| |
––––––––
I WHISTLED AS I ROUNDED the corner to her house, feeling a lightness in my chest I hadn’t felt in a while. Something about the thought of spending the day with her—even after a long shift at work—made the world seem a little brighter.
I had agreed to come around when I was finished my shift at work, and I had hired out a handful of tools as well as gathering a few supplies for the repairs. I wasn’t sure what I would do with everything once we were done, but I could think about that once we got there. For now, all I was really interested in was getting this house back into good shape and creating a place Celeste would be able to live without worrying for herself.
Plus, I was looking forward to seeing a little more of Ellie. I wasn’t sure what it was nagging at the back of my mind, but the thought of her had hooked in there and I couldn’t get rid of it, no matter how hard I tried. I wished I was able to cut through the bullshit of everything going on in my head so I could figure out exactly what I felt about her, but hey – I had a couple of weeks to work it out. I could take my time. There was no rush.
I pulled the car to a halt outside the house and spotted her in the kitchen. She was singing along to some music I could hear from the radio, and scrubbing at the window frame as though her life depended on it. She hadn’t noticed me yet, and for a moment, I just watched her—the way her hair bobbed as she danced on the spot, the smile spreading over her face as the music took hold of her. She really was gorgeous.
She lifted her head and spotted me there, and beamed. It was the first time she had greeted me with a proper smile, and I returned it. I liked the feeling of being good news to her, instead of bringing a heap of questions she needed to answer. I wanted to make a difference to her, I wanted to make her see how much I could help. I wanted to be indispensable, because that meant she would want me around more.
Okay, I was already overthinking, and I hadn’t even stepped through the door yet. I needed to pull myself together, or she was going to see right through me and work out what was going on in my head. I didn’t want her to guess just how attracted I was to her—I didn't want her to think this was the only reason I was doing this, when I had a genuine vested interest in making sure her mom was doing better.
She came outside to greet me, a spray bottle of cleaning fluid in one hand and an old rag in the other, and waved and smiled.
“Hey!” she greeted me happily. “I didn’t think you would get here so soon after work.”
“I wanted to get started,” I replied. I tried not to let my gaze fall to her long legs in the shorts she was wearing, her bare feet crossed at the ankle as she stood there in the doorway.
“Well, I think the first thing we need to do is scrub this place down,” she replied. “I can’t believe how bad it’s gotten in here. Mom was always so houseproud.”
“There are a lot of high ceilings,” I pointed out to her. “And other stuff she can’t reach without a ladder. She was having back pain before she had the fall, she wasn’t in any state to be climbing up a ladder.”
“Back pain, too?” Ellie asked, a frown crossing over her face. “She never mentioned it to me.”
I almost wanted to ask her what she did know about her mother, because, at this point, it seemed as though Celeste was doing all she could to hide the truth of her situation from her. It made me wonder if there were things my own parents weren’t telling me, for fear I couldn’t handle the truth. I supposed everyone did it, to some extent, kept secrets they didn’t want the world to know, but it still felt strange to me to think about how much she must have been holding to herself just to keep her daughter from worrying.
“Well, we can take care of it, now we’re here,” I offered her, and she nodded and managed to smile again.
“Yeah, I think that’s the first thing for us to do,” she agreed. “We have to clean the place. Top to bottom. And then maybe move some of the furniture out of the living room so we can see how it’s looking in there.”
“Sounds like you’ve got a whole heap of ideas,” I remarked, and she shrugged.
“I’ve just been taking a proper look at this place,” she explained. “There’s more to do than I thought, but I don’t want to get overwhelmed by it. I’ve been breaking it down into parts, so I can think about how to make the change, you know?”
“What does you mom think about all of this?” I asked.
“She’ll be fine once she sees how much better everything looks,” she replied. “I put her outside, with a book, she’ll be out there for hours. In fact, I was hoping she’ll fall asleep so she doesn’t notice how much we’re changing.”
“Let me guess, she wasn’t happy about the sewing room?” I asked, and she laughed and shook her head.
“Yeah, not at all,” she agreed. “I think she’s going to flip when she finds out how much more you want to change around here.”
I winced.
“But don’t worry, I’ll handle her,” she assured me. “It’s important we do this, for her own good. She’s just going to take a while to come around and see it.”
“You think?”
“I know,” she replied. “I know she doesn’t want to live in a house she can’t take care of herself. We’re just going to make it easier for her.”
“Speaking of that,” I replied. “I think it’s probably a good idea to look into hiring a cleaner, at least for a couple of days a week, to keep her from doing too much.”
“Yeah, okay, you can be the one to tell her that,” she laughed. “I’m not going to tell her she can’t take care of her own house.”
“You think she’d take it badly?”
“I know she would,” she warned me, cocking an eyebrow. “Trust me. She likes to be the one in control of everything. She’s having a hard enough time letting you in here to make it safer. If we hire a cleaner, she’s going to spend the day before they come scrubbing this place top to bottom with a toothbrush.”
I sighed. It was going to be harder than I thought to get Celeste to accept we were trying to help her, but it wasn’t as though I could blame her. I knew all too well what it felt like to have a life pulled out from underneath you, even if you had somewhat agreed to it happening, and she was going to hang on to everything she could of the previous life she had lived.
“Well, I guess we should get started while we have the chance, huh?” I suggested. “What’s first?”
“Could you hold the ladder in the kitchen while I get up into the corners?” she suggested. “I have a horrible feeling I’m going to kick that thing out from under me if I’m not careful.”
“Sure,” I replied. “What were you listening to in there? Seemed like you were enjoying it.”
“Just some cheesy eighties stuff,” she replied, waving a hand, as though she wasn’t sure what else to say about it.
“Best music to do anything to,” I agreed. “Gets you pumped up, right?”
“You like that kind of thing too?” she asked, her eyes brightening excitedly.
“My entire running playlist is pretty much A-Ha,” I replied, and she laughed delightedly.
“Oh, that’s awesome,” she replied.
I propped up her ladder as she reached for the cobwebs in the very corners of the room and kept my eyes averted so I didn’t stare right at her gorgeous, long legs. We chatted about music, nothing serious, the conversation flowing with ease as we cleaned the rest of the kitchen, clearing out the cupboards and making room for everything that needed to be done.
It was clear Celeste had been living here without much to support or help her for a long time, and, as Ellie made her way down from the ladder, I wondered if I could ask her just what it was that had happened to put her in such a state. Why had Ellie been gone so long? But I pushed it down, knowing it was none of my business and not wanting to hurt her or stir up bad memories.
In the hallway, Ellie paused for a moment to look at one of the pictures of her and her mother in front of a large old church, surrounded by cobbled sidewalks.
“Where were you?” I asked.
“Bologna,” she replied. “In Italy. I lived there for a few months when I was doing a project for my boss, and I knew my mom had to see it. She loved it out there. It’s so beautiful, and there’s so much history right at your fingertips.”
“I’ve never been to Italy,” I remarked, and she shook her head.
“You need to go,” she told me. “Even just for the food. And the drinks. Oh, my goodness, they had this cocktail called a negroni there, and it’s pretty much the strongest drink I’ve ever had in my life. I had to make sure I wasn’t wearing heels if I had more than one of them or I would be over on my ass in a matter of seconds.”
She told me about a few of their other trips with enormous fondness, remembering small details of where they had gone together, what they had done. She had travelled a whole hell of a lot, and it seemed like she had lived in most of the destinations she had brought her mother to for at least some time. She never mentioned what it was she did there, but she seemed to have happy memories of nearly everywhere but here.
When she came to the photo of what I assumed was her father holding her as a kid, she stopped dead in her tracks, like the sight of it was more than she could take. The corners of her mouth turned down, and she glanced away, clearly not able to handle the weight of everything going on inside her head at the sight of her late dad.
“Anyway, we should get to clearing the living room,” she replied after a second. “How are you feeling? Up to moving some furniture?”
My muscles, still aching from Saturday, groaned in protest, but I did as I was asked. I wanted to be as helpful as I could be to her and Celeste. It was why I’d come here in the first place. I wanted to make sure I got them through this, and they needed my help, given the state of the house right now and everything which still needed to be done.
We turned up the music and I moved the furniture so Ellie could clean underneath it, scrubbing out the cobwebs and dust and stains which had accumulated beneath the chairs and tables. She bobbed her head along to the music, humming with this riff or that one, and I watched her out of the corner of my eye.
She seemed a little more at ease now than she had before, as though she was getting used to being home. Maybe scrubbing it out was helping her work through her own memories too, some version of herself getting cleaned out at the corners as much as this place was. Whatever had changed, I was glad for it; she seemed lighter than before, as though she was carrying less weight on her shoulders.
Eventually, Celeste hobbled to the doorway, and she gasped when she saw how much had changed.
“What are you doing?” she exclaimed, and both Ellie and I looked up as though we had been caught in the middle of something.
“We’re cleaning,” Ellie assured her mother quickly. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to keep it like this, I just needed to move the furniture to make sure we could get into all the corners.”
“You better put this all back like you found it,” she warned her daughter, and I had to hold back a smirk at the look on Ellie’s face. It was funny, the way people fell back into their own habits and patterns when they were back in their family homes, no matter how much time they had spent away from them. Put someone in front of their parents, and watch them revert to their teenage dynamics, whether they wanted to admit it or not.
“I will,” Ellie groaned to her mother, shooting me a look and rolling her eyes playfully. I rolled them right back, and it felt like the two of us were sharing a camaraderie. Whatever doubts we’d had about one another when all of this had started, they were starting to fade, and I was relieved we both seemed to be able to cut through the bullshit and have a little fun.
And maybe, just maybe, something more, too.
