The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag (3 page)

I’d picked up the phone on the way to the mailbox and the winter air stole the breath from my lungs. The second week in February and at least another month of daytime highs slightly above freezing. I really missed Virginia Beach.

“I’ve been better, with this new partner at the firm driving me to distraction. They get younger every year and the inexperience shows. Holding a sweaty hand and telling the newest pimple-faced hire that it’ll all be all right is
not
how I foresaw spending my golden years.”

I couldn’t picture my mother-in-law holding anyone’s hand unless it was to keep him still while she latched onto his jugular.

“However, that’s another matter. The reason I’m calling is to invite you to a luncheon downtown on Thursday.”

I held the phone away from my ear and scowled at it. No way did I hear that right. “Come again?”

“It’ll be a decent-size event for a friend of mine who is retiring. Right down the street from Beacon Hill.”

“You want me to go to a luncheon? With you?” The questions sounded even more stupid than I’d imagined, but in my defense, my mother-in-law brings out the worst in me. The last time she’d introduced me to friends of hers, I’d been detained by the police after some yahoo off-ed a man and dumped his body in my wheelbarrow. Even if I wasn’t a devoted stay-at-home-mom and a cleaning lady to boot, I figured Laura wouldn’t show me off. Must be the bumpkin stamp on my forehead.

“Yes…. dear…. A luncheon….” The answer came slowly, as if Laura was communicating with the squirrelly village idiot. She said dear the way some people say dumb-ass.

Scowling, I rolled my head around on my shoulders, as if understanding would fall into place with enough centripetal force.

“I will email you the time and address. You can come early and pick me up at the house. Be sure to wear something appropriate, none of your flashier get-ups.”

I blinked, but didn’t respond. Neil once said his mother issued more orders than all the BUD/s instructors he’d had during training to become a SEAL. While her words might have been camouflaged as a request, there was no doubt in my mind that I’d been appointed for the task.

“I’ll have to check my schedule before I can commit to anything,” I hedged, but there was no way I’d agree to her whims until I figured out the why of it. “Neil and I have some stuff going on and I promised—”

“What sort of ‘stuff’?” Suspicion coated her tone.

For an instant, my inner smart-aleck wanted to retort ‘wild monkey sex,’ but I came to my senses in time. Laura made it blatantly obvious that she didn’t appreciate my sense of humor. Her loss. I was simply glad Neil hadn’t inherited her superiority complex.

“Oh you know, some post-holiday shopping, a few appointments we’ve been putting off, things like that.” I purposefully kept my answer vague because I didn’t want Laura’s take on our seeing a marriage counselor. Of course, she’d think it was my fault and do her best to make me feel like a steaming pile of manure.

“I see. Well, I would hate to hold you up from your busy social life.” The frost in her voice chilled me more than the Massachusetts’ winter. The phone clicked in my ear. Another lesson on how to win friends and influence in-laws brought to you by Maggie Phillips.

The snow had melted a bit on our driveway, but more was predicted for the next day. How did Yankees deal with this every stinking year?

I scuttled inside and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders. Flipping through the mail, I sorted bills from junk and left Neil’s
Men’s Fitness
magazine on his end table.

Another fight had ensued when Neil realized I’d cancelled our memberships to the gym. Now he was stuck running at the high school track and working out with free weights in our garage to keep fit and he wasn’t happy about it.

Depressed, I sat down at the computer and checked my email. Several requests had come in for my cleaning services. I sent the auto response Josh had created for me, letting the client know my rates had changed. When I’d first been lured into this cleaning business, I’d worked for way too little and consequently, become the Hag everyone wanted to hire. By charging more, I’d turned off some potential clients, but also made a bit of money last month. I still had to turn people down because I had yet to hire a new cleaning partner.

Now what? Neil was at work, picking up some overtime before our 1:00 session with the marriage guru and the boys wouldn’t be back from school for hours. I’d knocked on Sylvia’s door twice already and she either wasn’t home or refused to answer. Eric’s SUV hadn’t been parked in the driveway, so I gathered he was lying low like the snake he resembled.

Ruminating on Eric and Sylvia’s marriage was not a healthy way to spend my time. After a few moments, I decided to take a page out of Neil’s book and exercise my troubles away.

Every pair of sweats I owned had at least two bleach stains on them, so I snagged a pair of my husband’s track pants, rolling them at the waist a few times so I wouldn’t trip over the cuffs. Donning crappy sneakers and an extra sweatshirt, gloves and Neil’s SEAL cap, I checked out my appearance then wished I’d resisted. I looked like the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. Hopefully Bill Murray wouldn’t show up and zap me into another dimension.

Grabbing my keys and cell phone, I locked the house then hit the streets. Our neighborhood is built on a series of rolling hills and the bright sun sparkled off the snow-covered rooftops below. Midmorning on a weekday, no neighbors were out and about since I’m the only stay-at-home mom in the community. Just as well, since I didn’t particularly want any witnesses as I stumbled and ran.

Jogging has never been my forte and I lasted maybe a minute before I decreased my unsteady lope to a brisk walk. My mother had always said I was one of those girls who couldn’t do two things at once, and bless her skeptical soul, she was right. Neither my irascible brother nor I could walk and chew gum, let alone jog and think. Since I didn’t want to think about Josh locking himself in the bathroom, Eric getting serviced by the Fran Dresher look-alike or my husband thinking our marriage needed an intervention, I picked up my pace again. My muscles were strong, built from years of vigorous cleaning and frenetic mothering, but I couldn’t seem to get my breathing under control.

Stumble, step, wheeze, stumble step wheeze. I focused on inhaling through my nose, shoving oxygen down into my lungs by force of will. After another indeterminable amount of time—maybe forty seconds—I slowed again and gasped for breath. This was ridiculous, my husband could run a five minute mile and he was pushing forty! Granted, he had the benefit of BUD/s training, the hardcore physical conditioning required for a man to become a Navy SEAL, but Neil was a natural athlete and made his health a priority.

I struggled for air, my gaze landed on the Kline mansion situated on top of the hill. Last I knew, Mr. Kline had put the house up for sale and was off being strange in some other neighborhood. He was a decent, if wacky man, but I wished I’d never met him. My life had spiraled out of control the moment I’d set foot in his house and I wanted it back.

Determination burned in the pit of my stomach and I started off again. I was tired of my pity party, tired of being the laughingstock of the Hudson P.D. Tired of fretting about my family and friends, tired of jumping every time a door slammed or a car backfired. That sick S.O.B had already taken enough in his quest for vengeance, and he couldn’t hurt me anymore. I needed to get some control over my life. Neil had told me the men who made it all the way through the zealous training and into the SEAL teams shared one common trait, absolute resolve. They saw the Budweiser pin at the end and unflinchingly worked to attain it.

Well I wanted to be fit and fabulous, or at least be able to run a freaking mile if I wanted. My cell phone rang and I praised the Lord and slowed to retrieve it from my pants pocket. Rome wasn’t built in a day after all.

“Hello?” I rasped into the phone. Crap, one would think I’d been having a smoking contest with the Marlboro Man.

“Maggie my love, where are you?” Leo sang into the phone. Ever upbeat and energetic, Leo is a housekeeper for my in-laws and my best bud, after Neil, for close to a decade. He’s worked for Laura for almost as long and is the only person I know who calls her a gorgon to her face. Why she hasn’t fired him is still a mystery, but I suspect it has something to do with his triple chocolate cake. Gorgons need to eat, too.

“You’re in a good mood.” I observed.

“Why talk when you can sing? Why walk when you can dance?” Leo sighed dreamily and it clicked into place.

“Uh oh, you met someone. Where and what’s he like? Come on Leo, dish.”

“Perhaps I’m happy just because the sun is shining and here I have a few minutes to talk to my very best friend. Does everything in the world need to be about a man?”

“Yes,” we answered at the same time and laughed.

“So come on, get to the juicy stuff. What does he look like?” No man would ever be good enough for my pal, not only is he a total peach on a fast track for sainthood, he looks a bit like a mature Jude Law, only less broody. Chances were good that I’d feel the same way about both Kenny and Josh when they started dating, so smothering Leo was good practice.

“Where are you?” Leo asked again.

“Where are you?” I shot back and moved over to the side of the road to let a car pass. Instead, the vehicle slowed and the window rolled down to reveal a grinning Leo.

“Want some candy, little girl?”

“You’re a sick, sick man. How did you find me?” I shut my phone and climbed into the car.

“I went to your house first and when no one answered, I called you. The wheezing tipped me off. Thought you could use a ride home. Or an oxygen tank.”

“Quit picking on me and spill.”

Leo loved to tell drawn-out stories and he was quite good at painting a picture. “Since it was my night off, I went to a party in South Boston with a few of my friends. Do you remember Dillon?”

“The angel who made me those slipcovers?” Without consulting me, my mother-in-law had purchased a sofa and matching love-seat for us for Christmas. It may have been a nice gesture, if made out of kindness instead of mortification. Or if the furniture had been scotch-guarded to protect the gleaming white upholstery.

“That’s him. Anywho, he bought this fab mini-mansion, which he just finished renovating. Total Greco-Roman masterpiece, sculpted columns, authentic wall treatments throughout. He had the idea he’d do a restore and flip, but with the markets cooling off, he got stuck with it.”

“Yikes, makes me glad we unloaded our house in Virginia Beach when we did.” I’d been following the housing bubble story online and some of the tales curled my hair. My own personal nightmare is to be penniless and at the whim of the universe. It’d happened before and I’d survived, but the thought of losing everything, of being so poor I couldn’t buy food for my family gave me palpitations.

“Well, he rented out the upstairs half for a song so he could keep up with mortgage payments.” Leo was like a little kid saving his favorite piece of candy ‘til last.

“And…,” I prompted. Leo pulled up to my house.

“Do you have any good coffee? Not that generic brand swill, but fresh-off-the-Columbian-mule coffee?”

“I swear; you are such a drama queen.”

“Hello kettle, this is the pot calling and I’m sorry to say it, but you’re black.”

“Fine, I’ll make you some real coffee.” I lunged from the car, and slammed the door. So what if I was proving his point?

My freezer was stocked for a Leo visit and I retrieved a bag of whole bean medium-dark and tossed it at his head. “You make the coffee. I need a shower.”

“Work on my day off? You must be joking.”

“You brought it on yourself, pal. Besides, you make better coffee.”

“True, true. It’s such a burden being me.” Leo knew where I kept everything and he already had the filter in place by the time I left the kitchen.

I have showering down to a science. I don’t have to look good afterwards. I can go from mud wrestler filthy to sparkling clean in under two minutes. The low-maintenance look, or as close as I get to it without resembling an alpaca. Neil appreciates this about me and I usually ignore my dormant and understated pride, except when I want to make an impact. Then it takes over an hour to get myself whipped together.

Leo didn’t need me to impress him, so after I garbed my frame in a faded sweatshirt and a pair of decent jeans; I traipsed in the kitchen and poured myself the first cup. “Enough of the stall tactics, I want the juicy tid-bits.”

“Where was I?” Leo tapped his chin in mock forgetfulness. The man has a brain like a steel drum, he has to in order to run Ralph and Laura’s household so smoothly. I circled my hand, indicating he should move it along. “Dillon and his masterpiece.”

“Right, so we had a small get together there last weekend—”

“For the Super Bowl?” I interrupted, smiling behind the rim of my mug.

Leo quirked an eyebrow. “A matter of fact, yes Miss Sassy-pants.”

I gagged on my coffee. “Seriously?” The mental picture of Leo and his Bostonian pals hanging around munching chips and staring at a big screen wouldn’t gel. They were more the Oscar-party types.

“We each dressed up in our favorite player’s team colors and I brought these little spinach-stuffed puff pastries, absolutely delish! I’ll shoot you the recipe.”