‘Next task!’ someone wrote. ‘Top of the fridge!’
She reached up and dragged two fingers across it. They came back gray.
‘OMG, SHE FOUND A NEW SPECIES OF DUST.’
Patricia looked personally betrayed.
Her smile disappeared.
Then came the cabinets. She opened one too fast, and three plastic containers rained onto the counter.
‘THE CABINET IS FIGHTING BACK.’
Meanwhile, I’d already finished my cabinets and moved on to the laundry without dropping a thing.
She didn’t laugh.
By the time someone suggested folding a fitted sheet, Patricia looked personally betrayed by the internet.
Next, someone asked us to wipe the range hoods. Mine took seconds. Patricia scrubbed hers twice, but the cloth still came away brown with grease.
I held up my clean cloth and laughed.
“Patricia, should I pretend I didn’t see that?”
She didn’t laugh.
“Just finish the task.”
That was when Patricia finally stopped performing. The bright Facebook smile vanished. So did the little lectures about how things “should” be done. She just stood there holding the filthy cloth while the comments piled up faster than she could read them.
“I don’t know why everyone’s ganging up on me,” she said, but there was no anger in it now.
I opened my mouth to remind her whose idea public humiliation had been. Then I saw her hand shaking.
“Patricia,” I said. “Forget the comments. Just finish the task.”
The comments went still.
She looked at me through the screen.
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
She lowered herself onto the kitchen floor.
“I mean I can’t do any of it, Claire. I never could.”
“You were looking for reasons to judge me?”
The comments went still.
“You and Nathan have this… this life. Your house, your jobs, dinner on the table. You make all of it look so easy.”
She wiped at her face.
“Every time I came to your house, I looked for something wrong. Dust. Dinner. Laundry. Anything. Because if I could find something you were failing at, I didn’t have to feel so ashamed of what I was failing at here.”
I’d finally won.
I stared at her. “You were looking for reasons to judge me?”
“I was looking for reasons not to judge myself.”
Her eyes moved around the kitchen.
“And when I saw you in bed that day… I finally had something I could use against you. So I did.”
“We’re done.”
And there it was. Eight years of little hums, inspections, corrections, all those impossible standards I’d kept trying to meet. They had never been about my house. They had been about hers.
I stared at her little square on my screen.
Three days earlier, I’d wanted her embarrassed. Ten minutes earlier, I’d wanted her beaten at her own game.
I’d finally won. I just didn’t want the victory anymore.
“I’m sorry, Claire.”
“Nathan,” I said. “End the stream.”
Patricia looked up.
“Claire…”
“We’re done.”
“That’s a start.”
****
An hour later, Nathan and I stood outside Patricia’s door. This time, we knocked.
Nathan quietly slid our emergency key off her ring.
“You come over when you’re invited,” he said. “Not before.”
She nodded, small and tired. Then she looked at the floor.
“I’m sorry, Claire.”
That was enough.
I waited. Patricia had apologized before — for being “too honest,” for “hurting my feelings,” for things that somehow still ended up being my fault.
But this time, she didn’t add anything.
“Thank you,” I said. “That’s a start.”
****
Driving home, Nathan reached for my hand.
“You okay?”
I thought about Patricia’s little hum and all the years I’d spent trying to avoid it.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m done trying to impress your mother.”
Nathan smiled.
“Good.”
For once, that was enough.
