Blanche Cleans Up Page 6

  Felicia was sitting at her desk looking through some papers. Something about the angle of her head and the extra concentration she was giving to what she was doing made Blanche think she was pretending to be busy.

  “Good morning, ma’am. You wanted to see me?” She set the coffee tray on the far end of Felicia’s desk.

  Felicia continued to flip pages for a few more seconds, then hitched her chair around. She looked up at Blanche and quickly away.

  “Good morning, Blanche.”

  Felicia looked as though she’d spent the night with five horny young men who’d made her jump hurdles between bouts of being jumped herself. Even her hair looked beat.

  “Tonight’s the big night, you know. The big man makes his bid for the big job. It’s all so big, isn’t it?” She poured her own coffee and took a sip.

  Blanche took a mental step backward. This wasn’t the conversation she’d expected. Maybe Felicia hadn’t seen her poke Samuelson.

  Felicia picked up a sheet of paper from her desk and turned the subject to changes in the household schedule. She told Blanche that Allister would be campaigning in Springfield on Saturday and Sunday and would be gone until early Monday morning. They’d both be out for lunch and dinner on Monday. While Allister Brindle’s run for governor surely wasn’t in any poor person’s best interest, having him out glad-handing was going to make Blanche’s work life a little easier. She relaxed her guard against being put on the hot seat and half listened to what Felicia was saying until she realized it centered on her.

  “Inez’s note says you need to leave early today, Blanche.” Felicia’s smile quivered like it was nervous. “But that’s not why I sent for you.”

  Shoulda known, Blanche thought. Miss Mistress just likes to play with people. Shoulda known. Needing somebody to yo-yo was pretty common among women she’d worked for whose powerful husbands treated them like toys. She gave Felicia an inquiring look.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  Felicia avoided Blanche’s eyes. “I saw the quote accident unquote you had with Reverend Samuelson. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Blanche had to concentrate on not laughing. Was this fool joking? What did she have to say for herself? Did Felicia think this was grade school and she was the schoolmarm? Oughtta tell her “kiss my butt” is what I got to say for myself! Instead, she stared at Felicia as though she had half an avocado stuck to her forehead.

  “Well?” Felicia crossed her arms over her chest.

  “Well, what, ma’am?” Blanche’s right hand rose,unbidden, to her hip.

  “Please don’t take that attitude with me, Blanche. I could have fired you the moment you touched him. I still might.”

  “Well, ma’am, you got a right to have whoever you want working for you, but you can’t fire me because this isn’t my job. It’s Inez Brown’s job. I believe she’s been working for y’all for some years. Of course, you can get somebody in from an agency until Inez gets back, which is fine with me. I just hope you aren’t planning to fire Inez for something you seem to think I did, although I’m not quite sure what it is I’m supposed to have done…ma’am.” Blanche watched Felicia figure out how much trouble would be involved in finding a new housekeeper-cook just to finish out the week.

  Felicia nodded her head a couple of times. “You know how to protect yourself, I’ll give you that.” She let her hands fall into her lap. “You’re not going to tell me the truth, are you? I wouldn’t if I were you. But let me say that I saw what you did to Reverend Samuelson. I don’t know what he said or did to you, but men being men, I can imagine. Nevertheless, I cannot allow such behavior in my house. Do you understand?”

  She was going fine till that last question, Blanche thought. Now it’s back to grade school. But Felicia wasn’t through.

  “You don’t think I understand at all, do you?” She looked into Blanche’s eyes for just a second. “You think because I’m…You think I don’t know how it feels to have someone disrespect you so badly you just have to…”

  She ain’t trying to convince me she knows something about life, is she? Blanche asked herself. Probably thinks being disrespected means having somebody come late to her dinner party. Blanche had no thought of confessing, but if she had, Felicia’s doing the I-feel-your-pain thing wouldn't have changed her mind. Confessing was something she did with people she trusted, people who cared about her. People in her world. Her world and Felicia’s were on different planets. Only one of them ever took the spaceship called the city bus to the other’s planet. Felicia’s attempt to get her to stab herself in the back was evidence that only one of them lived in the real world.

  Blanche watched Felicia closely, waiting for her to finish her sentence. When they’d first met, Blanche had noticed that Felicia was one of those employers who actually looked you in the eye and spoke directly to you instead of acting like you were a machine they spoke into to get their meals cooked and their drawers washed. But Felicia wasn’t making much eye contact today. For while Felicia acted like what they were talking about was important, in the pauses between what Felicia had to say, Blanche could feel the woman slipping away to think about something more pressing—something that was making Felicia look like a vampire’s leftovers.

  “Well, as you say, it’s only temporary,” Felicia said at last.

  She handed Blanche two small white envelopes—one with Blanche’s name, and one with Carrie’s name written on the front of it. Blanche put the pay envelopes in her pocket. She hadn’t expected to get paid today since she’d only been on the job for two days, but she liked the fact that Felicia paid her on the regular day anyway.

  “Will there be anything else, ma’am?”

  “No, Blanche, there’s been more than enough already.”

  Blanche was glad Carrie wasn’t around when she got back to the kitchen. She needed a few minutes alone to take herself to task in a way Felicia couldn’t. She plopped into a chair and leaned her elbows on the kitchen table. How could she have been so sloppy? Had she even looked around to see if anyone was watching? Samuelson had just pissed her off so badly! Still, she should have been more careful.

  She rose in anticipation of a tap on the back door.

  “Hi. I’m Mick Harper, Mrs. Brindle’s masseuse.”

  She had the same red-brown coloring that Taifa and Malik had inherited from their Creole daddy.

  Blanche stepped back so Mick could enter. “Blanche White,” she said, “Pleased to meet you. I’m holding down Inez’s job while she’s on vacation.”

  If Mick Harper’s mannish haircut, bone-crushing handshake, and butch walk didn’t deliver her message, her purple T-shirt did. i can’t even think straight was plastered across her chest in hot-pink letters. She was one of those midsize women who managed to make themselves seem taller and bigger by the way they moved their bodies. Blanche was tickled. She knew instinctively that Felicia’s having a very out lesbian masseuse was meant to be a slap at that righteous-assed Allister.

  “Love that shirt,” she said.

  Mick grinned and pushed her granny glasses further up her freckled nose. She lowered her eyes when she smiled in a way that gave Blanche a glimpse of someone who was not quite as brash as Mick’s big bad woman front.

  “She ready for me?” Mick gestured with her head toward the second floor, exactly as Wanda and Blanche and, Blanche suspected, hundreds of thousands of other women did every day when referring to their employers.

  “If acting shifty-eyed and nervous is what you mean by ready, I guess she is.”

  “She have breakfast?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it.”

  “They fight?” Mick asked. “They usually do when she has to play the politico’s wife. Didn’t he have some kind of campaign lunch yesterday? She wanted me to come early yesterday morning, but I was booked. Well, let me get to it.” Mick stomped up the back stairs.

  When Mick came back down, the kitchen table was set with cups and plates for three. A plump carrot cake a
dorned the middle of the table flanked by a plate each of sliced-turkey-and-Havarti sandwiches and one of smoked salmon and Boursin.

  Mick didn’t hide her surprise. “Wow! Food! I don’t think Miz Inez would approve, not unless you’re planning to charge me. You’d swear she was paying for the groceries around here.”

  “Well, I won’t tell her if you don’t.” Blanche waved Mick to a chair. “Carrie should be through in a little bit. I don’t think she’ll mind if we start without her.”

  Mick gave Blanche a skeptical look. “You don’t really think Carrie’s gonna sit down and have lunch with me, do you?”

  “Bet you a nickel food will win out over foolishness,” Blanche said.

  “You’re on.” Mick straddled a chair and helped herself to a couple of sandwiches. Blanche allowed her a few bites before she began asking questions. This wasn’t exactly a free lunch. She’d never met a black masseuse before. She was all but drooling with curiosity.

  “You been doin’ this kinda work long?”

  Mick screwed her snubbed nose and thinnish lips into an I’m thinking arrangement and pushed up her glasses again.

  “ ’Bout eight years.” She took a huge bite of her sandwich.

  “Started with a Swedish girlfriend,” she said, talking around half a mouthful. She gave Blanche a challenging look and hesitated a beat.

  Blanche figured the look must be about the Swedish girlfriend’s color, since they’d already jumped over the sexual preference hurdle. She waited for Mick to go on.

  “Ingrid was into massage, got me interested. I went to the Massage Institute in Waltham, got my certification, and quit my job at the phone company.” Mick reached for another sandwich.

  “So, you do good business?”

  “I do okay. Being my own boss, in charge of my own time, makes up for what I lose in cash.”

  “I know just what you mean.” Blanche filled Mick’s coffee cup. “Course, your clients probably recommend you to people, same as mine. I know that helps.”

  “Oh sure. I work on all Felicia’s friends now.”

  “She seems decent enough.”

  “Felicia? She’s okay, I guess,” Mick said.

  Blanche waited for her to go on, but Mick finished her sandwich in silence.

  “So, Felicia’s a good employer?” Blanche prompted.

  Mick shrugged. Crumbs dotted the corner of her mouth. “She’s okay, I guess.”

  “You already told me that. But that don’t tell me much.” Blanche failed in her plan to keep irritation out of her voice. What did these Brindles do to hush up the help? First Carrie and now Mick.

  Mick fiddled with her coffee cup but didn’t speak.

  If politeness didn’t open her up, maybe a little jab would help. “Of course, not everyone knows how to get information about the people they work for.”

  “Oh, I know how to get it, all right,” Mick huffed. “I’m just not sure I oughtta be talking about my client’s business.”

  “Well, I don’t know how it is in your business,” Blanche told her, “but in my business, information is just like a pot or a broom, just another something I use to do my job in a way that works for all concerned, just like you need to know if your client’s got a bad back or a tricky kidney so you can give them the best service. And anyway, I’m working for Felicia, too. So, this is just a little talk between two professionals about our mutual client.”

  Mick laughed.

  “Now, tell me everything.” Curiosity made Blanche nearly squirm in her chair.

  “Everything like what?”

  “Well, how’d these two wind up together, for a start. Or don’t you know?” Blanche put plenty of challenge in her voice.

  Mick leaned back in her chair. “I know, all right, Blanche. It ain’t about not knowing.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, Felicia met Allister at an anti–Vietnam War rally in college. It sounds weird, now that Allister’s become Mr. Right-Wing Republican. But it’s true. Felicia was big in Women Against the War, or something like that, and Allister burned his draft card.”

  Blanche snorted. “Figures. I bet Allister was more interested in keeping his butt outta the line of fire than he was in ending the war!”

  “Tell me about it,” Mick said. “But Felicia sure thought he was the real deal. She said he was magnificent back then. That’s the exact word she used.”

  “Then what the hell happened? She acts like she can hardly stand him now.”

  Mick shrugged. “Allister changed after they settled down and had a kid. At first she thought his right-wing thing was Allister’s way of sucking up to his grandfather, making sure he got all of whatever the old man had to leave. Or at least that’s what one of Felicia’s girlfriends told me. But Allister was just showing his true colors. He didn’t switch back to being a liberal when the old man died. That’s what I don’t understand: Why a good-looking, intelligent woman with goo-gobs of money, who claims to be against war and poverty, and a feminist and all, stays with a man who now says he hates everything he used to believe in, everything she still believes in.”

  “Well, there’s believing and believing,” Blanche said. “Maybe she believes in being Mrs. Overclass just a little bit more than she believes in peace and feminism.”

  Mick looked disgusted. “You’re probably right. She sure don’t have no problem letting you know—in a very nice way, of course—that she’s a big deal in this town. Allister’s related to people who own this state. Or should I say, people who killed the Indians and stole their land? Being his wife means something whether he’s a Republican or walks around in a monkey suit. Being his ex-wife don’t mean jack, and being a liberal don’t mean nothing nowhere, these days.”

  Blanche thought about the difference between this picture of Felicia and the one Wanda had painted. She had no doubt that both versions were true. Like everyone else, Felicia was put together with pieces from different jigsaw puzzles so you got a little bit of a tree, half of a horse’s leg, and a bit of lake that taken together meant something different from anything the individual pieces showed.

  “Honey, I was wrong about you! You are deep in these folks’ business!” Blanche said. Nothing like a little flattery to keep a person’s tongue loose.

  “Oh, Felicia’s not my only source,” Mick told her. “It’s really kinda funny. While I’m working on them, Felicia and all her friends tell me rosy stories about their own lives and all the sad and juicy stuff about their friends. Told in the most sympathetic way, of course, at least on the surface. But you have to ask yourself…Anyway, I don’t get a lot of information directly from the source, but I sure get plenty from the girlfriends. If I hear the same story from three of them, I figure it’s probably mostly true. And, man, do they have stories to tell! I’m thinking about writing a book one of these days.”

  “I hope you’re planning to hire a good lawyer.”

  Mick laughed. “And a couple of bodyguards, too. These real upper-crust girls hate it when their shit gets in the street.”

  Blanche wasn’t ready to move on to Mick’s alternative career; she Blanche cut Mick a healthy slice of cake. “What about their son?”

  “Marc. Him and Allister fight a lot. Marc lives right over in Arlington, not a half hour away. Close enough to visit, but never does.”

  “I wonder what they fight about.”

  Mick ducked her head and picked at the crumbs on her plate. “Usual father-son bullshit, probably.”

  She knows something, Blanche thought, and wondered what Mick didn’t want to tell.

  “Felicia meets Marc for lunch a couple times a month,” Mick went on. “I used to think she did it just to piss Allister off. But she talks about Marc like my mom talks about my brother—like there was something real special between ’em.”

  Carrie came down the back stairs and stared first at the sandwiches and cake and then at Blanche and Mick.

  “Just in time. Have a seat.” Blanche held her breath.

  Carrie
took a step forward and one back. She put her hands in her apron pockets and took them out. She looked at the sandwiches again. Blanche could almost feel Mick adding another layer of protection around her most sensitive self.

  “I think you’ll like these salmon sandwiches,” Blanche said to Carrie. “Would you rather have juice than coffee?” she asked as if there was no doubt Carrie was going to join them.

  Carrie eased onto the chair in front of her place setting. Under the table, Blanche poked Mick on the thigh and held out her hand for her nickel. Mick dug into her pocket and slipped the coin to Blanche. Blanche grinned and offered Carrie the sandwiches. Breaking bread with a lesbian. A step in the right direction, even though Carrie couldn’t make eye contact with Mick. Blanche wondered if Mick would change the conversation now that Carrie had joined them, and was pleased when she didn’t.

  “I thought Allister Brindle was going to have a heart attack the first time he saw me!” Mick laughed. “Yeah, I’ll always remember that day.”

  “You think that’s why she hired you?”

  Mick didn’t pretend not to know what Blanche was talking about.

  “I used to, when I first found out what a right-wing asshole Allister is. In the beginning, every time I came here, she made sure he saw me. I felt like I was being used to jag him. That was before I realized how good I am at what I do. Now I charge her extra because I’m working in a hostile environment.” She put out her palm. Blanche slapped it and laughed.

  “I pray for him every night,” Carrie said. She kept her eyes on her sandwich. “I pray that God won’t make him suffer too much.”

  “Better to pray that bastard gets just what he deserves.” Mick stood up and thanked Blanche for the lunch. “See ya Monday!”

  Blanche gave Carrie her pay before Carrie went off to set the table. Blanche was ready to slip the Brindles’ lunch into the microwave—something she rarely did, but she didn’t feel like working over a hot stove for Allister Brindle. Anyway, she’d discovered very few people could tell the difference between the cooked and the zapped.