Tuesday is the day I most look forward to. I watch for her from my front window. She’s usually on time, but occasionally she’s early, depending on the bus she takes; yet her picture is always the same, a youngish woman rounding the corner with her head down and her shoulders slightly slumped, heavy from her canvas bag full of bottles of bleach and orange oil and rags and sponges, with a mop clenched in the hot crevice of her left armpit. Most Tuesdays, she wears her dyed-black hair pinned back in an old-fashioned bun which I find too severe. Other times, she drapes a paisley scarf over her head so that it covers everything in the beginning, until stray strands loosen and escape as she scrubs savagely at ceramic tiles or flashes her naked throat at the ceiling, reaching for the dust settled on the top of my window blinds.
Today, the blanched sky is a shamble of clouds, and it might rain because my knees are sore. I strain my eyes. Nothing. Ten past nine and she’s nowhere to be found, and my ribcage constricts with a sharp pain, and I wonder if I’m starting to lose pieces of my mind, that I’ve got the day or the time wrong somehow, but before I can check my diary, she appears, ambling down the sidewalk, wearing the house dress I like so much, the one with the pink and yellow roses that hits just above her slim brown ankles. Her hair is different; it’s loose and long around her shoulders, as though she’s just gotten out of bed, and it’s a sight of beauty, to see it all unwound around her quiet face, and my chest relaxes with a softening of breath and I shake my head and laugh a bit that I got worked up over ten minutes. The rattle of the knob and she lets herself in, scuffing the soles of her shoes on my old rug with a gentle scratching before she walks under the archway that separates my living room and entryway.
“Good morning, Mr. Peterson. I’m sorry I’m late.”
The crown of her head bends toward the floor. I want to reach out and take her nail-bitten fingers and warm them in my own because I know the wind has taken a vicious turn today, but we have never touched, not in any of the years she has come to my house, and I would never want to scare her.
“No bother. I should get myself one of those smartphones so you can reach me when you need to.” I laugh in the hollow of silence and hope she smiles, but she doesn’t look up; she’s getting organized for the day. “You can start in the kitchen,” I finally say.
I settle into my armchair, with a lukewarm cup of coffee I won’t drink and the radio singing out commercials in the background. She fills her bucket partway full of water, and then she wets a pink sponge, and begins to scrub the laminate countertop. Occasionally, she grunts or sighs or hums a short tune I never recognize. I’ve always thought it’s her way of speaking to me. See this spot, here, Mr. Peterson? It’s stubborn. You need to stop splashing your bacon grease. And those cigarettes aren’t any good for you. Not for your heart not your lungs. And I don’t like the smell they leave. It’s hard to clean out. And sometimes I would answer her in a silent dialogue, unable to contain a chuckle over her concern. Sure, you’re right. I shouldn’t be eating bacon so much and I should quit the smokes. You’re as sharp as a nurse. If you lived here, you’d be a good influence.
She’s done with the countertop and now she takes the mop and grips it with her slender fingers. She hasn’t tied her hair up to clean. It sways as she strokes the floor with her whole body, a back-and-forth motion. And I’m lost in the movement until her head snaps up from the floor. She’s caught me looking. Her mouth parts and this gesture of surprise and innocence feels strangely rehearsed.
“Mr. Peterson,” she says. “I’m sorry to say that I won’t be able to clean for you anymore.” She looks at me expectantly. Something hot spreads from my stomach to my neck, and I remember the toast I’ve eaten this morning, instead of the bacon and eggs, and it’s like a hard ball has settled in my gut.
“I’m sorry?”
She clutches the mop handle to her chest, right to where I think her heart must beat.
“I’m getting married and my husband doesn’t want me to work anymore. I would have told you sooner but he only told me this past week.”
“You’re getting married?”
“I got engaged a few months ago.”
“Who is he?”
“I’ve known him since we were children.”
I want to say you never mentioned him, but I realize she never mentions anything. That we have barely spoken all these years beyond perfunctory pleasantries, however much I wished to break through to the surface of her person. Her left hand is bare. No mark of a ring. At the base of her collarbone is a small bruise, no bigger than a thumbprint. A groove deepens between her brows.
“Sir, are you ok?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine.”
“But sir, you’re crying.”
I touch my face; it’s true. Her mop seeps onto the floor, leaving tiny arteries of water on the tile.
“I’m just…I’m just very happy for you.”
She smiles. Hesitant, dimpled. Then, with a drooping head, she wipes away the puddles she made.
“Thank you, sir,” she says, without looking up. “Thank you.”
I get up from my chair to stand at the window. It’s raining. A soft drizzle from the open sky. My knees were right. Outside, there’s nothing. Nothing except the barren horizon of grass and sidewalk.
Behind me, she hums.
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