extra couple of inches, which Alison takes as an invitation to come into the house.

“Gosh,” I say. “A couple of hours without the kids—bliss. You must have so many things you want to do.”

“Absolutely.” And with that, she’s in. I remember Mitzi saying that Alison would ring her up and want to chat for hours on the phone, and we would wonder where her real friends were. And then, Mitzi realized, she
was
Alison’s real friend.

“Goodness,” says Alison, surveying the hall carpet patterned with gloves, hats and, inexplicably, a children’s UV sunsuit. “Have you been burgled?”

This is what passes for humor in her world. “It’s the weekend, you know. If you’d let me know you were dropping by…”

I hear a shout from the top landing. “Ready, steady, Geronimo…” cries Joel, followed by an ominous thudding as Rufus snowboards down two flights of stairs in a
Cars
Snuggle
Sac, trying to beat the marble to the bottom. He and the marble land with a thud at Alison’s feet.

Joel and Gabe come rushing down behind him.

“Be careful on the stairs,” I say.

“Will do.”

“Not you, Joel. Gabe. Slide down on your bottom, sweetheart.”

“Did it work?” Joel asks Rufus.

“Yeah, it got all the way down and I didn’t have to push it once and I won, I beat it but it was going so fast and so was I.”

“You know Alison, don’t you?” I say, although she is always referred to in this house as Angrison.

“Yes, we’ve met,” says Joel. “Do you want a go of our marble run? It goes all the way from the top of the house and it’s taken us two hours to make. Look,” he says, pointing at the avocado basket that has been designed as the marbles’ final resting place. “All made from the recycling.”

I expect her to appear unimpressed by the fact that it looks as if the recycling box has been involved in an overly successful breeding program, but instead she giggles. I’d go as far as to say she giggles coquettishly.

“It looks amazing. You’re so sweet, Joel. What a wonderful father you are. You’re so lucky, Mary. I wish bloody Chris could do something like this, though I suppose he’s so busy at the moment building up a client base that he can’t really expend his energies on building a marble run, lovely as it is. Did I tell you he’s getting a record bonus this year? I know, despite all the gloom.”

She walks straight through to my kitchen, stopping to remove a half-eaten apple that has grabbed her foot.

“What can I say? It’s the weekend,” I repeat.

“You know, I really admire the way you’re so laid back about mess. I wish I could let my house go like this,” she says.

“To be honest, I don’t like it much either. I wish it weren’t such a state.”

“Have you tried tidying up as you go along?”

“This
is
after I’ve been tidying up as I go along. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to walk into this house. In fact, you barely could as it was.”

“Poor you, it can be hard to cope.”

“I am coping; my house just doesn’t happen to be as immaculate as yours, that’s all.”

“Do you want to know the secret?”

“There’s a secret?”

“Oh yes. There’s a secret. Shall I tell you?”

She leans forward. I lean forward. “Of course,” I find myself whispering.

“Are you ready for this?”

I nod.

“It will change your life.”

And it could, I think, save my marriage.

I don’t know what I expected from Alison’s great revelation. Some sort of voodoo, perhaps—an incantation that could lure the magic cleaning pixies into my home. Maybe, I thought, she’s going to admit that her family doesn’t eat normal food but is fed Complan intravenously through stomach tubes, thus saving on all that endless shopping-cooking-washing-up. Or that they have clothes that are made by NASA and repel dirt and germs. That her family are aliens and so don’t make a mess or need to wash. That she has a robot which does all the tidying—or, failing that, a very cheap illegal immigrant who lives in the cupboard under the stairs.

What I got was a scribbled name on a piece of paper.

“What’s this?” A guru, maybe. A goddess to come around to my
house and wave a wand that will sort out the wayward cables and put the outgrown clothes into bags to take to the charity shop.

“It’s a website. For people like you. I used to be like you, Mary, but I found the way. Follow the way, Mary, and you will have a tidy home. And you will become happier, too.” She spoke with all the evangelism of an AA member, but her sermon was made a little less convincing by the fact that she is still the grumpiest person I’ve ever met.

“Has this website made you happier?”

“Oh yes. I’m so calm these days, ask anyone. You won’t believe it, but I used to shout at my family all the time. And now,” she smiles, beatifically, “we live in calm.”

“Sometimes,” I said to her, “I feel as if my house is a physical manifestation of my mind, and it’s all scraggly and messed up, and if my house was this white, empty space then my mind might be, too. Empty in a good way, I mean.”

Alison’s mobile rang. “For god’s sake, Chris,” she snapped. “I’m only requesting that you look after Grace for two hours. Is that too bloody much to ask for? It’s in the cupboard by the front door, of course, where it always is—which you’d know if you ever bothered to take your child to the swings. I’ll be back by six, do you think you can manage until then? Hmmm? Too much for you? How do you think I manage when you go off on those infernal golf weekends? Funny that, isn’t it, since I’m the one who earns more money and yet still has to do more childcare?”

She put the phone in her pocket and then gave me one of those cocked-head, sympathetic looks. “Try it,” she repeated. “I really think you need it.”

I hole myself up with the laptop and with near-trembling anticipation, I type the website address that Alison gave me. Speak to me, I silently intone to the computer, speak to me.

Instead of the virtual magic I’ve been hoping for, I’m faced with one of the messiest looking web pages I’ve ever seen, with the exhortations “Declutter!,” “A new program for home executives!” and “Shiny happy sinks!” I am very confused. Is this really the life-saving secret that Alison has bestowed on me?

I read on, though I am itching to get back to The List to tot up today’s many transgressions. I force myself through the myriad exclamation marks to try to make sense of it all. The website tells, I finally discover, of a system by which your house will be spotless and permanently guest-ready, without you having to spend more than fifteen minutes a day on it. Florid testimonials tell of lives and homes transformed by the mere application of the “dance of disposal,” where the home executive will put on a three-minute song and throw away as many things as she can in its duration. Others speak of the elimination of their “toxic spots,” which sounds like something I haven’t done since I had adolescent acne. All write eulogies as to the transformative powers of the creation of a “Golden Notebook,” a ring-binder of to-do lists, menu plans and household zones. Doris Lessing, I think, must be so proud.

I read on, hoping to discover the secret of how you can inspire those that you share your house with to take as much interest in purging household junk as you do, while at the same time wondering why the women behind this site didn’t think to perhaps try to declutter some of the excessive exclamation marks littering the prose. My eyes are glazing over just thinking about these commands to enjoy the daily cleaning of my toilet bowl and to have fun while throwing out junk. It makes me yearn for the exclamation-mark-free, joyfully joyless zone of The List. My List.

But still, I concede, can all these women (and they are all women) be so wrong? Alison did say it has changed her life,
transformed her from Angrison to Airy-fairy-son. Maybe I too shall go from Scary Mary to Merry Mary. Before I can change my mind, I sign up for email reminders of how to “Work the System!” and resolve to give the “ClutterNoNo!™” system of home-executive efficiency a week’s trial.

Day 1. By the time I check my messages at work on Monday morning, I have 39 emails from my new friends at ClutterNoNo. I’m confused before I’ve even read them. How am I supposed to find time to wade through the household detritus if I have to spend all my time wading through my inbox?

I soon discover that I’m already falling woefully behind. I should have set my alarm to get up half an hour before the rest of my family in order to get that toilet bowl really sparkly, as well as making sure that I have put on a “face”—by which I think they mean makeup, rather than just pulling one.

I’m frowning at my screen when I’m interrupted by Lily. “Matt told me to tell you that he needs all the costs added to the schedule by the end of today. Or something. Whatevs.”

I’m hearing her words at the same time as reading “Go empty the dishwasher! No excuses, right now, girlfriend!”

“Sorry, what was that, Lily?”

“I don’t know, Matt said something about schedules and costs. He needs them.”

“Shall do. If you see him, tell him it’s under control.” But, I think as I read the fourteenth nagging email reminder from ClutterNoNo, I don’t have all my closets under control, do I? Apparently, my mind will never be clean until the closet is. It even talks of a “coat closet,” which I guess is what some people in a parallel universe have instead of the matted jumble of outdoor wear that slithers down the wall from the pegs in the hall. And what about dusting the underside of the dining-room chairs? I
don’t even have a dining room. And must I really create my own “signature air freshener” out of fresh mint and rose petals?

I spend the office day trying to wear two hats, that of an efficient home executive (what hat would that be? A hairnet, perhaps?) and that of an equally efficient overseer of production management at a thrusting independent television company (a beret worn at a jaunty angle?). I hardly dare look at my emails for fear of seeing more exhortations to refill my bird feeders and to love myself. Oh, god, ClutterNoNo is right, I really should clean out the boys’ bath toys more often to prevent the frequent occurrence of them vomiting out gray bilge instead of bubbly water when squeezed. And if I had a laundry room, I would go there to look behind the appliances for odd socks.

Since I haven’t had time to buy the ring-binder necessary to create a Golden Notebook, I scribble out a to-do list on the back of a production meeting agenda and go home full of resolve to at least give the ClutterNoNo system a try.

I barely have time to speak to my children, so frenzied am I in my race to tick off tasks. In a bid to have decluttered my allotted number of things, I am forced to throw away the artwork that Gabe has brought back from playgroup. He looks a bit upset, but I sometimes think this endless supply of daubs is all about appeasing the parents rather than bringing out any artistic talent in the child. And, to be honest, they weren’t very good.

At dinner, I put newspaper under everyone’s chairs as instructed and then whip the sodden pages into the bin afterward, along with the wet wipes that I have to use to get my toilet bowl “shiny shiny,” and the dying plant that Ursula gave me as a Christmas present (gee, thanks). Then I have to empty the bin because it’s so full of the fruits of my labor, as well as the moldy contents of the fruit bowl. I want to throw Joel in
there, too, when he comes home and tells me to “chill.” Using funny teen-speak laden with irony doesn’t make it OK, husband of mine.

Day 2. The house doesn’t look much better than it did before. I find I am spending so much time trying to create a nice-looking Golden Notebook that I don’t have time to get myself looking “nice ‘n’ pretty” for the day. I spend the day at work, juggling the yet again reduced budgets and revised crew lists, before coming home and attempting to purify at least one of my household zones. Before collapsing exhausted into bed at night, I have to tidy the living room and kitchen, lay the table for breakfast and plan what I shall be cooking for that meal. Sugar-laden cereal, as it happens. My woman’s work is not done even when I finally get to bed, for I must reflect on my day’s achievements and write a list of all that I have to be thankful for, as well as making time to share with my “dh”—short for “dear husband.” I think this last exhortation might be a euphemism. Either way, I don’t do it. Nor do I fall asleep, as ordered, “with a smile on my face.”