Paul Cleave - The Cleaner

I punch in the number (I wrote it down on a complimentary Five Seasons pad with a shaky hand while listening to the message), and the phone starts ringing. I end up talking to a woman at a Chinese restaurant for about a minute, trying to ask how my mother is while being given the day’s specials, until I realize I’ve dialed the wrong number. I slam the phone down and suck in a deep breath, but it doesn’t calm my nerves. My hands are shaking violently, and I have to use both of them to dial. I close my eyes and begin to imagine a world without Mom, and as I imagine it, tears begin to well in my eyes.

A life without Mom. I refuse to think about it. She’s the most important person in the world to me, and to think that something could be wrong. . well. . well, it hurts. More than having my testicle crushed into pulp and juiced. To imagine her gone. .

I simply won’t imagine it.

Simply can’t imagine it.

A woman at Christchurch Hospital answers the phone and tells me I’ve just called Christchurch Hospital. I appreciate her insight. I ask for Costello and a long minute later he comes to the phone, bringing with him a deep, concerned voice.

“Ah, yes, Joe. Listen, it’s about your mother.”

“Please don’t tell me anything’s wrong with her.”

“Well, actually, nothing is wrong with her,” he says, and for some reason I can’t explain I feel disappointment. “You can speak to her yourself. She’s right here.”

“But you’re at a hospital,” I say, as if I’m accusing him of something-perhaps of being a doctor.

“Yes, but your mother’s fine.”

“Then why didn’t she call me?”

“Well, she’s fine now, and since she’s not going home tonight, this was the only way she could speak to you. She said the only way of getting hold of you was if I called. She’s quite an insistent woman, your mother,” he says, without any humor.

“What was wrong with her?”

“I’ll let you talk to her.”

The line goes quiet as the phone changes hands. A mumbling of voices and then, “Joe?”

“Mom?”

“This is your mother.”

“What’s wrong? Why are you in the hospital?”

“I chipped a tooth.”

I sit there gripping the phone, pretty sure she’s told me she just chipped a tooth, but knowing that’s not what she said because. . well. . “A tooth? You chipped a tooth and you’re at the hospital?” I shake my head, trying to make her words make sense. If she chipped a tooth, then wouldn’t she be. . “At the dentist. Why aren’t you at a dentist?”

“I’ve been to the dentist, Joe.”

She says nothing then. My mother, a woman who probably won’t even stop talking when she’s dead, offers me no explanation. A couple of weeks ago she was happy to tell me she was shitting water. So I have to ask. “Why are you at the hospital?”

“It’s Walt.”

“He’s sick?” I ask, perhaps a little too hopefully.

“He broke his hip.”

“Broke his hip? How?”

“He slipped in the shower.”

“What?”

“He was having a shower, and he fell. Broke his hip. I had to call an ambulance. It was scary, Joe, yet exciting too, because I’ve never been in an ambulance. The sirens were loud. Of course, Walt kept on crying. I felt so bad for him, but he was so strong. The ambulance driver had a mustache.”

Uh huh. Uh huh. “You were at his house when he was showering?”

“Don’t be silly, Joe. I was at home.”

“Why did he call you?”

“He didn’t need to call me. I was already at home. It was me who called the ambulance.”

“Yeah, but why didn’t Walt call?” I ask, somewhat confused-perhaps not as confused as I’d like to be, because there is a scenario being built here.

“Because he was in the shower,” Mom says.

“Then how did he call you?”

“I was already there, Joe. What are you getting at?”

“I’m not sure,” I answer, happy to let it go.

“We were getting ready to go out, so we decided. .” She pauses, but I’ve already heard her mistake. “ He decided to take a shower.”

“He was at your house? You had a shower with him?”

“Don’t be so rude, Joe. Of course I didn’t.”

Images start going through my mind. I squeeze my eyes shut. I’d tear them out if it’d help. The images don’t budge. I’m sweating like a pig. I push my fingers at my closed eyes and thousands of colors appear-like in the chandelier downstairs-and I try to follow the colors with my eyes as they float across my mind. I’m happy to believe they didn’t take a shower together. If she says so, then I’m happy to believe it. Happy to forget she said we instead of he. Happy to forget this entire conversation. She just has to tell me that. .

“So, Mom, how did you chip your tooth?”

“It happened when Walt fell over.”

“What?”

“It happened when-”

“I heard you, Mom,” I say, trying to squeeze my eyes closed even tighter. “But I thought you said you weren’t taking a shower together.”

“Well, Joe, we’re adults. Just because we were taking a shower together doesn’t mean anything of a sexual nature was happening. Just because in this day and age young people can’t keep their hands off each other doesn’t mean we were acting just as immorally. We’re pensioners, Joe. We can’t afford to leave hot water running all day. So we took a shower together. Now don’t you go making a big deal out of nothing.”

“So how did you chip your tooth? He knocked you over?”

I open my eyes, because if they’re open, I see this lovely hotel room wall and not my mother taking a shower with some old guy. I don’t want to question her. She has explained things in enough detail for me, yet the question has left my mouth before I could stop it. I didn’t want to ask-God knows I didn’t. Eyes open, I see a couple of chairs, some paintings, and I can see the hotel room door. Maybe I should run for it.

“No, no, he kicked me in the mouth. His foot slipped out from beneath him, and the heel of his foot kicked me in the mouth.”

Don’t ask, Joe. Just don’t ask. “But how did his foot reach so high?”

“Oh, I wasn’t standing. I was kneeling. I was. . um. . well, it just happened, Joe, okay? He kicked me in the mouth.”

It just happened. What just happened? Oh God, please don’t show me. .

Only my mind does show me. My entire shirt is wet. I become so scared that she might confirm exactly what she was doing that the moment she starts talking again I put the phone down and run to the bathroom, reaching the bowl only just in time.

A hiccup, a convulsion of my stomach, the taste of bile. Vomit explodes from me in a roar and splashes into the water, while drops of water and puke flick onto my face and roll down onto my chin. I keep coughing it up until I have no more to cough, but I keep coughing anyway, watching it form a yellowish soup in the bottom of the toilet. As my body shudders, all I can picture is my mother in the shower. My throat quickly becomes raw, and my stomach shrinks into a small ball of pain. I can taste blood as it drips off my lips and plinks into the syrup below. There is something floating in there that looks like one of my dead goldfish.

My mind is spinning and I feel light-headed. I reach out and slap the lever and the mess that surely couldn’t have come out of me, but did anyway, is flushed away.

It hasn’t stopped flushing before I kneel back over the bowl, trying to throw up once again. Now I’m only gagging. Blood clots land in the water and spread out into rose petal shapes. I flush, but the toilet hasn’t regained pressure, so the petals don’t disappear. They just swirl around the edges of the bowl. Strands of drool hang from my bottom lip. They stick to the rim of the bowl, and they stretch when I lean back, eventually breaking. The tops of the strands swing down onto the black linoleum. Thinking about the thousands of people who have sat here and pissed and shat is better than thinking about Mom and her broken tooth.