Floor Washing Day

Floor Washing Day
by Christine Greeley

The past is the arm-chair of time.

Sounds catchy, don’t it? I thought that one up while I was scraping the damned paint off the window sill. You know, that’s one of those stupid chores I would gladly hand over to a man—if there was one around worth keeping.

Anyway, scrape, scrape, scrape, then this idea comes into my head.

The past is the arm-chair of time.

Oh, sometimes I think I am brilliant. Then others, I know I’m not because here I am in this dump. Yeah, the past is like that scroungy chair in my living room, with it’s stuffing all oozing from the cushion, and its arms all frayed from that damned cat sharpening her claws there when I’m not looking. It’s pilled and puckered, sinking and creaky. There’s a dark stain that spreads across the place where you’d settle back. Hell, there are probably little critters living in it, whaddya callem—dust mites or cooties or some other.

Yeah, that chair is a mess, but wouldn’t I like to just set in it for an hour? Maybe cover my feet in a natty old afghan and rest my head on the old faithful shoulder of that chair? I know what it is, I accept it snags and all, I can find ways to be comfortable there.

Hell no, I gotta scrape, because no else is going to do it. If I was feeling really smart right now, I might say that the present time is like this window sill, sturdy enough underneath, but flaking so I have to pick up after it. Then there are the slivers that catch you unawares under your softened fingernails. Yeah, that’s the present. That’s right now. And of course, I’ll have to smooth it all over with some shiny new paint; but that’s a project for another day.

Whenever I take on a boring chore like this here, my mind starts to ramble around. So of course you know just where it goes off to: back to that stupid chair. I know it’s out there all the time, with that stain like a wide clown grin across its 1970s Harvest Gold back.

The day that bastard left me was just like any day, except when I got up in the morning I did feel a twinge of something creep in around my senses, like a feeling that I just shouldn’t oughtta get up at all. But I did, because chores got to get done, and he sure wasn’t about to do any of it. Could he open a can of coffee and brew a pot, or make his own damn toast “just so” or even let the cat out and feed her for Christ sake? Nope, not Cal.

Callous Cal, I sometimes mumbled under my breath as he tracked a shovel-full of mud through the house every day when he came home from working at the Public Works Department. If I so much as looked crossways at him over it, he’d say, “Well you ain’t got nothin’ to do otherwise, so go ‘head and clean it up!” That is—was—my Cal.

So anyway, he left me, but not without a bit of a fight. I just had it up to here with his nit picking, and treating me like the maid. Like I said, I got out of bed with this weird feeling, but I shook it off and put my cleaning clothes on because it was floor washing day. I caught a glimpse of myself in the bedroom mirror as a tied on an apron, and the thought of being lost, so lost, came into my head as I barely recognized that old lady I saw, and I pushed that aside too. Gotta clean the floor.

I got the bucket and mop out of the bathroom closet and set them in the tub. Sitting on the edge of the tub, I filled the bucket with hot water and watched the steam cloud my eyes. I remember thinking the warm mist felt good, like a tropical feeling in a place far away. But then I had to go get the bleach, so enough of that daydreaming baloney. I poured a cup of bleach into the bucket and the scent of it stung my nose, deep inside. Christ, I thought, you could kill a person with that.

Which brings me back to Cal, the bastard. Sometimes I really wanted him dead. But then what? Could an old woman live alone with a stupid cat and no man? If I didn’t have to clean up those damned boot prints, what would I do with my time?

Lugging the bucket to the kitchen, I swore I saw movement in the living room, like a shadow. I put the bucket down, and peeped in, but I saw nothing. Crazy old bat, you are really losing it. I continued on to the kitchen and saw muddy boot prints, size 12, in a crazy line across the white linoleum. Damn that man. But he’s been at work for a few hours already, and nowhere near time to come home. But damn him anyway, here or not, he is making me crazy.

“Cal!” I says at the top of my lungs. “Cal you get in here this minute, I got a bone to pick with you!” I shouted so loud that I could hear my voice die out in a ring within the fancy soup tureen I keep on top of the refrigerator. No answer. What kind of game was he playing with me?

Well, I huffed and fumed a bit more, then I decided to just clean it up now and kill him later. Getting down on my creaky knees, I wiped at those big sloshes of mud with a rag, but all I managed was to smear it around in sloppy half-moons. I scrubbed some more, forward and back toward my knees, forward and back. And now the rag was soaked with it, so I had to go dip it in the bucket for a rinse.

When I dunked the rag, all heavy with that muck, that’s when it went strange. I looked down in the bucket as I swished the rag and the water went red. What the hell kind of mud was that? What the hell did he traipse in this time? I lifted the rag out of the bucket and watched the water drip off. Damned if that didn’t look like blood. A prickly chill skipped down my backbone.

I dropped the rag into the bucket and backed away, feeling fuzzy in my head and not knowing just what to think. I looked at my hands and they were stained pinkish by the mystery red. I looked from my hands to the remaining footprints and now they looked more like size eight tennis shoes.

Slowly, my eyes drifted down to my feet and they were streaked with the stuff. Getting more and more nervous, I decided I must have been sniffing too much bleach and I needed a break to clear my head. Yes indeed, I was going to go set in his chair with a cold drink and wait for my sense to return.

I went to the fridge, plucked open the door and scanned the contents. Ah there, behind the 1% milk, there was a brown bottle with a shiny silver cap. Just what the doctor ordered, a Coors Light, and the last one besides.

I popped it open and heard that little whisper as the air escaped. Pssht! I was feeling better already. The bottle was cold—and I remember thinking it was somehow very real— in my hand.

As I moved toward the living room, the phone call yesterday after lunch popped into my head. I had just cleaned the bathroom until it smelled all bleachy and I had to open a window. But there is nothing like the smell of clean bleach mixed with a puff of fresh March air. Then the phone rang with a shrill just as I was admiring the sparkling tub.

“Hello.”

“Dorinda, what the hell you doing putting pretzels in my lunch? You know I hate those. It’s like eating sticks for cryin’ out loud. ”

“Okay Cal. I’m sorry. I was just trying to feed you a little healthier. You know you have the cholesterol.”

“Don’t bitch at me, woman. Put some Goddamn chips in there next time. You know, the wrinkled ones.”

The beer bottle in my hand came back into view, and I cursed under my breath. “Old bastard, oughtta make his own damn lunch then.” I continued on to the living room. It was the one room that generally stayed clean since he always came in through the kitchen door, and by the time he made it to his chair in the living room he had changed into a grungy T-shirt and boxers, and had his crappy old slippers on.

But something was piled in the chair, a shadowed hulk against the yellow gold chair that looked the color of oatmeal in the dimness of the room. Was I daft enough today to have left a pile of laundry there, in his dirty old chair? I crossed to the picture window and grasped the pull cord for the shade. Damn, I felt weak. So tired I could barely pull the cord, so I just hooked my fingers around it and let the weight of my arm do the job. Couldn’t wait to clear off that chair and have a rest. And he couldn’t tell me not to, since he was away at work, probably trying his best to look busy until quitting time.

What I saw when the shade went up and the room filled with the ghostly 10 a.m. light of a gray day stopped me dead in my tracks. There was Cal, slumped in his chair. I remember saying to myself, I says, “You lazy bastard, ya skipped work today to nap in your precious chair!?” I took a defiant swig of the beer, then swung it out toward him in a sort of toast. “And do something about this, would ya? Oh, and let’s not forget that mess you left in the kitchen!” My eyes then went back to my tennis shoes, streaked with dark stains, sunk into the carpet that was thick with sticky liquid, like an over-wet sponge.

Now Cal is a big man, and like most big, sloppy guys, he snored quite a lot when he slept, especially in that position with his chin on his pudgy chest. But I noticed there was no snoring. Not a wheeze, not a gurgle. I was also still contemplating my tennis shoes, when I noticed the stain on the chair behind him, just above the shoulders. And the stains creeping down his dirty old white T-shirt, escaping from the leering grin sliced in his fat neck. . And the glint of metal on the floor next to the chair.



Anyway, I can’t think about that anymore right now. It’s getting me weary again. I can’t quite make sense of what happened. All’s I know is I gotta get this window sill scraped and painted because no one else is going to do it. Nope. Not Cal especially, since those people came and carted him away. Took him right out of his Goddamned chair. They wouldn’t tell me where they were taking him, and he went mighty quiet like. Then they tells me, they says, “You have a right to remain silent,” and some such. Well yeah, I been silent all this time, why should I blabber now?

So they put me in this place with the paint flaking from the window sill, and I got to get it finished soon, but all they give me was this plastic knife, you know, the kind you use at a picnic to spread some ketchup on your burger.

Thinking of ketchup gets me thinking of that crescent of a stain on the back of the arm-chair. The past is the arm-chair of time. It was quiet back there, in the chair, and I knew it for what it was. I hope someone cleans that mess up before I get home, but you know it will probably be left for me.