My neighbor, Claire, fascinates me. She lives with her perfect husband and two perfect children in a perfectly clean home down the street. Even when she walks her dog she is well coiffed and well shod, and I have no doubt but that she trained her dog not to shed in the house. I met her when I took her some of her mail that had been delivered to me by mistake. She greeted me warmly and, after I introduced myself, she told me that just yesterday she had gotten some of my mail, so she went to her desk to get it.
While Claire went to get my mail I looked around her pristine home in wonder: everything shone, the sofa looked like it had never been used and classical music played softly in the background; a bouquet of long stemmed white roses on the immaculate glass dining room table was spotlighted by the clear morning sun.
Claire returned with my mail and showed me a letter with my partner’s name on it. “Is this yours too?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “that’s my partner.”
“Oh,” said Claire. “I see.”
The next week Claire brought some mail to my house. She was wearing a black skirt, red silk blouse, pearls and heels. “Thanks for bringing this by,” I told her; “are you on your way to work?”
““I’m just going to Target,” said Claire.
Without thinking I blurted out, “You wear pearls to Target?”
She nodded. “I like to look nice,” she said. “It tells the world how you feel about yourself.” Without really wanting to she looked at my tee-shirt, my cargo shorts and flip-flops and shuddered slightly. She touched her pearls, perhaps to reassure herself they were still there.
“Words to live by!” I said brightly, but Claire did not hear, she was looking around my house.
I hate when uber-clean people come over because they always make me feel inadequate: I gave up any pretense of trying to maintain a pristine home environment long ago. Why spend hours cleaning when one dog with a roll of purloined toilet paper can undo hours of work in 10 minutes? I can’t deny that our old house does veer towards dusty and shabby, but my partner and I don’t care, and the dog certainly doesn’t, so I rarely think of it unless someone like Claire, with a home where you could safely conduct surgery on the kitchen counter, comes in.
Now I saw our house through her eyes. I saw the dog’s nose marks all over the sliding doors and the thick layer of cat fur on every flat surface. I saw the disgraceful old leather sofa where the dog sleeps and the chair the cat uses as a scratching post. I noticed that our wood floor, installed with such pride a couple of years ago, now looks as old as the house thanks to the non-stop games of tag the dog and cat play. I saw stacks of newspapers and magazines and books, along with several 12-packs of Diet Coke and and a half-full bottle of wine, covering the dining room table.
Claire gulped; she had clearly been taught that you must always compliment someone’s home the first time you see it, no matter what condition it is in. She cleared her throat. “This will be a really nice room when it’s done,” is what she finally said.
I never saw that one coming. “This room IS done,” I said shortly, thinking that our living room has a sofa, a TV and a lamp. What else did she expect – a grand piano? A sculpture garden?
Claire looked surprised. “Oh,” she said, embarrassed, “I’m sorry. It’s just that I thought you people always had lovely homes.”
“’We people’?” I said dangerously. “You mean tall people?”
She blushed. “That came out wrong,” she said. “It’s just that most guys….” she paused for a beat, “I mean most guys like you usually….” I folded my arms and Claire stopped.
“I have a friend named David in Wilton Manors,” she said hurriedly, perhaps to convince me of her liberal chops. “Do you know him?”
“You actually know someone named Dave in Wilton Manors?” I said politely; Claire may have been trying to embrace diversity, but at best this was a wave from across the street.
She shook her head, horrified. “Don’t ever call him ‘Dave’,” she said. “It’s ‘David’.”
“Oh, that narrows it down,” I said, as I opened the front door. “Buh-bye,” I said. Showing true restraint I resisted the urge to push her down the front porch stairs and closed the door firmly behind her.
Several days later I got more of Claire’s mail. I marked it all “Refused” and put it back in the mail box.