Max Halper
The Principle of the Thing Embodied in the
Person
My wife fired our Ukrainian housekeeper out of nowhere. The reason she gave was that we didn't need her but we obviously did because now the house is a disaster. I'm afraid to argue with her though because I don't want my wife to think I have any ulterior motives other than wanting a clean house. She had a scar on her cheek, the housekeeper, in distinctly the pattern of a mouthful of teeth. That's really all there is to say about her. I never asked her how she got the scar on her face. We barely ever spoke. Her English was poor and I didn't have the patience. I liked to watch her clean the tub. I can say that too, since my wife will never read this. The way she cleaned the tub is she would kind of straddle the lip of it and bend forward and scrub the flat bottom first and work her way up around the edges. I can't remember her name. It was extremely Ukrainian. Our son liked to watch her clean the tub too. He's eleven. He probably liked to watch her clean the tub for the same reason I did. I can't be sure. I understand less and less about him everyday. The reason I liked to watch her clean the tub, if I'm being really honest, is because of the power thing. Like there was the blatant sexiness of a woman straddling anything, straining, her hair kind of swaying back and forth with the thrusts of the scrubbing, but then on top of that there was the added effect of knowing it was my tub she was scrubbing, my mess she was cleaning up. And that I was paying her. I don't know why my son liked to watch her. Maybe not for the same reason. Probably some other reason I can't think of. He does strange things I don’t understand. Sometimes he uses words I’ve never heard. There were a few days not long ago where he walked around everywhere with his arms crossed and his brow kind of furrowed, and didn’t speak at all and leaned against walls and closed his eyes a lot. My wife said he was emulating something he saw on TV. But what kind of TV show is that? I just don’t understand. It was a relief to catch him peeking from the end of the hall at the Ukrainian housekeeper as she scooched back and forth on the lip of the bathtub. That was something we had in common, me and my son, something we could do together. My wife didn’t know, obviously, about any of that. It was just between me and my son. Now that she’s been fired, I don’t know what my son and I will do together. My wife never cleans the tub, and even if she did it wouldn’t be normal for my son to watch her the way he watched the Ukrainian housekeeper. I could watch her that way, but I don’t care to. A long time ago maybe I would have, but things are different now. My wife is different. When my son came out of her something changed. I can’t put my finger on it. I’m sure I’m different to her, too. I don’t want to be unfair.
Max Halper is an adjunct professor of English. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly, Juked, Pithead Chapel and elsewhere. He lives in upstate New York.
Malasaña | Hudson, NY| Cargo Collective | Portland, ME | 2021