Cleaning Detergent

“Would you like to have a drink with me?”

That went on for three days straight. He held his stoic feelings close to himself as always, just as he held his glass of red wine. It was as if he was staring at a stone statue he could no longer recognise. You could barely see any semblance of emotions on his face. His brows were bushy, slightly unkempt. “Old age,” I thought. I scanned the ridges and wrinkles around his eyes – he had laughed a lot, even smiled a lot. But why this coldness? Why has his smile eluded me for the past three days?

Sitting across from him with our kneecaps barely touching each other, I was at a complete standstill. I could not help but wonder if there was a floodgate waiting to be opened at the mention of a particular word, or memory. Often, I blurted random words just to see if they would rustle him; in retrospect I was trying too hard. I did think of complex, highbrow words. Maybe they would incite a response from this man who, to me at the time, was like a mathematical equation waiting to be solved. If only I could find the right constant to be slotted in the right place.

I figured out toward the end, half a year later, while we sat in a quaint coffee shop tucked in the corner of Carey Street that the word was “limes”.

Of course, it never occurred to me then that such a simple, often overlooked object sitting in a bowl somewhere on your kitchen counter would be the one that taught me a couple of things about loneliness, loss, and wonderful cocktails. There was an inconspicuous bowl of limes used as décor, on the counter right next to the barista station. It would have made more sense for the limes to be there if the shop had cocktails on the menu, I thought.

“Isn’t it weird that they have a bowl of limes as décor but none of the food items on the menu have limes in them?”, I told him while nudging his arm and nodding toward the bowl.

“Oh?” he said. “That is quite peculiar,” he continued.

“I love limes; they remind me of the aged, leathery skin of my grandma’s hands,” I added. I went on about my grandma. “She chewed betel nuts constantly and had tattoos inked on both her forearms; a menacing figure to children of my age when I was younger. The betel nuts stained her teeth red and caused them to rot. My friends would never come home to play with me after school because grandma was always around, tending to the overgrown lawn (according to her). I could understand now why my friends would often ask me if my grandma was a witch and why they were afraid of her. But I love her nevertheless; in her supposed witchcraft, tattoos, missing front teeth and all.”

“Limes are great for cocktails,” he told me. “You see, in the early twentieth century when bootleg and cheap liquor rose in popularity in America from the alcohol prohibition, people used limes or other citrusy fruits to mask the nauseating smell and taste of the alcohol.”

“Well, at least they made something undrinkable, drinkable” I added wittedly.

“You can say so…” he replied. “I love limes too; they remind me of someone” he said with a suddenly solemn tone. I began to see the elusive drapes of his emotions being pulled to the side slowly. It felt as if I was peeking through the frosted windows of a candy store and seeing the last remaining jawbreaker of the day, sitting alone in the glass counter.

Why was I so invested in this man’s life? He knew so much about my affairs that I felt he owed me a tiny sliver of his stories. I didn’t ask for much. Tell me about the time you laughed so hard that it left those permanent creases around your lips, and I’d be content.

It’s not that he has never told me anything about his life – but most of the stories were peppered with little to no emotion. Stories like the time he worked in Israel during the 9/11 attacks and how he had to be evacuated, or when he had a great time fishing in Naousa with his brother. No. I want to read the stories you wrote in secrecy, the ones you wrote at 2 o’clock in the morning, then have hidden safely between the pages of a discreet bibliography book of a C-list celebrity that no one would ever care to pick up from the shelves of his study.

“My wife and I had a lime tree in the courtyard of our first apartment, right after we got married when I was 28 and she was 27,” he said.

“At last, we are getting somewhere,” I listened attentively.

“It wasn’t fancy, the apartment. We had leaks in our ceiling whenever it rained, and I dreaded the sound of thunderstorms looming over the distance every time. I knew I had to get the bucket ready, and she was always ready to prop the mop up against the kitchen door. That would be the first place she cleans.”

I knew then that she loved to spend time in the kitchen, always making something. I learned that she was Italian and that one of his favourite foods was her tagliatelle alla funghi. They had met back in the 80s during one of his college summer breaks in Italy. It was a balmy afternoon, and he was hungry after exploring the quiet, sleepy seaside town. He walked into a family-owned restaurant along one of the hidden streets of Catania and ordered tagliatelle alla funghi although he did not particularly like mushrooms. He didn’t understand Italian at the time. She was the daughter of the owner, and she served the tagliatelle. You can say it was love at first bite.

“From then on, it was history” he said. “It wasn’t easy, you see...” he added. “Things did not work out well in the early years of our relationship. We did not have cellular devices back then…”

“Cellular devices, nobody calls them that,” I interrupted, getting slightly lost in my own head.

“‘What would you two gentlemen like to have today?” said a gravelly voice abrupting our conversation.

“Just a hot, long black for me, please” I said without giving much thought as my eyes read the first thing they saw on the menu. I wanted to get back to the conversation so badly.

“Make it two then,” he said with a smile.

“Alright, have a seat anywhere and we’ll bring them to you” added the barista with the gruffy voice whose hair was combed slick back. He must have been a heavy smoker. We sat in a quiet corner of the café, and he continued his story.

I learned that they communicated at every chance they had. He would write numerous letters during the week and post them every Friday then he waited. Hers would arrive a couple of weeks later but he would still write to her. They would have a huge backlog of stories half-told and questions half-answered because the letters did not synchronise. Still, they wrote until the day she left Italy and moved in with him almost 5 years later.

“Do you still dread thunderstorms?” I asked.

“Sometimes. I still bear the traumas of having to clean our living room rug after a huge downpour. The rug would start to smell if you don’t clean and dry it fast enough,” he added.

“I don’t have to worry about smelly carpets anymore though. My apartment isn’t as dingy as the one I used to live in with her. I don’t have to worry about leaks now, everything’s modern and well kept”, he said with a sly laugh. But that slight grin faded as quickly as it emerged. I could see him retreating into a distant, somewhat tender memory.

“Did you know?” he asked. “That limes are caustic?”

“Yes, they are acidic” I said.

“Then you know they make great substitutes for cleaning liquids when you forget to pick them up at the grocery store even after your wife circled them with red ink on the list?” he laughed. “I have this tendency to forget about the little, mundane things. No, I would never forget to pay the rent or my taxes, heavens forbid!” he added.

By this time our coffees have arrived, and he has been taking gentle sips from his mug. The way he held his mug with both hands, to minimise the jittering – a side-effect of aging. Sitting in front of me; white beard, wrinkled hands, and all, evoked images of my own grandma. How very peculiar yet benign and familiar like mundane limes sitting in a stainless-steel bowl.

“Whenever I forget to get cleaning liquids, she would tell me to gather as many limes as I could from the courtyard. When I returned with a bucketful, she got to work. She would start concocting her own blend of “natural” cleaning liquids. Limber and agile, her fingers and hands would rummage through the pantry looking for other ingredients to throw in her makeshift cauldron as I called it. A cup of vinegar, a teaspoon of salt per cup of water, a dash of different spices, in her own methodical way.”

“But the one thing that I can vividly remember until this very day, is the scent of freshly squeezed lime that permeates and wafts through the kitchen. How pungent and earthy.”

He took a sip of his long black, still warm.

“‘Make us a drink, love. There’s plenty of limes left and there’s time to wait’ she would say after tossing a couple of limes into my hands.”

“And so, I get to work, mimicking her meticulous methods of preparing the “natural” cleaning solution.” He went on and said “I don’t know why she liked emphasising the “natural” part, I think it was quite redundant. I am a chemical engineer after all, and most, if not all things can be considered natural! The thing that celebrities inject into their faces to get rid of wrinkles…” he lamented.

“Botox” I said.

“Yes! That’s natural too! I don’t understand why ‘toxic’ and ‘natural’ are thought of as two mutually exclusive things’ he said.

“‘Marketing ploy” I added.

“Well, you can’t fool a scientist”’ he exclaimed.

Although he’s old, he still carries an innate charm and confidence with him. I can understand why she fell in love with him, though it must have been annoying arguing with a scientist. I’ve dated one myself.

“Add a sprinkle of salt here, a teaspoon of concentrated elderflower per 2 shots of gin, a tiny scoop of ice, top it up with the juices of these special, freshly gathered limes straight from our courtyard. I went on, pretending that I was on the finale of a cocktail making competition and she was the judge. She would chuckle at the mention of the limes because I would always make a point to be pretentious about the fact that we grow our own ‘organic, natural’ limes, free of toxins and chemicals”.

“Limes for drinking and limes for cleaning,” he paused, closing his eyes, and smiling. He seemed to have vanished into his reminiscence; his fingers caressing the sides of the mug as if he was trying hard to grasp at that long and distant, yet loving memory.

I learned that his wife died years later from an undiagnosed heart disease; one day it seized her heart after a massive downpour, while they were cleaning the rug. “Next day I walked alone into the living room, and it still smelled like limes,” he said.

I can feel the floodgates opening, I have been staring at the face of a brick wall for half a year now and I can see cracks forming in the grout that keeps things safely behind.

“I loved limes” he said, the edges of his lips lifting subtly.

“Pungent and earthy,” he repeated. “Like the soil of the exposed ground where I lowered her body by myself. Where I buried her, close to where we lived, the soil was always wet. Have you smelled wet earth before?” he asked.

“Yes, I think the word is petrichor” I replied.

“Whenever it rains, I am reminded of the old kitchen I used to share with her. You can see the lime tree from the kitchen window, unfazed by the relentless rain, unperturbed by the losses that happened within the walls that kept it safe. Aloof to the sudden seizure of a once-beating heart, and the sound of a lifeless body dropping to the floor. We grew up in that kitchen and I grew old in it alone” he added.

We both had finished our coffee. There was still a light drizzle outside.

“Would you like to have a drink with me?” he asked out of the blue.

“Of course, I’d like to have a glass of gin,” I said.

“I’ll stick to red wine” he replied.

♦

I have a lime tree growing in my backyard and my dogs like to seek shelter under it on a warm, summer’s day. When the limes are ready to be picked, I carefully select each one.