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“Oh my god,” said Nora, crossing her arms tightly and looking away.
“No…” said Brielle. She stared at Nora until the girl finally opened her mouth.
“Scrubbing Cherubs, here to shoot your home with the arrow of cleaning power!” She put her fingers over her brow in a V-shape like a magical heroine.
Mrs. Tanaka laughed and clapped. “Very good. Now come on in before one of these two rascals slips out.”
Brielle considered what a good client Mrs. Tanaka made for one of Nora’s training sessions. (True, she had worked last summer, but barely, considering all of her social commitments and summer school, and not particularly well. Their mom had insisted she start from scratch this time, working as a trainee first)
“Mrs. Tanaka likes us to start in the kitchen,” said Brielle, feeling like an instructor. Maybe she should look into teaching after all. A few more days of fruitless job searching and she would probably burst. Part of her felt like going back to school for some expensive and probably useless graduate degree just so she could spend a few more years cowering beneath her blankets, and another part of her didn’t think working as a cleaner for the rest of her life would be so bad. It had been comforting, the routine, in the two weeks since she’d last seen Archer. If only her mom would let her stay on without sitting her down for another lecture at least once a week.
Nora stopped cold in the kitchen entryway. “It’s spotless in here.”
“Thank you,” said Mrs. Tanaka, sliding past to get to the cupboard where she kept cans of her cats’ food. “I cleaned it this morning before you girls came.”
Staring after Mrs. Tanaka, Nora raised an eyebrow. “Then should we move on—”
Brielle shook her head vigorously and shot her a look. “You make our jobs easier, Mrs. Tanaka.”
“Best to be extra thorough.” She popped one can open and plopped its contents into a cute paw-print-adorned porcelain bowl and scraped it out thoroughly before disappearing down the hallway toward her recycling bin with the empty can in tow.
“Why are we cleaning if it’s already been cleaned?” hissed Nora.
Brielle made a throat-slashing movement, trying to end the conversation. “Later,” she said, taking the bucket from her and removing a folded cloth from it. “Since Mrs. Tanaka has quartz counters, we need to make sure we never use abrasive materials or cleaners to wipe them.”
Nora opened her mouth, but Brielle lifted a finger and she snapped it shut again. Grabbing the cloth, she turned on her heel.
“Brielle?” called Mrs. Tanaka from the hallway. “Might I have a moment?”
Brielle rattled off some instructions to her sister, who simply widened her eyes and nodded, and headed off toward their client, wiping her hands on her apron. Mrs. Tanaka was sorting through her mail. “How’s your job hunt going?”
A twitch tugged on the corner of Brielle’s lips. “It’s… Well, it’s not really… going anywhere. I got a few more rejections from jobs I applied to weeks ago, but…” She lowered her voice so Nora couldn’t overhear and use it to deflect an argument with their mom. “I haven’t applied for much for the past two weeks.”
Mrs. Tanaka raised her eyebrows, even though she kept staring at a catalog. “Two weeks? Leah surely wouldn’t like that.”
Mrs. Tanaka and her mom were on a first-name basis. “She doesn’t know.”
Clicking her tongue, Mrs. Tanaka put the stack of mail on a table in the hallway and grabbed for her letter opener. “If I had children and I was really so determined they not work for my own business, I’d be checking to make sure they were applying every day.”
Brielle decided not to comment on the fact that children applying for jobs would hardly be at the age where peering over their shoulder at the computer would be appropriate. “I should get back to applying more often.” She ran a hand over the inside of her arm. “I will. I just… got distracted.”
“Gotlazy,my mother would have said.”
After a few weeks of them falling into a sort of alliance when she’d gotten back into the work this summer, Brielle had almost forgotten how she used to find Mrs. Tanaka distasteful. But she had a point. And maybe the old her, the pre-graduation her, would have bristled like Nora would have in her position, but she had to admit she was right. “I guess I just got overwhelmed. And comfortable in my day-to-day routine.”
Tossing aside an empty envelope, Mrs. Tanaka pulled her reading glasses from their resting place atop her head. “I take it you didn’t take my advice to jump into the dating scene.”
Brielle grimaced. “I think I might have briefly, but that didn’t turn out well.”
“Why not?” Mrs. Tanaka’s eyes never left her letter.
“Well, I shouldn’t have dated him to begin with, right? Not until I knew where I was headed.”
“And what if you wind up staying right here for months or even years to come? What then? Would you regret not having dated him longer?”
“I don’t think my mom would be happy about that.” Brielle felt like she was being mined for details for the woman’s next session of town gossip. “And besides, I think I already kind of messed up.”
“Nonsense. Nothing an apology won’t fix.” She shifted her glasses back to the top of her head and handed Brielle the letter.
