“Well, not in those terms, exactly, but it was pretty haughty stuff, so I made him look up their grades and he settled down a little.”

Brilliant students, Shelley's kids brought home report cards that made Jane's mouth water.

“So when do they come back?"

“Not till Sunday night, but I've got to go to the airport today. To think, when we bought this house I knew how far it was from O'Hare, and I didn't think that would matter! What a fool."

“If the children aren't coming home, why are you going clear out there?"

“My mother's going to Hawaii, and she beat some poor, downtrodden travel agent into scheduling flights so she'd have two hours stopover for lunch with me and another two hours for dinner with my brother Fred in Los Angeles. Here, eat this instead of the cookies," she ordered, taking a bowl of tapioca out of the refrigerator.

“Yuck!"

“I've got to get the middle shelf cleared so everybody can put their food for the potluck in while I'm gone. I'm really irritated about the Happy Helper people sending this woman. I hate leaving someone I don't know a thing about in the house when I can't be here."

“You don't know Edith either. You've only had her clean for you once before, haven't you?"

“Yes, but I know of her from the other people around here she's been with for ages. Actually, I'd be glad to try someone else if I didn't have to leave the house. I wasn't all that impressed with the wonderful Edith. I know everybody raves about her, but I didn't think she was so great. She smudged up more windows and mirrors than she cleaned, and I know for a fact she didn't even touch the kids' bathroom."

“How odd. Robbie Jones and Joyce Greenway swear by her, and Joyce is probably the most compulsive tidy person I've ever known—next to you, of course," Jane added.

Shelley regarded her mania for cleanliness as an affliction. "I know it's shallow of me, but I really love to clean," she'd said once. "You know my favorite shopping place in the world? The hardware store—the section with the industrial cleaners and mops and buckets. I sneak in sometimes just to look at the new products." Shelley was the only person Jane knew who actually apologized for her house being so immaculate.

“I hope Edith isn't sick or something," Jane went on. "I'm supposed to have her at my house tomorrow for the first time. I've never even seen this wonder woman.”

The previous month Jane and Shelley's regular cleaning lady had decided to give it up and go live with her married daughter in Little Rock, after being with them for years. Shelley had immediately set about finding a replacement. Edith had recently lost two of her regular customers, and Shelley got her for Thursdays and arranged for Jane to have her Fridays.