A Manual for Cleaning Women (38 page)

We had to taper off drinking just to make the trip. We called Jon, Joe, and Ben, to let them know we were going away, would see them next Friday. We took a slow trip down. It was a wonderful trip. Swimming in the ocean. Carmel and Hearst’s Castle. Newport Beach.

Newport Beach was so great. The motel lady knocked on our door and said to me, “I forgot to give your husband the towels.”

We were watching
Big Valley
when Jesse said, “What do you think? Shall we get married or kill ourselves?”

We were close to my parents’ house when we got into a ridiculous fight. He wanted to see Richard Nixon’s house before he dropped me off. I said that I didn’t want one of the last acts in my lifetime to be seeing Nixon’s house.

“Well, fuck off, get out here then.”

I told myself that if he said he loved me I wouldn’t get out, but he just said, “Let me see your smile, Maggie.” I got out, got my suitcase from the backseat. I couldn’t smile. He drove off.

My mother was a witch; she knew everything. I hadn’t told them about Jesse. I had told them I had been laid off at school, the kids were in Mexico, that I was job hunting. But I had only been there for an hour when she said, “So, you planning to commit suicide, or what?”

I told them I was depressed about finding a job, that I missed my sons. I had thought a visit with them would be a good idea. But it just made me feel that I was procrastinating. I’d better go back in the morning. They were pretty sympathetic. We all were drinking a lot that evening.

The next morning my father drove me to John Wayne Airport and bought me a ticket for Oakland. He kept saying that I should be a receptionist in a doctor’s office, where I’d get benefits.

I was on the MacArthur bus headed for Telegraph about the time I was supposed to be drowning. I ran the blocks from Fortieth Street home, terrified now that Jesse had died already.

He wasn’t home. There were lilac tulips everywhere. In vases and cans and bowls. All over the apartment, the bathroom, the kitchen. On the table was a note, “You can’t leave me, Maggie.”

He came up behind me, turned me around against the stove. He held me and pulled up my skirt and pulled down my underpants, entered me and came. We spent the whole morning on the kitchen floor. Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix. “When a Man Loves a Woman.” Jesse made us his favorite sandwich. Chicken on Wonder Bread with mayonnaise. No salt. It’s an awful sandwich. My legs were shaking from making love, my face sore from smiling.

We took a shower and got dressed, spent the night up on our own roof. We didn’t talk. All he said was “It’s much worse now.” I nodded into his chest.

Jon arrived the next night, then Joe and Ben. Ben was pleased that we weren’t drinking. We hadn’t decided not to, just hadn’t. Of course they all asked about the tulips.

“Place needed some fucking color,” Jesse said.

We decided to get Flint’s Barbeque and go to the Berkeley Marina.

“I wish we could take them to our boat,” I said.

“I have a boat,” Jon said. “Let’s go out on my boat.”

His boat was smaller than
La Cigale
, but it was still nice. We went out, using the engine, went all around the bay in the sunset. It was beautiful, the cities, the bridge, the spray. We went back to the pier and had dinner on deck. Solly walked past, looked scared when he saw us. We introduced him to Jon, told him he had taken us out on the water.

Solly grinned, “Boy, you two must have loved that. A boat ride!”

Joe and Ben were laughing. They had loved it, being out in the bay, the smell and freedom of it. They were talking about getting a boat and living on it. Planning it all out.

“What’s the matter with you guys?” Joe asked us. It was true. The three of us were quiet, just sitting there.

“I’m depressed,” Jon said. “I’ve had this boat for a year, and this is the third time I’ve been out on it. Never have sailed the damn thing. My priorities are all out of whack. My life is a mess.”

“I’m…” Jesse shook his head, didn’t finish. I knew he was sad for the same reason I was. This was a real boat.

*   *   *

Jesse said he didn’t want to go to court. I told Carlotta I would be by for her really early. It was the time of gas rationing, so you never knew how long the lines would be. I picked her up on the corner by Sears. Jesse was with her, looking pale, hungover.

“Hey, man. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine,” I said. He nodded.

She put a scarf over her hair. She was clear-eyed and apparently calm, wearing a dusty-rose dress, patent leather pumps, a little bag.

“Jackie O goes to court! The dress is perfect,” I said.

They kissed good-bye.

“I hate that dress,” he said. “When you get back I get to burn it.” They stood looking at each other.

“Come on, get in the car. You’re not going to jail, Carlotta, I promise.”

We did have a long wait for gas. We talked about everything but the trial. We talked about Boston. The Grolier Book Shop. Lochober’s restaurant. Truro and the dunes. Cheryl and I had met in Provincetown. I told her Cheryl was having an affair. That I didn’t know what I felt. About the affair, about our marriage. Carlotta put her hand over mine, on the gearshift.

“I’m so sorry, Jon,” she said. “The hardest part is not knowing how you feel. Once you do, well, then, everything will be clear to you. I guess.”

“Thanks a lot.” I smiled.

Both the policemen were in the courtroom. She sat across from them in the spectator section. I spoke with the prosecutor and the judge and we went to his chambers. The two of them looked hard at her before we went in.

It went like clockwork. I had page after page of documentation about the police, the paperwork from the security check that did not find marijuana. The judge got the idea about the police report even before I really got into it.

“Yes, yes, so what do you propose?”

“We propose to sue the San Francisco Police Department unless all charges are dismissed.” He thought about it, but not for long.

“I think it appropriate to dismiss the charges.”

The prosecutor had seen it coming, but I could tell he hated facing the policemen.

We got back into the courtroom, where the judge said that because of a lawsuit pending against the San Francisco Police Department he felt it appropriate to drop all charges against Carlotta Moran. If the policemen had had flashlights, they would have bludgeoned Carlotta to death right there in the courtroom. She couldn’t resist an angelic smile.

I felt let down. It had been so quick. And I had expected her to be happier, more relieved. If the other lawyer had handled the case, she’d be locked up now. I even said this to her, fishing for compliments.

“Hey, how about a little elation, er, gratitude?”

“Jon, forgive me. Of course I’m elated. Of course we’re grateful. And I know what you charge. We really owe you thousands and thousands of dollars. More than that was that we got to know you, and you liked us. And we love you now.” She gave me a warm hug then, a big smile.

I was ashamed, told her to forget the money, that it had gone beyond a case. We got into the car.

“Jon, I need a drink. We both need breakfast.”

I stopped and bought her a half-pint of Jim Beam. She took some big gulps before we got to Denny’s.

“What a morning. We could be in Cleveland. Look around us.” Denny’s in Redwood City was like being in the heartland of America.

I realized that she was trying hard to show me she was happy. She asked me to tell her everything that happened, what I said, what the judge said. On the way home, she asked me about other cases, what were my favorites. I didn’t understand what was going on until we were on the Bay Bridge and I saw the tears. When we got off the bridge, I pulled over and stopped, gave her my handkerchief. She fixed her face in the mirror, looked at me with a rictus of a smile.

“So, I guess the party’s over now,” I said. I put the car top up just in time. It started to rain hard as we drove on toward Oakland.

“What are you going to do?”

“What do you advise, Counselor?”

“Don’t be sarcastic, Carlotta. It’s not like you.”

“I’m very serious. What would you do?”

I shook my head. I thought about her face, reading Nathan’s letter. I remembered Jesse holding her throat.

“Is it clear to you? What you are going to do?”

“Yes,” she whispered, “it’s clear.”

He was waiting on the corner by Sears. Soaking wet.

“Stop! There he is!”

She got out. He came over, asked how it went.

“Piece of cake. It was great.”

He reached in and shook my hand. “Thank you, Jon.”

I turned the corner and pulled over to the curb, watched them walk away in the drenching rain, each of them deliberately stomping in puddles, bumping gently into each other.

Mama

“Mama knew everything,” my sister Sally said. “She was a witch. Even now that she’s dead I get scared she can see me.”

“Me too. If I’m doing something really lame, that’s when I worry. The pitiful part is that when I do something right I’ll hope she can. ‘Hey Mama, check it out.’ What if the dead just hang out looking at us all, laughing their heads off? God, Sally, that sounds like something she’d say. What if I am just like her?”

Our mother wondered what chairs would look like if our knees bent the other way. What if Christ had been electrocuted? Instead of crosses on chains, everybody’d be running around wearing chairs around their necks.

“She told me, ‘Whatever you do, don’t breed,’” Sally said. “And if I were dumb enough to ever marry, be sure he was rich and adored me. ‘Never, ever marry for love. If you love a man you’ll want to be with him, please him, do things for him. You’ll ask him things like “Where have you been?” or “What are you thinking about?” or “Do you love me?” So he’ll beat you up. Or go out for cigarettes and never come back.’”

“She hated the word
love
. She said it the way people say the word
slut.
”

“She hated children. I met her once at an airport when all four of my kids were little. She yelled ‘Call them off!’ as if they were a pack of Dobermans.”

“I don’t know if she disowned me because I married a Mexican or because he was Catholic.”

“She blamed the Catholic church for people having so many babies. She said popes had started the rumor that love made people happy.”

“Love makes you miserable,” our mama said. “You soak your pillow crying yourself to sleep, you steam up phone booths with your tears, your sobs make the dog holler, you smoke two cigarettes at once.”

“Did Daddy make you miserable?” I asked her.

“Who, him? He couldn’t make anybody miserable.”

But I used Mama’s advice to save my own son’s marriage. Coco, his wife, called me, crying away. Ken wanted to move out for a few months. He needed his space. Coco adored him; she was desperate. I found myself giving her advice in Mama’s voice. Literally, with her Texan twang, with a sneer. “Jes’ you give that fool a little old taste of his own med’cine.” I told her never to ask him back. “Don’t call him. Send yourself flowers with mysterious cards. Teach his African gray parrot to say, ‘Hello, Joe!’” I advised her to stock up on men, handsome, debonair men. Pay them if necessary, just to hang out at their place. Take them to Chez Panisse for lunch. Be sure different men were sitting around whenever Ken was likely to show up, to get clothes or visit his bird. Coco kept calling me. Yes she was doing what I told her, but he still hadn’t come home. She didn’t sound so miserable though.

Finally one day Ken called me. “Yo, Mom, get this … Coco is such a sleaze. I go to get some CDs at our apartment, right? And here is this jock. In a purple Lycra bicycle suit, probably sweaty, lying on my bed, watching Oprah on my TV, feeding my bird.”

What can I say? Ken and Coco have lived happily ever after. Just recently I was visiting them and the phone rang. Coco answered it, talked for a while, laughing occasionally. When she hung up Ken asked, “Who was that?” Coco smiled, “Oh, just some guy I met at the gym.”

*   *   *

“Mama ruined my favorite movie,” I told Sally. “
The Song of Bernadette
. I was going to school at St. Joseph’s then and planned to be a nun or, preferably, a saint. You were only about three years old then. I saw that movie three times. Finally she agreed to come with me. She laughed all through it. She said the beautiful lady wasn’t the Virgin Mary. ‘It’s Dorothy Lamour, for God’s sake.’ For weeks she made fun of the Immaculate Conception. ‘Get me a cup of coffee, will you? I can’t get up. I’m the Immaculate Conception.’ Or, on the phone to her friend Alice Pomeroy, she’d say, ‘Hi, it’s me, the sweaty conception.’ Or, ‘Hi, this is the two-second conception.’

“She was witty. You have to admit it. Like when she’d give panhandlers a nickel and say, ‘Excuse me, young man, but what are your dreams and aspirations?’ Or when a cabdriver was surly she’d say, ‘You seem rather thoughtful and introspective today.’

“No, even her humor was scary. Through the years her suicide notes, always written to me, were usually jokes. When she slit her wrists she signed it Bloody Mary. When she overdosed she wrote that she had tried a noose but couldn’t get the hang of it. Her last letter to me wasn’t funny. It said that she knew I would never forgive her. That she could not forgive me for the wreck I had made of my life.”

“She never wrote me a suicide note.”

“I don’t believe it. Sally, you’re actually jealous because I got all the suicide notes?”

“Well, yes. I am.”

When our father died Sally had flown from Mexico City to California. She went to Mama’s house and knocked on the door. Mama looked at her through the window but she wouldn’t let her in. She had disowned Sally years and years before.

“I miss Daddy,” Sally called to her through the glass. “I am dying of cancer. I need you now, Mama!” Our mother just closed the venetian blinds and ignored the banging banging on her door.

Sally would sob, replaying this scene and other sadder scenes over and over. Finally she was very sick and ready to die. She had stopped worrying about her children. She was serene, so lovely and sweet. Still, once in a while, rage grabbed her, not letting her go, denying her peace.