The Cleaner

CHAPTER NINE

Sally leaves work the same time Joe does, and though she tries to catch up to him, even calls out to him more than once, he doesn’t hear her. He reaches the bus stop, and a moment later the bus pulls away, spitting out a cloud of diesel fumes, some of which stick to the back of the bus, the rest disappearing into the air. She’s curious about where Joe goes. Sometimes he walks, sometimes he catches the bus. Does he live with his parents? Does he live with others like him? One of the things she likes the most about Joe is that he appears independent, and it wouldn’t surprise her if he lived in a flat or an apartment somewhere, fending for himself. Does he even have family? He’s never spoken of them. She hopes he does. The idea of Joe being all alone in this world is unsettling. She must make more of an effort to involve herself in his life, the same way she would want people to involve themselves in Martin’s life. If he were still alive.

He would be twenty-one today. What would they have been doing to celebrate? They would have thrown a party, invited family and friends, strung up a bunch of balloons and stabbed twenty-one candles into a chocolate cake shaped like a racing car.

She walks toward the parking building where she keeps her car. She ought to offer Joe rides home-he might like that. And she’d get to know him better too. Tomorrow she’ll ask him.

Christchurch is beautiful, she thinks, and she especially loves walking alongside the Avon River with its dark waters and lush, green banks-a strip of nature running through the city. Though the banks aren’t quite as lush as normal because of the lasting summer, but they’re still pretty green close to the waterline. Sometimes she eats her lunch out here, sitting on the grass, watching the ducks, throwing them pieces of bread as they play and feed in the water. She ought to ask Joe to join her. She’s sure he would like it. More and more he reminds her of her brother, and since she can no longer help Martin, perhaps she can help Joe. Is that such a crazy idea?

There is a homeless man sitting a few yards from the doorway into the parking building. He’s wearing a dark-blue tracksuit jacket that you only see in TV shows that came out of the ’80s. He’s got on a pair of plastic sunglasses with green arms, and a baseball cap with so much paint splashed on it she can’t read the team. He has a few days worth of stubble, which means somehow he’s still finding a way to shave. It makes Sally happy to know he still thinks appearances are important. She smiles at him and he smiles back, and she hands him a small plastic bag jammed full with sandwiches.

“How are you feeling today, Henry?”

“Better now, Sally,” he says, standing up and tucking his T-shirt into too large, too worn jeans. “Better now. How’s your dad doing?”

“He’s doing okay,” she answers, but of course he isn’t. He’s doing badly. That’s what happens with Parkinson’s disease. You never get any better. It gets into your body and sets up a home and has no intention of ever leaving. Doing okay is the best anybody can hope for. “It’s his birthday this week. We’re going to take him out to dinner,” she says, but it won’t be fun. His birthday never is, not since Martin died. Maybe it would be if it had been a month before or a month after, but having it the same week. .

“Well, you have a good time,” Henry says, interrupting her thoughts. “And say hi to him for me. And remember, Sally, that Jesus loves you.”

She smiles at Henry. She knows that Jesus loves her, and that Jesus loves Henry too, and at the end of the day that makes everything okay. When she first started to make Henry sandwiches (she would never give him money, which would surely go toward substances that would make him sin) she used to be the one telling him that Jesus loved him, and his reply was never positive. He used to tell her that God and Jesus hated him. God had made him unemployed. God had made him homeless. She pointed out it was more likely that Henry himself had been the cause of that. He had replied by telling her that God had given him his gambling habit-or at the very least hadn’t taken it away. She asked if Henry still gambled now, to which Henry said no, to which Sally pointed out that God had indeed helped him.

“Then God has a bad sense of timing,” Henry had said, and even though Sally didn’t like it, she certainly recognized there was an element of truth to that. Henry then went on to point out that if man was made in God’s image and man was doing nothing to help him, then God would be doing nothing too. If God came down to walk about the earth, Henry said, and saw him sitting there outside the parking building, begging for change and food, then God would look right through him and just walk on by. The same way everybody else did.

Sally could almost see his point, but at the same time found it easy to dismiss, mainly because Sally never walked past Henry without helping him. After months of bringing him sandwiches, he finally allowed her to teach him more about God’s will. She knows it’s possible he only says these things to her so she will continue to bring him food, but she likes hearing it.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Henry. Take care now.”

Henry sits back down and goes about taking care of himself the way she suggested, starting by reaching into the plastic bag. She walks inside and takes the elevator up to her car.

A moment later her car is mingling with the town traffic. It really is a beautiful city, she thinks. Voted friendliest in the world. It’s obvious why. So many good people. Caring people. She just wishes that sometimes they could show it a little more.

By the time she climbs three flights of stairs, she’s puffing. She could take the elevator, but she’s been taking the elevator all day at work and this is her best chance for exercise. Lord knows she would be thankful to lose a pound or two. She reaches her car-a twenty-year-old sedan that doesn’t have much in the way of features but has plenty in the way of rust, but every day the engine keeps on ticking over and Lord knows she’s thankful for that too.

The building exits on a different street from which she came in. Traffic is thickening, and in an hour, some of these streets will almost grind to a halt. She smiles as she strikes a string of green traffic lights. The sun is still out, there’s a warm breeze, and everywhere around her people are happy. She winds down the passenger window, but the one on her side doesn’t work, but that’s okay because enough of a breeze still makes it inside. She keeps smiling as she drives. There are so many flower beds, so many trees, a river flowing through the center of town-who would want to live anywhere else?