The high schoolers (Daisy and Malachi) and I are doing a "writing group" this year and it's one of the best things ever. I (and occasionally Malachi, when he thinks he can get away with it) assign short essays or articles for reading, and then we take turns giving weekly writing assignments. I can't in good conscience get out of doing these assignments myself, so I've been accumulating some personal essays dredged up from life experiences. Some of these experiences really do deserve to be written about! And this is one of them.
I was scrubbing the stovetop one afternoon when I heard a strangled “Help!” Walking into the high-ceilinged living room, I was horrified to see the window guy hanging from the upper-story windowsill by his fingertips. His ladder was a few feet to his left.
“Oh no!” I said.
“Hey,” the guy said, politely, but still in that strangled tone. His face was pressed against the wall. “Hey. Can you…uh…”
It had already been a strange afternoon. It wasn’t the first time I’d had the windows cleaned, of course. The second-story windows in that house seemed to attract grime. After a few rainstorms they’d be covered with water spots and I’d get progressively more fed up with them until I finally said yes to one of the constant stream of window-washers coming to our door.
I never quite knew if any of these prospective washers—always men in their early twenties, usually carrying clipboards—worked for an actual company or were at all otherwise on the up-and-up. Most of them produced some sort of business card, but these ranged wildly from semi-professsional-looking designs featuring rainclouds or squeegees to templates apparently chosen at random from a free word-processing program at the library. “We’re in your area,” the prospects would always say when I opened the door. “We’re doing, uh, Steve’s windows from down the street.” There was no Steve down the street. “We can offer you a good discount if you want yours done today.”
I usually sent them away with varying degrees of civility, but when I got desperate enough, I’d pick the nicest, least-shifty looking one and say, “Do you do the screens too?” This was my best narrowing technique, as most of them balked at the extra work. I’d had the screens cleaned by an earlier window-washer once, though, and it had made enough difference I didn’t ever want to go back.
Today was one of those days I'd been desperate enough. A dusty summer storm had left the windows looking like they were covered with one of those pinpricked window shades people put up to shade babies in cars, and it made the house feel dim, almost oppressive, inside. It bothered me enough that when the doorbell rang, I invited in a sad-looking, droopy-haired fellow with his ladder and box full of cleaning fluids. He did screens, he announced, and that decided me. The kids had been watching him work on the high living room windows for the last hour while I cleaned up the kitchen, and they remained staring up at him with useless and benign interest all the while I was hurrying in to see what had happened. At his broken-off plea for help I was already running for the ladder and moving it toward his dangling feet. “Hang on,” I said, unnecessarily. “Here we go…that should…” I scooted one of the higher rungs until it touched his toe, and he scrabbled about backwards with his foot until he could set it firmly on the ladder. He let go of the windowsill and let out a dramatic sigh. “Whoaaaaa,” he said, turning around to droop his upper body bonelessly down across the top of the ladder. “Whoaaa.”
“Are you okay?” I said. “How did that happen?”
“I leaned over too far,” he said from between his arms. “Feet slipped off. Barely caught the windowsill.”
“It was impressive!” I said. “I’m amazed you could hold on like that.”
“Whoaaaaa,” he moaned.
“Lucky it turned out okay!” I said brightly, uncomfortable with his growing distress. “You’re okay now!”
“Ohhhh mannnn,” he moaned, and I could hear him starting to breathe in and out more quickly.
“Hey, come on down from there,” I said. “Do you want to sit down for a minute? Before you get back to it, I mean?” I looked up at the half-cleaned window above us.
The droopy guy climbed down from the ladder rung by rung, feeling for each step with his foot before putting his weight on it. When he had reached the ground he said “ohhhh mannn” again, and I tried to smile reassuringly as he collapsed on a nearby couch. He flopped over the arm of it in the same way he’d flopped over the ladder. “Whoaaaa,” he said.
“I’ll just give you a minute while I finish the dishes,” I said cheerily. “Always plenty to do around here, ha ha!” The guy didn’t answer.
After I’d finished the stove, done the dishes, and wiped the counters I walked back into the living room. He was still lying there. “I make the best eggs,” he said, voice muffled by the arm of the couch.
“Pardon?” I said.
“Eggs,” he said. There was a silence.
“I bet you do,” I said to his back.
“I have a special technique,” he said. “I could show you.”
“That’s so fun,” I said, a little helplessly.
He sat up and flopped his hair out of his eyes. “I made it up,” he said. “But it makes the fluffiest eggs. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“A man of many talents,” I said jovially, looking at the ladder. “Eggs. And windows.”
“All I need is a frying pan and a little butter,” he said.
I scooted the ladder a few inches closer to the window. I laughed lightly. “Next time I need a cooking lesson!” I said. “I’ll know who to call! And these windows are starting to look good too!”
“I’d do it for free,” he said unironically, and without warning, he buried his face in his hands again.
“Ohhhhh mannnn. Ohhh mannnn.” He blew out the air in his lungs and moaned, then subsided into silence.
A minute went by.
“What kind of eggs?” I said.
He sat up again. “I don’t call them a certain kind of eggs,” he said. “It’s a whole technique. There’s no name for it. You have to get the pan scorching hot first. It freaks some people out.”
“Oh, no way,” I said.
He stood up. “I’ll show you right now,” he said. “You like eggs, right? You’ll never eat them any other way again. Do you have butter? And some oregano? And a frying pan? Some people don’t keep frying pans around, and I’m just like, what are you even doing, you know?”
“I know,” I said. I felt I had crossed some invisible point of no return, and he apparently sensed it too, because he went into the kitchen and started opening cupboards.
“Nice crock pot,” he said, as I followed him mutely and handed him a frying pan. “Don’t forget the butter,” he reminded me. “And a spatula.”
A few of the kids came into the kitchen and I picked up the toddler as an excuse for something to do. The window guy was narrating as he sliced a wedge of butter off the cube with the spatula and put it in the pan. “You don’t want too much, but it’s gotta be butter, you know? Not just butter. That freaks some people out.”
“Well, we like butter, don’t we!” I said, jouncing the toddler a little. “Oh—you’re really beating those eggs.”
He kept beating them with the flat end of the spatula, explaining his actions to me as he went. I waited with grim anticipation to see what the “secret method” would be. It was, it turned out, adding a splash of water to the eggs. When they were done, he divided them into two bowls and I ate mine, nodding in what I hoped was an appreciative manner while he told me how any other kind of eggs were going to be absolutely ruined for me now. “Some people don’t want to put in the effort for a decent egg,” he said.
I stood up and put my bowl in the sink with an emphatic clank. “Speaking of effort,” I said. “Do you want me to help you move that ladder back over?”
“No thanks,” he said, flopping his hair. “I’ve been doing windows since before I could cook.”
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