Amber spotted the wreckage on her way home from work. As she drove up Peacock Lane, ready to turn into her cul-de-sac, she saw the Lindstrom’s house, its roof completely gone, every shingle blown in a different direction and scattered over neighboring lawns.
So, Sheila Lindstrom had finally left Neil. There were ways to leave gracefully and kindly, ways that still kept your home intact. Sheila had obviously chosen another way. Poor Neil. He worked hard and tried to make his wife happy. How could he not know she was cheating on him? Amber had been in the Lindstrom’s house. Signs of disorder were everywhere.
Amber stopped at the foot of her driveway and got the mail. Bills, bills, and two magazines. Women’s Home had the best headline: “The World’s Cleanest House!” She flipped through the pages. It was probably some impossibly decorated place, all feng shui and no stuff. Completely undoable. Even the bare minimum—towels and forks and books and umbrellas—could easily get out of hand.
Working Mother had “Ten Tips for Speed-Cleaning.” She didn’t bother glancing at that one. She’d seen every bit of advice out there, from watching less TV to volunteering at a soup kitchen. They all worked to a certain extent, but they all took as much time as actually cleaning her house. Her own method seemed simpler. She worked, Michael worked, Brian went to school, and they tidied up on weekends. But with three people in it, their small ranch house was never going to be sparkling, unless she become a nun or something.
She opened the door and almost tripped over shoes—snow boots, sandals, high heels, flip flops—a pile she distinctly remembered picking up that morning. Angry music hit her from behind Brian’s door. Well, that explained the shoes. She reconsidered the nun option—nuns with their perfectly ordered lives reflecting their perfect virtue.
She stepped into the kitchen and dropped the mail on the table. A first-class letter slipped out from between the magazines. She frowned when she saw Lincoln High School as the return address. Her eyes cut to Brian’s bedroom and then back to the kitchen. No dishes in the sink, nothing on the countertops, every chair tucked snugly under the table. Maybe it wasn’t so bad this time. Maybe that talk they’d had with Brian last week actually made a difference. She ripped open the envelope and withdrew the single sheet of paper. It was pink, hand-written, the bottom of a stack of carbon copies. She’d seen this form before: one copy for the teacher, one for the permanent file, one for the parents.
Her eyes skimmed over the words. Cheating on a test. Skipping class. In danger of failing. Call school for a conference.
Splat. She looked up from the letter at the sound of a drip from the one of the cupboards. A thick, white liquid oozed from the cupboard, pooling onto the countertop below. Amber frowned. All she kept there were coffee cups.
She crossed over to the cupboard and flung open the door, then ducked as an avalanche of silverware and tinfoil and plastic lids tumbled out. Below that was a melting pint of vanilla ice cream. She opened the drawer where she kept the rags, only to find plastic wrap and sharp knives. A jumble of soup cans, spatulas, potato chip bags, and sponges greeted her from the next cupboard. She frantically tore open every door, hoping that something—anything—would be in its proper place. She found one or two plates per cupboard, boxes from the pantry on every shelf, and the microwave full of jars and bowls. Over the sink, the spaghetti pot was full of rice and the coffee grinder was full of cereal. She didn’t dare look anywhere else. If there was ice cream in the cupboard, who knew what was in the freezer?
“Brian!” she yelled, but stopped when a pot rattled in the cupboard. Right. No yelling. Brian wouldn’t be able to hear above his music anyway.
Brian. Their only child. They’d named him after his grandfather, given him everything from private preschool to tennis lessons to a car. And this was what they received in return.
Amber cursed under her breath and threw the leaking ice cream carton in the sink. She removed everything from the cupboard and began scrubbing with a rag she found under the teapot.
The front door opened and Michael stepped over the pile of shoes in the entryway. “Hi, honey! Did you see the Lindstrom’s house?”
“Did you see ours?” She put down the rag and opened all the kitchen cupboards, standing back to let him admire the mess. “Such exquisite geometry,” she said. “Such massive disorder, and yet it all fits behind closed doors.”
Michael’s eyes widened. “What happened?”
“This happened.” She handed him the letter from the school. “We have to talk to him. Today. Now. This cannot go on.”
Michael gestured around the kitchen. “Do you want some help with this first?”
Amber put her hands on her hips and glared at him. That was always the way, wasn’t it? Domestic jobs were the woman’s responsibility. Men “helped.” She snatched the letter out of Michael’s hand and marched toward Brian’s room.
Michael caught up to her in the hall and put a hand on her arm. “Maybe you should calm down before you speak to Brian.”
“I can’t calm down!” She breathed heavily through her nose. “I’ve been calming down for sixteen years.”
“Be careful,” Michael said. “You know, the Lindstroms, you saw what…”
“Excuse me? Honey, the Lindstroms don’t live here.” She shook off Michael’s hand, stormed down the hall, slammed open Brian’s door and snapped off the music.
Brian sat in his beanbag chair, holding a video game controller. His homework sat on his desk, untouched. He paused the game and focused on her. “Hey, Mom. When’s dinner?”
“Maybe never. Have you seen the kitchen? Have you seen this?” She waved the pink sheet of paper in his face. “Skipping chemistry class? Again? After all we talked about?”
Brian’s bulletin board fell off the wall, face down onto the bed.
“Give me that.” He reached for the letter and scanned it. “Do you believe this?”
“Yes.” Amber looked around the room, taking in the piles of clothes, game packs, and candy wrappers.
“Oh, so you’re going to believe the school, and not me, your own son?” He unpaused the video game and started playing again.
Amber stood and clicked off the video display. She ripped the controller out of Brian’s hands.
“Hey!”
“No, not ‘hey.’ I’m talking to you.”
“It’s stupid.” Brian crossed his arms and thrust out his chin. “Chemistry is a such a waste of time. And Mrs. Hanson is crazy. That woman hates me.”
“I don’t know how she can hate you if she never sees you.” Hangers rattled in the closet.
“Tell me, when am I ever going to use chemistry?” Brian asked. “It’s so irrelevant.”
“I’m a nurse!” Amber yelled. “I use chemistry every single day. I mix the wrong IV and a patient is dead, Brian. Dead! You need chemistry. You need it to cook a meal. You need it to understand life.”
Brian threw out his hands. “I’m not going to be a nurse.”
“You’re not going to be anything if you fail out of high school!”
In the corner, a towering pile of dirty laundry tipped over and sprawled onto the floor. Amber ignored it. She was sick and tired of being terrorized by her own home. She didn’t want to make Sheila Lindstrom’s mistakes, but wasn’t blowing off her roof better than living under it in constant fear of making a mess?
“You’re grounded,” she said.
“What?”
“You’re coming home right after school and doing your homework at the kitchen table, which I am going to check before you turn it in. I will be on the phone with your teachers every single night if I have to. And that allowance you demand every week? You’re not getting it anymore.”
“But, Mom!”
“Silence!” Amber took a deep breath, and held it, waiting. The house was still. She unplugged the video game controller from the console and wound up the cord. “This is mine until you get your grades back up.”
“You can’t do that!”
Amber hesitated . Did she dare do so much at once? Would they be homeless tomorrow? But better homeless than living like this. “Oh, and hand over the car keys. I don’t know what we were thinking, letting you drive everywhere.”
Brian jumped to his feet. “How will I get to school?”
“They have this marvelous invention for kids like you. It’s called a bus.” She spotted his car keys among a pile of papers on the desk and snatched them up.
“Dad!” Brian yelled. He turned a red face on his mother. “Dad won’t let you do this to me.”
“Don’t even try,” she said. “Dad is on my side.” Was he? Amber listened. Silence. No broken windows, no exploding roof, nothing collapsing or tearing or ripping apart. Yes, Michael would back her up.
“That sucks.” Brian kicked the piles of dirty laundry around his room, then threw his pillows on the floor. “That absolutely sucks. You’ll be sorry!”
“I don’t think I will.” She left Brian’s room and closed the door, leaning against it. The sound of angry drums and whining guitars wafted through the door. She sighed. The rest of the house seemed okay, but she still had a kitchen to clean.
“Amber!” Michael called from the kitchen. “Look at this!”
She dashed down the hall to the kitchen. Michael stood smiling in the center of it, surrounded by cupboards and drawers that were now shut. The contents of the leaking ice cream cupboard were all put away. Oh please, Amber thought. Please don’t make me praise him for cleaning out one lousy cupboard.
He held up an index finger for her to wait, then triumphantly flung open one cupboard door after another. He followed by pulling open all the drawers, and finished by showing her the pantry, lifting his eyebrows and flourishing his hands.
Amber gasped. Every dish, every cup, every pot, every box, every can, every towel, every piece of silverware was now back where it belonged. The sink gleamed, pantry goods were arranged by height, and the spice rack was alphabetized. Not a crumb marred the countertops. She peered at the microwave, which looked different. Then she realized that the crusted-on spot she could never remove from the door had disappeared.
“Did you do this?” she asked Michael.
“No. How could I?”
How, indeed. Amber jingled Brian’s car keys in her hand. Maybe she’d write her own magazine article. She’d call it, “How to Raise your Children to Help with Housework.”
She glanced at the floor, hoping the grout had whitened and the tiles had buffed themselves. No such luck. Well, no family was perfect.
The coffee maker strained at its cord, positioned too far from the outlet for comfortable use. Amber looked at the coffee maker, then at Brian’s door.
“Turn that music down!” she yelled, and watched the coffee maker slide into its rightful place.