Oh-Oh City Read online

  Oh-Oh City

  Jonathan Carroll

  First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1992. For the personal use of those who have purchased the ESF 1993 Award anthology only.

  Jonathan Carroll

  Uh-Oh City

  Old men ought to be explorers

  Here and there does not matter

  We must be still and still moving

  Into another intensity…

  In myend is my beginning.

  – T.S. Eliot, "East Coker"

  All right, look at it this way. If her name had been Codruta or Glenyus or Heulwen, it would have been easier to accept. Some exotic name from the Urals or Druid country, places where strange events are as common as grass. But no, her name was Beenie. Beenie Rushforth. Doesn't that sound like a fifty-year-old golfing "gal" from the local country club? It does to me. A woman with too loud a voice, too deep a tan, and too much bourbon in her glass at eleven in the morning. Beenie Rushforth, Wellesley, class of '65.

  Even the way she arrived was no big deal, either. Our last cleaning woman decided to marry her boyfriend and move to Chicago. No great loss. She wasn't the world's best worker. She was the kind who swept around a rug rather than under it. My wife, Roberta, is also convinced this woman was taking nips from our liquor bottles, but that didn't bother me. Whatdoes get on my nerves is paying good money for a clean house, but getting instead secret corners of dust, and streaked windows in the guest room.

  She gave notice, and Roberta put a file card on the bulletin board outside the supermarket. You know, along with the "lawns mowed/German lessons/portable typewriter barely used…" signs. The place you check either when you're in need, or only bored.

  We can clean our house well enough, but since the kids left and I was given a chair at the university, there is more money now than ever before. I want to use some of it to make life nicer for us. Roberta deserves it.

  Throughout my adult life, I have had an uncanny talent for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I specifically chose the U. of Michigan graduate program so that I could study with Ellroy, the greatest Melville scholar around. Who just happened to die six weeks after I began there. Roberta was pregnant with our first daughter, Norah, and was having her own tough time. But she was magnificent. Told me I had a full fellowship to a great school, and, Ellroy or not, a Ph.D. from the place meant something; so shut up and get to Work. I did. Three very lean years later, we walked out of there with a doctorate and two babies in hand. For the next decade, we lived your typical academic vagabond's life, loading up the VW bus every couple of years and driving from one end of the country to the other to new jobs. The students liked me, but my colleagues were jealous. I was writing fast and well then, and had already knocked out the monograph on Melville's Gnosticism that sent a lot of people running to their copies of Moby Dick to see what they'd missed. Then came "Moonlight marines – a study of the work of Albert Pinkham Ryder and Herman Melville," which should have made me a famous man, but did not. I didn't complain. I knew it was good, we were young, had our love, healthy babies, promise… what else do you need when you're that age? In Minnesota, we bought our first house and first dog. The sixties were starting to flex their muscles, so once again I chose the wrong place at the wrong time. Norah started kindergarten in New Mexico. We liked it there. The dry winters and long views to the mountains made us happy. The college was disgracefully conservative, but we had friends there, and life was comfortable.

  Everyone was passionate in the sixties; everyone had something "important" to say about the state of the world. Me, too. I was one of those idiots who let their hair grow too long and demonstrated loudly against the war. That would have been fine if we'd lived in New England or California, where it was fashionable, but the Southwest was full of blind patriots and armament factories. Besides, the university was a state school, and thus tied umbilically to the government. Suffice it to say, when I came up for well-deserved tenure, it wasn't granted.

  Desperate, I looked around for another job, but the only one available was at an agricultural college in Hale, Texas. God forbid you should ever spend time in Hale. We were there for four of the worst years of our lives. Pay was miserable, the kids went to a lousy school, and the other people in my department were Cro-Magnon both in their approach to education and the social graces. I almost went out of my mind. Single-handedly, I came close to ruining our marriage with my unforgivable behavior. One horrendous night, Roberta and I stared at each other across the dining room table. She said, "I never thought it would come to this." I said, "That's what happens when you marry a loser with a big mouth." She said, "I always knew you had a big mouth, but not that you were a loser. Not till now. And a mean one, too."

  Unfortunately, it didn't end there, and only because of my wife's patience and goodwill did we survive. By then I was at wit's end, and the kids were so scared of my moods that they wouldn't come close unless I ordered them over. A life that had once been as interesting and rich as a good novel was turning into a railroad timetable.

  Out of the blue, I was offered a position here. The department chairman was an old acquaintance from Michigan I'd kept in touch with over the years because we worked in the same field. I will never forget turning to Roberta after his phone call and saying, "Toots, pack the bags. We're goin' North."

  The transition was not easy. Norah was happy in her school, things were far more expensive in the new town (partially because we never did anything in Texas, because there was nothing to do), and my teaching load was greater. But despite things like that, after six months I felt like all my veins and arteries had come unclogged. We were back in the race.

  What followed was twenty years of mostly interesting days, some horrendous ones, and a general contentment that is rare. I've noticed few people say, "I have a good life." It is as if they are embarrassed or ashamed of their lucky lot, ashamed God permitted them to travel a smooth road. Not I. Five years ago I realized how blessed I was, and thought it time I began attending church. I looked around and chose one as simple as could be; a place where one could give thanks but not get choked in velvet robes and oblique ceremonies that missed the point. I am fifty-five years old, and believe God is willing to listen if we speak clearly and to the point. His responses are manifested, not in immediate answers or results, but in dots everywhere around us that need to be connected intelligently. I feel that even more strongly now because of Beenie. Despite Beenie. Bless her. Damn her.

  I answered the phone the first time she called. Certain people's voices fit their looks. Big man, deep voice – that sort of thing. My first impression of Mrs. Rushforth was middle-aged, hearty, good-natured. She said she'd seen our notice on the board and was interested in the "position." I smiled at the word. Since when had housecleaner become a position? However, we live in a time when garbage collectors are "sanitary engineers," so if she wanted it to be a position, O.K. She told me more about herself than I needed to know: she had grown children, had lost a husband, didn't need the money, but liked to keep active. I wondered if that was the truth; who cleans houses to keep their muscles toned? Why not join a gym instead and sculpt a body on gleaming silver machines? I invited her over to the house the next morning and she readily accepted. I added another word to my list of her qualities via the sound of her voice – lonely. She sounded so eager to come. Before hanging up, she gave me her telephone number in case something went wrong and I had to cancel the meeting. As soon as I got off the phone, I went to the telephone book and looked up Rushforth. I do things like that – look people up in phone books, read the small print on contest offers and cereal boxes. Equal parts curiosity, nosiness, and scholarship. I am used to gathering as much information as I can on a subject, then culling what I need fr
om it. I didn't go to the phone book because I was particularly suspicious of this Mrs. Rushforth. Only curious.

  To my great surprise, the only B. Rushforth lived on Plum Hill, a charming and prestigious neighborhood down near the lake. A cleaning woman who lived there? Now I was thoroughly intrigued, and so was Roberta after hearing about the call and my little research.

  "Oh Scott, maybe she'll be like Auntie Mame. Rich and eccentric. We'll have Rosalind Russell cleaning our house!"

  Early the next morning, I got a call from a colleague who needed my help immediately, so I had to leave and miss the meeting with the mysterious Beenie.

  When I returned at lunchtime, Roberta filled me in. "What does she look like?"

  "Middle-age, middle-size, a little round, short gray hair. She looks like a masseuse."

  "I thought so. How'd she dress?"

  "In one of those bright running suits and complicated sneakers. She's very friendly, but also very take-charge. Know what I mean? She asked if she could look around the house before I even offered her the job. Checking out the work load.

  "You did offer it?"

  "Yes. Sweetie, she's nice and looks dependable: Any person who lives on Plum Hill but wants to clean houses to keep busy has got to be at least interesting, right? And if she turns out to be a good cleaner, too, all the better."

  "True. Bring on the Beenie."

  "She starts tomorrow."

  My seminar in Hawthorne took up most of the next morning. It's a good class, full of intelligent students who appear to have a genuine interest in the work. Generally I come out of there feeling invigorated and happy to be a teacher. That day a rather heated discussion arose over certain imagery in the short story "Young Goodman Brown." In the middle of it, one fellow asked another, "Do you think you'd say all these things if you knew Hawthorne was sitting in the back of the room? You should hear yourself. Would you be so confident if you knew the guy who'd written it was listening?"

  A good question I'd heard asked in a variety of ways over the years. I was thinking it over as I walked in our front door and was greeted by the familiar voice of our vacuum cleaner.

  "Anyone home?"

  The vacuum kept up its high roar.

  "Helllllo?"

  Nothing. Then a burst of familiar laughter from the living room. I walked in and saw Roberta bunched over on the couch, cackling. My wife is a dramatic laugher – she'll smack a knee and rock back and forth if the joke's good. It's easy to amuse her, and a pleasure, too, because she's so appreciative. I think part of the reason why I fell in love with her in the first place was that she was the first woman to genuinely laugh at my jokes. Sex is great, but making a woman laugh can be even more satisfying sometimes.

  "You must be Scott. Roberta was giving me the lowdown on you." She was all gray and silver. Gray hair, gray sweatsuit, gray sneakers. Hands on hips, she looked me over as though I were a used car. The vacuum was still on and stood humming by her side. "Beenie?"

  "It's really Bernice, but if you call me that, I'll quit. How do you do?"

  "Very well. Looks like you two are doing O.K."

  "I was telling Roberta about my son."

  My wife waved a hand in front of her face as if there were a fly too close. "You've got to hear these stories, Scott. Tell him the one about the rabbit. Please!"

  Beenie looked both pleased and shy. "Aww, I'll tell him some other time. I got to get this vacuuming done. I want to get to the windows today, but I'm still not half-done with this."

  She unplugged the machine and pulled it behind her into the hall. A moment later it started up again in the dining room.

  I looked over my shoulder to make sure she wasn't near. "How's she doing?"

  "Terrific! She's an atomic power plant. Have you seen the kitchen yet? Take a look. It's like an ad for floor wax on T.V. – the whole room is one big gleam. You need sunglasses. I think we lucked out with her."

  "That would be nice. Why were you laughing so hard?"

  "Oh, because she's funny. The woman tells stories… You've got to hear her talk."

  "I'll be happy if she can clean."

  "That's what's great – she does both."

  New sounds filled our house that day. Pillows pounded and plumped; the vacuum cleaner hissed up against floorboards and walls that hadn't been cleaned in years. She found a window in the bathroom that had probably never known full sunlight to pass through it since the house was built thirty years ago. The dog bowls shone; curtains were washed; Roberta couldn't get over the fact that the area under the unused back bathroom sink was not only spotless, but also smelled wonderfully of an unknown new disinfectant. Beenie's answer? "When it comes to cleaners, I bring my own." My desk was dusted and the papers neatly arranged. Even the books on it were stacked alphabetically. I didn't like anyone touching my desk – it was one of those great taboos in the family – but I was so impressed by the detail of her cleaning that I said nothing. Neither of us knew if this whirlwind stopped for lunch. Neither of us saw her even sit down. She accomplished so much in that eight-hour period that, after she was gone, the two of us walked around our still-glowing house, exclaiming about one find after the other.

  "My God, she washed the dog, too?"

  "No, just vacuumed and brushed him, but did you see your shoes? They've been polished."

  "And my underwear? I think she ironed them. No one's ever ironed my underpants."

  "Are you trying to tell me something dear husband?"

  It was an Easter-egg hunt. Who would think of cleaning invisible things like light bulbs in table lamps or the top of the saltshaker? This latter cleaning I discovered days later at breakfast. I had often looked at that object and thought about wiping the glut of white crystals away and sticking a toothpick down the holes to free up the blockage. Now it had been done, along with so much else.

  God knows, Roberta and I have enough to talk about. If it's not the kids, it's our life, or our separate lives, or books, or whatever. But Beenie Rushforth was a major topic of conversation the next few days. Whether it was what she'd done or how she'd done it, somehow or other, she kept coming up. We discovered after the initial shock that not only had she cleaned, ironed, scrubbed, polished … her way through the entire house, but also had done a myriad of small things in most rooms to organize us better. The alphabetized books on my desk, for example. In the kitchen cupboard the canned foods were ordered, the spices arranged in such a way that they were now all visible, rather than before, when they had been thrown together in a heap that needed sorting through any time one needed bay leaves or cinnamon. The ink bottle on Roberta's desk had been wiped, and the envelopes next to it sorted and arranged by color.

  "This is too much."

  "What?"

  "Look – the toothpaste tube's been squeezed from the bottom so it's all up in the top. You didn't do it, did you?"

  "Me? You've been yelling at me for thirty years to squeeze from the bottom."

  "I thought so. Roberta? Why are we so astonished by our cleaning lady?"

  "Because she's amazing. And costs the same as the last one, who didn't lift a finger."

  "Tell me what else she told you. How does she work living on Plum Hill?"

  "It's not what you think. Apparently, it's someone's estate, but there's a small gatehouse on the edge of the property, and that's what she rents. She's been there for years, and pays very little for it. Her husband died ten years ago. He was an executive for an insurance company in Kansas City."

  "I guess that explains why she said she didn't need the money: Whenever an insurance guy pops off, his family inevitably inherits a bundle because he held the best policy."

  "She did say she was comfortable."

  "I'll bet. And she had a son?"

  "Yes, and a daughter. He sounds like a card. Get her to tell you the story about the cigars."

  "O.K. You know what I've been thinking? This sounds odd, but I've been wondering what is she going to clean when she comes next week? What is there left
to do?"

  The basement.

  "Oh Beenie, that's not necessary. It's only the laundry room and storage. We're never there."

  "I went down last week to have a look, and I think it's got a lot of possibilities if you want to use them. I'll need only a few hours, and we'll have everything ready and right."

  Roberta said, for the rest of that morning until I came home for lunch, she heard the most disconcerting mix of sounds coming from that pit. Which is what it is, truth be told. The dark at the bottom of our stairs; the once-a-week-descent-with-a-basket-of-laundry-under-your-arm ordeal when there are so many other things you'd rather be doing.

  In our house, there are two places to purposely misplace things – attic and basement, in that order. If you vaguely want to keep something, but have little desire to see it for a while, disappear it into the attic. If you don't ever want to see it again, but have neither the heart nor guts to make the big break and toss it in the garbage, travel it to the basement. The land of damp shadows and dead suitcases. If it had been up to me, I would have detached that bottom part of our house like the first stage of a rocket once it's reached a certain altitude. With the exception of the ten-year-old washing machine, the only function the basement served was as momentary memory flash now and then of kids stomping around down there, yelling across hide-and-seek or monster games. Our children were grown and gone. When they came to visit, their own were still too young or uninterested to play there.

  A house closes down on you as you grow older. Because you need less space, the rooms once filled with life accuse with their closed-door stillness: you gave me life, but now you've taken it away. Where are the kids, the parties, the noise and movement and things resting on the floor a moment? No one's ever reflected in the mirrors anymore; there are no teenage-perfume or warm-chicken-dinner smells in the unused dining room. You have nothing for me? Then I damn you with my quiet, the objects that never move, the things that stay clean too long.