The Fourth Second Chance

A short story by Cathy Adams

I’m a maid for a heroin addict. I know that sounds implausible because how could a heroin addict afford a maid? Fortunately for me, this heroin addict is insanely rich and slightly famous. She’s not using at the moment, but she will always be an addict, or so that’s what I’ve learned about addiction. I thought it would be a good idea to educate myself if I was going to be the maid of a heroin addict. I’ve worked for Marion for eighteen months. So far, she’s had four trips to rehab, and for a week now, she’s been clean. Of heroin, that is. In all other areas of her life, she is quite unclean. I’m not complaining. It's job security.

Working for Marion pays well because she trusts me. After months of sneaking glances at me picking up her clothes, hair accessories, and jewelry from floors, coffee tables, and bathroom counters and putting it all away, she realized I wasn’t going to steal from her. She raised my salary high enough to stop me from looking for other work.

            Marion loves to talk about how she came through so much adversity as if she invented adversity and owns the copyright. In the early days, Marion shot up regularly. One Thursday morning I found her out cold on her bed, the needle on the floor, and her arm with that tie thing hanging off. The whole scene was picturesque, like some blackened stereotypical scene from a movie where a props manager placed everything around her to look devil-may-care glamorous. Even her silk robe was beautiful in seashell pink waves around her inert body. I called 9-1-1, and then I sat on the edge of the bed, stroking the fibers of the silk while she lay on her stomach, unconscious. That robe cost more than a week’s salary for me, and there she was, drooling on it. For a moment I thought if she died maybe I could roll her out of it and put it in my bag before the ambulance got there. But she didn’t die. That was the day she went off to rehab for five weeks, and when she got home she gave me another raise, so I felt guilty that I had considered stealing her robe.

Today Marion’s in Fragile Phase. She’s always been spineless, especially when she’s been off the junk for a while. Except for the ticking of the kitchen clock, the house is quiet. She used to have a yapping dog named Fubo, one of those little runny-eyed, fuzzy dogs that has to be groomed every other week. One night she decided to take him with her into the pool on a huge float crowned with a unicorn head, but Marion passed out and Fubo must have jumped off the float. The next morning, she didn’t remember being in the pool. I was the one who found Fubo’s white mop of a body in the water. Marion felt so guilty she checked herself into rehab again. Number three, I think. I had over a month of only quiet dusting.

Today I am sitting at the table waiting for her to return from her Twelve Step meeting. Her dinner’s been ready 25 minutes, a Buddha bowl, and I am keeping it hot for her. The knife is in my hand. Waiting.

            “Juanetta?” I hear her heels clicking through the door. She calls my name as if she’s perpetually surprised I’m where I’m supposed to be.

            “Here.” This is what I always say in reply.

            “Avocado!” She trumpets as she passes through the kitchen. She makes her voice cheery when she says this so that it sounds less like an order, but we both know that’s exactly what it is. Wielding the knife, I skillfully slice a complete circle longways around the avocado and twist apart the two sides. I smack the blade into the pit, twist it out, and flick it into the trash. I roll the skin away from the green, luscious meat, slice it in one-eighth-inch-thick slices, and precisely overlap each slice a half inch apart over her food. Forty-five seconds, as usual.

“Buddha Bowl,” I announce, as if this clarification is necessary, and I place it on the table before her with a glass of cranberry juice.

            “Ah, Juanetta, you are a jewel.”

            Yes, I probably am.

            “Can you stay late tomorrow night? Idris and Abeer are stopping by and I need vegetarian hors d'oeuvres. Do that hummus,” she said, stuffing a forkful of spinach into her mouth and snapping her fingers. “The one you do with the hot red peppers. God, I hope Idris doesn’t bring that sister of his. She goes on and on about whatever movie she’s in as if she ever has anything more than a tit role. Lord, I’ve never seen anyone revel in being eye-candy as much as that woman. What an insubstantial twit. Abeer told me she’d even been in jail once, but he wouldn’t say what for. What’s her name? LaDonna? Lewanna? Nelita?”

            And this is the way her monologue droned on throughout her meal for which I stood by, waiting to wash her dishes. She never noticed that I didn’t answer her question about whether or not I am able to work late tomorrow.  

---

A few hours before Idris and Abeer were expected, Marion came swishing into the kitchen. “OMG, I am utterly exhausted preparing for seasonal social engagements.” She actually talks like that, social media abbreviations spoken in letters and interspersed among Katharine Hepburn phrasing. I had prepared the hummus, put the Riesling in the refrigerator to chill, wiped the wine glasses shiny, set out a tray of almonds and Medjool dates, readied the tortilla chips, sliced some gouda, arranged Alba Apricot crackers in a circle on a tray, and set out an alternating line of Acadia white and Pompeii white linen napkins on the coffee table. No wonder she was exhausted.

She moved to the sunroom and sat in the lotus position on the velvet sofa so she could do her meditative breathing exercises. “Juanetta, did I hear the door?”

“No.”

“Did you say ‘no’?”

“Yes.”

“What did you say? There’s no one at the door? Did you check it?”

“Yes. No. Yes.”

She sits up, nearly dropping her meditation stick. “Is there someone there or not? Check the door!”

“Not.”

“Are you refusing to answer the door?” Marion’s voice was officially raised.

“No.”

I love playing the game of giving her literal answers to her questions because I think, honest to God, it drives her insane. And for some reason, I find it balances my inexplicable loyalty to her. In a moment Marion’s heels click across the marble foyer and the front door opens. Shrieked greetings, air kisses, the smell of expensive perfume, and the crinkling sound of paper-wrapped flowers tell me that I was indeed wrong about there being no one at the door.

“Juanetta! Take everyone’s coats and hang them up. Then come put these in water, please!” The word ‘please’ was extended in the way she does when she is reaching her maddened state. Idris brought not only his insubstantial twit sister, Melanna, but a little sister friend of hers. That’s exactly how Idris introduced her: “My little sister’s friend.” He then had to ask her name, which turned out to be Vivienne, a name Marion is enamored of saying because she kept repeating it. “Oh, what a gorgeous name! Vivienne. Vivienne. It just rolls off the tongue like ‘meander.’ Don’t you think? Do you know my domestic’s name is Jua-net-ta? FYI, she is adorable. And marvelously competent. I couldn’t get along without her. Don’t any of you try to steal her away from me!” Laughter ensued on cue.

I should be grateful that she spoke kindly of me, but she said those things in the way that people do when they want you to be grateful, expect you to be grateful, and get pissed off if you don’t act grateful. I slipped into the kitchen with the flowers and hid in the cupboard so I could take my time looking for a vase. In addition to being a chef, I am also expected to exhibit professional floral arranging skills. I found a crystal vase of the right size and poked the lilies into it. Then I filled it with water and flipped the blooms this way and that, like I’d seen on TV. Carrying it cautiously in both hands into the sunroom, I placed the crystal vase of yellow and pink flowers in full view of Marion and her guests and stood formally erect next to them with my hands folded over my abdomen. “The flowers have been installed on the occasional table.”

“Thank you, Juanetta,” Marion returned to her Enthusiastic Voice. “Abeer, you have totally gone full send. You have exquisite taste.”

Abeer held his wine glass aloft. “You deserve it after what you’ve been through in these past months. I think I speak on behalf of all of us when I say we are so proud of you for the hard work you’ve done in conquering that terrible habit.” I was sure they were all going to break out in applause, but all they did was gush. Everyone except Vedrana’s friend, Vivienne, who just sat there picking at the skin on her arm.

He wasn’t finished. “And we’re here not only to celebrate Marion’s second chance, but we have another milestone to acknowledge.”

Four, I thought to myself. It’s four second chances.

“Vivienne just earned her three-month coin! Let’s hear it for Vivienne!” Abeer raised his glass and the cheering began again.

Vivienne was saying something, but they all drowned her out. She repeated herself, louder.

“Ninety-day chip, it’s a chip,” she said, pulling it from her pocket and holding it up for all to see. It’s pink plastic with Ninety Days stamped on it. Wynona hugged her and said, “It doesn’t matter if it’s a poker chip, we’re just happy you’ve come so far.”

---

Marion had placed her Thirty Day chip on the dresser, but now that Vivienne had out-chipped her, I knew her plan for me to come trotting out with it had been nixed. I hurried through Marion’s bedroom and into the dressing closet to hang up the men’s and Vivienne’s coats and LaFanda’s shapeless mesh wrap that has never known a hanger. Through the small open space in the door, I saw MeWanna go into Marion’s private bathroom. I waited. Two minutes went by, and then LeNanda came out, still pulling down the hem of her dress that looked like a mummy’s wrap spun around her torso and spray-painted pink. The thick carpet absorbed her footfalls, but she stepped with exaggerated caution right up to the dresser that held Marion’s jewelry box. Pulling open the top two drawers, she began picking through the contents. Then from the third drawer, she took something, slipped it down the front of her dress, and tip-toed out of the room.

I jerked open the third drawer. There was an open spot where Marion’s sapphire bracelet had been, the one she claimed James Franco had given her because in truth she was too high to remember who it was from.

Back in the sunroom, Abeer was sharing a story about a garden party where he’d discovered one of Adele’s earrings in his cranberry cocktail. “And she tossed her head back and let out that throaty laugh of hers. She said, ‘Abeer, I’m sooo sorry,’ and she was reaching for it like she was going to pluck it right out of my drink with her fingers.”

I halted in front of the group just as MeVanna squealed in hysterical laughter at Abeer’s story. Marion's nostrils flared just the tiniest bit and they all stared up at me, waiting. "Juanetta, is there something you needed?"

I gave our thieving guest the stink-eye. “Take a look down the front of her dress if you want a new story about jewelry being in the wrong place.”

Marion’s face looked as if it was going to melt off her bones in anger. Vivienne temporarily halted her flesh picking, and the two men froze with their wine glasses in mid-air. The only face with any look of recognition is Menyanna, and her eyes were narrowed to hateful little slits that say you-dirty-little-bitch-maid-I-will-make-you-pay. Marion stood from her seat and put her hands on her hips in the same dramatic pose she always used when denying some awful behavior she never remembered. “Juanetta, just what--”

“Look down the front of her dress.”

Myasthenia dropped her killer eyes and spread her hands in perplexed innocence. “I have no idea what your maid is up to. Maybe she’s been drinking.”

Before I could protest, Vivienne’s scratching hand dove down into Marenna’s bosom. She pulled out a fistful of sapphires and diamonds set on a platinum band, and everyone’s faces were set in varying expressions of horrified shock that cameras love to home in on at cliffhanger moments in reality shows.

“Leneida, why?” hissed Vivienne. “We talked about this. You promised!”

Ah, so her name is Leneida.

“I swear, I don’t know how that got there,” Leneida began. “It had to have gotten caught in my clothes when I was in the bathroom. This dress is so tight I had to take it off and put it on the counter just to use the toilet.”

I was sure everyone was going to pile drive Leneida for stealing Marion’s bracelet, but Marion took it from Vivienne and barely glanced at it. “Let’s just forget it. We’re here to celebrate second chances, so let’s give Leneida one. Isn’t that why we all came together? Second chances?”

I wanted to say something about taking responsibility for what you’ve done, to remind her that I am the honest maid she trusts and who looked out for her when no one else does. I am the one who holds her hair when she vomits. I am the one who cleans up the messes when she passes out. I am the one who waits here, keeping her house in order while she’s getting clean, time after time. But Vivienne isn’t finished.

“This is not the second time,” said Vivienne. “I caught her going through my purse at Splunken. And you’re on step four, remember? You know that’s not what this is about.”

“I was looking for eye drops,” snapped Leneida. “I explained that like two hundred times. Why do you have to be such a judgmental bitch?”

Abeer stood up from his seat and posed with jazz hands. “I think we all need to take a breath.”

“Why? So Miss Ninety Days and Miss Snitch can conspire against me?” Leneida stood up and slung her bag over her shoulder. “I am not staying here another minute with her or her.” She pointed a French nail at Vivienne who was fiddling with her phone, and then she pointed it at me. “I would so fire you if you worked for me and you treated my guests like that.”

“Don’t bother,” said Vivienne. “I’ll leave. I’ve called an Uber.”

Idris shushed everyone with an open palm before announcing, “I can’t help but feel this is ultimately your fault, Juanetta.”

“My fault?” My throat dried up at the words.

“You may not understand the pressures on people with high visibility careers like Leneida. Your life is simple. You come to work in this beautiful house where all you have to do is cook and clean. Of course, I’m not judging you for cooking and cleaning, but people aren’t coming down on you to be perfect every minute of the day or hang all over you just because of your celebrity status. The Stans alone can drive you absolutely mad. And let me tell you, the stress from all that can break a person. And you, you just accused her of a crime without even investigating what happened.”

I saw her steal it out of Marion’s jewelry box. These are the words stuck in my throat, but before I could speak Marion held up the bracelet and intervened.

“Juanetta, please return this to the bathroom counter where I left it and rethink any ideas you may have about accusing my friends of thievery in the future. Otherwise, I might have to rethink your continued employment.”

            All the air left the room, and I could hear only a loud humming in my head as I took the bracelet from her. “Now,” she said in the shrilly firm voice she calls up only when she isn’t plastered. “Please get Vivienne’s coat. I think I see her Uber.” She gave me a dismissive little wave the way actresses like Joan Crawford or Betty Davis do in the movies. Vivienne watched me with helpless eyes as I willed my feet to return to the bedroom. In the closet I found her coat, removed it carefully from the hanger, and folded it neatly over my arm. Then I found Abeer’s jacket, slid the bracelet the inside breast pocket, and returned to the sunroom to deliver Vivienne’s coat. 

---

Cathy Adams’ latest novel, A Body’s Just as Dead was published by SFK Press. Her writing has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a short story writer with publications in The Saturday Evening Post, Utne, AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, Barely South, Five on the Fifth, Southern Pacific Review, and 72 other journals from around the world. She earned her M.F.A. at Rainier Writing Workshop, Pacific Lutheran University, Washington, and currently teaches at the American University in Bulgaria.

Images:

Beaded bracelet by Liana S.

Fingernails by Ayo Ogunseinde

Diamonds by Karen Poniman