“Let’s see if you can say that, missy, when you’re my age.” Blotting her mouth on a hand towel without removing it from the rack, she pushed past Cathy.
“And don’t hog this room all morning.”
CHAPTER 4
Cathy dried herself off, put her pyjamas back on, and stepped cautiously out into an empty hall. Her mother had vanished and the house had fallen silent again. Hurrying, she opened the hall closet where the cleaning supplies were kept, gathered up what she needed for her chores, and raced up to her room.
“Great news, huh?”
Cathy dumped all the aerosol cans and spray bottles and dusters into the middle of her unmade bed.
“Oh, Angela, I’ve got a job.”
“So I heard.”
“I’ve got something to do all summer.”
“Cool.”
“I can’t believe it. All of a sudden I feel so grown up.”
Cathy plunged into the closet and hung her wet underwear on a nail in the back corner.
“A summer job. I’ll have a bit of money and something to do.”
She popped back out and tore open a dresser drawer to begin changing into work clothes.
“I can go somewhere every day for two whole months.”
“Hot dog!”
“I’m so excited.”
“So I see.”
“I’ve always wanted to go away. For years, I’ve been thinking about it.”
“I’ve seen the pencil marks under your desk.”
“But I thought it wouldn’t be until I could go to university. But that’s still three years away.”
“Lucky break, huh?”
“But this is right out of the blue. It’s not the same as going away to live somewhere else, like residence, but it’s at least a start.”
Angela smiled. Cathy plunked herself down on the bed to pull on a pair of socks.
“It’s housekeeping ... for three priests ... at St. Alphonsis rectory ... across town.”
“I was there, remember?”
“It’s supposed to be old, but maybe it’s going to be really nice, like those parish churches in the old Christmas movies, you know? All that nice dark old woodwork, some of it halfway up the walls in some of the rooms, like the dining room, you know? I wouldn’t mind polishing all that.”
“You just might be out of your mind, you know?”
“I get to cook, too.”
“That’s always fun.”
“I know how to make sloppy joes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and tuna casserole.”
“Gotta start somewhere.”
“And I can barbecue things, steaks and chicken and burgers. I’m sure they’ll have a barbecue.”
“Well, you hope they’ll have a barbecue.”
“I’ve always wanted to try baked Alaska too. You know, it’s ice cream that gets baked inside a cake and it doesn’t melt?”
The whine of the vacuum cleaner suddenly started up in one of the downstairs rooms. Cathy saw that she was sitting motionless, gazing at herself in the dresser mirror. The side of her face was swollen, her eyes bloodshot, and one finger was bound in white tape.
She got up and opened the two small windows in the room. The droning of several lawn mowers and the smell of fresh-cut grass and newly blooming roses floated in through the screens. Unmistakably, it was summer.
“You’ve got a summer job,” she whispered, “a real live summer job.”
She picked up the bottle of glass cleaner and a rag and began cleaning the mirror. Her Saturday morning routine had been set in stone for years: bedroom, bathroom, dining room, front hall, dishes. Always in that order. Within each room, the various chores were also ordered. Remove stale sheets or towels first. Then work from the top of the room down: walls, windows and sills, mirrors, furniture, baseboards, floor. Finally, make the bed with fresh sheets or hang fresh towels. Her arm went round and round across the smooth glass surface, the cloth buffing away imagined smudges. How many mirrors would there be in a rectory?
When I was your age, my dear, I could work rings around anyone. My father taught me the meaning of hard work early, by golly, and it’s never hurt me one single bit.
How her mother loved the idea of work. Especially if it was hard physical work where you had to bend over or reach up to lift or pull heavy things; where you had to apply force and scrub hard; anything that made you huff and puff and tired you out and gave you rough red hands at the end of the day. That was work, by golly. The backbone of character.
Cathy sprayed the mirror and began buffing it again. At least it had to be better than working for nuns. Priests were a lot more easygoing than nuns. Father McCoy flaring his nostrils like a horse, raising his eyebrows practically up into his hair to get a laugh. She’d never known a nun to make faces. Sister Anne Rochelle sometimes laughed at her own feeble little witticisms, but generally nuns didn’t clown around. And was there a priest anywhere who could come even close to Sister Lumina in sourness? Father Lauzon was very businesslike, perhaps impatient, but she had never sensed cruelty in him.
The vacuum cleaner stopped and the house fell silent. The skin on the back of Cathy’s neck contracted. How long had she been cleaning the mirror? Panicked, she put down her cloth and pulled open a dresser drawer. She would tell her mother that she was taking a moment to go through each drawer, refolding everything neatly.
The vacuum started up again, sucking, whining, thumping into the baseboards. At least while it was moving she knew where her mother was. She picked up another duster and the can of furniture polish. How much furniture would there be in a rectory? What would it be like? White French provincial, like this?
“In a guy’s room? What are you thinking?”
“Well, there are rooms other than bedrooms.”
“Yeah, at Marie Antoinette’s house.”
“She retired to a hat box, didn’t she?”
“Oh! Excellent.”
Cathy smiled as she sprayed a lemon-scented mist of polish over the surface of her dresser.
“I’m sure if the place is old, it will be all dark. That’d be better. See this? I can hardly tell where I’ve been. It’s better when the wood’s dark and you can just cut a path through the polish like plowing through snow.”
“As you wish.”
Working through her morning tasks, digging into crevices, rubbing vigorously, pulling things taut, her mother’s endless opinions flowed through her mind. Only dirty filthy pigs slept for more than one week in the same sheets; this wasn’t a museum, with spider webs allowed to grow to the size of hammocks in every corner; the French were lazy, which is why they chose white for all their furniture. They thought it didn’t show the dust. But they didn’t fool her, by Jesus. At least not anymore. It was just too bad she hadn’t seen through them before furnishing Cathy’s room with the darned stuff. But she wouldn’t be fooled again, no siree.
Because