Cleaning Out the COVID

When Sue finally came out of her room, the chore chart was up, and it said it was her turn to clean the den. The House Manager prepared the chart once a week and posted it outside of the staff office. It always drew a non-social distancing crowd when she did, residents craning to see what they’d be doing for the next week, coughing, breathing on each other, swapping viruses, and making deals to trade washing dishes for vacuuming the living room, bathrooms for the porch, or whatever.

Sue preferred to wait until everyone cleared out before she inspected the chore chart. She let the viruses settle before examining whether someone had erased her name under a more desirable chore and put it in under a harder one. She could easily imagine someone doing it, even in the middle of the crowd, saying I’m going to put Sue’s name under cleaning the den, and everybody laughing at the irony because, after all, the den was the room most filled with COVID and Sue was the only one in the group home who wasn’t hacking up a lung half the time.

After the crowd cleared, she went up to the board to inspect it and, sure enough, there was her name, Sue, under the heading, Den. She studied it for changes in the handwriting, smudge marks and the like. Chemicals from the dry erase markers were just starting to go to her head when she heard a voice say, “I’ll trade you for washing the kitchen floor on Saturday night.”

Sue didn’t turn towards the voice to keep her out of the direct path of the death emanating from his mouth; but, out of the corner of her eye, she saw his shoes on the floor and she heard his voice repeat the offer. It was Tim. He had a girlfriend he was going to ask out on Saturday. He explained he couldn’t wait around half the night for the dishes to be done before beginning on his chore so he wanted to trade with Sue.

She didn’t answer Tim at first. She knew Tim didn’t have a girlfriend, and would never get a date. Even if he did, no one was leaving the group home except for essential employment. She thought she should study him for a while to find out his motivations. Tim was what they call a clean-cut young man; handsome and, unlike the rest in the group home, well dressed and groomed. His hands were in his pockets, the left one scratching his genitals through the lining while he waited for Sue’s answer.

Sue always had a hard time trusting Tim and it wasn’t just her illness.

Someone, no one in particular, murmured in her head. They can call you paranoid if they want, plenty of people have, but I’ve always had a bad feeling about him. When everything is said and done, they won’t be calling you a schizophrenic any more. No, they’d be calling you a genius.

Sue was about to agree to trade cleaning the den for doing the floor when Tim said forget it, walked away, and went out to the porch to smoke.

It just goes to show, you can’t trust him, said no one in particular. He asks you something and then he just changes his mind.

Tim never fit in. He had a car and a part time job wiping down carts at a grocery store, where he kept picking up COVID germs and carrying them to the group home for everyone else. In a house full of seriously and persistently mentally ill people, he was so normal, it was weird.

While Sue thought about all this, she lowered her left ear down on her shoulder. No one in particular murmured, It’s remarkable how, when you look at things sideways, your mind adjusts them so they seem straight up and down.

She first came upon that discovery lying on her mother’s couch watching TV when she was little. The TV made vastly more sense to her back then than anything her mother did.

Your mother could’ve been certified nuts had she ever gone to the doctor, said no one in particular. As it was, your father and older sister took care of things and saved her the trouble. What they got for their pains was constant abuse and the contempt one can’t help but have for those who let you walk all over them. The only thing she ever had to do was to throw temper tantrums.

Sue watched a lot of TV then and wore only blue clothes so as to blend in with the couch, which was blue also. She hardly watched any TV nowadays and wouldn’t go near the couch; but that didn’t stop her from assuming the TV watching position whenever she had to concentrate.

Sue kept an eye on the staff room door. If a staff came out and caught her with her head tipped, she’d start to lose privileges. Sue once tried to explain to the House Manager the benefits of tipping her head, but she’d have none of it. The House Manager went on and on about fitting in with society and acting appropriately and then set up a behavior plan so that Sue would lose privileges whenever she was caught tipping her head. By this time, she’d had the plan for ages; they reviewed it every three months. She’d gotten really good at keeping an eye on the staff room door.

Tim’s retreat left her in command of the field. She wasn’t sure that anyone else would make a move on her so she stayed in position after he left. She knew that, just by standing very, very still, she could freak some people out. Other residents generally took it in stride but new counselors couldn’t handle it. One staff was so unhinged by Sue not moving, that she had to call 911 and have an ambulance come and cart her off to the hospital, still in position, strapped to a stretcher, before she felt better.

From her position, Sue had a good view of most everything going on in the group home. She stood at the foot of the stairs like a suit of armor in the hallway of an old castle. An open window was close at hand, giving her good air circulation that kept the viruses moving. She could see and hear the smokers out on the porch, Jose, Erick, Viv, Keshawn, and Tim, bumming a smoke. As usual, there was a lot of traffic in the house: people making the circuit from the bathrooms upstairs, to the den to cough and watch TV, to the kitchen for a drink, out to the porch for a smoke, and back to the bathrooms. It’s as if the house was a body and these scurrying people were viruses: treacherous, multiplying viruses, spreading their malignancy to every corner.

Sue was just trying to will her lungs not to breathe when Tim called out to Becky, the neighbor, home from college, as she got out of her car next door. Tim liked to call Becky his girlfriend, but he never said it to her face. Everyone knew, even Tim, although he refused to admit it to himself, that while she may have been a girlfriend to him, he was nothing more than a project to her. Her dad had opposed the group home from opening next door and Becky felt sorry for everyone. She felt most sorry for Tim, who was her same age and relatively normal looking.

Leave it to horny Tim, said no one in particular to Sue, He can’t even tell the difference between captivation and pity.

“Becky, what are doing now?” called Tim, in his needy kind of way.

“Nothing much. Going for a a swim.” Becky’s parents had a pool in their backyard.

“I’ll be right over,” said Tim, already stamping out his smoke.

Becky smiled at him, waved, and went in her house. A high ponytail nodding behind her.

Jose said to him “We can’t leave the porch unless we’re going to an essential job. Remember, we’re on lockdown.”

Tim went to the office to ask permission he was never going to get. In half a second he was out.

“You need to knock before you come in,” said the House Manager.

He knocked. Then House Manager said, “You can’t come in. I’m on the phone.”

“Fucking bitch,” he said, and ran upstairs to put on his trunks.

Tim never really caught on to the art of living in the group home, said no one in particular to Sue. It doesn’t pay to get upset about the House Manager any more than it pays to get upset when the rain gets you all wet. The rain can’t help getting you wet if you don’t have the sense to get out of it when it’s coming down. If a House Manager gave you everything that you want when you wanted it, she wouldn’t be managing a darn thing; you’d be managing her. The solution to dealing with the House Manager is in remembering that the very moment she stops you from getting what you want, she, at the same time, is giving you the means to circumvent her.

For instance, Sue used to ask the House Manager what she and the other staff were always writing about her in their charts, but she never would tell her. Then one day the House Manager left her keys lying on the kitchen counter. No one in particular had whispered to Sue, It doesn’t take a genius to see that the keys are there to take, unlock the staff room door, and read the charts yourself.

The House Manager made a fine show of tearing the kitchen apart looking for them.

But you knew that she would not ask anyone if they saw her keys because she didn’t want anyone to know she lost them.

Sue just kept them long enough to make her own copy at the hardware store and put them in the silverware basket of the dishwasher, where the House Manager could find them.

So, you see, said no one in particular, you get a lot further with staff when you understand their ways.

Tim came back down, saw the House Manager was still on the phone and went directly next door to go swimming with Becky. He was always set on just one way of doing things.

You’ve got to keep yourself flexible because you never know what’s going to come up.

For instance, when Sue got her copy of the staff room key, she had thought that she was going to be reading her own chart. She didn’t read very far before she discovered it told her a lot more about the staff writing it than it ever said about her.

They said you were “Isolating… responding to inner stimuli… shows no interest in the lives of the other residents… flat affect… exhibiting delusions about disease in the den… catatonic… bizarre…” I could go on, but then I’d be “rambling and tangential”.

Reading it was like having spoken with a newspaper reporter and wincing when he mangles your quotes. After a while it’s just too painful to continue and you turn to the other stories.

Tim’s chart was one of the first she had read. It was thicker than most, half-filled with Tim’s own handwriting: “Tim loves Becky,” over and over again like a schoolboy’s punishment. The interesting thing was the Becky next door was not the Becky in the handwriting. The Becky in the handwriting was some chick he met at his sister’s wedding reception years ago. He was dressed in a tux, having been given the job of usher. She said hello with a smile that melted his horndog heart. He had his own catatonic moment, not knowing what to say back. Finally, the band struck up the Rock Lobster and she went off to dance. He leaned back on the head table, certain that he would marry her. The reception ended and his sister went off to her honeymoon. He began planning his. When his sister got back, he pestered her for Becky’s address. To her eternal credit, she didn’t give it to him, tux or no tux, she knew he was a royal creep.

Having no address and nothing more to go on but a kind hello, Tim nourished his crush with thousands of pages of declarations and dedications to the radio. Twenty therapists could do nothing with Tim’s obsession until he moved into the group home and the House Manager treated him with one of her Behavioral Plans.

There wasn’t a word of this in the chart, but Sue knew that Tim was convinced that the Becky from next door was the very same Becky he’d been waiting for all these years. Never mind she had the wrong hair color and looked nothing like her. To Tim’s warped mind it went to prove that Becky was devoted to him. She had changed her name, her hair color, and got plastic surgery to trick all those who were trying to keep them apart. It was only a matter of time before Tim would tell her that he knows who she really is.

Watch, said no one in particular to Sue, Becky will whisk away his delusions like a doctor takes away your limits.

Jose was on the porch, talking like a fish. Sue had read his chart, too. It said, “He’s has a delusion that someone is trying to drown him.” Jose had never stopped talking about being drowned since a gang of kids dunked him in the pool when he was eight. He’s in his forties now. During this time, his eyes started popping out of his head, his chin’s been receding, and he gargles when he speaks like he’s under water.

It’s like what somebody said once, said no one in particular to Sue, after age forty you get the face that you deserve. Or, in Jose’s case, the face he needs, because it’s plain that he’s turning into a fish.

Jose went to the House Manager to tattle on Tim, but she was still on the phone. No one in particular said to Sue, We’re going to have a storm and, if it rains for forty days and forty nights, Jose will be ready.

Sue got to wondering when she would be able to clean the den. Bruce was in there, coughing up a squall. The air was thick with COVID. You wouldn’t catch Sue dead in there; she liked to keep her lungs working. Bruce didn’t seem to care about his lungs, for when he wasn’t coughing in the den, he was smoking on the porch, an auburn glass ashtray filled with butts balancing on his knee. His fingers were stained the same color as the ashtray and his lower lip had a notch in it where the cigarette rests. Just like I said with Jose. A person gets the face he needs. In Bruce’s case, he’s turning into an ashtray.

According to his chart, Bruce had a stint in the Air Force fueling airplanes. He’d just hooked up his gas line to an F-16 and stepped away when the whole thing went up in an explosion. No one ever found the source of the spark that ignited the fuel, but Bruce must’ve lit up when he was gassing the plane, and absentmindedly threw the match down where the fuel vapors could get to it. They tried to question him about the fire but by then he had become a stammering idiot. The half-witted Air Force doctors released him with a service-connected disability that set him up for the rest of his life.

No one in particular said, The House Manager wants to get her share, so she keeps Bruce’s demons fresh in his mind. That’s why she gave him the permanent job of mowing the lawn in the summer and running the snow blower in the winter. It meant he would have to gas up something year-round.

The lawn mower was out in the driveway with a full can of gas next to it while Bruce did his coughing.

Sue was just calculating how long she’d have to wait before the COVID settled after Bruce left, when Becky started screaming from the pool. She couldn’t see what was going on past a hedge, but it couldn’t have been good. She could hear some splashing, then another scream, and a little more splashing. The smokers on the porch debated whether they should go over without permission to leave or if they could finish their smokes.

The fish called Jose gargled out to the House Manager like he was trying to get through a whole bottle of Listerine, “Becky’s screaming for help and Tim is with her without permission.” But the House Manager was still on the phone.

There was another scream, this one cut short.

By this time, Bruce finished his coughing and heard the commotion outside. He went through the hall, his very breath trailing death behind him. It was Sue’s chance to clean the room, but he had left a horrible COVID death behind and she wasn’t going in there with that thing.

By now, the porch crowd had all gone over to the pool and stood gawking at Tim, Becky, and Jose. The House Manager had completed her call and went out to see what was going on. Sue followed her quietly and stood where she could peer around the hedge.

Jose kneeled by the pool and was giving Becky CPR. “I saved her from drowning,” he said, but it was clear he hadn’t. Tim paced back and forth on the other side of the pool. They were all soaking wet. A pink stain in the water accused the entire group home of a horrible deed.

The House Manager was already back on her phone. “They’re going to kick us out of the neighborhood, and every other group home, too. No one will ever be able to build another one.”

It’s time for you to clean up, said no one in particular to Sue.

On the way, she picked up the gas can Bruce had left by the mower.

You can’t have the neighbors see you leaving a mess in the yard.

Stepping in the porch and looking inside, she saw a cloud of COVID settling on the walls, the floor, and every piece of furniture. A single strand of smoke meandered up from the cigarette someone had left on the porch in the auburn ashtray.

Since gasoline is a solvent, you can use it to solve things.

She held her breath and emptied the can out in the den.

You’ll have to do something with that cigarette before it does something to you.

She picked the cigarette up by the end of her fingers and threw it in the den.

Health is the most important thing, said no one in particular. You should do this for your health.

Keith R Wilson is a mental health counselor in private practice. Read more of his fiction series, The Narrative Imperative and other stuff.