Spring Cleaning Read online

leaning

  By Allison Brown

  Copyright 2013 Allison Brown

  “Crazy, crazy, crazy,” she sighed. “I swear I’m going crazy.” Marian kept turning around and around, as she forgot what she was looking for. She stood in the hallway, beside the doorway to the living room, where she seldom went; it was reserved for company. The long skinny table along the side of the hallway was scattered with weeks of mail, ripped into and left. Mittens, a few scarves, and an old fashioned muff that smelled like mothballs were laying there along with the mail.

  Marian was looking at the floor though, not at the table. She knew she meant to look for something, something on the floor. She had dropped it—no, it had fallen. No, the wind had blown it from the other room. Oh, she couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember what it was, even. A hairpin? She was going out, so that could be it. She was going out wasn’t she? Yes, she was almost sure of that, because she just got off the phone with her son, and she distinctly remembered him saying “ok mum, I’m on my way over.”

  It must have been a hairpin, she decided. Then again, there was nothing visible on the floor. She kept the floor so clean usually. That’s why she noticed it there in the first place. Then she was about to pick it up, but, oh after that the phone rang. So it couldn’t have been a hairpin after all—she hadn’t known she was going out when she noticed it. She came back, intending it pick it up, but now there she was, all bent over, giving herself a sore back looking for something that wasn’t there. What was it? What was it? Oh my, she couldn’t even remember where she had seen it. Was it in that corner? Or under the table? She stood up momentarily, exhaling heavily and holding her hands on the small of her back to support it like a very pregnant woman might. She, much too old to be pregnant, carried the figure of a women blessed with five sons and a daughter, and this part of her past weighed noticeably on her legs and weakening back.

  She stood, still breathing hard, surveying the hallway. She tightened her pink housecoat around her waist, and smoothed her gray hair behind her ears. The old, dark wood creaked as she shifted her weight, and the cracks in the white paint glared at her, but she could never get up the energy to putty them up. She was trying to sort out in her head what she needed to do. The weather was getting warmer—the storm windows needed to be replaced with screens. Marian sighed, and forgetting about whatever it had been on the floor, turned to go into the kitchen. It was no use thinking about switching the storm windows, no use at all, she said to herself. The screens were stored up in the attic, hidden safe behind a trap door and a shaky old ladder that she had been forbidden to climb up for years now. Her children took good care of her, she would say to herself, when she had to remind herself that they loved her and only wanted to help by keeping her from breaking a hip. She cursed her hip for being more susceptible to breakages than it was twenty years ago.

  Oh you poor old house, she thought, as she ran her hand along the white wall. They’d been through a lot together, she and that house. Almost sixty years she had lived there. She prided herself on this consistency. It was only my stubbornness that kept you from being sold long ago, she reminded the house.

  A whistle came from the kitchen, low at first, but then raising its pitch and urgency. Surprised to hear that the kettle began to boil, she turned towards the kitchen. She scrunched up her face, confused. When had she put the water on? It was probably tea time, but she couldn’t recall the time exactly. Hadn’t she just looked at the clock? She couldn’t remember. With one last deep, heaving breath, she tiredly moved her body to the kitchen, where she lifted the kettle off the stove, quieting its screams. She reached up above her head to a cupboard, not even having to look where she put her hand to fetch her favorite tea, English breakfast. She hummed to herself—what was that tune called?—as she dipped the tea bag repeatedly to make the water turn a deep brown. She liked her tea strong, strong as death (that was the song, she remembered: set me as a seal upon your heart, was how it started. It was from the Bible; I think, she tacked on. It could have been Coleridge) and she liked it with cream. She had always drunk her tea with cream, except when she was pregnant with her third son. She couldn’t keep any dairy down for much of the nine months—and still cringed at the memory of those stomach aches. Replacing the kettle on the stove, she went to get the cream from the refrigerator. The scream of the kettle once again pierced the silence of the kitchen, and she was so bewildered that she let go of the cream, letting it slip from her hand to the floor and glug its contents around her feet. My slippers, was the first thing she thought, and she watched them soak up the cream like sponges. The kettle was still whistling. She shook her head.

  What in the world was going on? The kettle’s scream pitched higher, and as if kicked from behind, Marian stood up straight. She tsked at the cream, stepped out of her slippers, and went to turn off the stove. Of course—she had forgotten to turn off the stove. That was all, nothing to get in a fuss over. She took a dishtowel, wet it, and wrung it firmly in her hands. With much concentration, she got herself on her knees and started to mop up the spilled cream. It reminded her of when Norm, her youngest, was mad at her that one time. He stood in the middle of that very kitchen, with the meanest, most defiant face he could muster, as she told him that, no, he could not spend the night with Tom, he had to go to his sister’s dance recital because that’s what good brothers do. She remembered that he let out a wild, frustrated scream and crashed the milk jug he was holding as hard as he could onto the floor. It splattered everywhere. She chuckled. The cream made a much smaller puddle. With Norm’s spill, she was finding milk splatters on the cupboard doors days later, after she thought she had cleaned it all. Some times she imagined she could still smell the slight scent of sour milk in the kitchen.

  But this was much smaller, this she cleaned up in a few swipes of the dishtowel. She never did keep much cream in the house, anyways, now that it was only her. Not many people over for tea, nowadays. And besides, the slippers also soaked up most of the cream. She laughed, using the slippers as sponges to help soak up the rest, and threw them in the sink along with the rag. Now, what was she about to do. She looked around the room. The image of Norm’s seven-year-old face was still stuck in her head. None of the others got mad at her like Norm did, she thought. Norm was just stubborn. The others were lambs like her husband, but Norm was like her, stubborn and strong. “Stubborn and strong,” she repeated out loud to herself.

  Now she stood looking from the kitchen into the hallway. She could see clear through to the front door. That doorknob looked dusty. And dull. She wondered if she should shine it up. They replaced that when they moved in. She always wanted to live in a house with doorknobs shaped like roses. Big ornate roses cast in brass that made you want to pause at the door and run your finger over the smooth brass petals. Was that the third anniversary, or fourth, that Paul gave them to her? Anyways, they were looking dull.

  Oh there it was! A glint of gold on the floor in the hallway caught her eye. From the kitchen the light hit the object just right, making it glow. She walked towards it, not moving her eyes. She would not forget what she was looking for this time. A she got closer, she saw it was a delicate gold ring, wedged between the floor boards. Marian picked it up, letting it rest in the palm of her hand, and then held it between her index finger and thumb, at arm’s length away from her face. Her eyes were not as good as they used to be. Where were her darned glasses anyways? She could barely make out what design the tiny ring had on it. She strained her eyes and felt the tinge of a headache coming on, but focused her eyes enough to see that it was a small Claddagh. It looked familiar, and felt familiar as she ran her thumb over the surface of it. But she couldn’t place whose it was, or when she had seen it last. It could have been her daughter, Kelly�
��s. Or one of her friends. How long had it been there? She usually kept the floor so clean, wouldn’t she have noticed it? It couldn’t have been there very long. But then again—didn’t they used to have a carpet in the hallway? One of those long skinny ones. Hadn’t she? She couldn’t remember. If they did used to have one, when did she take it away? Maybe she had spilled something on it. Or maybe they had never had a carpet in this hallway. Marian stood, dazed, still looking intently at the floor, trying to visualize what kind of carpet they would have had there(green, she decided—it was her favorite color), and what had happened to it.

  There was the creak of footsteps on the porch.