Marguerite

What fol­lows is a true account of an odd job I picked up in Port­land. It was a strange, affect­ing expe­ri­ence and I have been mean­ing to write about it for some time. So I sat down and wrote about it. It’s a bit stilted and awk­ward, but it feels good have out with it.

I found Mar­guerite through craigslist. Hav­ing recently fin­ished col­lege, I was des­per­ate for the odd job, but also for the struc­ture in my day. She hired me to clean and orga­nize her house for a highly antic­i­pated “guest.” I was put off when she demanded I be “clean cut” at least three times over the phone, her deep voice full of scrutiny. But upon meet­ing, I found her refresh­ingly shrewd.

After eight hours of wip­ing dust from the white mold­ing in her bed­room, scrap­ing apple sauce off her refrig­er­a­tor shelf, and find­ing silky, coral-colored panties mixed-up with her son’s laun­dry, I wanted her to know me, too. I wanted her to look in my eyes and match her menopausal wis­dom to my soul. She was blunt and prim and pho­bic, but also mater­nal, accom­mo­dat­ing and bright. By the end of the first day, I could have lived and died by her razor judg­ment. I felt like she could help me map the poles.

I am tempted to write a list of things I saw in her draw­ers and cab­i­nets and let you find her there. After all, they were suf­fi­cient for me. But you need to see the objects in rela­tion to each other. A fem­i­nist essay on faith and cre­ativ­ity stacked above some­thing titled From Fatigued to Fan­tas­tic. Vagi­nal cream (not a lubri­cant) on the night­stand inches from a pur­ple stuffed poo­dle, over­turned. A mist of organic, all-purpose house­hold cleaner and the cit­rus scent of moist dust­ing wipes.

Domes­tic tasks gen­er­ally make me feel like I am twid­dling my life away, but here, I went over and beyond my duties. I wanted Mar­guerite to notice that I had washed the win­dows with­out her ask­ing, and found a much more sen­si­ble place for the cereal. At one point, sur­vey­ing boxes left unpacked for the past two-and-a-half years, I wanted to scold her. I wanted to talk to her like I would to my own mother. When are you ever gonna use this beaded key­chain?

Most of my sec­ond day at Marguerite’s was spent weed­ing her front lawn. I think weed­ing is sense­less (I won’t explain myself here) but I attacked that lawn like a face-full of pim­ples. With a shovel, hoe, and ser­rated spade I exor­cized a white web of roots from dry soil. I was fif­teen again, steam­ing open my pores and squeez­ing every last cen­time­ter of my acne-ridden face. I obsessed over the furtive net­work of dan­de­lion ten­ta­cles I had surely missed. I made piles of my roots, the crisp threads, and looked back at them with sat­is­fac­tion. I would sub­due that yard with my relent­less prod­ding and stab­bing, make it shine like the shaved back of a ani­mal. And I nearly did.

It was all ther­a­peu­tic. I liked the day­light slid­ing through the blinds, liked to feel it change from room to room, hour to hour. I also liked per­form­ing to very clear, mea­sur­able stan­dards. I gen­uinely hoped she would call me again. I con­tin­u­ally stressed how much I love orga­niz­ing. It would be fun clean­ing out your garage, I said, I’m grate­ful for the work! If she had asked me to do the same task twice, I might have thanked her.

I haven’t heard from Mar­guerite since. Sur­vey­ing her weed-less lawn, she said, Looks good enough. Glanc­ing under her son’s bed, she ques­tioned, Did you vac­uum down here? How could she know I wanted to lay myself on the liv­ing room rug for her assess­ment? As a 22 year-old woman who never speaks to her mother, I wanted Mar­guerite to make a clin­i­cal esti­ma­tion of my options, plans and dreams. Or maybe put a hand on my shoul­der and say, laugh­ingly, God, you’re young. You can’t pos­si­bly know what you want.

I don’t want to emu­late her, a work-at-home author of user’s man­u­als for IBM soft­ware. Con­fronted with her belong­ings, the arti­facts of midlife and of all the choices that pre­ceded midlife, I sensed the dis­tance between what we intend and what we accom­plish. It’s not a cold dis­tance, or an impos­si­ble cliff, it’s the diver­gence of paths that touched once but will not touch again. I could see this between flicks of the bed sheet; I could see this often works out for the best.

Our lives work towards ends we never con­sid­ered. I could read this on the walls, I just wanted her to issue the warn­ing. You touched once, but touch no longer. It’s minu­tiae, con­se­quen­tial minu­tiae. Which, I sup­pose, is all mean­ing ever is.