Sundries

This is about a house I cleaned in the early 90’s. It belonged to a doctor, his wife and their 2 adopted daughters. It was in the outskirts of town across the Scioto River. Eric Clapton has a house around  there, now. He married a woman from Columbus, Ohio, and apparently she wanted to be near her family. But at the time I cleaned the house, EC and the young woman wouldn’t have yet met. There are many beautiful homes on this river. This house was a big old farmhouse of stone and wood frame. There was some acreage around it, I’m going to guess maybe 20. There was a groundskeeper handyman employee who worked there everyday, Joe. As you pulled off the road you’d see hay bales along the driveway at certain times of year, and you’d pass an old unused kennel and workshop where Joe could stay warm and had his tools and such. There was room to park on a blacktop area at the side entrance of the house, where everyone entered the home’s kitchen. When I first entered this house I felt like I had been dropped into the home of the seven dwarves. Not because things were small scale, but because it was so charming in a woodland way. Very high quality woodland way, rich polished woods, old wool carpets and beautiful wallpaper. The kitchen and bathroom tiles were earth tones with pressed fern shapes. I have to hand it to Lois, she made a very beautiful and cozy place for her family. The kitchen chairs had rungs along the back and Lois liked those wiped down and polished, regularly. Most days when I got there she would would be cooking a hot lunch which she’d take to her daughters at their Montessori school. She’d often talk to me as she cooked and I cleaned. She believed all children should work in a fast food place when they were old enough so they didn’t take things for granted. She’d had to. She reminded me of a cross between Carol Kane and Sandy Dennis. There was always a hint of anxiety in her voice. I believe I already wrote about the small house off the tennis court that had been her husband’s bachelor pad before he married her, when he had his elderly parents living with him in the large house. It had a beautiful bathtub built for two, with brass fixtures and chunky, real amethyst tap handles. It was something. I felt that it was a not going to be a happy something, and that it wasn’t a completely happy something even at that moment. Occasionally she’d ask me to clean the little house. Looking at it all, it was like a movie set. When you clean another person's house, you get glimpses of lives. Sometimes homes are happy and content, and full of projects and the smell of tea, and stuff all over the place. The house feels the way its people feel  It may feel like emptiness and depression, clipped hairs in the sink, hardly any belongings, no art,  new carpet smells and unhappiness. But mainly, as a cleaner, it was work. It was vacuuming the entire house washing the kitchen floors and chairs, scouring all sinks and tubs and dusting. I’d spend 4 hours there. The opposite end of the house from the kitchen was off the living room,  a small room with tall windows and a spiral staircase that went up to the daughters room. If I’d thought I’d been dropped into a Grimm’s story before, that feeling  was made certain upon reaching the girls room. Wallpaper of  sepia ink branches and a carved double bed with thick comforters and an amazingly detailed rocking horse anchored the room. Lots of windows looked out into the acres of trees and field. How much fun it could be, to be a child that climbed a spiral staircase to bed each night, and climbed into that fantastical bed. Lois had her own little private sitting room on the third floor of the home. Filled with her old records, a small record player, and trunks of memorabilia, stacks of old Ms. magazines. I didn’t clean up there often, her little shrine to her former life. In that room too, you could feel, still, that it was a sad story happening in that home. I met her husband once, he was a good 25 years older than she was. I found out he had tried to be elected coroner. He seemed a bit on the disgruntled side. The little girls, when they were home, were often arguing over things, one of them was quite emphatic, but the other looked like she was silently handling what the other was dishing out. Cute little fox eyes not giving in. I wondered if the children knew they lived in a beautiful, but sorrowful home. I think I cleaned for them for two or three years.  They always gave me a box of grapefruit at Christmas, and they spent as much of the winter in Florida as they could. Lois hated the cold, I remember. 

Maybe 5-10 years later, the family moved away. To Florida. I drove by where the house had stood and there were sardine packed suburban homes there. I still think of this family and their house and how all the charm of it didn’t make anyone happy. I wonder what a cleaner might notice in my own home. How does it feel to others?

Note: this is an image from the web, not the house in the story but similar to it.