Window Washing

Trisha stuck her arm out the car window to let the summer sun fry her skin. Her mom was giving her a ride to the fast-food place where she worked. She asked Trisha when she was going to get a driver’s license, as was typical for her mom to do. “I don’t know, Mom, when I take the test.” She also asked about the interview at the daycare center, and Trisha responded that she hadn’t gotten a call yet. “No, Mom, I told you last night, I haven’t heard from the lady.” Her mom seemed exhausted. Maybe if she didn’t ask so many questions she wouldn’t be so tired, Trisha thought. They’d both eaten TV dinners for breakfast, meatloaf and macaroni. They’d both brushed their hair with the same hairbrush. Somehow, they were still worlds apart.  

According to Trisha’s mom, after you graduate highschool you’re free. Working at the fast-food restaurant was not freedom. Her coworkers were all mad, always mad, because when you work at a place like that you’re not happy, just sweaty and irritated. They would complain about their girlfriends, their girlfriends were cheating on them with that motherfucker in 3B, but that’s how it was, all girlfriends are like that. They complained about landlords who were selling fentanyl and their neighbors with dogs that barked all the time. Most of all they would complain about the customers. Trying to impress them, Trisha had told them about her dad, her dad who was in prison for serial rape. She said, “all dads are kind of failures, right?” They nodded and she blushed with pride; that was a tune they could all sing along to. 

Before the start of Trisha’s shift, a coworker tried to show her how to do winged eyeliner. She ended up with black smudges on the sides of her head from repeatedly trying and wiping it off. “Well, you would sweat it off anyway,” her coworker said impatiently, using a square of toilet paper to dab under her own eye. No matter how much she talked about her dad and tried to wear makeup, Trisha did not fit in very well with them; her eyes were mostly downcast and her voice was little more than a squeak. They were cranky, rebellious even; Trisha was mostly sad. 

After hours of shouting, confusion, and wanting to be dead, it was late at night and business had subsided. Because she had nothing else to do and didn’t care much to hear anymore about the unfaithful girlfriends and the 2am yelling matches with neighbors, Trisha was spraying the windows in the lobby. She wiped them with her rag, pulled the trigger on the bottle, sprayed some more mist, and wiped again. She imagined she was a cowboy, quick on the draw, like in those movies her grandpa always watched. 

And so, she cleaned the already clean windows for forty-five minutes. She had almost lulled herself to sleep with her broad, circular motions when she noticed two dark-haired children in the parking lot. There was a girl and a boy. They had backpacks and detached expressions. They seemed abandoned. Trisha lowered her spray bottle and rag. 

“Hey,” she called to the counter. “There’s some kids out here!” A male coworker came over to the glass and cupped his hands around his eyes so that he could get a clear view outside.  

“Where?” He walked out into the parking lot, looked out toward the road and then back at the drive thru that stretched behind the restaurant. Trisha could see her coworker out the window but, like him, could not see any children. They seemed to have vanished in the nighttime breeze. 

** 

Her shift the next day was miserable. Miguel, the manager, was exasperated, hurrying back and forth between the makeline, the registers, and the drive thru window. His mustache, bristly like a push broom, was slick with sweat. He paused only to wipe it with a napkin. His forty-plus years and big stomach made walking around the kitchen equivalent to swimming upstream. The struggle and the stress made his mustache melt. Trisha tried to ask him about the pickles, where was the opened jar of pickles, but he looked at her without listening and then disappeared before giving her a reply. He was a magician that way. So, she didn’t put any pickles on the next couple of orders. 

Her only solace came when she could clean the lobby, sweeping straws off the floor and using her nails to dig up crusty mustard from tabletops. Her hands and arms reeked of sanitizer. She sighed, eager to go home and wash the smells away; the grease and the cleansers. At least in the coolness of the lobby she didn’t have to interact with her belligerent coworkers or equally belligerent customers.  

After finishing with her other tasks, she was spraying the windows again. In the violet sunset, more strange people began appearing in the parking lot. Some of them were crying, some were cheering, some were bleeding, all without any context. She watched them with wonder. A coworker was moseying around behind her, eating something on a table she had already cleaned. He didn’t seem to notice all the people who kept appearing in the parking lot seemingly out of nowhere. Her coworkers had started to notice the extraordinary amount of time Trisha spent gazing out of the windows. “Lazy kid,” the coworker at the table remarked behind her as he bit into his burger dripping with ketchup. 

One evening, when the restaurant was quiet, she saw a couple in the parking lot. A man was kneeling on the asphalt and gazing up at a woman. He had something in his hand, and he opened it. The woman seemed unimpressed. Before a minute had passed, the man closed the box and it snapped shut like the mouth of an alligator; cruel and quick. The window cleaner streaked the glass like tears. The pair began arguing although Trisha couldn’t hear a word of what they were saying. The sight made her uncomfortable and so she swiped her rag across them, and, somehow, they were gone.  

** 

The following day, a male coworker was especially ill-tempered. “I don’t know, Shauna! Why don’t you just do something yourself for once instead of asking everyone else to do it for you?” Miguel, with his face turning into a puddle at his feet, put an end to the squabbling with one sharp remark. Trisha was beginning to feel some excitement over the drama she was watching through the window. It was like being at a private screening for an upcoming film. That’s what the window was; an insight into everyone’s lives, as if the constant complaining and moodiness wasn’t insight enough. She knew about their relationship troubles before they knew anything was wrong. She saw the moment when things were going to disintegrate, the crisis, the accomplishments too. Once, she saw a little girl win a spelling bee though she never found out who the little girl was. Sometimes, she searched for her dad out the window, because despite it all, she was curious about him and curious about prison. 

After hours of bitter comebacks and a lack of mayonnaise (which disturbed a surprising number of customers), the sky became dark, and Trisha was at her usual place in front of the window. This time, like times before it, a familiar face appeared in the empty lot. However, this was someone much closer to her than she expected. She had a pudgy face, short legs, and youthful skin. She also had eyeliner on though it wasn’t applied very well. This girl had swapped her restaurant uniform for something more professional, something representing a higher pay grade: a modest silver necklace and bracelet, a striped button-up with cuffed sleeves, and flats. 

Trisha felt a flurry of emotion and she couldn’t readily discern if it was happiness or depression. Maybe it was fear? She sighed and turned away from the girl to return her spray bottle and rag to the closet where they belonged. 

** 

Trisha did not mention that she’d applied for a new job, nor did she mention that she expected to get it. Instead, she continued to hand people fries in paper bags and relay orders. It was a couple of nights after Trisha had seen the girl in the button-up through the window. She and Miguel were outside watching the cars roll by, enjoying the fleeting moments of calm. He was sitting at a table, scooping liquid vanilla ice cream out of a cup. She was sitting on the curb, chewing on her own styrofoam cup.  

“You know, I’ve thought about getting out of here but I think I would miss my kids too much,” Miguel said halfheartedly. He was the only one who’d never spoken much about his personal life before. In fact, Trisha had never considered he had a life outside of the burger place. He was a true professional. She wasn’t sure what had inspired him to reveal this. Maybe it was because, for the first time all day, he could contemplate his own problems instead of worrying about everyone else’s. 

“Have you ever thought like that? Like, would you miss your mom?” He squinted in the cutting twilight sun.  

“I don’t know.” Trisha looked at how the sun turned Miguel’s black hair into the color of butter. She was overcome with tender feelings. Before this, she had felt ambivalent about him. She could feel the resentment unloading from him then and somehow it cured her of her own as well. 

“My ex just dropped them off at my house late the other night, didn’t even let me know they were coming. I took them to school the next morning and she picked them up and that was that, that was the most time I’ve gotten to spend with them in at least three weeks.” Miguel laid his hands palm-up on the table as a signal of defeat. Trisha didn’t speak. “I said goodnight and good morning, that’s all I said.” He spoke without looking at Trisha to gauge her reaction. Maybe in the midst of his melancholy he’d forgotten her. 

“My little boy has a birthday coming up. She didn’t invite me.” A car went by, shaking the whole town with the loud music pouring from its speakers. Trisha watched the ice in her drink melt. Miguel stabbed his spoon into the soupy ice cream in the bottom of his cup as if he were trying to spear a fish. He couldn’t catch the fish, so he stood up and threw the cup away. Finally, he acknowledged her again. “Ah, you’re just a kid. You can’t be worrying about things like this.” He smiled and it made her feel bad because it wasn’t real and both of them knew as much. He went back inside, leaving Trisha to tear apart her cup and leave the crumbs at her feet. 

** 

Once the store was locked up and everyone had headed home or to a party or to an ex’s, Miguel drove Trisha to the duplex she shared with her mom. It was usually him or Shauna, and Shauna liked to talk on the phone while she was driving and talk about getting waxed, where to buy weed, how to win that guy back, etc. So, Trisha preferred to ride with Miguel who was kind enough and, until recently, very reserved. 

Trisha folded her hands in her lap. “I would miss my mom,” she said. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yes, I think I would. I don’t think I could go very far away.” Miguel mulled over this. 

“Do you think I’m a bad guy for talking about leaving?”  

“No, I think you’ve been around negative people for too long.” Trisha snapped her hair band against her wrist. She watched it turn red. “It’s not your fault.” 

They came to a red light. Nobody else was at the intersection. 

“I think you should go to his birthday party,” Trisha said lightly. Miguel snickered. 

The light turned green. He shook his head. “I don’t know what to get him. I don’t know what he likes,” he said as though this was an insurmountable obstacle. He drove through the intersection. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” 

“Just some cousins,” Trisha replied. “My boy cousin likes race cars.” 

“I think I liked race cars when I was a kid too. It feels like it was so long ago, I’m not sure what I liked anymore,” he laughed. “What do you want to do, Trisha? When you’re not working at that place?” He jabbed a thumb in the direction of the burger restaurant. 

“I don’t know. I’ll find something eventually, I guess.” 

“Hah,” Miguel chuckled. “You’ve got to have more ambition than that.” 

“So do you.” They arrived at the duplex. 

“Goodnight, Trisha, see you Thursday.” The conversation was abandoned. 

** 

It was her last day, and it was raining a lot. She stood before the window as if it were a magic eight ball and searched for clues about her future. Would she like working there? Would she meet a handsome guy? She spent a long time scrubbing, and the parking lot remained empty. Maybe it was all of the wetness. A coworker put the chairs up on the tables behind her and began mopping the floor, urging Trisha to move along so that she was not in her way. Trisha scrubbed more vigorously.  

On the other side of the glass, a dark-haired child was sitting on the ground with his back to her. She stood on her toes, trying to see what he was doing. He turned on his heel and pushed a little blue race car toward Trisha in the window. He leapt up quickly and sprinted to retrieve the car. Before picking it up, he stopped to look at her like no one before him had done. He put his hands on the glass and looked around her at the counter where Miguel was counting the change. He stood there for a moment, his face shining in the lights of the lobby. Then, he bent down, gathered the car into his arms, and dispersed into the lot like a mist. Unknown to her coworkers, she would do the same the following day when she called to say she was quitting.