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Sarah Aswell Honorable Mention story in the 2003 Nick Adams Short Story Contest |
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Return to: ... Nick Adams Contest ... Winning stories and authors ... ACM home page Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited. |
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The kitchen was done. The living room, and the dining room and the bathrooms were done. The checkered foyer floors had been mopped, the beds had been made. The bedroom blinds had been raised in the morning and lowered in the late afternoon, the wash was drying. Mrs. Wells glanced at the grandfather clock in the hallway and saw that it was almost time to start dinner, and not long before Mr. and Mrs. Johnson returned home from the office and muddied the foyer and dirtied the dishes again. Mrs. Wells wiped her hands on her apron, and shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Her shoes had thick soles for a full day of working, but by the late afternoon, the balls and heels of her feet ached with dull throbs. The ottoman in the living room caught her eye, and she walked over and eased herself onto the edge of it with a sigh. But almost as soon as she her muscles had begun to relax, a set of headlights swept slowly through the room as a car pulled into the circular driveway. Mrs. Wells met Mrs. Johnson in the foyer. "How was work today, Mrs. Johnson?" She asked, taking her coat and briefcase. "Frustrating as usual. The government is trying to screw us out of our own money, as usual. Tom will be late to dinner. I'll be in my office." Mrs. Wells nodded and hung the coat in the closet underneath the main stairs and then commented that the outlet was broken in the laundry room and that she had to move elsewhere to do the ironing. She moved the board from the basement into the hallway outside of the office. Mrs. Johnson was bent over the books and pecking at a calculator, her hair falling around her shoulders, too involved in her work to notice Mrs. Wells staring. Mrs. Wells had finished the ironing earlier in the day, but now she stuck her arm into the basket of neatly folded shirts and made them into a tangled pile once again. She then fished a shirt out and started her slow circles with the iron. She wasn't sure which she preferred, when Mrs. Johnson worked at home or when she was at the office with her husband. When she was home, Mrs. Wells could observe her, but when she was at work, she could have the whole house to herself. Sometimes Mrs. Wells would have lunch in the main dining room instead of the kitchen, or sit down with one of Mrs. Johnson's books in the front room. Mrs. Wells didn't actually read them much -- they were mostly about economics and business and she had to keep an eye on the driveway in case someone got home early -- but she liked how they felt in her hands and how she must have looked when she was reading them. At the moment, though, she was happy just watching her employer from across the hall. Mrs. Johnson made working seem beautiful. Her pencil glided along the page, turning loops without slowing. Every now and then she would float across the room in her rolling leather chair to consult a book on the shelf, her tiny suede heels clicking against the floor. She wasn't masculine like a lot of the working women that Mrs. Wells saw during her daily commute; her business suits were fitted, and her skirts were hemmed above her knee. Mrs. Johnson was very serious about her and her husband's business, and sighed often as she flipped through the pages of the ledger. Sometimes, when Mrs. Wells stayed late, she could hear the two of them arguing about the books with the bedroom door closed, because they were both so passionate about it. It seemed strange that they were so concerned with money matters when their business seemed to be making so much of it. Now, though, Mrs. Johnson was staring at the page, her pen touching her lips, which were turned up in a slight smile. Mrs. Wells tried to mimic the face, without the pen, of course, and wished she had a mirror. They were both in their mid-forties, but Mrs. Johnson's exotic creams and expensive makeup hid her hard-earned wrinkles. Mrs. Wells looked down at the forgotten shirt, and watched the rising steam turn to smoke. The iron hissed as she picked it up, and she knew the shirt was ruined. The burn was a crisp brown, and shaped like a quarter moon. She stood dumbly and stared at the shirt -- she was always ruining things; she could never get anything right. She finally looked towards the study door for Mrs. Johnson, but the large leather chair was empty. Mrs. Johnson was already walking towards her. In one movement, she jerked the plug out of the socket and grabbed the iron from Mrs. Wells. Her heels gave her the height advantage; she had to look down. "It's alright, Mrs. Wells, Tom has plenty of shirts, and this one was beginning to wear at the collar." Her voice was very controlled, a sure sign of disappointment. Mrs. Wells kept trying to apologize, but she couldn't get past the first couple of mumbled words. She couldn't even hear what Mrs. Johnson was saying, she was so upset over the shirt. Finally, she just tried to hard to copy her boss' face -- the hard furrows on her forehead and straight, thin lips -- and though she didn't understand the words, she could hear from Mrs. Johnson's heightened tone that her new expression had been noticed. The shirt in the trash, the ironing back in the basement, and Mrs. Johnson still working in her study, Mrs. Wells chopped and diced in the kitchen. It was vegetable soup tonight, one of the few dishes Mrs. Johnson's ever-changing diet plan permitted. The kitchen was in the back of the large house, behind a large swinging door. Mrs. Wells felt safe here; her white uniform, apron, shoes, and tights made her disappear into the white tiles, cabinets, and countertops. She liked to think that only her head and arms remained, floating disembodied; a strange ghost. She bent down from the chopping board to loosen the laces on her shoes. Her reflection looked back up at her in the white kitchen tiles -- they were newly waxed and beautiful. Her hair had fallen out of her neat ponytail and hung around her face. In that moment, she looked her age. The white light of the overhead washed out her crow's feet and hid the tiredness in her eyes, her blotchy skin looked improved and her hair looked thicker. When Mrs. Wells had come to interview for the housekeeping job eight years before, these tiles were just being installed, and those crow's feet hadn't even begun to develop yet. The Johnsons had just moved in, but many of the rooms hadn't been finished. Mrs. Wells recalled being led into the living room where she was offered a seat on a still plastic-covered couch and met Mrs. Johnson for the very first time. She had been in the kitchen, and Mrs. Wells had been able see everything and hear every word she was saying because the walls between the rooms hadn't been plastered over yet. "I don't know anything about tiling; I'm an accountant. It's your job to tell me about tiling, that's your job." She was slapping her hand against a clipboard as she spoke, but her voice was controlled. A man in paint-splattered coveralls stood silent, holding a book of tile patterns, a tape measure and a calculator. "So, as a workman, tell me which of these tiles is the most expensive, and I'll take those." "Well, Ma'am, I apologize if I've done anything wrong ... I ... well, generally, the tiles get more expensive as they get larger, but the installation gets cheaper as they get bigger, and more expensive as they get smaller. It all makes logical sense, really ..." He was moving his weight from one work boot to the other. "I'll take the best tile you sell. Now, if you'll excuse me." The interview was short. Mrs. Wells was giddy on the power she had sensed in Mrs. Johnson's interaction with the workman; she had trouble concentrating as Mrs. Johnson shot out questions. "I look for two things in a maid," she began, "Diligence and trustworthiness. Can you supply those two things?" Mrs. Wells nodded. She felt she could trust Mrs. Johnson with anything. "Appearance is everything, and that means that you will be responsible for everything. We will have guests for meals often; we will have a clean house, and we will have order." She was hired. Her first day at the job she had been assigned to laying out the kitchen tiles, a task Mrs. Wells had never done before and that she couldn't find included in Mrs. Johnson's job description or contract. Mrs. Wells was happy to do it, however; she got a lot out of her job. She loved the house and all of the nice things in it. Sometimes she even felt like she was getting the better end of the deal -- she spent all day surrounded by nice things, and all she had to do was cook and clean. She was also happy to have such an understanding boss. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were everything she could have wished for, even if they did call her Missus when she had told them several times that she had never been married. There were a few other things too. Mrs. Johnson spent too much money, but on the wrong things and things she didn't need much at all. Mrs. Wells didn't spend her money at all. She was saving up. Mrs. Wells finished chopping the onion, and wiped her eyes and hands on her apron. She began to take silverware from the drying rack and put it away in the kitchen drawers. She moved quickly, and it would have been hard to catch her slipping a nutcracker into her apron pocket with a sleight of hand. |
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Note: This story is reprinted with permission. Copying this story without the express, written permission of the author is prohibited. |
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