“I didn’t know you were going to move until now!” she shuffles a hand in front of her. “And, well, sometimes they party, and you know, that stuff is… out.”
Briefly I think of Scarface and get worried. “What kind of stuff?”
“You know, like coke and some pot sometimes. Empty bottles, nothing crazy,” she says, casually, like coke and pot are normal.
“I will be okay with coke and pot for $100,000 a year because I’m not insane, I know my morals can kick in after I windex drugs off glass tables for a few years. Besides, it would put me closer to going back to school.”
“Okay,” I say again, confirming I’ll do it, yawning, sinking back into the couch.
“Okay? That’s it?” Melody seemed a bit surprised she didn’t have to convince me more, but really, she’s right- it is a good idea. I’m not above cleaning houses. I just want to pay off this debt and move on. May as well see beautiful homes and spend time with my cousin while I’m doing it.
“Yeah,” I shrug off the afghan and rise to my feet. “I’ll get the ball rolling on this place this week. I’ll do it. I’ll move and be a maid, why not?” she rises and I pull her into a hug, which is hard because she’s taller than me but I manage. She feels warm and familiar, safe against my chest and safety is a feeling I realize that I’d been desperately needing.
Well, safety and um, money.
“Okay, yay, I’m excited. I’m going to step out and call my boss, call Donny and have him get his shit off the couch and you can come with me tonight, now that everything here is over here.”
She’s right, everything here is, for lack of better words, over.
Mom’s been gone for a week, equipment is given back, service is over, bills are piled and waiting. There aren’t many things in this house I hadn’t sold or pawned to make money for the mortgage and bills in the last year so I don’t have much to do.
Melody makes the calls she needs to make and comes back inside more excited than before.
“I knew it! They said as long as you pass the background check and have no problem signing the paperwork, then you can start in two weeks, after Mavis is gone. You can be on my route; we’ll be on the same service. It’s going to be awesome!” she’s thrilled and her excitement drifts from towards me, tingling in my toes, working its way to my belly. It’d been so long since I’d been excited for a new adventure, it felt good to have something to look forward to—even if it was slightly tainted.
“You’re really lucky, you know, if Mavis wasn’t leaving, you’d never get an in. The girls at the agency hardly ever leave, of their own volition at least.”
I do feel lucky with this job on the horizon. “What do I have to sign?” I’d only ever worked at the grocery store and there was no employment contract there. More of a “here’s your apron, you’re on camera, don’t steal” type of contract going on there.
“Legal stuff. An NDA, that’s the most important part,” she says, typing away into her phone. It’s a new phone, in a protective case, and I watch her manicured nails dance over the screen. I look at her dress—it, too, looks new.
“How much money do you really make?” I say, sizing her up, a smile on her face as she watches me do it. I know what she said but I’m in disbelief.
She doesn’t look up so she reads my skepticism as curiosity. “After tips, a lot. I’d be in culinary school; I’d own my own house and a car by now if it wasn’t for Donny.” She rolls her eyes. “He’s in a lot of debt. Not like your debt. He gambled it all away and then some.” She shrugs it off. I’ve not once heard her complain about the shitty apartment she lives in, either. And the way she describes it, it’s pretty shitty.
And then there’s her boyfriend.
Donny. Worked a handful of days in his entire life, stresses her out, spends her money (and puts them in debt, apparently) and keeps her from her dreams. I don’t press her on why she stays with him—clearly, she stays with him because she loves him, so why bring that up? I want better for her, but I am not one to meddle in someone else’s happiness.
“Well, I hope I can get the debt paid off and I can get back in school before I’m sixty years old,” I joke, though the fear of not being able to return to school is real. When we were younger, Melody and I had dreamed of going to culinary school together. The “real” Martha Stewarts, we said we’d call ourselves. “We won’t make all these weird things that real people don’t like! We’ll make stuff people actually want!” we’d said. Now, years later, the idea of culinary school seems so distant it could be a star in another galaxy. Untouchable, unreachable, almost make believe. I stuff it down and smile, staying positive, because that’s the only way to move forward.
“You will. It will be great. And you know,” she slides the phone into her purse and pulls out a green marble square and opens it, blotting her nose with the pad inside. “Cleaning houses isn’t something to be ashamed of. Not when you’re making one hundred grand and promise to keep your eyes and ears to yourself.”
“That’s so much money, I can’t even believe it,” I nod, my mouth agape. Three years. I only have to do this three years and I can have mom’s entire debt paid off and my nest egg for school, whatever that ends up looking like. That’s not too long.
