Chapter 3 Una
Una
Una Einarsson pulled her VW Bug into the driveway of a split-level brick ranch and turned off the engine.
She was early. Too early to knock on the door and expect Beth Pulaski to answer.
Beth always took long, luxurious showers. And when she finally got out of the shower, she’d put the radio on and sit at her
vanity, applying her makeup and drying her hair into a long, straight waterfall of gold. She’d sing along to whatever was
playing on WPLJ while picking out an outfit from one of her four closets. Finally, she’d admire herself in the Cheval mirror
Una cleaned once a week.
By the time Beth emerged from her bedroom—dressed in curve-hugging jeans, or a low-cut jumpsuit, or a dress with such a high
side slit that she couldn’t get out of her Jag without flashing her panties—she knew exactly how good she looked.
Beth Pulaski, age twenty-eight, was the Marilyn Monroe of Cold Harbor. She knew how to move her body to attract attention.
When she walked, her hips rocked like a boat caught by a river current. Her breasts rose and fell like waves rolling into
the shore. Her hair shimmered like sunlight on sand.
In high school, she’d been the cheerleader who could do the deepest splits and the most roundoffs. She was the flyer of every pyramid.
Ten years later, she still used her petite frame to her advantage. At the grocery store, she’d stand on tiptoe to reach for
items on the highest shelf. She liked the whisper of her skirt sliding up her thighs. She liked feeling tendrils of cool air
creep under her dress. She liked knowing people’s eyes were moving up her toned legs to her tight ass.
“I work hard for this body, and I want people to see it,” Beth told Una back when she first started cleaning for the Pulaskis.
Una had plugged in the vacuum and met Beth’s Delft-blue gaze. “They see it.”
“Don likes it when other guys stare at me. It turns him on. But men are easy. When a woman stares? That’s what I like. Because women understand beauty. Women’s bodies are works of art, don’t you think?”
Una’s gaze slid from Beth’s lovely face to the toast crumbs on the counter. “I suppose so.”
“I know what they say about me, the women in the neighborhood. They call me a slut. They think I want to seduce their husbands.
They won’t let their sons walk past my house because I might lure them over and say something naughty. But they’ve got me
all wrong. I just want people to look. I only want to be touched by Don.”
To Una, it seemed like Beth’s main occupation was seducing her husband. She had drawers full of lingerie. Silk nighties and
robes hung from padded hangers in her closet. The trunk at the end of her bed held costumes that Una would find on the bedroom
floor from time to time. The French maid was clearly a favorite. As was the nurse.
Beth owned a lot of clothes. Fuzzy sweaters, leather pants, pleated miniskirts, whisper-thin blouses.
Wrap dresses, ribbed dresses, strapless dresses.
Dresses made of mesh, of soft cotton, of shimmering silver sequins or metallic gold.
Beth had racks of shoes, too. Thigh-high boots, stilettos, strappy sandals, and wedge heels.
“Don likes me to model whatever I buy,” Beth once explained. “It’s a game we play. After dinner, he makes a drink and goes
to the den. I put on my new outfit to show him, and he tells me to walk around or spin—to act like a model. If he likes what
he sees, he’ll take it off, nice and slow. That means I’m keeping the outfit. If he’s not in the mood, or he’s more interested
in the game than in me, I return what I’m wearing. If I can’t make Don horny enough to look away from a bunch of sweaty guys
in uniforms, I blame the clothes.”
When Una first started cleaning for the Pulaskis, she was shocked by the things Beth told her. She’d never met a woman who
revealed such intimate details about her sex life.
Una had grown up in a small village north of Reykjavik where women prided themselves on modesty and humility. It made her
uncomfortable to listen to Beth talk about things that should be kept between herself and her husband.
Una had wanted to quit after her first time cleaning the Pulaskis’ house. She couldn’t imagine picking Beth’s thongs off the
carpet or seeing her parade around in a state of undress ever again.
But she didn’t quit.
She kept cleaning for Beth Pulaski because Gunnar’s scholarship didn’t cover room and board at Cornell. Nor did it cover the
cost of his textbooks. No one from Una’s family had gone to college. The same went for Kristofer, her husband. Their son,
Gunnar, would be the first—and as an engineering major no less—so Una went back to the Pulaskis the next week.
Una never encouraged Beth to confide in her. She gave no indication that she was interested in the details of Beth’s marriage. In fact, she tried to send her thoughts elsewhere during their one-sided conversations, concentrating on what to clean next or mulling over what to make for dinner.
She managed to remain emotionally unattached until the day she found Beth huddled in the corner of her bathroom, crying like
a lost child.
Una dropped to her knees and took Beth’s hand in hers. “What is it, sweetheart?”
Beth let out a sob. “I just got my period. I was four days late, and I’m never late, so I thought . . . I hoped . . . I’ve been praying so hard!”
Una stroked Beth’s soft, smooth hand. “You want a baby?”
“More than anything!”
“Have you been trying for a long time?”
“Years.” Beth’s face crumpled in pain. “I got pregnant once, but I lost the baby. There was blood in the toilet and when I
went to the doctor, he couldn’t find a heartbeat. It was just gone. I think about that all the time. How I flushed it down
the toilet. How I didn’t even know it was there. My baby. The doctor said I didn’t do anything wrong, but there must be something wrong with me. With my body.”
Una wrapped an arm around Beth’s shoulder. As the younger woman sobbed into her chest, smearing Una’s blouse with tears and
snot, Una smoothed her golden hair and hummed a lullaby from her homeland.
Tae er margt sem myrkrie veit,
minn er hugur tungur.
Oft ég svarta sandinn leit
svíea graenan engireit.
í joklinum hljóea daueadjúpar sprungur.
There is much that darkness knows,
My mind is heavy.
Often I’ve seen the black sand
Scorching green meadows.
In the glacier rumbles deadly deep cracks.
Eventually, Beth had stopped crying. She’d gotten to her feet and moved to the sink to wash the sorrow off her face.
Una had returned to her cleaning, but not before noticing the stack of American Baby magazines in the cabinet under the sink. They were all worn and water-wrinkled, as if Beth sat in the tub, paging through
them over and over again, seeing her future child in every fair-haired, dimple-cheeked cherub. She read about diaper rash
and milestones until the water turned cold. Then she’d pull the plug, letting gravity take her dreams and the dirty water
down into the dark.
Unlike her other clients, Beth had never given Una a key.
“Who knows what you’d walk in on?” Beth had teased. “If I don’t come to the door, and you see Don’s car in the driveway, you
might have to wait outside for a few minutes if you know what I mean.”
Today, Don’s car—a boxy look-at-me red sports car—was in the driveway. This meant Una had to wait.
The sun slanted through the old dogwood tree in the Pulaskis’ front yard, dappling Una’s face with light and shadow. The chiaroscuro
effect softened the lines around her eyes and mouth, transforming her from a sixty-two-year-old housecleaner to the young
bride who’d immigrated to the US from an Icelandic fishing village three decades ago.
Even now, after all this time, she still rejoiced in the feel of sunlight on her skin.
She was eternally the cat, seeking a square of sunshine.
She spent her childhood yearning for this bone-warming light.
She’d read about it in books. Her uncle spoke of it when he shared tales of his travels.
He’d been to many places. He’d met Mickey Mouse in Florida and climbed the Statue of Liberty all the way up to her crown.
He’d ridden in taxis and visited museums. He’d eaten at a Burger King and slept at a Howard Johnson’s.
He made it sound like everything about America glowed.
Everything was bigger and brighter. Even the sun.
Una pictured her uncle on a stool close to the fire, packing his pipe with work-worn fingers. She could see the wisps of smoke
rise toward the rafters and smell the peaty scent of his tobacco. As she sank into an ocean of memories, her eyelids grew
heavy.
She hadn’t been sleeping well lately. Every morning, she woke sticky with sweat. Her tongue was dry as sandpaper and her head
felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
She couldn’t remember her dreams, but she knew they were troubled. Something was calling to her from that other place—that
close but faraway place where the mind wanders in the small hours of the night. She felt the echoes of this other world even
after she woke up—disturbances in her psyche where things from the dream place had latched onto her like a sucker fish.
It had been a long time since she’d taken a nap, but she allowed her stiff neck and knotted shoulders to relax deeper into
her seat. Her breathing slowed. She concentrated on the vision of smoke curling out of her uncle’s pipe and her father’s laughter,
which sounded like an avalanche of snow. She could see his eyes, the blue of a frozen fjord, sparkling with merriment. His
beard wagged like a sheep’s tail as he chortled and slapped his thigh.
In the memory, he was wearing his favorite sweater—the one Mamma made for him last winter. There was a hole in the elbow and another where his collarbones met. A fishhook had landed there, biting into the weave, stretching and pulling until the wool finally gave way.
Pappi.