The TV wasn't on when she got home. If it were, it would probably be tuned to Dance Time, her mother Susan's favorite daytime talk show.
Sebastian Stevens had been a guest the past few days. Every time he walked on stage, waving in his suit, the audience went wild. He was young, handsome, and had fantastic white teeth. The show's host, Victor Belleza, would jump up and meet him for a hug to even more raucous applause and cheering.
Much of their banter focused on his fabulous wealth; in one game, Victor challenged Sebastian to name the prices of common grocery items, and he had to admit he didn't know the cost of a carton of eggs. It was all in good fun, since Victor and his media empire couldn't rightly criticize someone for being rich. Not that anyone should. The whole "all business is bad" philosophy was stupid, in her opinion.
She could tell from his expression that he wasn't vain enough to participate in Victor's silly dancing games for the sake of it. There was something resigned in his eyes, as if he accepted celebrity as a necessary consequence of some greater goal. Some awfully noble cause.
"Do you think that's real?" Susan would always say, pointing at Sebastian's carefully coiffed brown hair. "He looks great, you know? Not like your father used to."
This time, Susan's voice rang in from the kitchen. "Rach, honey, I left you a snack on the table." There was a bag of potato chips from her job and a sticky note with a heart on it.
Rachel followed the trail of notes papering the walls. Susan taped and pinned everything up: cut-out pictures of models from magazines to motivate her to stick with her diet, printed directions to the pharmacy and the doctor's office, pages torn from notebooks with blood pressure and weight records in a messy scrawl, reminders to watch My Obese Life on the Reality Channel at two.
"Mom," Rachel started, but was instantly shushed. Susan gave her a silent hug and kiss while keeping her attention on the phone—an old flip-style model. A robotic voice asked, for each week, if she worked, how many days she worked, and if she earned more than $504 in said week. Susan mouthed that she had already been on the phone for two hours. Rachel couldn't bear to watch her mother's trembling fingers hesitate over the keypad, slowly punching in numbers. She offered to do the rest herself; at least that way they could talk.
"You're not on temp work again?" Rachel asked.
Susan nodded. "They says to me, they says, 'Oh, Su-Su'—that's what they call me—'we don't want to lose you, we want you to stay, but we can't afford to have you in every day,' so I have to wait by the phone to see if I get a call, if they want me to come in."
"So you're going to spend eight hours waiting by the phone for the chance you'll get two hours of work?" She was faster than Susan; she was able to input the remaining weeks into the unemployment hotline and hand the phone back to Susan, who thanked her with an "I love you."
The wall, or at least the parts of it that could be seen under all the notes, had splotches of old dirt. Cleaning it was a hassle. All of the papers had to be taken down and put back up in the right spots. The baseboard was almost entirely brown where it used to be white. Despite all her attempts at scrubbing, all Rachel could conjure was a growing puddle of brown water that seeped from the stains.
Parts of the house were beyond cleaning, especially the bathroom. The tiles had become cracked and sunken, and the floor was haphazardly covered with mats to cover it. There were holes in the plaster where the plumbers had come to fix the pipes that had never been filled in. It was on the orders of several of these plumbers that they could no longer flush toilet paper because the septic tank couldn't handle it. Any used toilet paper went in the garbage can. There was no stench anymore, but Rachel wondered if she hadn't just gotten used to it, and if any visitor wouldn't instantly gag. Rachel flushed her own toilet paper and found that it didn't cause any problems, but Susan wouldn't follow suit. "We can't risk the tank overflowing again," she would say. "The plumbers know these things."
Susan's rituals were optimized for ease. On the orders of her doctor (to whom she wrote thank-you letters expressing barely-hidden romance) and her yellow-paged paperback medical book, the cover so frayed away that you could barely make out the words A Woman's Guide to Heart Disease, she would not lift anything she didn't have to. Dr. Mel, the host of TV's Doctor Time, a sister show of Dance Time known for its segments on the healing powers of guava and dragging out wheelbarrows of gelatinous fat to show the audience just how many disgusting globby pounds even 200 extra calories a day could add to the body, advised all women of her age to not lift more than fifty pounds.
Although even the most active bowel alive couldn't have made that bathroom garbage bag weigh more than just a few pounds, even when it was loaded with used toilet paper, Susan made sure to pick each piece of brown tissue out and redistribute it to different bags. One full garbage bag would be divided into five smaller ones, and each one would be carried out individually to the outside garbage on pick-up day.
More and more, their house felt like one of the filthy pigsties Dr. Jones would exhibit on Healing Time, a psychology talk show. The audience of middle-aged women would gasp in terror at pictures of homes with dirty, ripped carpets and garbage-strewn floors, houses with rats and bugs, flashing across the studio's screens with dramatic music and black-and-white crime scene filters. Dr. Jones would take a deep breath, preparing himself to tear into the gap-toothed, thin-haired, rapidly aging white mother sitting across from him, and say with knife-like precision, "You are a slob, you are disgusting, and you are unfit to be a parent," and the audience would cheer in a rapturous frenzy.
"They're not your friends if they won't give you work," Rachel said. She opened the cabinet and picked up a bowl. Food was still crusted to the bottom of it.
She showed the bowl to Susan. "Is this clean?"
Susan adjusted her glasses. "Oh, I didn't see that."
Rachel sighed and ran the sink. She put in too much detergent and scrubbed the spot too hard.
"You're too fussy, Rach. I eat from it and I haven't died yet. It's fine."
"It's not fine when I can tell what meal was eaten in it last."
"Oh, you're too fancy, Rach." She smiled and said, in her "you'll see" voice, "You can��t be this fancy in this real world."
"And why are there plastic spoons in the sink? I told you, just use it once and throw it away."
The plastic spoons had a layer of grime in the back of the handles that never came out, no matter how hard you tried to wash them.
"They help me eat less," Susan said, "because they're small."
"So use one, throw it away, and buy more when you run out."
"Why would we waste money on a million plastic spoons a week?"
"Because! Would you put used toilet paper in the washing machine and hang it out to dry?"
She poured more detergent into the bowl. The sink was surrounded by fake flowers with dark spots of dirt on the petals. Rachel had argued endlessly about throwing them away, but Susan had retorted, "They're flowers. What's wrong with having flowers? They're pretty."
While Rachel cleaned, Susan explained that her boss Leslie (who she had seen eat multiple pieces of cheesecake at a party once, didn't she care about her health?) was probably edging her out for a new hire who had a bachelor of science in custodial engineering from an ASA school. Leslie was so impressed that she quickly made this new girl (her name was Kyra) the only one allowed to fill the mop buckets.
She didn't go to a great school or anything, this Kyra woman (of course she didn't, it was ASA), but no one else at Susan's job had a degree. On top of that, Kyra also had certifications in both Clorox and Windex.
"Maybe I should get a degree—I think they call it a 'CE' degree, for custodial engineering—too," Susan said.
Rachel saw the problems in this plan. A CE degree required real use of brooms, dusters, and rags, and couldn't be done online. Sure, the reading assignments and essays could be done over the computer, but the hands-on stuff had to be done in a lab. Her mother would have to drive to classes, and she was already nervous every time she got behind the wheel—it took her months before she was comfortable driving alone to work. And speaking of work, if she decided to juggle her job and go to classes part-time, it would take much longer than four years to get a degree.
She didn't say any of this. At eye level in front of the sink was a chocolate wrapper taped to the wall that said "There's always a happy ending. If it's not happy, then it's not the end."
What she really wanted to say was, why fight so hard to keep such a shitty job? Susan's bosses might call her Su-Su or organize the occasional cheesecake party here and there, but in every other sense they were cruel and demanding. They distributed erratic schedules hours before work started in the early morning—the phone calls Susan waited for. They doled out regular pat-downs to make sure no one was taking any of the wet wipes or sponges from the supply closet home. Bathroom breaks had to be once an hour and five minutes max, you had to raise your hand (like in school) to ask a supervisor for one, and offenders of the time restrictions were put on a large board in the break room called the Potty List. Every employee's name was listed with a blank space next to it. All extra bathroom breaks were tallied up with little stickers that looked like toilets.
Of course, Susan's (undiagnosed) bladder issues meant she was running to the bathroom every minute. There was no official penalty for getting a lot of toilet stickers, but it was probably why the slip of paper that constituted her employee review always had 1's circled under "productivity," "initiative," and "motivation."
Susan even told Rachel a story once about how a few times she just looked both ways, pulled down her pants, squatted over the yellow mop bucket, and peed into it just to escape the ire of the "toilet Nazis," as she called them. Susan laughed while she told it, but Rachel was horrified. "And I kept mopping with it," Susan added.
The worst part was when Susan—maybe jokingly, maybe not—suggested that if Rachel didn't know what she wanted to do, she would recommend her for a position at her job.
Susan would sometimes laugh, thinking about the things she had to study in school. "History, science, math… It turns out you don't need any of that in the real world!" Maybe that was true for CE jobs. You didn't have to know about the stars in the sky or the great works of literature. You didn't deserve to know any of that. All you had to know was how to polish a floor.
To her, that was death. Every minute of life not spent executing the complete potential of every tendon in her body would be wasted. Not aiming for the absolute apex, not striving with all your might, meant becoming nothing. That was, as she imagined it, the horror of middle age: looking back and having nothing to show for it.
"I was thinking of taking an internship," she said vaguely.
"Now? What about school?"
"You get credit for it, if you get in. Whatever schooling you need, they give you."
"And you're going to do it… where? Here?"
"No, somewhere else." Somewhere far from here, she almost added, but the bitterness and contempt in the thought surprised her and made her sad. Kate would tell her to just relax and have a good time. She adjusted the notion in her mind—what would be more fun than Silicon Valley? Skyscrapers and huge tech campuses filled with geniuses? This was her most automatic reflex, the ability to justify her own feelings to an imagined audience before even attempting to justify them to herself.
"Do you have enough time? What about college?"
She felt a twinge of panic. "I have enough time. If I do it now. And if I do it I'll get into a better college."
But she wasn't sure if she really had enough time. Graduation was approaching fast. The "Fernwood Class of 2033" Seatbelt group was full of classmates excitedly declaring their destinations. This was the moment when futures were set into motion. High school, for what it was, was a place of relative equity. Whether your dad bought you a Rolls Royce for your sweet sixteen or not, you still had to sit in class alongside everyone else as students. But after high school? All bets were off. People drifted, whether by osmosis or by concentrated effort, Rachel didn't know (though she suspected the former), into the vast network of "adult" life that throbbed all around her.
Her only perspective into the changes of adulthood was Susan's assertion that you never really felt any different on the inside than you did when you were a teenager. Rachel's classmates would become the next leaders of the world, without changing from how they were now. It was hard to imagine.
Therefore, all that mattered was grabbing hold of it, the future you wanted. So she suggested to Susan that they watch Dance Time together. Sebastian Stevens was still there, continuing his multi-day run as featured guest.
Sebastian was holding two "love paddles" while Victor flashed through a series of pictures of male celebrities. The love paddles measured his heart rate as he looked at each on a scale from "cold turkey" to "hoochee mama."
"I don't know about this, Victor," Sebastian said, as if consciously playing up the buttoned-up reticence the audience loved him for. Everyone laughed.
"Oh, come on, do you really think I would embarrass you in front of millions of Americans?"
"Do I even have to answer that question?" A perfectly quippy response.
"I'll start you off with an easy one." A picture of Victor in a bathing suit appeared and the needle on the love paddle meter flew to "hoochee mama."
Victor gave a faux gasp. "Sebastian! I… I had no idea!"
"Can we get someone to check if this thing is working?" Sebastian said. A crew member with an oversized toolbox ran out, tapped the love meter with a foam wrench, and gave a thumbs up.
"Looks like it's working to me," Victor said with a shrug.
"I would have your team fired from my R&D department, I'll say that."
Susan adjusted her glasses. "He does look like Zeke, doesn't he? I've seen him in the yearbook photos. Are you in the same class as Zeke, Rach?"
Rachel gave a distracted "yes" and focused closer on the TV, almost as if to see if Sebastian's intelligence had a visible aura. Sebastian's having a son who went to Fernwood High was not remarkable. A lot of kids she knew had parents who were well respected or famous in their fields, even to the extent of making the occasional television appearance. The significant thing was that Zeke didn't live with his father. Sebastian had divorced Zeke's mother long ago, and Zeke had stayed in Fernwood, New York instead of following him to Silicon Valley. Whatever his reasons for this estrangement, Rachel wasn't sure, but she did know from the College Decisions page that he was following Sebastian in the sense of his legacy admission to Yale.
On the screen, Victor and Sebastian continued their playful banter. Sebastian grabbed hold of the needle on the meter and tried to force it back while Victor urged Sebastian to be honest with his feelings.
Finally, Victor said, laughing, "It'll take a strong dose of Rybenza to get that needle to drop, Sebastian!"
Sebastian's expression fell. "I'd like to not joke about that. It is important to note that rymulgene belentirepevec, which has yet to be approved, is under development for ego-dystonia only, and that this is a medical condition that can only be diagnosed by a medical professional."
He recited this apparently FDA-mandated boilerplate as if by memory, but his anger was unmistakably genuine. The normally jovial Victor began apologizing profusely until Sebastian assured him it was fine, but that it was simply an important distinction to make. The rest of the show couldn't escape that tense atmosphere. Both the audience and Victor shrank away from the scolding, and their fear and embarrassment was awkward to watch.
"He is so smart, all those words," Susan said. "And someone had to put that Victor in his place, I say. He seems so fake."
Rachel leaned forward, feeling as if she would fall forward into the dusty TV screen, when she noticed her mother's legs. She stood up.
"Jesus Christ, Mom, I talked to you about wearing underwear in the house."
"I'm wearing a shirt. You can't even see it."
"Yeah, a shirt that you never clean." She paced, pressing a hand to her forehead. "And since when was a fucking shirt a dress? And since when did you not wear underwear under a dress?"
"Rach, it gets so hot down there."
"It's November!"
"You know this house. It gets hot, it gets cold…" Susan said, leaning her hands to the left and right like a balance scale.
She was sick of this. She was sick of Susan playing her game of learned helplessness, of her dark pubic hair making itself visible whenever she bent over in the kitchen when she was dressed like this, and of her sneakiness—they had had this argument before. But Susan's insistence that her shirt was long enough, even though it wasn't even close to reaching her knees, made her keep stubbornly striving to subvert the rule.
"I've told you a million times, I don't want to see that. And you wonder why I don't have people over, why I don't have Kate over."
"You can't see it!"
"What about when you came in my room while I was doing my crunches on the floor? I couldn't see it then?"
Rachel prepared to storm upstairs to her room, but turned on her heel, grabbed all of the plastic utensils Susan used for portion control from the sink, and threw them out right in front of her, adding, "And we're done with the dirty fucking spoons."
Later, when she had almost finished getting ready for the party, she heard a small noise outside her door. She waited before opening it and found a small box of chocolate covered peanuts with a note attached to it on the floor. The note said, "Rachel—I'm sorry for not wearing underwear. I love you. – Mom."
She tried to toss it in the garbage, but calculated that it cost $3.99—exactly 20 minutes and 17 seconds worth of labor—and ate it anyway.