Clean

Sometimes, when Dave would go out of town, my parents would come to visit. They'd only come when he was gone because they disliked him from the moment they met him. I chalked it up to the fact that he was covered in tattoos and had long hair because, despite his appearance, he was kind, gentle and good to me. My parents, for their part, said that he was no good for me, that I didn't see him for who he is.

"They're so judgmental," I would complain to my friends, annoyed and disbelieving. 

On the rare weekends when my parents would come to my apartment to visit, I would clean furiously. I would vacuum, wipe down the countertops in the kitchen, clean the sink, toilet and bathtub, and dust the living room. 

But, inevitably, when they arrived, they would look around with disapproval on their faces. Sometimes, my mom would comment about how the litterbox smelled or how the kitchen was, in her words, "filthy." They would stare at the spatter on the wall next to the oven, at the dirt caked on the windowsills and at the pile of clothes strewn, unwashed, around my bedroom.

"They're so judgmental," I would think. 

I told myself that the apartment was old, that the stuff on the walls and windowsills wouldn't come off and that the laundry was no big deal. 

When I called my mom the morning after Dave broke up with me she said, relief in her voice, that she would come that weekend and that we would clean. Before she came, I cleaned even more furiously than usual, thinking that, this time, there'd be no way she'd see something that I was blind to.

Yet, when my mom arrived, she dropped her bags in the living room, wrinkled her nose and said, "We'll start with the kitchen. It's filthy." She said that when it was done, I would feel better. Exasperated, I told her that I had already cleaned before she got there.

We stood in the kitchen and looked around and my mom said, "First, the refrigerator."

I started to protest as she opened the refrigerator door, until I smelled a faint odor coming from inside. She opened one of the drawers and pointed to a brown stain from an unidentifiable liquid, to the container of moldy cheese in the back and to the mostly empty bottles of expired salad dressing lining the shelf.

She took all the food out of the refrigerator, threw most of it away and started scrubbing. I stood in the middle of my kitchen and looked around. Minutes passed and I didn't move. I expected my mom to bark at me to start cleaning. But she didn't. She let me stand there. She waited for me to see it.

My eyes came to rest on the once-white windowsills, now blackened with caked dirt. I always hated the way they looked but felt powerless to do anything about it. 

"Those need to be painted," I said, "because whenever I try to clean them, the dirt just turns to mud and makes them worse."

"You can paint them," my mom replied, "but the paint won't stick unless you clean them first."

So I put on a pair of gloves, sprayed the windowsills with the lemon-scented cleaner we had just bought and I started to scrub. And the dirt, it started to come off, layer after layer.

As the white windowsills started to peek through the years of grime and grease, I began to feel embarrassed and upset. My parents had seen this, my friends had seen it. Why hadn't I? How did I learn to exist this way?

When you live with a mess for long enough, you stop seeing it for what it is. And the mess gets worse. And, still, you live with it. 

It will come as no surprise to you that, as I scrubbed the windowsill, I began to think about my relationship. 

Up to now, I have told one side to the story about Dave. I have written about a man who was kind, gentle and good. That is the beginning of the story, the first four or so years. But it's not the end. And, here, I want to be cautious and I do not want to overshare because I still love and respect him. So I am not going to write, specifically, about the things he did.

I will say that near the end of our relationship, one of my friends sat me down over brunch and said, "I'm worried about you." My sister felt even more strongly than that. There were nights when my friends implored me to leave. 

I became a basketcase. And I stayed. I stayed because I was living for the relationship that we had, not for the mess that we were in. I stayed because I didn't see that the mess couldn't be fixed with tweaks here and there, a cursory cleaning. I stayed because when you live with a mess for long enough, you stop seeing it for what it is. And the mess gets worse. And, still, you live with it.

We cleaned for hours, rock music blaring in the background. I felt shame, guilt, embarrassment, sorrow and heartbreak as I thought about the mess, worked furiously to make it disappear. 

Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore. I stood up, threw down the sodden, dirty rag I was using to wipe it all away and began sobbing. My mom held me even though I was covered in sweat and dirt. Tears and mascara streamed down my face. I bolted from the room and took a long, cold shower, washing away the remnants of the mess that still stuck to me.

When I returned from the shower, the kitchen was done. I breathed a shaky sigh of relief, the kind that comes after a long, hard cry.

"Remember," my mom said, "it doesn't stay clean."