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Cleaning House
by Mary Carroll-Hackett
 
He comes into the house you spent all Saturday morning cleaning, standing there covered with dirt from playing softball or fishing or moving furniture for one of his buddies. Or maybe the dirt’s from laying in a new culvert or from just cutting grass, and he stands there dripping sweat from that good kind of work that good men do. He stands back on the little mat you keep by the front door, the blue one from WalMart with the braided edge; he stands there smiling, apologetic, not wanting to smudge anything, his greasy work hat in his hand. He looks around, holding that work hat out in midair, then drops it against his thigh like he can’t quite figure out where to put the hat or himself. Where do you put a sweaty man’s things in a woman’s house? So his hat rises and falls between you as he talks, and he smiles. You smile too, all the while twisting the dustrag smelling of lemons and slick as oil in your fingers in your Saturday morning clean house. Neither of you move, forward or away, in that Pine Sol Lemon Fresh room.
You invite him to sit, but he says no, he can’t, eyeing your slip-covered chairs, and the just-swept floor, and says no again, says he just stopped by to see if you wanted him to run the tractor through that side ditch you can’t quite get with the lawnmower. Maybe you’d like him to reattach that loose gutter? You say no, that’s okay, don’t mess with it.
Or you say, yes, thank you.
Most likely you say yes, thank you. You watch while he props a ladder by the house, climbs it, tending to that section of gutter pulled loose, putting it back where it should be. His hands steady and sure, you watch them like you’ve never seen a man’s hands work before.
You stand there, at the edge of your azaleas, mindful not to step on the grape hyacinth or the tulips winding their way out of bloom. You stand careful in your own body with its own things needing fixing and needing messing with and tending to, not having any answers as to why he keeps coming by and why you keep letting him.
He slides the gutter into place, then notices something else loose, and you move backward out of his way, stepping on the smallest azalea, cussing softly, and he says what? And you say nothing, cause you’re not thinking about the gutter or the damned azalea, but what it is about a sweaty man that makes you want to take him by the hand down off that ladder and lead him into your woman’s bedroom with its dotted Swiss and Laura Ashley wallpaper. But you can’t say that. Yet.
So you say you got some sweet tea and he says that might be okay, that he’ll come in soon as he’s done. You go inside and stand on the braided rug, stand where he stood, sweating, and listen to your heart drumming in your quiet clean house. You stand where he stood in your loneliness and fear and think about all the things you would say and do--for him--if only you thought he would let you. The ladder scrapes away from the wall outside and you imagine him carrying it to the garage, so you hurry to the kitchen, pouring tea for both of you and setting the glasses, already beginning to sweat, on your newly polished table. You consider the roast beef sliced extra thin at the Food Lion deli now packaged up in the crisper drawer; at the time you didn’t know why you even bought it; you think he might like a sandwich, so you make one. Before you ask him. Because you know that he’s way too polite to say no if the sandwich is already made, if he comes in and the sandwich is there, if he comes in and it’s waiting for him on the table.
He knocks at the back door, and comes in, and seeming more comfortable, there on the worn linoleum in the kitchen, he finds his way around your kitchen with no problem, washing his hands in the kitchen sink, eyeing the sandwich where you put it on a plate, ruffled with lettuce, sharp with onion, waiting.
“That for me?” he asks, when you both know it is, that it’s way too much meat and bread for you, that it’s a man sandwich, a sandwich for a man who has been sweating, doing good work to work up a sweat. You want him to admit that he knows that it’s for him, just like everything else you could do for him.
But you just nod and smile. “Thought you might be hungry,” you say.
He sits down. “You thought right,” he says.
He fills your Windsor chair, its curved back swallowed by the largeness of him, and he fills your small kitchen. You drink in the shrinking space, the space he fills, and it makes you feel safe in a way that the many rooms in your house, even when clean, never can. You ask him if he wants more food, and he shakes his head.
“More tea?” you ask, jumping up to pull the pitcher from the fridge, but he’s telling you that he’s got to run. Stuff to do. He told Walter Blount he’d come help with that Buick he’s fixing and that his own truck needs an oil change, and as he stands, blocking the light pouring through the back door, you stand too. You wipe crumbs from the table that you cleaned this morning, the wood that you rubbed Murphy’s Oil into till it shone. You stroke the clean smooth wood with your fingertips and nod, saying you understand. That he’s awful good to be helping Walter that way.
You take a step toward the front room, but he goes to the back door. He goes to the back door away from the lemon smell and slipcovers, holding the knob in his hand, he reminds you to call him should that gutter come loose again, and then he thanks you for the sandwich, tapping the hat against his thigh. You tell him it’s the least you can do, and looking at him, framed there in the glass door, you see the glisten of sweat still shining on his broad forehead and heavy jaw.
He squints against the white light pouring in through the door. “Well,” he says.
You nod. “Well,” you say too. Then you move, lean forward and touch his arm, that finely shaped arm, strong as rope, and you ask, “Maybe you’ll come by one day when nothing needs to be fixed?”
He smiles, a smile you can’t read, a smile you don’t understand, one that doesn’t fit into a yes or no, and he opens the door, stepping out into that bright white light, saying, “Might do that.”
He walks away, swinging his hat, sweat making his shirt cling to his board-broad back, and you watch through the Windex-sparkling glass. You watch till he’s gone. You stand in your Saturday clean lemon scented house and wonder what it is about a sweaty man--that sweaty man--that makes you want to have him sweat all over you, a sudden rain, an afternoon coastal storm, rolling in over you deep and thick as thunder, turning your dust-pan weekend into a vacation, into a slide-away trip to your very own life. Or what you thought once your life might be.