The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [25]
By the time she walked over the bridge and crossed the West Side Highway, the early autumn twilight had turned to dark. She could still hear the creaking of swings in the new children’s park across Washington Street and the murmur of mothers’ voices as they gave their kids a final push, cajoling them towards home with promises of dinner and bedtime stories.
Charlotte felt herself tumbling into a familiar limbo. The feeling was similar to catching one’s heel on the edge of a rug. She was losing her balance, falling. Caught in the beginnings of that lethargy and listlessness that signaled depression, she felt almost homeless. Turning her key in the lock, she entered the apartment.
For the first time in months, Charlotte didn’t fight it. She simply allowed the void to engulf her. Lying prone on the living room couch as the inertia rolled over her and her muscles and mind went slack, even the impulse to breathe seemed to demand too much effort. When she was younger, much younger, Charlotte had often feared that this oppressively flat and featureless inner landscape would drive her mad. It was a sign of weakness, a shameful secret, that she’d hidden away while practicing her smile in the bathroom mirror.
But even now, she was glad that she’d cut down on her antidepressants. She missed the vertiginous highs after these periods of inertia—a state of being, or non-being—that Charlotte also likened to being buried alive. She was picturing herself at the airport with Amy’s set of custom-made Vuitton when her world went dark.
15
She still wasn’t used to the new electric toothbrush. Every time, she switched it on, she felt as if she were brushing with a swarm of mosquitoes or bees in her mouth. After rinsing and tying her hair back in a ponytail, she strode off towards the kitchen. Cleaning was one of Charlotte’s pre-mission rituals. It was also one of her greatest pleasures. She found a certain nobility in the work.
Her supplies were in a closet next to the Sub-Zero refrigerator. Slipping her hands into a pair of pink rubber gloves, she filled a pail with hot, steamy water and vinegar and rolled up her sleeves. Why is this work so satisfying, she wondered before getting down on her hands and knees to scrub the grouting between the Italian tiles with an old toothbrush. Maybe it’s the physical part of it, she thought. “Sweat equity.” Wielding mops, dusting, ironing clothes, and washing floors was a means of claiming a space as one’s own. It created a complicity between the animate and the inanimate. It brought a house alive.
Sitting back with her hands on her hips, she pitied all the women in New York who never touched a broom, a mop, an iron, a sponge. Women who only sweat in spas and private gyms in front of personal trainers. (“Gymnausea,” she called it.)
After mopping the floors and wiping down the window ledges with more hot water and vinegar, she placed two fresh lemon wedges in the dishwasher and reached for the Dustbuster. This one was so powerful, it even sucked up liquids. It had been a Christmas present from her ex-boyfriend, Paul. “How can you stand being such a neat freak?” he’d asked her as she unwrapped the gift. “You’re so neurotically tidy!”
What did slobs like Paul know of such primal, uncomplicated joys? Of a woman’s deep, unfulfilled longings not just for order but for the dazzle, the spotless promise of new beginnings? This was the pleasure of cleaning house, this aura of promise.
After replacing the Dustbuster in its charger, Charlotte smiled. She could smell the scent of lemon from the dishwasher. She’d reline the cabinets later with a new, hand-waxed paper from Kate’s Paperie. The only job that remained was the poker. Opening up the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, she pulled out a can of Brasso and her soft chamois cloth. Nothing cleaned better than old-fashioned elbow grease.
16
Shit! The prong of the poker was stuck, like the barb of a fish hook in the woman