I would have cleaned her house at three in the morning if she had asked me to, but I tried to sound professional.
“Let me check.”
Standing in the rain, I pretended to look through an imaginary calendar.
“Yes. Thursdays are open.”
“Good. Come tomorrow at ten.”
Then she paused.
“You’re crying.”
I froze.
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s raining too. I can hear it.”
Another pause.
“Ten tomorrow. 418 Linden Street. Blue door.”
Then she hung up.
When I climbed back into the car, Willa looked up from her library book.
“Who was that?”
“A woman who might give us our first real cleaning job.”
“Is she nice?”
I thought about Margaret’s voice and the way she had realized I was crying without embarrassing me by asking why.
“I don’t know yet. Maybe.”
The house on Linden Street was enormous compared with anything I had ever cleaned before.
Built in the 1920s, it had white columns, a wide porch, a blue front door with a brass pineapple knocker, and a huge oak tree standing in the yard.
Margaret opened the door before I had a chance to knock.
She was around seventy, small and straight-backed, with short white hair and reading glasses hanging from a silver chain.
She wore gray slacks and a navy cardigan with pearl buttons.
She looked like someone who had spent her entire life expecting people to arrive exactly when they said they would.
“Come in, Carly.”
She showed me through the house.
There was a long wooden hallway, a living room with an old piano, a formal dining room, an enormous kitchen with black-and-white tile, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a claw-foot bathtub.
“My husband and I bought this house in 1971. We raised our daughter Susan here. She lives in Oregon now.”
She stopped for a moment.
“My husband died two years ago.”
Then she continued walking.
“The house is too big for one person.”
“Are you planning to move?”
“No.”
She glanced toward me.
“I’m too stubborn.”
We eventually sat at the small round table beside the kitchen window.
Margaret sat down.
I remained standing.
“I’ll pay you one hundred dollars every Thursday. Nine until two. I’ll leave a check on the counter.”
One hundred dollars every week.
