The Lady Who Liked Clean Restrooms

by J. P. Donleavy

  And now companionship was the least of it. She had to find, really and desperately, another job. And not get fired pouring wine over someone’s head. Look every day through the ads in The New York Times. Even despondent enough to pretend she was Irish or English and become a housekeeper or maid. Then her children would really have an excuse not to come and see her as they had now not done for more than three months. As someone’s domestic servant in one of those vast apartments on Park Avenue around 72nd Street she’d at least have full board, decent coffee to drink and her own bed, bathroom and sitting room. And the way servants were demanding these days she’d insist upon her own private telephone, sound system, television and car to drive. The only trouble was two Bryn Mawr friends lived around there, one with 16 rooms the other with twenty-six. But then gosh, she’d be paid more than a secretary. Plus she’d charge fees for instruction in decorum and courtliness. Or how to shoot her Smith and Wesson from the hip if those two exhibited graces didn’t work.

  But O god, maybe she’d be met walking the dog in her domestic’s uniform by one of the friends on her way to lunch at the Colony Club down the street where her own membership had dismally ceased upon her unpaid indebtedness. O hi Jocelyn I didn’t know you lived around here. But no. They wouldn’t speak. They’d pretend instead not to see me. That’s what they’d do. But O god how could she stand it to end up in close proximity and under the thumb of money grabbing gruesomely illmannered people flashing around with their jewels and bad taste. What she needed to find was a rich, cultured and not too doddering old man who lived in a big old house with a big old lawn around it and with whom she could listen to madrigals and to whom she could read Swinburne by the fire at night as they sipped their Irish coffee after dinner.

  But in scanning The New York Times there were no jobs and certainly no old men looking for cultured companions. However there was temporary work advertised in The Herald Statesman as an assistant, gift wrapping people’s Christmas presents at another novelty store in Yonkers. But by the time she got to and from work on the bus it would almost be preferable to be a whore. Both her children invited by their father to ski at Aspen and then to spend a snow bound two weeks in a cabin out in the wilds of Idaho in the Bitterroot National Forest.

  Her sleeping pills were collected. While she brushed her teeth she saw them stacked up ready in the medicine chest of her cramped bathroom. But even though she had not to say please feed my cat, each suicide note she wrote sounded so trite and sentimental. If they were going to be her last words they deserved to be at least somewhat more than matter of fact. Or even unexpurgated. Don’t pay that god damn newspaper boy who missed two papers last week any more than the eleven dollars I owe him. Nor the son of a bitch plumber the forty bucks he’s claiming to flush a toilet and who thinks he’s god’s gift to women. And kiss my ass goodbye you bunch of no good low down bunch of shits.

  If she could just struggle on till it was February and go see the Paul Klee retrospective. If only she could last that long. And it would also provide an excuse to ask the sad man come with her to the private showing. But she was finding it so easy to cry these days and did right in front of the nice lady who was so friendly at the membership desk at the Museum of Modern Art. Who so kindly escorted her to the ladies rest room and brought her a cup of coffee.

  All she needed now was a deep snow-fall with the drifts marooning her in alone with her loneliness. She’d have to phone the boy gardener to come dig her out. O god. A beer now in the Town Tavern wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Even Clifford, and giving the boy a treat, would be a welcome distraction, if only he’d worked up enough nerve to dodge bullets again. And she really could use a fuck paid or unpaid. Holding a broom or vacuuming or on her knees scrubbing her terribly ugly brown and orange kitchen floor. Get her rocks off for one last time before all her hormones went to sleep.

  The mail each day got more and more depressing. Amid the brochures and circulars and bill demands, the Bryn Mawr alumni magazine. Births, deaths and marriages. If the telephone, electricity were added up and paid with this month’s rent she’d be broke. But still all her overheads were infinitesimal compared to those at Winnapoopoo Road when she was languishing there. She would never go on her knees to Steve for money. Besides, from what she’d recently read in a gossip column, his new laugh-a-second show was getting drowned out by groans and his bimbo, to whom he was engaged, took off on someone else’s private jet to Nice.

  However, bills got more and more devastating as they got closer and closer to not being paid and the services cut off. But if she ended it all now her own children could be held responsible for her debts. She had to make sure there was enough money to pay at least a month’s rent, and the due bills and her funeral expenses before she could take her pills. And now this morning in the middle of her increasing dread, someone was after her. A registered letter. Her hand trembling as she signed for the mailman. And then as she slit the envelope open with a knife and pinned the letter to the table, her shaking hand then spilt coffee from her cup on the first paragraph.

  But other than to nearly shave a groove in Clifford’s head she couldn’t remember anything else that she’d recently done to be summoned to a lawyer’s office. O god Clifford could be suing me for grievous bodily harm occasioned by fear descending a staircase. But this letter isn’t threatening. But lawyers don’t have to be. They already were. And especially could be if this letterhead is any indication. With offices in Brussels, London, Paris, Rome, New York and Washington. They would be glad if she would please come and see them at her convenience as soon as possible.

  Glad could mean anything these days in a legal letter. But the words as soon as possible did not bode well. At least it was no problem that she couldn’t phone and make an appointment on the day she was going downtown anyway to visit the Chagall exhibition at the Met. Her last dentist appointment she could afford might have to make her delay an appointment until three o’clock. Maybe her former financial adviser Theodore is going to make at least a partial voluntary restitution of some of the money he’s bilked me of in his dud deals and the fortune his meal guzzling team spent at the Bristol Hotel in Paris. One dinner bill alone amounted to eight hundred and sixteen dollars and thirteen cents. And is about what exactly I have left in the entire world before I get cleaned out paying a dentist’s bill.

  It was bitter cold as she walked towards the East River on Forty-Fifth Street. Across this city that is never dark and when it was briefly once, everyone started fucking. Turn in the doors of this massive skyscraper and into a tropical warmth. One’s nose senses the strange not quite noxious smell that new unused buildings seemed to have when the dust has disappeared and the first few polishes have been put on the marble floors. In the pink tiled atrium, shrubbery and flowers. A fountain gushing water into a large pool in the middle of the lobby. A group of these elevators express all the way to the sixtieth, sixty-first and sixty-second floor.

  A shiver across her shoulders at the sight of a refined looking lady seated on a stainless steel bench reading The New York Times. Obviously homeless with her three polythene bags cluttered about her. But still in proud possession of her dignity. At least enough to keep at bay for a while someone saying get the hell out of here. And I’m going up to the top floor. A sign in New York, that the higher up you go the more affluence and influence to be found. And this firm of lawyers could be nothing but prosperous. Although she’d never heard of them, they had five of those old established New York prestigious sounding names engraved on their vellum over which one tripped one’s finger nail. Like her grandmother’s lawyers with their two hundred partners and a library bigger than Bryn Mawr’s.

  Express elevator to the sixtieth floor. Two women and five men, my fellow passengers upwards. And if the girls are anything to go by, although their taste doesn’t impress me, they sure make me look not much better than dowdy. The guys sporting all kinds of subtle attempts to be different and not look like lawyers but making sure everyone like
them knew they matriculated at Andover, Choate or Deerfield, the latter where her own son had been on the school’s winning ice hockey team.

  Her ear drums felt the pressure of the altitude and her heart was thumping heavily and rapidly in her chest. The elevator emptying on the sixtieth and sixty-first floors. She had the feeling that arising further alone to the last stop that she was attending upon the holy of holies. And out of fashion now for two years, her clothes so inadequate. And young I once was when once the world was out there and into it you were supposed to daintily step, yellow gardenias in your hair, crinoline aswirl about your feet and as you fox trotted across the ballroom it was only to amuse while waiting until all your dreams came true.

  But what had finally come true was that even her very oldest friends were testing her to see if she were still worth knowing. For behind the response to each friendly telephone call she made she knew their thoughts were I don’t need to know you anymore. And if I do go on knowing you, you’re going to bring me your problems which I don’t need because I have my own. And is this, as I alight from this now empty elevator and through this glass door into this spacious waiting room, going to be more bad news of the unknown. Or of the unquantifiable as my grandmother used to say. And as my old bones all sink together in a heap in some old sack, I gather together what optimism is left in my increasingly apologetic self to brave the sternness of this stern receptionist behind her desk. To make sure no poor and homeless soul loiters up here in the clouds.

  ‘I’m here to see Mr Sutton please. I have an appointment for three o’clock and I think I’m a few minutes early.’

  ‘Ah yes, it is Mrs Jocelyn Jones.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mrs Jocelyn Guenevere Marchantiere Jones?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Mr Sutton is expecting you. Please take a seat. He won’t be a moment.’

  Sit in soft leather opulence. Open a magazine. Photographs of the glad-faced upon their lawns posed in front of their grand houses and in the splendour of their drawing rooms. And my god, did I hear actually said and well-pronounced, my entire name, just like they announce in court when they sentence you to death. And now I hear the human sound of a hinge closing the bars behind me. But it’s a tall wavy grey haired man coming out of a door. And crossing the rug in a dark blue pin striped suit. His hand outstretched and smiling as he slightly bows, and all of her old bones growing fragile in a sack, she stands, they shake hands and he reaches to guide her by the elbow.

  ‘So nice to meet you Mrs Jones. Thank you for coming. I’m Mr Sutton. Do please come this way. I see you’re looking at our rug.’

  ‘Yes. It’s most very attractive.’

  ‘It’s tapestry Brussels. And those, too, I see you’ve noticed.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Paul Klee. An original. And not that we are pretending to the macabre, a Charles Addams. And that’s an Edwin Gorey. It’s nice to have an occasional pleasant distraction to view on our walls.’

  ‘Surely more than a pleasant distraction.’

  ‘Touché, Mrs Jones. Touché. Yes I entirely agree. Do please come in. Do. Sit there.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Enjoy our view of The United Nations Headquarters and across the East River to Queens and of course if we view from the other side, west to New Jersey and beyond to the Rocky Mountains.’

  ‘It’s quite stunning.’

  ‘Thank you. On clear days of course one can see across Brooklyn and practically follow the aircraft all the way to landing at Kennedy. Being the first tenants and the landlord as a client, we did rather think it nice to be able to get these very top floors of the building. Well I suppose Mrs Jones you’re not entirely wondering why, and perhaps to use too strong a word, you’ve been summoned here. And you are, of course, Mrs Jocelyn Guenevere Marchantiere Jones.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You mustn’t look so apprehensive.’

  ‘Well I’m actually in a little bit of a hurry. This is the last day of the Chagall exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I’ve got to cross back over to Madison Avenue and the buses can be so slow uptown this time of day.’

  ‘And, Mrs Jones, also going downtown and crosstown.’

  ‘Yes. But I do feel a certain disquiet not to say apprehensive curiosity as to what you want to see me about.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Please don’t let all these files alarm you. It’s because of the curious nature of the matter and also that we have had to be somewhat circumspect in alerting you. But some of the mystery is solved. You’re clearly an art lover. Just as was Mr MacDurbrinisky. You see we couldn’t find any trace of your name in his papers. And I’m sure you won’t mind my keeping you if I promise not to keep you longer than is necessary. But if you’d rather we can make another appointment so that you can be with your legal counsel. However, now if you like, you’ll be given a full copy of all relevant documents, and I’ll just acquaint you with the more salient matters. I’m sure you’ll want to listen to what I have to say and so why don’t we get straight down to the practical side of matters and I’ll move forward as quickly as possible. May I get you some refreshment.’

  ‘No, thank you. But what have I done.’

  ‘Mrs Jones I know this might all come as a shock to you, especially the very wide extent of assets. But really there’s no cause for alarm. We act as Mr MacDurbrinisky’s sole executors. Now as you may know with Mr MacDurbrinisky being a very uncommunicative not to say secretive gentleman, few people were aware of his extended business activities which involved a great deal more than the garment industry and his principal product of lingerie and sleepware manufacture.’

  ‘Mr Sutton. I really do think I had better tell you that I don’t know what you’re talking about or what it has to do with me.’

  ‘Ah but we’re quickly coming to that. But as you may or may not be aware Mr MacDurbrinisky was also the founding finance and seed money in several of America’s now well known companies in ventures especially involving, such as electronics, British banking and the computer industry. Which explains why a comparatively small garment manufacturing enterprise, much smaller than say the Mitchell Brothers could seem to have made Mr MacDurbrinisky such a wealthy man. In Mr MacDurbrinisky as you know suffering a long kidney illness he sold out nearly the entirety of his interests before his death. And as it would happily appear, very much at the top of the market. So it may come to you entirely as a revelation that as near as can be presently determined Mr MacDurbrinisky’s assets may, when finally ascertained, total much more than the twenty-eight million dollars or thereabouts presently accounted for. And as one might aver, we’re still counting. Yes. I can see you’re very surprised. So are we.’

  ‘I would really appreciate, Mr Sutton, you’re telling me please what this is all about. Flattered as I would to be a candidate, I hope this isn’t some kind of front for the white slave trade. And that I should be ready to run for the elevator.’

  ‘Ha, ha, well now I can believe why you and Mr MacDurbrinisky got to be friends and so you must know more than a little of his dealings.’

  ‘Mr MacDurbrinisky and I are not friends. And I know nothing at all about his dealings.’

  ‘I see. Ah. Well. Not to worry. He was of course very confidential. And I suppose could be regarded, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, in view of his considerable wealth, as a rather curmudgeonly and ultra conservative man. As you know there were those who might be tempted to use words stronger about Mr MacDurbrinisky such as penny pinching, however one does not want to speak ill of the dead. But of course as you know he was much disliked by many and indeed as you also know there was bitter and protracted litigation among the family some years ago, happily all settled, although the usual threats and claims have been voiced but are entirely frivolous, which I suppose will explain to you Mr MacDurbrinisky’s novel way of bequeathing his money which would appear and I hope gratifyingly, Mrs Jones, to have resulted considerably to your advantage. In fact sim
ilar to a case that I believe happened not that long ago. And may be happening more than we realize secretly all over America.’

  ‘I’m afraid, Mr Sutton, if I may interrupt again. I don’t know of the case whatever it is or was, that you allude to. I’m listening avidly for a hint of what this is all about but I still haven’t in fact the faintest idea yet of what on earth this Mr MacDurbrinisky has to do with me.’

  ‘O but you were an acquaintance of Mr MacDurbrinisky’s.’

  ‘I’m sorry unless I’m living out some strange reincarnation. I’ve never heard of, nor come across the man in my life.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And truly I have no idea why I’m here or what this is all about. I don’t have any outstanding bill for lingerie that I know of. In fact I’ve been sitting here in front of your desk, wondering what I did wrong and why I’m going to be sued. And how much it’s going to cost to fight or settle. Which if it’s anything at all I haven’t got it.’

  ‘I see. Well pardon my chuckle, you’re far from being sued. Or incurring cost, save for our own fees as executors to be paid out of the estate.’

  ‘Mr Sutton, I’m sure somehow this is mistaken identity and it is someone else to whom what you’re saying should be said. And if you’ll excuse me I really should you know be going.’

  ‘Please, Mrs Jones, forgive me if I suggest you should please remain. Of course you’re entirely quite free to go but I would advise not. We’re anxious to wind these matters up and I think you’ll see why when you fully hear what I’ve got to say. But I can see an explanation is in order. And you will I’m sure see why it was assumed that you knew Mr MacDurbrinisky.’

  ‘Well I don’t. And no one resembling such a name.’