If You Were Here by Jen Lancaster Page A

Duh. All she wants to do is give me decorating advice.”
    After my folks divorced, my mother, sister, and grandmother migrated south. They live in Miami Beach now, and together they own Two Polish Ladies Maid Service, the East Coast’s largest residential and commercial cleaning operation.
    I know, right?
    I couldn’t be prouder of how they built their business from the ground up. Jess and I weren’t the only ones inspired by Hughes’s films. One night Babcia watched Home Alone with me and spent the whole time bitching about the state of the McCallisters’ house.
    “They rich—so why house not sparkle?” Babcia groused. She’d parked herself next to me on the old plaid couch with a mason jar of her homemade grain alcohol. Smelling strongly of gasoline and horseradish, Babcia’s mash was so potent I’d get a contact high just being around it. This stuff sparked my lifelong aversion to any liquor not best served with a tiny drink umbrella.
    “Babcia,” I explained, “Kevin McCallister is eight years old, and more important, he’s home alone . Things are bound to get messy.”
    “No! Is filthy before. Look hardwood! No shine! Look window! Is need clean with newspaper! Look rug! Is terrible crunchy. I make potion, clean whole house. Get lots rich people money.”
    “Babcia, you can’t ‘make potion’ and clean this particular house, because it’s a movie,” I argued fecklessly, fully aware that rational thought held no weight. I’d recently made the mistake of watching Field of Dreams and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with her, and for weeks all I heard was, “Why dead men play baseball? Why turtles eat pizza? You find and tell stop.”
    Point? Babcia’s threat about cleaning rich people’s houses turned into an obsession, which turned into a business, which eventually turned into an empire. 65
    Since becoming entrepreneurs, Babcia and my mother lost their aversion to aesthetics, and they wouldn’t admit to having owned that shoddy old plaid couch on a bet. Between the two of them, they’ve filled their Ocean Drive penthouse with acres of claw-footed chairs, chandeliers the size of water buffalo, rich tapestries, and gilt-framed paintings. Even with twenty-foot-high south-facing windows, they’ve managed to make their place as dark, foreboding, and gothic as a medieval castle. Jess and I call their style “Eastern Bloc chic,” but Mac says it’s more like “Donald Trump Meets Count Dracula.”
    “You have to call her back. I can’t put her off again. Now.You should call her now,” Mac insists, a rising edge of panic in his voice. Mac fought in Desert Storm before he went to college—he saw real combat and experienced all the horrors of war, but the only thing in the world that scares him is my Babcia. He swears the mole above her left eye stares into his soul.
    Pfft. He should have seen it before she had the laser hair removal.
    Over the years Babcia’s upgraded her Stalin-era babushkas for Hermès scarves and stopped turning her tresses pink with at-home colorings, but she’s still got enough Old World in her that I get why she’d be terrifying to an outsider.
    I set down what I’m about to pack—a bunch of empty CD jewel cases—and reluctantly pick up the phone.
    “Hello, talk.” There’s something wonderfully imperious about how my grandmother answers the phone.
    “Babcia! Hi, it’s Mia.”
    “Ah, moja zabko ! ” 66 Her pleasantries don’t even last a second before she launches into me. “Why I call eleventeen times? Why? I tell call Babcia, you call Babcia now! I see, I spank! Bad girl!”
    Interesting side note—the family business didn’t really catch on until Jess took over all the customer interaction. Turns out most people don’t enjoy being yelled at—or threatened with a spanking—particularly when paying ninety dollars an hour. Now Mom does the accounting and deals with vendors, Jess is the face of the business, and Babcia commands her army of maids with an iron