Maid - Stephanie Land Page 0,74

the bathtub.

Before she died, the wife collected rocks, birdhouses, and nests, lining them up by the windows in the living room. They’d spent a lot of time traveling in Central or South America. The wife had been a teacher. I imagined her bringing the little dolls and artwork from their travels to decorate her classroom or to show them to her students. I wondered if she taught them Spanish.

The Sad House seemed like it had been a vacation house, or an empty nester’s way of not mourning vacant, stagnant rooms no longer filled with children. They’d had two sons. One had passed away, and the other lived in the area but never seemed to visit. I often wondered if he’d lost them all at the same time, if maybe his wife and son were killed in an accident, and grief tore his other son away. I made up stories based on artifacts I saw around the house—photographs, notes scrawled on paper, a framed card with a cartoon illustration of a naked man and woman holding hands that read “Cabin Rules: Save water. Shower together.” The Sad House seemed frozen in time—projects half done, artwork still waiting in the walk-in closet to be hung on the wall. His wife’s list of projects was still tacked to the corkboard in the kitchen on now yellowed paper. Get new hose. Fix latch on gate. I imagined her pulling weeds from the flower beds outside, then coming in to grab something to drink from the kitchen, jotting that down before returning to her work. Underneath it was a receipt she’d signed for landscaping. There wasn’t a date.

Just halfway through my six-hour workday, I let out a big sigh and hooked a spray bottle onto the pocket in my pants. I sprayed one rag lightly with vinegar water and stuffed it in my other pocket to use for dusting. Then I grabbed another one for wiping anything that needed to be sprayed. But the Sad House never got dirty.

The various medications in the bathroom seemed to increase every time I cleaned. I moved them to wipe the counter under them before turning around to move to the bathtub. There was that wicker shelf. I’d opened the boxes with the ashes purely out of curiosity the first time. Since then I couldn’t help but revisit them occasionally to see if they were still there. I wondered if he’d spread some of them but kept these for himself. I wondered if it comforted him to have them there, behind him, while he combed his hair.

On the bar by the kitchen, the stack of photos had been partially hidden by the paperwork from the hospital. I looked for clues in the photos, thinking I’d see something different. But they were always the same—people standing next to grills full of burgers and fish and the Sad House man standing, proudly, with children dressed in red, white, and blue holding their sparklers high. Everyone puts on a smile for pictures, but the man beamed in his, like a child holding up the first fish he’d caught. He’d done everything right. All these trinkets and photos pointed to a person who’d successfully accomplished the American Dream. Yet here he was, alone.

He never left notes or cards on the counter for me. I didn’t expect him to or think it necessary for him to spend any extra money on a tip or holiday bonus for me. It seemed weird to think of it this way, but the man had given me another gift. The Sad House made me look at the small space I shared with Mia, at the room we lived in, and see it was a home, full of love, because we filled it. Even though we didn’t have nice cars or a house on a bluff above the beach, we had each other. I could enjoy her company, instead of living alone in a place filled with her memories. My struggle with loneliness, for companionship, still tugged at me, but I wasn’t alone. Mia saved me from that.

19

LORI’S HOUSE

Summer started to wane, and the sun set slowly, filling the evenings in our studio with pink, orange, and purple instead of heat that left our bedsheets soaked with sweat. Mia started falling asleep before nine again, leaving me to sit at our little kitchen table. On those nights, I listened to the cars speeding by on the freeway and the neighborhood boys talking from their perch on the curb below,