The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

foods were ordered, the spices arranged in such a way that they were now all visible, rather than before, when they had been thrown together in a heap that needed sorting through any time one needed bay leaves or cinnamon. The ink bottle on Roberta’s desk had been wiped, and the envelopes next to it sorted and arranged by colour.
    “This is too much.”
    “What?”
    “Look—the toothpaste tube’s been squeezed from the bottom so it’s all up in the top. You didn’t do it, did you?”
    “Me? You’ve been yelling at me for thirty years to squeeze from the bottom.”
    “I thought so. Roberta? Why are we so astonished by our cleaning lady?”
    “Because she’s amazing. And costs the same as the last one, who didn’t lift a finger.”
    “Tell me what else she told you. How does she work living on Plum Hill?”
    “It’s not what you think. Apparently, it’s someone’s estate, but there’s a small gatehouse on the edge of the property, and that’s what she rents. She’s been there for years, and pays very little for it. Her husband died ten years ago. He was an executive for an insurance company in Kansas City.”
    “I guess that explains why she said she didn’t need the money: whenever an insurance guy pops off, his family inevitably inherits a bundle because he held the best policy.”
    “She did say she was comfortable.”
    “I’ll bet. And she had a son?”
    “Yes, and a daughter. He sounds like a card. Get her to tell you the story about the cigars.”
    “OK. You know what I’ve been thinking? This sounds odd, but I’ve been wondering what is she going to clean when she comes next week? What is there left to do?”
    The basement.
    “Oh Beenie, that’s not necessary. It’s only the laundry room and storage. We’re never there.”
    “I went down last week to have a look, and I think it’s got a lot of possibilities if you want to use them. I’ll need only a few hours, and we’ll have everything ready and right.”
    Roberta said, for the rest of the morning until I came home for lunch, she heard the most disconcerting mix of sounds coming from that pit. Which is what it is, truth be told. The dark at the bottom of our stairs; the once-a-week-descent-with-a-basket-of-laundry-under-your-arm ordeal when there are so many other things you’d rather be doing.
    In our house, there are two places to purposely misplace things—attic and basement, in that order. If you vaguely want to keep something, but have little desire to see it for a while, disappear it into the attic. If you don’t ever want to see it again, but have neither the heart nor guts to make the big break and toss it in the garbage, travel it to the basement. The land of damp shadows and dead suitcases. If it had been up to me, I would have detached that bottom part of our house like the first stage of a rocket once it’s reached a certain altitude. With the exception of the ten-year-old washing machine, the only function the basement served was as a momentary memory flash now and then of kids stomping around down there, yelling across hide-and-seek or monster games. Our children were grown and gone. When they came to visit, their own were still too young or uninterested to play there.
    A house closes down on you as you grow older. Because you need less space, the rooms once filled with life accuse with their closed-door stillness: you gave me life, but now you’ve taken it away. Where are the kids, the parties, the noise and movement and things resting on the floor a moment? No one’s ever reflected in the mirrors anymore; there are no teenage-perfume or warm-chicken-dinner smells in the unused dining room. You have nothing for me? Then I damn you with my quiet, the objects that never move, the things that stay clean too long.
    I call it the creeping-museum syndrome—everything we own becomes more museum-like the older one gets, including ourselves.
    “Uh-Oh City!”
    I forgot to mention this. The floorboards between the