Wit and Wisdom
by Beth Broderick
“Your house is pathologically clean,” my old friend Lawrence said as he looked around.
I was in the Hollywood hills then, in a house selected by my first husband. He was someone who could not abide the notion of a fixer-upper, so we bought one that was turn-key, and moved into its rather sterile environs. We then proceeded to get unmarried toot sweet. Not a good fit for me. The man or the newy-looking home, but Lawrence was right, boy oh boy was that place clean.
The house I grew up in on Park Street in Huntington Beach, was not. It was flea-infested and filthy. My Mom would set out white bowls filled with water that she said would attract the little pests. The bowls had to be white. Her theory was that the biting bugs would leap toward into the bowl, attracted to said whiteness, and unwittingly drown themselves. There were, at all times, a few insects who met a grim fate in the soiled water, but there were plenty left in the carpet that would bite your ankles as you walked across and would terrorize the pets.
Mom lived that way throughout her life. Shelved beautiful things, and was on the borderline of being a hoarder. She crowded the walls of her homes with lovely paintings that were subsequently caked with dust and streaked with nicotine, but she still found them beautiful and somehow so did we. She collected wooden ducks, anything gold, and was knee-deep in the dried flower arrangements she loved to make. They pleased her no end; just to steal a glance at one of them brought her joy. She did dishes, but she never cleaned. Never. When we had to move her out of her last place, the smoke and filth were so overwhelming that we had to wear the kind of masks that professional painters need, like full-on Darth Vader-looking things.
She just didn’t see the point, I guess. She was smart and talented. A good painter and sketch artist with a keen eye for those kinds of details but, zero interest in housekeeping. She loved things, loved jewelry, and clothes. Her closets were stuffed with outfits she had no use for. We found hundreds of boxes of footwear, many of which were repeats. When she wanted something, well, by God, she was going to have it. This impulse led her to buy the exact same pair of shoes time and time again, and most were never worn. Every box we took down released clouds of dust and debris, but inside the shoes were brand new, pristine.
My sister Laura and I are both meticulous about keeping our homes neat and clean. We got the clean gene. My older sister lived in a home buried with knickknacks and stocked floor to ceiling with crafting materials and endless amounts of holiday decor. Any and every holiday was observed with tremendous gusto. There was just too much stuff to get anything clean. One would have had to dive beneath piles of art supplies and gewgaws. It wasn’t “Park Street” dirty but it for sure wasn’t Beth-and-Laura clean. None of us cared; that was just her deal. Her daughters have taken different paths. Lauren is the tidy one while Meg’s surroundings seem to have been hit by more than one cyclone.
I have no judgement about it. We all miss Kim and her excessive … everything, and we are all happily hearing our own drum.
ABRACADABRA.
Gloria was my housekeeper for almost twenty years in LA. She came three times a week, a blessing as I was working crazy hours and maintaining a full social and social service delivery schedule. Gloria and her husband Rogelio were on hand for any occasion of import. They helped me move from home to home, something I did every couple of years for reasons that are not entirely clear to me but, I am pretty certain, have something to do with Park Street. They helped me cater fundraisers at my homes, and host the wild and wooly parties I used to throw. I paid her a proper salary, on the books, so that she would be entitled to Social Security.
I had a business manager then, who at one point called me in to scold me: “You pay your housekeeper more than any of my other clients do. I think you should cut back on her wages.”
Yeah, no. I had only to endure a ten-day period without Gloria when she visited family in El Salvador to know for certain that her efforts were worth every single penny. She was also a friend and a blast to have around. When I cooked for the multitudes, she stood by me in the kitchen for hours at a time. She would only chop vegetables with a steak knife. Her favorite was old and worn—I could never have pushed it through a carrot—but she insisted that was the correct instrument. I once tried to get her to cut back on her use of paper towels. She refused. She explained to me that she had come to America in the trunk of a car with her infant son in her arms and she planned to take advantage of its every offering. She loved paper towels, dammit! She was okay with cleaning up other folks’ messes, but she was sure as shooting going to do it her way, on her own terms.
I got a different business manager.
Gloria is retired now, and we still catch up occasionally. I am overdue to make a meal for her and the family. She loved my food,
“Oh Mrs. Beth! En la cocina, su hands son como magic!”
(In the kitchen your hands are like magic!).”
I made her lunch on the rare occasions that I was home when she came, and would always make extra whenever I cooked to send home with her after her workday. Her kids are all very successful. She and Rogelio raised a pack of professionals who are making them proud. Gloria was and is a wonder. Her tiny feet were housed in shoes that have been very hard to fill.
POOF! IT’S GONE.
In Austin I had Paisley for a while. She is a sweetheart, and Democracy, my rescue wolfdog, loved her. This was key, because he was very particular about folks and scared the wee-billy Jesus out of most. Marcella took over after I bought a house down south out of Paisley’s range, and she was darling, though dependent on her husband to drive her to work and he was not reliable, so her attendance was hit and miss. When I moved back to Los Angeles, I decided to try doing it without help.
I did it for a year. Cleaned my two bedroom/ two bath apartment on my own. I kept telling myself that I should absolutely be able to manage a small space such as the one I occupy. I spent a lot of time doing it. As I have previously noted, I can be a tetch obsessive about cleanliness, The floors were scrubbed on hand and knee. The refrigerator was frequently emptied and scrubbed down, then rearranged with a vengeance. Bathrooms were cleaned and re-cleaned. I bought a gazillion tools to help with this endeavor: a special scrubbing-mop head attached to a long pole to use on shower walls, an endless supply of Mr. Clean sponges, and all manner of eco-friendly sprays and polishes.
I gave it a whirl, but no.
It just takes up too much of my precious time. My time. I cannot just clean a room. I am a nutter. I have to remove every object on every shelf and clean behind and under them. I can spend hours on a cleaning mission, and those are hours that would be better spent on other things. So, I have been on a search to find someone to help me.
The first woman who came to clean was recommended by a good friend. She did a fine job but was never available when I asked for her to come. She would then text me out of the blue at 10 o’clock on a random night and tell me she was heading over the next morning. I needed a plan of some kind; some way of knowing about her schedule in advance, and she could not or would not provide one.
The next woman that came was from a cleaning agency. Her name started with an I but that’s all I can remember about it. She had an accent that sounded Eastern European. On our first encounter she was here for several hours and spent them cleaning the fridge and organizing it in a very strict, rather remarkable way, but that was it. She told me that she had not had time to do anything else. Huh. I mean, I love a tidy refrigerator but ….
My friend Don recommended Maria Elena, and while there are a few eccentricities in her manner, I think we may be a match. Don warned me about her habit of putting household objects in unlikely places. The centerpiece of his long dining table contains four vases which routinely hold lovely fragrant arrangements of eucalyptus. After she cleaned one day, he was down to three. She has been known to move an object from one bathroom to the other, put the odd piece of glassware in with the pots and pans. After an extensive search, Don found the missing vase in the laundry-room cupboard. I was missing my 2-cup measure for several days but finally located it in the under-cabinet beneath the wet bar.
The missing items turn up eventually, and I think it’s kind of interesting to follow the patterns of her mind regarding the placement of ordinary items in new and unexpected places. She might also be a match for me in terms of obsessiveness, maybe even a fellow nutter when it comes to that.
I came back the other day after she had been here, and the apartment was so clean it was almost unnerving. The floors were scrubbed to a shiny and slightly slippery perfection. Every photo frame polished, every surface gleaming. I took the guest-bathroom tissue box, which had made its way into the living room, back to its rightful place, jostled the barstools into position, and re-sorted the items on the kitchen countertop, then ran a bath in the sparkling tub.
My favorite tea-ball steeper thingy has gone astray, but I am sure to find it somewhere, someday, and when I do, I will be grateful to have it back.
I have the problems that everybody wants good problems, blessed problems, and a clean apartment to boot. Ya now!
On we go …
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