How to Love

The next few hours passed by slowly. Matt had dropped my car off, though he hadn’t stayed long. We made small talk for a little while, and he reminded me to tell Dad about the baby. As if I could forget. I was dreading telling my dad, and I wasn’t even the one that was pregnant.

Finally, eight o’clock rolled around, and the family was all cleared out by eight-twenty or so. Dad came upstairs to let me know that it was okay to head down, so I left my post at the phones to show Jake exactly what he’d need to clean. He was waiting patiently by the door when I came down the stairs.

“So how was it?” I asked. “Horribly awful?”

“Worst job I’ve ever had,” Jake quipped, and then laughed. “It was fine. But you’re right; it gets a little tiring after a while.”

“I did tell you that you could take a break,” I reminded him. “You’re not completely chained to the door, you know.”

“I know,” he nodded. “I just didn’t feel the need to. It really wasn’t that bad.”

“Well, here comes the fun part,” I scoffed. “The cleaning.”

I motioned for Jake to follow me down the hallway a little bit, turning the corner into the little section for the handicapped restroom. I opened the closet and pulled out the vacuum cleaner and the duster. I dragged them out into the big chapel, Jake continuing to follow. “So before we do anything, we need to get the vacuuming done. The last doorman always straightened the chairs first, poorly, and then by the time he was done vacuuming on the rare occasions he remembered, they were all messed up again.”

“The fact that you even have to explain that baffles me,” Jake shook his head. “How bad did this kid suck?”

“He was terrible,” I told him. “Like a whole new level of suck.”

“Damn,” he lifted his eyebrows. “So shall I start vacuuming?”

“Oh, one more thing,” I stopped him before he plugged the vacuum in. “You can only use the outlets on the right of the chapel for some reason. I’ve yet to figure out why the hell that is, but if you plug it in on the left side, everything down here short circuits. When you’re done, I’ll show you how to straighten the chairs.”

Jake nodded and plugged the vacuum in. I watched him for a few moments, noticing how meticulous he was about it. Every little flower petal that was on the floor got swept up, which I had to admit I was impressed with his cleaning skills. The flower petals could be pretty hard to see in contrast with the carpeting. As Jake finished vacuuming, I dusted the tables and organ in the back of the chapel, and soon enough Jake was done. Naturally, I had to inspect to see if he’d gotten everything, though I figured he’d picked it all up. He had, so we were able to move on to straightening the chairs.

“My dad’s kind of particular about the chairs,” I informed him. “They need to be perfectly straight and parallel. It can take a while sometimes, but it’s worth it.”

He nodded along again. “Any specific method I should use to ensure perfection?”

I did my best to explain to him the method my dad used, but truthfully, I couldn’t properly articulate it. I’d been helping fix the chairs since I was six years old. After eleven years, it was kind of just engrained in my brain forever. Soon enough, we got that done, and we put the cleaning stuff away and headed down into the basement where the luncheon rooms were. I was hoping that the family had been considerate and would clean up after themselves a little better, but they’d left quite a mess for such a small amount of people.

“Wow,” Jake whistled, glancing around. “Will it always be like this?”

“No,” I told him. “Sometimes it’ll be worse. Other times, it’ll be close to spotless. It just depends on the family.” I did a quick survey of the damage. The chairs at the tables were completely fucked up, and they’d managed to spill some kind of pasta sauce all over one of the white table covers at the food table. There was also a huge amount of crumbs around the dessert table, and people had left their coffee cups around randomly. “I’m afraid to look in the bathrooms.”

“You didn’t mention anything about cleaning bathrooms,” Jake frowned.

“Don’t be a baby,” I rolled my eyes. “I’m not gonna make you clean the women’s room or anything.”

“Well, I kind of always wanted to know what the women’s room looks like,” he admitted. “I have no idea why.”

“It looks exactly like yours,” I said, “except that we have more stalls and no urinals.”

“It’s probably cleaner, too,” Jake said.

“Not necessarily,” I shrugged. “There are some sick, sick fucks that use the bathrooms, for both men and women. I won’t even describe some of the worst stuff I’ve seen.”

“Good, ‘cause I don’t wanna hear about it,” he shuddered. “Let’s just get the luncheon room done first. Is there a vacuum cleaner for down here?”

“Yes,” I replied. I backtracked down the hallway a little and pulled a chair away from one of the walls, opening the door behind it. “All of the supplies you’ll ever need will come out of here.” I motioned around the boiler room. “You’ve got your vacuum cleaner over here, extra bags, trash bags, more dusters, toilet paper, paper towels, paper plates, Styrofoam cups…like I said, everything.”

“You weren’t kidding,” he scoffed. “It’s pretty big down here. I feel like you could probably live in here.”

“I used to be really good friends with this one girl, and she was super gullible,” I told him. “The first time she came over here, I had her convinced that we were renting the back part of the boiler room to a hobo named Herman.”

“And she believed that?” he asked incredulously. “Wow.”

“She wanted to know if he was nice, and if we could say hi,” I finished.

Jake laughed loudly. “That might have just made my night.” He took the vacuum cleaner and I grabbed a new tablecloth to replace the one ruined by pasta sauce.

“Normally, we’ll just use Windex or something to clean off the tablecloths to reuse them, but in a case like this, we’ll just throw it out,” I explained to him as we reentered the luncheon room. “There’s no point in wasting the time trying to clean it. It’s just not gonna happen.”

Jake started up the vacuum cleaner and went through the room, vacuuming just as carefully as he had in the chapel. I changed the tablecloth and collected the stray foam coffee cups from around the room, dumping them in the trash. I decided to go ahead and clean the bathrooms while Jake finished up the vacuuming, so I went to the boiler room, grabbed a few rolls of toilet paper, and headed into the ladies’ room. Luckily, it wasn’t that bad, except for a few scattered paper towels. I tossed those in the trash, cleaned the toilet bowls, and wiped off the mirrors after making sure that there were enough soap and paper towels. I headed into the men’s restroom next, bracing myself for the worst, though it was actually cleaner than the women’s room. I wiped off the mirrors in there as well and was turning to restock the paper towels when I noticed an extremely large spider sitting at the bottom of the urinal. I involuntarily let out a brief scream, covering my mouth in hopes that Jake hadn’t heard me. He had though, and seconds later he came charging in the bathroom. “What is it? What happened?”

I shook my head, laughing at myself awkwardly. “Nothing. I just…don’t like spiders.” I gestured towards the urinal and Jake made a wincing face.

“That’s one ugly bitch of a spider.”

“You’re telling me,” I agreed.

“Do you want me to kill it?” he asked.

“Well, I’m sure as hell not touching it,” I shook my head. For the most part, very little scared me. I could watch horror movie after horror movie and not have any one of them bother me, but faced with a spider, I’d become frozen with fear. I was always afraid that they’d jump on my hand or foot as I was going to kill them or something. Plus, I didn’t like the feeling of squishing the spider. “Fuck that noise.”

He walked past the urinal and into the lone bathroom stall, grabbing a few pieces of toilet paper. He crouched down and studied the spider for a moment, and then as the spider tried to dart away, Jake reached out and picked it up with the toilet paper, carrying it over to the toilet and dropping it in, flushing once it landed in the water. “Well, that takes care of that.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll keep you employed for the rest of your life if you kill all the spiders down here.”

“What, you don’t get spiders upstairs?” he laughed.

“No, not really,” I answered. “I’ve seen maybe five upstairs in seventeen years. That’s a ratio I like.”

He nodded in agreement, and then laughed again. “You know, it’s kind of funny. You’ll throw a drink on a guy and lock him out of a party without batting an eye, but you freak out over a tiny little spider.”

“Hey, you said it yourself,” I defended. “It was a nasty bitch. Way too big for a spider.”

“Whatever you say,” he teased. “So are you gonna show me how to straighten these chairs or what?”

“Well, we’ve gotta clean the tables and chairs first, but then we can straighten them,” I informed him, happy for a subject change. Jake probably thought that I was the world’s biggest pussy after the spider episode. I was relieved to be back on a topic where I had the upper hand. I grabbed a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Windex from the boiler room and we went back into the luncheon room. I handed him a few pieces of paper towel and squirted some of the Windex on two of the tables. “I don’t think I need to explain this. Go crazy.”

I went to the other side of the luncheon room to do the same thing, and we wiped the tables in silence for a few moments, but then Jake opened the door to conversation again. “So you said you’re seventeen, right?” I nodded in response. “How do you know how to do all of this stuff, then? Shouldn’t you be in high school or something?” He seemed to sense my irritation with the question, since he backtracked right away. “I don’t mean that in a bad way, but shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, enjoying being seventeen?”

“See, everyone keeps saying that, but I don’t think there’s anything all that great about being seventeen,” I answered. “High school sucks, everyone gets way too wrapped up in the whole drama thing, and everyone seems to have their heads up their asses. The schoolwork was boring, and it felt like a waste of time.”

“Did you drop out, then?” he asked.

“I did,” I admitted. “I got my GED right after, though. I’ve been taking some classes at Tri-C to keep myself occupied.”

“You go there, too?” he inquired. “Why haven’t I seen you around?”

“I try to keep a very minimal schedule there,” I replied. “Three days out of the week for maybe a few hours each day. This semester I’ve got two online classes, and my other two haven’t started yet. I usually hang out in the café in between classes.”

“Upper level or lower level?”

“Upper,” I said. “I like to sit by the Honors room. No one ever goes up there.”

“That would explain why I’ve never seen you, then,” he nodded. “I don’t usually go up there. But anyways-” I shot him a look. “Sorry, anyway, that doesn’t answer my first question. How do you know how to do all this stuff?”

“Cleaning is hardly rocket science,” I answered shortly.

“No, I don’t mean that,” Jake shook his head. “I mean everything else. I was talking to your dad for a little while in between the viewings, and he told me that you pretty much do all the paperwork and answer phones and get death certificates signed and all that. Where’d you learn it?”

“I don’t do all the paperwork,” I said. “I do most of it, but my dad does a decent amount, too. Same goes for answering the phones. I get the death certificates signed because it’s better for a funeral director to be there if someone calls and asks for pricing or something. I just kind of learned how to do it from observing growing up. I paid attention more than they thought I did.”

“Guess it’s a good thing then, huh?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Anyway, what’s your story?”

“What about my story?” Jake wondered, looking up from wiping the first table.

“How’d you get stuck working at Jocko’s?” I clarified. “And why does it suck so bad there?”

He shrugged. “I needed the money. My seasonal thing at Spirit Halloween was up, and they had a dishwashing position open, so I figured, hey, what the hell? It wasn’t that bad at first, but then I started to get to know everyone and see how they interact, and it’s just run really unprofessionally.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Well, like I was telling you at the Shell Station the other night,” he started. “There’s no real set work hours. I mean, there are, but they don’t stick to them. They’ll promise that you’ll be out of there at midnight, and you’re still doing bullshit at two-thirty in the morning. Plus, I’m just a dishwasher, but one of the bartenders, PJ, will ask me to roll silverware, which isn’t usually so bad, unless I’ve got a huge stack of dishes to wash. And then Chad, the head cook, starts asking for help with the prep work, and again, the dishes get neglected, and I’m stuck there until the end of time.”

“Ouch,” I mumbled. “Sounds sucky.”

“That’s not even the worst part,” he continued. “If I go in there to eat with my family or some of my buddies or something, if someone notices me, they’ll ask me to bus tables or to go back and help wash dishes, even if it’s my day off. They just really take advantage of their employees.”

“That’s some real bullshit right there,” I frowned. “That’d be like if you came here for a visitation and I suddenly asked you to work the door or to stick around and clean or something. That’d be terrible.”

“Right,” Jake nodded in agreement. “See, most places see it the same way you and I do. Evidently, Jocko doesn’t.”

“So what was the straw that broke the camel’s back?” I questioned.

“Huh?” he looked at me in confusion.

“Why’d you decide to quit?” I rephrased. I hadn’t noticed that I was wiping furiously at the same spot the whole time we’d been talking. At least part of the table would be extra shiny.

“There’s a bunch of bullshit drama between PJ and Chad,” Jake rolled his eyes. “I don’t know how old PJ is, but Chad is twenty-eight, and they both act like thirteen year old girls.” He eyed me for a second. “No offense.”

“None taken,” I waved him off.

“Anyway, I don’t know what the hell their fight started about, but they ended up screaming at each other to get their shit together, and then Chad just up and left,” he explained. “It was only like ten o’clock, so Adam, the other cook, had to do everything. And now whenever Chad is working and PJ comes in to bartend, he just leaves. And Chad’s dad is the manager, and he’s also friends with Jocko, so he gets away with it.”

“That’s a bunch of nonsense,” I shook my head. “I can’t blame you for wanting to leave.”

“Me neither,” he scoffed. “I’m putting my two weeks’ notice in on Wednesday. Hopefully Chad won’t hit the roof.”

“You’ll be better off without that place,” I assured him.

“Oh, I know,” Jake agreed, nodding. “I already like working here much better.”

I smiled. “Well, I’m happy to hear that.”

“Yeah,” Jake said, and then cleared his throat. “So, about these chairs.”

I explained to him how to line the chairs up, nine on either side of the table, using the chair in the middle to space everything else out evenly, and soon enough we were done. The only thing left for Jake to do was to take the trash out, and by the time he’d finished with that, it was about nine-thirty.

As Jake was walking back inside from taking the trash out to the dumpster, I suddenly remembered about having to talk to my dad about Liz and Matt’s predicament. I felt my stomach drop and I could practically feel a panic attack coming on, though I was determined to stop it.

“You okay?” Jake asked as he came back in. “You look like you did last night. Like you’re gonna be sick or something.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, shaking my head. “Hey, it’s kind of late. You’re probably hungry. Do you wanna come up for something to eat? I can heat up some leftover spaghetti or something.” I wanted Jake to stay for as long as possible. As long as he was here, I could put off talking to Dad, and that was just what I wanted. Besides, Jake was pretty cool and I wasn’t as easily irritated by him as I was with just about everyone else.

“Sounds appetizing,” Jake answered. “But I’ll probably swing by Burger King or something. It’s right on the way home. I’ve got some homework due tomorrow, and you know the college way; due tomorrow, do tomorrow.” He chuckled a little bit. “I haven’t forgotten about that rain check, though. I plan on collecting on that. I just can’t tonight.”

I nodded. “Okay. Just thought I’d offer.”

“I appreciate it,” he said. “And like I said. I plan on collecting soon.” He gave me a little wave. “I’ll see you later. Have a good rest of the night. Tell your dad I said good-bye.”

I nodded again, feeling the anxiety creeping through my body. “Will do.” He headed out and I was about to walk back upstairs, but Jake poked his head in again. “Hey, are there any viewings coming up that I should clear my schedule for?”

“There’s one on Saturday,” I answered. “Two to five, seven to nine.”

“Two to five, seven to nine,” he repeated. “Got it. See you then.”

He gave me another wave, and I watched him as he seemed to saunter back to his car, his bowlegs extremely evident, but strangely appealing. I tried to concentrate on that as I made my way upstairs, but all I could think about was telling my dad about the baby and trying to gauge his reaction to the news. Maybe he’d take it well and not be mad about it. And maybe I was the Queen of England. As I pulled back the accordion doors, I prepared myself to face the music.