ELLEN
Ellen’s to-do list was just about complete. She looked back over all of the things she had checked off over the past six weeks and let out a long sigh. She actually couldn’t believe she had accomplished so much in such a short period of time. The three-hour drive back and forth across the state of Florida was killing her. She was exhausted. How many times had she done it? At least a dozen.
The call from Ellen’s uncle informing her that her aunt had broken her hip and was in surgery had been a shock. But the consequential deterioration of both of her octogenarian godparents after the incident was still something she was having trouble comprehending. It seemed as if the single event of Aunt Mary’s fall had just been the tipping of the first domino. Aunt Mary was still in recovery when, right there in the hospital waiting room, Uncle Henry lost consciousness. He was rushed to the Emergency Room and pronounced dead from an aneurism a few short hours later. Mary went to a rehab center but her grief was too much, and within a month she, too, was gone.
Ellen was their only beneficiary, which meant the house—the one her children called the Monkey House—was hers. Standing now in the empty interior, it was difficult to imagine how she was ever going to finish getting the house ready for sale. To be sure, there were beautiful design finishes like the authentic terrazzo floors, the built-in maple cabinetry, and mid-century porcelain fixtures and tiling in the bathrooms. But those so-called pets, the squirrel monkeys her archeologist aunt and uncle had brought back with them 15 years ago from the dig in Tikal, Guatemala, had been unruly devils. Never mind the teeth marks in the crown moulding. Those could be filled and painted. Aunt Mary and Uncle Henry, more accustomed to caring for a campsite than a home, had begun their retirement as terrible housekeepers, and had never improved. Just as in the Central American jungle, they had given those monkeys free rein of the place, and there was plenty of fecal matter and food detritus to attest to how bad they had actually let things get.
Thank goodness the estate manager had been able to look past the filth as she selected the best of the many items Ellen’s aunt and uncle had collected over their long archeological careers. The proceeds from the sale of the hand woven rugs from Turkey and Afghanistan, the Moroccan metalwork, and the carved wooden Mayan and Aztec fertility idols would put all five of Ellen’s children through college. Unfortunately, one of the pair of Ming vases had been knocked over during a particularly raucous monkey chase through the living room one evening, so the surviving vase now sat on Ellen’s dining room sideboard with fresh cut flowers in it.
The dilemma facing Ellen at this moment was the hiring of a cleaning agency. She had brought four different schedulers over to the house to assess the needs and all four had turned the job down. Turned it down! She had been willing to pay double, triple, even, but nope. They all had said they wouldn’t touch it. She was desperate to get this job done and it needed to be completed by the end of the month—only two weeks from now. Out of professional agency options, she decided she’d enlist her three oldest children and a few of their friends. She’d make it sound fun, like a slumber party weekend. She would, of course, pay them. To sweeten the pot, she and her husband, who would also need to be part of the crew, would take the kids out to a fancy restaurant and tell them they could order anything they wanted from the menu. But she wouldn’t lie to them. She would make sure they all understood that it was going to be a difficult job. She didn’t want anyone signing up for this who didn’t understand the amount of work required.
With her plan mapped out, Ellen locked the house up and headed home to put her plan in motion.
CATHY
When Mrs. O’Donnell first asked me if I wanted to be part of a cleaning team to get her aunt and uncle’s house ready for sale, it sounded like hard work, but fun. I was dating her son, Matt, who would also be participating. Matt’s older brother, Jamie, his girlfriend, Joan, along with both Mr. and Mrs. O’Donnell, Matt and Jamie’s sister, Rosemary, and a family cousin, Rick, would make up the team of eight that would work and stay in the house over the weekend. Mrs O’Donnell explained that the house was disgustingly dirty, but that we’d all work in teams of two, and she’d try to throw in some fun as well. Maybe a kickball game in the front yard, some board games or cards at night, and definitely a night out at a fancy restaurant. She wanted us all to bring something nice to wear for Saturday night, but otherwise wear and bring clothes that we wouldn’t mind getting dirty.
After school on Friday, we all met at the O’Donnell’s house with everything we’d been instructed to bring—a sleeping bag, blow-up mattress, bath towel, toiletries, work clothes and closed-toe shoes, and something nice to wear on Saturday evening.
Our weekend started when we all piled into the O’Donnell’s Chevrolet Suburban with a cooler of soda and a couple buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The three-hour drive meant we didn’t get to the house until after dark, but during the journey we had a blast talking, telling stories, and singing to the radio. We were all pretty excited.
From what Mrs. O’Donnell had explained, I expected the house to smell, but it didn’t. At least not horribly so. Maybe a little musty, but nothing gross. We girls—me, Joan, and Rosemary—were shown to a bedroom with its own bathroom. The boys had their own room and bath, and Mr. and Mrs. O’Donnell took the master suite on the other side of the house.
By the time we had set up our mattresses and sleeping bags, it was past 8:00. Mr. O’Donnell ordered pizza, and we then sat in a circle on the bare floor in the living room to eat it while Mrs. O’Donnell sketched out how she expected the next day to go. She reasoned that with so little lighting in the house, and it being already so late, we might as well all get a good night’s sleep. She’d be waking us bright and early at 6:00; we’d have a good breakfast; and then it would be rubber gloves, bleach, scrub brushes, mops, scouring powder, sponges, buckets, and a lot of elbow grease until mid-morning snack, followed by more of the same until lunch and so forth until 5:00 when we’d then all get cleaned up and ready to go out for dinner.
To bed!
ELLEN
Using the same management skills that she employed to run her household of seven, Ellen paired up the six teenagers and gave them their first assignments of the day. Cathy and Joan were to clean the three bathrooms, and then move on to closet interiors. “Top to bottom, and every single inch of surface,” she instructed them. Rosemary and Matt were put in charge of the pool area, which included hauling several year’s worth of debris from the mucky shallows of the unused pool, and removing the various ropes and swings that had been installed for the monkeys. Jamie and Rick were to do all the baseboards first and then start in on cleaning and polishing the terrazzo floors. Ellen and her husband, Dan, would take on the kitchen, and then move on to the yard if there was time left in the day.
At their 10:00 break, Ellen was discouraged by what seemed a lack of progress. At noon when they stopped for lunch, she began to feel a glimmer of hope. When they broke again at 2:30 for another snack and a quick inning of kickball in the front yard, Ellen was more than hopeful that they’d get everything done by Sunday afternoon. But by 5:00 on Saturday afternoon, Ellen was positive. The kids had been amazing. They had been so amazing that she decided that the $100 she had promised them was not going to be enough. After consulting with Dan, he agreed that $200 a piece would be put in the envelopes they would give the workers at dinner tonight.
JAMIE
I didn’t even know what a terrazzo floor was before Rick and I spent an afternoon wrestling a buffing machine to polish the one in my great aunt and uncle’s Monkey House. I can’t remember who started calling it the Monkey House, but I also can’t remember calling it anything else.
After my mom’s aunt and uncle retired from their long careers as archaeologists, they bought a brand new house in the Colee Hammock neighborhood of Ft. Lauderdale. The only time we ever stayed in the house was during our first visit. I was only five or six years old, and Matt was only three. No Rosemary, or Shannon, or Meaghan yet. All I remember about that visit was Aunt Mary saying, “Don’t chase the monkeys, they’ll bite you. If you sit still, they’ll come and crawl on your shoulders and maybe paw through your hair, but they won’t hurt you.” The first time one of them crawled up on me, it was a bit scary, but when Aunt Mary had me hand them pieces of ripe mango, they became very friendly. I took her warning to not chase them seriously, and never had any trouble. Matt, on the other hand, got a swipe across his face. The attack, which he deserved for his foolishness, left a couple scratches on his cheek. Other than being taken by surprise, which led to a few tears, he was fine. After that, whenever we visited for a weekend, we stayed at the Holiday Inn. I think the real reason for not staying there was because during that first visit a couple of the monkeys crawled into bed with my parents and Mom woke up to find a monkey snuggled in her hair.
After knocking off work for the day, we all got cleaned up and dressed for dinner. Mom and Dad were taking us to the Oyster Bar and said we could order anything we wanted. I wanted lobster and steak. My girlfriend, Joan, was a bit shy about ordering something so expensive but I persuaded her that doing so would make my parents really happy.
During dessert (I ordered a chocolate torte, and shared it with Joan who said she was too stuffed to order her own dessert) Dad gave a little speech about how grateful he and Mom were for all of our hard work so far. “Tomorrow is going to be another big day, but we want to go ahead and show our appreciation in advance.” He then handed us each a white envelope that held two $100 bills. None of us had jobs that paid much more than minimum wage, which was $2.50 an hour, so $200 was a big deal for two day’s work. I think Joan felt a bit embarrassed by the amount thinking it was too much. Dad could see this because he then said, “I know it may seem like an awful lot of money, but believe me when I say, you are all worth every penny.” Mom went on to explain that we were doing something that four professional businesses had refused to do and encouraged us to enjoy the fruits of our labor.
ELLEN
Sunday dawned with the list of chores diminished, but not complete. Ellen put the teams to work again with all new assignments. The girls were to develop a system for cleaning all the walls from crown moulding to the tops of the baseboards, which the boys had cleaned yesterday. She asked them to take care not to undo the work Jamie and Rick had done on the floors by using drop cloths. Ellen knew that it would have been better to have done the walls before the floors, but she’d had to prioritize the chores by level of importance in the event they didn’t get everything done. And the floors had been a definite priority.
The girls quickly devised a plan of attack. Joan was placed at the top of the ladder, Cathy kept her supplied with freshly rinsed out cleaning rags and sponges, and Rosemary was in charge of changing out the dirty water in the bucket. They made their way around the rooms in an orderly and efficient manner. Ellen couldn’t have been more pleased as the painters were scheduled to arrive first thing in the morning and would have no need to spend time cleaning first.
With the boys finishing up what Matt and Rosemary had not been able to get to in the pool area, Ellen and Dan did some more work in the yard. Her goal was to get enough done so that she could then instruct the landscaping company she’d hired to come in and finish it up. The jungle of a yard had been too overwhelming in scope for her to even have a notion of what she wanted done. She made notes as she and Dan pulled dead palm branches out from between the bromeliad garden and the Norwegian Pine. She wanted the Live Oak in the middle of the front yard trimmed back and its canopy raised to allow more light into the yard. She wanted the potted trees from the pool area placed in various outdoor spaces, and all of the surrounding bushes trimmed neatly into hedgerows. She’d have the lawn care people edge, mow, pull weeds, and generally neaten things up with new mulch. She thought that ought to get the yard pretty close to having some decent curb appeal.
DAN
My wife is a wonder. That Monkey House wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever seen, but it was a daunting mess of a place when Ellen inherited it. After her Aunt Mary and Uncle Henry died, she mobilized me and the kids to take charge of ourselves with the expectation that we’d keep the home-show on the road while she attended to the affairs of her elderly godparents. We were all up to the challenge, and I hope she’s happy with how well we did.
As Ellen prepared to head back to the Monkey House after the funerals, my biggest concern was what in the hell was she going to do about those animals? The thought of that alone made my head spin. But not hers, she had a plan. It’s funny to think that there is a person out there who can keep himself employed full-time with the removal and new placement of exotic pets. But, there is. And Ellen found him. Having found an exotic pet relocator, it was especially annoying to her that she couldn’t find someone to do something as simple as clean the house. But, even in that she has prevailed. The weekend has been an outstanding success.
JOAN
By the time we got back in the Suburban to head home, we were all completely wiped out. Even though I wore rubber gloves, my fingers were red and raw from scrubbing. And my shoulder muscles were sore for a week. Probably from all that stretching to wash the walls. Mrs. O’Donnell had promised to try and balance all the hard work with some fun, and she didn’t disappoint. We really did have fun. We had fun working together and laughing, making jokes about the excrement and rotten bits of who-knows-what we found in nooks and crannies and closets. And we each got $200!
The Monkey House was really something to behold when we finished up that afternoon. Just before we left, we all stood looking at what we had done and Jamie said, “Man, we should have taken before and after photos.” Ah well, we’ll just have to try hard to remember how bad it was when we started. Because it was bad. I don’t know what squirrel monkeys are but I have a very good idea of what they can do to a living space. I bet they’re cute. Jamie, Matt, and Rosemary told some pretty funny stories about them. But I’m thinking...they don’t make good pets.
Copyright DJ Anderson, 2020
My Uncle Leonard had a spider monkey named Jodie, that ran free at my Grandmother and Grandfather’s home. My uncle lived there in a separate dwelling. I was very little, and had been told Jodie would bite.
ReplyDeleteLater, my uncle brought three Rhesus MonkeysBoo How, which was Japanese for “no good”, I think and Miss Lilly and Miss Kitty.
Boo How was a very mean monkey and we knew to stay well away from him. There were 22 grandchildren and watching the monkeys from a distance was always a favorite activity.