This is my most-rejected short story. It has been rejected thirty-six times, which is a lot. It is a multiple of 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 18 and 36. So I'm posting it here in the hope that you will read it and like it since it is a story I like a lot. Or maybe I've just got a soft spot for rejectees (I always picked out the mis-shapen pumpkins for Hallowe'en. Still do).
It also has some Arts and Crafts references, so I'll find some pretty Arts and Crafts illustrations with which to perk it up since it's not a really happy story.
Cleaning Mr. Graber's House
Lori-ann had been cleaning Mr.
Graber’s house for two years when she first started to think about taking something
from it.
She never would, of course. When
you cleaned houses for people you had to remember they were allowing you an unedited
and intimate glimpse into their lives.
She told
that to Mark one time. He just laughed at her.
“Get off
it! ‘Unedited?’ ‘Intimate?’” he said, making finger quotes, “You clean houses
for snobs who pay you, that’s all.”
“They’re
not snobs. None of them are,” she said, angry at him the way she was all of the
time now.
 | |
| Tools of the Trade |
She
couldn’t remember when he had started making fun of her. Really making fun of
her, not just teasing. He never used to do that. Now he’d gotten just out-and-out
mean. Anything was fair game for him: her weight, though she wasn’t fat, her
job, her cooking. They developed a pattern. He’d make fun of her. She’d get
hurt, then get angry. He’d tell her she was too sensitive. Next, they’d be
fighting.
In any case,
he was wrong about her clients. She knew that the way Mark saw it, anybody who
wasn’t just like him—anybody who didn’t rent an old camp, but actually owned a
house on the lake—was a snob. But they weren’t.
Some of
them were nicer than others, of course.
Mrs.
Mitchem, the old lady, was a sweetheart. She was pretty much home-bound, so she
was always there when Lori-ann cleaned her house.
She must have been lonely, living by
herself, no longer able to drive. Yet she didn’t try to talk Lori-ann’s ear off.
She’d make some polite chit-chat when Lori-ann arrived and then, when the
cleaning was finished, she would give her a mug of coffee and a home-made
cookie on a cloth napkin. They’d sit down and talk for fifteen minutes or so. Lori-ann
knew that Mrs. Mitchem had a son out in Seattle who worked for Microsoft. He
had two kids who were in their late teens. Her daughter lived nearby. She’d
adopted two Chinese girls, Susie and Rose. She was a stay-at-home mom now, but
before that had taught second grade.
Mrs.
Mitchem knew that Lori-ann lived with Mark in one of those converted camps out
on the lake. She knew that Lori-ann liked spending time with her niece and
nephew, that she was taking two classes at the community college. She knew
Lori-ann wanted to become a nurse someday.
At the rate she was going she
figured she’d be thirty before she finished. School cost money and took time.
She also cleaned
for the Robenses. She didn’t like the Robenses. The kids treated her as if she
were invisible—which, for them, she supposed she was. They took for granted
that their mother didn’t clean their house. That some girl named Lori-ann did
it for her.
Mrs. Robens was all-business. She
didn’t even pretend to be friendly. Lori-ann had never even seen Mr. Robens,
just his underwear which she sometimes found under the bed. He was a large man,
she’d determined, who cut little slits in the elastic waistbands of his boxers
so they wouldn’t bind so much.
She cleaned
for the Massarellis and the Adamses and the Whitlocks and the Wongs. In each
case, they were almost never home. Sometimes the McGees were--they both had
home offices and two teen-agers, so you never really knew who you were going to
run into there.
Sherry Schwartz
was always home because she had three pre-schoolers and was at her wit’s end
most of the time. She loved Lori-ann. It was more or less mutual. Sherry just
couldn’t keep on top of things—who could with three little kids?—and she was so
grateful for Lori-ann’s help.
“You’re
like a big sister to me,” she told Lori-ann one time when she was in the midst making
home-made Play-dough, “I mean, I know I’m older than you and all that. But I
think you may be wiser.”
Lori-ann
thought that might be true—she never would have had three kids all under the
age of five, for example—but she was flattered nonetheless.
It took
forever to clean Sherry’s house. She’d spend almost twice the time she did at
any other comparably-sized house. But she never told Sherry that she was giving
her what amounted to a 50% discount. That’s because it actually made her happy
to see Sherry visibly calmer when everything was clean and back in order—even
though she was sure it didn’t stay that way for long.
He lived
out on Innisfree Road, the direct opposite side of the lake from where she and
Mark lived. It always made her laugh to think that both Mr. Graber and she had
lake views—hers from the trashy side, his from the wealthy.
