“It’s Friday Fright Night, and tonight’s movie isFright Night.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“The one from 2011.”
I sighed. I loved that one.
“Next week. This is urgent.”
“He’s going to know we cleaned, he was just in here,” Kate said.
I huffed and stepped over to the coffee table, reaching beneath to retrieve two bras that had been resting there for the last few weeks since they stopped fitting.
“Better than him seeing all this.” I threw the bras at her. Kate caught them with one arm and, without much more protest, got to work under the condition that we listen to her playlist and I didn’t complain about the Imagine Dragons songs.
If there’s anything that Kate and I were good at, it was cleaning, and cleaning very quickly. It was in our blood. We were like carefully trained assassins, but janitors.
I attacked the bathroom first. I sprayed the bathtub, sink, and toilet, and while the cleaner sat, I swept up the mass of hair and dust gathered in the corners.
There were no extra soaps under the sink, but I did find a new toothpaste and replaced my nearly empty one. I usually kept the same tube until it took almost as much time to squeeze it out as it did to brush my teeth.
The counter wasn’t horrible, but the organization was limited to my one messy catch-all drawer, the spare counter space, and the little white shelf that Dad installed for me when I moved in. I kept the necessities on the shelf: sensitive scalp brush, bottle of dry shampoo, face sunscreen, and the tub of unscented lotion that was thick like margarine, which I smeared across and around my stomach every night under Kate’s recommendation. The rest of the various makeups, lip balms, hair ties, and face creams were deposited without ado into the drawer.
If Barry decided the downstairs bathroom was unusable, as I believed he would, he could use the other half of the shelf for his things. I wasn’t sure what those things were, but probably hair gel and hopefully deodorant. My toothbrush holder has always only held one of the four spots, so he could use that. Unless he was the kind of guy with a mechanical toothbrush? One of the expensive ones from Costco? Did he carry his hypothetically expensive toothbrush in a travel case?
Upon further thought, I was sure he did because, hello, semi-famous hockey player.
“I’m throwing this container away,” Kate yelled from the kitchen.
“Fine,” I said and got back to work. My mom’s creations hung on hooks by the mirror, one for bracelets, two for necklaces, though the necklaces usually ended up by the couch or on my nightstand, piles of colored beads from when I was too tired or lazy to hang them on their hooks.
Looking in the clear mirror, I put on a headband, tilted my head side to side and then immediately threw it in the drawer. Cleaning the house was trying enough, the headband would teeter into aiming-to-impress territory.
Kate’s playlist went on as we worked through the house, her in the kitchen and living room, me in the bathroom and bedroom. Kate’s phone was hooked up to my green Bluetooth speaker, and the vibes were good despite my hurried anxiety. That being said, the bedroom was worse than I thought at first glance. My bowling shirt wasn’t hung up or ironed, something Mom would no doubt mention when we played next, and my junk drawer runneth over. The Skip-Bo deck had somehow fallen last week, and I’d just kicked the cards into a pile instead of picking them up.
The worst of it was the puzzle corner, which was where I stacked my largest puzzle boxes, the ones that weren’t very pretty to look at and didn’t fit well on a shelf.
I like puzzles, have always liked them. Maybe I even lovethem. They’re an easy gift and everyone knows I have a thing about them so I’m seldom in want of a puzzle. It’s like when a kid loves sloths. For the next decade, someone will get them a sloth themed gift, usually a calendar, until the whole sloth situation gets out of hand. I receive a minimum of four puzzles at Christmas, and at least three for my birthday each year. Not all of them can be winners. Some are ugly, or uninteresting, and those I donate or post on the no-buy Facebook page. Others, though, have an effect on me that is without words. I adore them.
In my kitchen, I have a stack of cubes, each cube holding one food-themed puzzle, like a red snapper or a coffee cup. They’re twenty-minute puzzles that Kate and I do during lunch sometimes. The little shelf that holds my TV has my prettiest puzzles, the fanciest ones, the ones that make it look like I just have a designer puzzle collection instead of a problem. I have boxes of puzzles under the bed, under the couch, and even some standing sideways next to my books. Tubes, too. Some of my favorite puzzles are in tubes.
Puzzles are like math in that there’s only one answer, but they’re much easier than math and require less critical thinking. I never get a puzzle wrong. Plus, there’s a puzzle for every occasion. I bring one to every holiday because when a puzzle is out, people can’t help but try to finish it.
I understand, rationally, that my collection is nearing the status of a well-meaning hoarder, and I should scale down so I have more space for other, more practical items. I thought about keeping all of the puzzles for the baby, but it would be years before she could do a fifty-piece puzzle, much less a three thousand.
I wouldn’t say I had a true puzzle problem, but if I didn’t purge about one fourth of them before Christmas, Iwould. I was planning on it. It was the right thing, but for now I’d tidy the stack in my room and put my laundry basket in front so it was less conspicuous.
Would the puzzles be a mark against me in Barry’s eyes? Another reason that I wasn’t fit to take care of myself, much less a newborn? I didn’t want to assume that he was trying to prove how bad I would be at mothering, but why would he want to move in with me, really, if not to make sure I wasn’t day drinking or something? Even if he did want to co-parent the baby with me, why couldn’t he do it from his house? Lots of kids had two homes! Ours would be fine. She’d just stay here most of the time, with me.
If he was trying to determine my ability to be a good mother, I was confident that by the end of the trial week he would see that I take fine care of myself and don’t need to live with him until the baby comes. Maybe he’d decide that he would be good without the baby after all. Maybe he wouldn’t want to be a dad and, absolved of all guilt after seeing how self-sufficient and well-supported I am, he could just pack up his duffle and leave.
“How’s the progress?” Kate asked. I was folding the clean clothes that had been sitting on my floor since the last time I did laundry.
“Almost done.”
“You keep buying bell peppers and not eating them before they go bad,” Kate said.
“I always mean to. They’re aspirational.”
