Annie Ruiz tired of the slow progress of the automated pod coffee as it trickled into another bleak morning. The kitchen window revealed the neighbor’s cat already stalking the local mourning dove population through her neglected garden. Last year’s irises rotted over their suffocated young, a few spindly shoots of green clawing up at her, accusing. Glancing at the glass, she noticed the vague, painting-like quality it gave the yard. She traced her index finger across it. It came back the color of decay. Annie cried out in disgust and ran it under the faucet.
Eager to shake the experience, she went back upstairs to rifle through the linen closet. To her dismay the good sheets—an elegant lilac grey that she picked out to look dreamy next to her moon-colored walls—were stale and caked in the same oily dust of her window. Not those, not the old blue ones, not even the plain white ones were usable. She nudged the unfolded pile with her foot. Then, with an irritated sigh, plucked them off the floor to be delivered to the laundry room.
That’s how it started. On the first day, she reorganized the disheveled basement, chucked the old sponges from the sink and dispatched the spiders that had taken over the doorway. Her cleaning supplies were in a sorry state, some discolored from being left in the tiny window, some dried to a sticky film on the sides of their containers. These she threw into the unlined bin that lived in the basement because no one ever had the courage to pitch it. She dragged it out to the curb as the sun was setting and sweat slicked her underarms.
The next day, Annie began in the sitting room. Piles of mail had accumulated on the coffee table and the loveseat, forming tree rings of outdated magazines and medical bills with varying amounts of threatening red ink. She mauled off the addresses on the envelopes and deposited them into the recycling. She passed a vacuum over the carpet and spot cleaned the upholstery. She used dish soap and rags to clear the dust from picture frames. Her son grinned at her in graduation regalia, as a sticky-palmed toddler in a Spiderman costume, and with his arms around her pregnant daughter-in-law.
Rain left little pools of water on the kitchen floor when she returned with her grocery bags. They overflowed with bottles of detergents and bleach, all promising by some noxious alchemy to leave her home sparkling and lemon fresh. When she finally cleared, dusted, vacuumed, and put her throw pillows on tumble dry, a deep and satisfying exhaustion settled over her. She settled into a dreamless sleep on the couch. For the first time in months, she didn’t wake until the sun was up and the rumble of the local school bus reminded her it was past eight.
That day, she brought the trusty coffee maker out of exile, gingerly edging it into the crux of her elbow from the top of the fridge. It wiped clean easily enough. Just to be safe, she ran a bath of white vinegar and water through it, relishing the sharp aroma as it burned away the smell of disuse. As it sputtered, she turned her attention to the microwave. She scrubbed the glass rotating in the sink, and scraped the charred, crusted grease with bare fingernails. Her hands used to be a point of pride, her regular manicures were the one little indulgence she allowed herself. She always loved how dainty and ladylike her fingers were. Now, her nails were ragged and uneven, with ruddy half-moons of reheated pork shoulder grinning at her. The plasticky remains of a tulip-pink gel coat hovered above her cuticles, a kind gesture from her daughter-in-law the last time they visited. Annie sighed. She didn’t care much. Arthritis would continue to gnarl her digits, and the brown spots of age would only multiply.
She finished the microwave and opened the fridge, propping the door open with the garbage can. She flung mummified fruits and congealed meatloaf into the bin. Further back, white and green fuzz clambered over the edges of Tupperware and Pyrexes she promised return. She tossed them without hesitation. There went the expired meal replacement shakes, electrolyte fluids, seltzer that lost its effervescence months ago. One garbage bag became two, became, three, and so on until all she was left with was half a gallon of milk and a respectably-dated carton of eggs. She tore through the rest of the room, countertops, behind the fridge, the floors. She cleaned until her nostrils burned and her limbs were numb.
The sun had already set when she trudged through the garden in her rubber boots. She used her phone’s flashlight for guidance. Despite never being dug up and planted as planned, a few of the yellow tulips and the Spanish irises made it. These she brought in and trimmed to fit the vase she always used. For years, she would come home to find flowers on the kitchen for every wedding anniversary, every birthday, and sometimes just because. When those flowers were replaced by the lurid, food coloring-dyed blossoms sent by oblivious well-wishers, and then again by the drooping white lilies that came with condolences, Annie vowed she would never entertain floral arrangements again until they were on her terms. The spring blooms in her vase were just that, her choice. Having seemed to have forgiven Annie for her neglect, they stood defiant and sturdy in the water as she clicked off the kitchen light.
The next day, Annie made her way to the bathroom. There, she pulled bottle after goop-encrusted bottle from the shower and atop the sink. Not a single over-the-counter remedy wasn’t expired. Annie’s whole life seemed to have expired a year ago, and remained a petrified forest of useless potions. She washed the bathmats and scoured every surface until the room gleamed white. The bleach made her head spin, and the tile and tub cleaner burned her fingers. Replacing the moldering shower curtain was satisfying, as was the chemical reek of the vinyl. She washed every towel in the house and collapsed on a heap of warm cotton on the couch.
When she woke, Annie rubbed the terry cloth pattern from her cheek and decided to vacuum. She passed the wheezing machine through the hall and to the bedroom. Encouraged by her progress, she washed her clothes and wiped down every surface in the room. She tore an ancient sweater, a gift from one of her sisters-in-law that was two sizes too big, and began scrubbing the floors by hand. The soapy solutions stung her knuckles where they had cracked and split. She paused once, to massage her hand. Her knees were locking with fatigue, and her back screamed in pain when she extended her arms too far upward. The sun was just below the horizon when, for the first time in a very long time, she collapsed into her bed and slept alone all through the night.
Dawn was stifled by an overcast sky laden with rain. Annie crept through her house, still unlit, and stood by the counter staring at the coffee maker. She had one more room to go. She brewed a pot of coffee and let herself sit and wait for the rain to start pounding on the newly clear kitchen window. One more. One more. One more, goddammit. This –this—shouldn’t be so trying.
It was late in the afternoon before Annie dragged herself up the steps, down the hall, and through the door she had been avoiding. She expected something horrible, a shudder-inducing creak, or the smell of rot, but she was greeted by silence and the stale, shut-in air. One of her sisters-in-law must have straightened the hospital bed and laid it flat, so it appeared no on had ever spent every night hunched against it, breathing raggedly. The nightstand was still riddles with prescription bottles, useless supplements, and the feeding tube. Books and magazines, read mostly by Annie, littered the corner. There were still a few “Get Well Soon” cards, even a couple of rosaries she knew she never bought. She ran her finger idly across the bookshelf. Dust coated Jane Austen, Issac Asimov, and a few pulpy mysteries they both enjoyed on long flights. Then there was the flag.
Two younger men had folded it flawlessly and handed it to her. She remembered not knowing what to do with it, how to hold it. The two men were grim-faced, their expressions set like stone, the same as his when he was in dress uniform. They stood upright perfectly, the same as he used to. She used to admire his posture; it used to make her feel all a-flutter how strong he seemed when he loomed over her. She used to watch him sit perfectly upright, even when it was over the paper and a box of powdered donuts. When he got sick, when he got really sick, he seemed so broken over not being upright anymore.
She placed the flag on the bed where he spent those horrible months. Let there be some dignity there. The cards, the empty wishes and the gifted rosaries all went into the trash. She pitched the prescription bottles, relics of when they still thought it was just his kidneys. She tossed the feeding tube, which landed atop a pile of pamphlets about acceptance and support services that never really supported.
Annie was sweating. She dragged the mop bucket and her more trusted cleaning supplies in and set to work. The blinds, the shelves, the cabinet, the TV they had brought in were all caked with dust. It was the worst here. The armchair their son had dutifully resurrected from a past iteration of their living room sat near the bed, her post for so many nights. It was draped in a blanket some neighborhood acquaintance had knit for him that he secretly didn’t like. What did it matter? At that point, he couldn’t speak, couldn’t hold a pen, and only she could tell he hated it. She threw the awful thing into the trash.
Everything was wiped down, again and again. It took a higher concentrations of cleaning solution to water, and both the rags and her hands were streaked with dirt. But at least it was finally lifting.
Annie paused through cleaning out the cabinet. She didn’t know, but was vaguely aware she’d be disappointed if she was expecting a letter he had written for her back before his hands became clawed, back when he was in denial enough to hold her tight and let her indulge her fears. He wasn’t the love letter type of man. What she did find was old tax forms, letters he saved from his sisters when they moved out of state, even a couple of Christmas cards. Before they became frozen, Annie never saved anything. Sitting atop a next of 1099s from her consultant days was the jar. The masking tape was worn at the edges, but her handwriting was still legible. “MARCO’S JAR”.
One day, when she was still pregnant with their son, and racked with hellish Braxton-Hick’s, he decided to crack a joke. Rather than distract from the pain, it enraged her. But when he slipped a callused hand around hers, and she let loose every ounce of her strength to ride out a particularly bad pang, her pained cry became laughter. She began laughing hysterically, enough to startle him silent. When she finally stopped, she knocked him gently upside the head and told him, for every awful one-liner she had to endure, he had to deposit a quarter in a jar for bad jokes. As she waddled down for breakfast the next day, there was her beloved sourdough starter jar, with a new quarter winking at the bottom. Every time he broke from his usual stoicism, to crack some pun, or some dirty joke her heard from one of the cadets on the base, she demanded a quarter in the jar.
“Your pension won’t keep up my lifestyle,” she said one day. “This is my retirement fund.”
Now it was half-filled with change. Now she was starkly aware that his pension did little to keep her afloat of their hospital bills. Now the only trace of her tall, straight-backed man was his hospital bed and a triangle of the American flag. By the time he went, she had forgotten what he looked like without the knob of the feeding tube, the curved spine, the clawed hands. She had wanted him cremated, wanted to release him finally from the wheezing prison his own body had become. But his stupid, obstinate Catholic sisters insisted on a burial. They had the nerve to cluck their tongues at her dirty kitchen when they came by to choose his suit. Annie couldn’t bear the thought of someone cracking his back and filling him with rods and wires so he would look good in it.
Everything had stopped when he was diagnosed. She stopped cleaning when the dust it kicked up made him choke. She stopped cooking when the smell of food made him miserable. She stopped contacting the ALS Foundation representative when she didn’t have time to sit on hold. She stopped sleeping in their bed in the master bedroom, unwilling to brave the alien landscape of dreaming without his snores beside her.
Annie was shaking now. She had never been this angry in her life. Looking at all the stupid paperbacks she hoarded for a retirement that would never happen. She hurried to the kitchen for a glass of water. She drank it, steeling herself against the the cold. She willed herself to calm. Instead, she retched into the sink, water cloudy as her mop bucket.
Before long, she was on the floor, sobbing. Not just sobbing. Moaning. Yelling. Using every curse she knew. She clutched her knees and cried out to stop the shaking. She yelled because she could. She cried until her eyes were swollen and she was sure she was empty. Distrusting the water, she fixed herself the last of the vodka from the wake. A nod to her late mother’s generation of home cures. For good measure, she made a cup of tea.
As the sun set that day, Annie sat in her kitchen with a cup of tea. She watched its progress and wondered what to do in a completely cleaned house.
