Spit up and the Suburbs

Despite the seemingly-permanent black cloud hanging over her head (did this woman ever run out of things to bitch about?), Donna was all too happy to share her house cleaner’s name and contact info when Alyssa sent her a text later that day. “Definitely call Christine Plenko!” Donna said, adding, “She is very reliable and does a pretty good job, although I’ll warn you she could stand to read that Marie Kondo book on organization.”

Of course. A dig. No big shock since MDR and Donna were virtually clones of one another, down to the pricey lashes and Ozempic affinity.

The quick exchange wouldn’t have been complete with some homemade, Southern-style passive aggression. “Glad you asked, girl, because you need a cleaner with those five kids! I don’t know how you do it!” came a follow-up text.

Alyssa had learned long ago that “I don’t know how you do it,” was code for, “I wouldn’t want to do it.” 

But Alyssa gratefully took the info Donna supplied, and moved on to the next phase of her plan.

A quick search on Facebook yielded results that were almost too good to be true. Christine was a member of the Almería Moms group. Upon perusing her most recent posts, Alyssa quickly gathered that her kids were grown, she had her own cleaning business, and she worked for several families in the community, with the goal of adding more business through word of mouth. This all added up to the reality that MDR, well, she was going down.

Honestly, it was almost too easy. Alyssa only had to wait about a week or so before she ran into MDR at the grocery store, where she was able to glean that everything she’d put into place in the past days had gone off without a hitch.

The look on MDR’s face didn’t give it away at first, to be fair. After all, she always looked like she’d just smelled something foul.

As she made her way up the cereal aisle, leaning heavily on her shopping cart as if choosing between Rice Krispies and Cheerios was just too much, MDR, who had recently taken to sporting oversized, grandma-like, tortoise shell glasses as a fashion accessory, gave her acquaintance an eye roll one could see even through the tinted lenses before Alyssa even had the chance to ask the obligatory, “How are you?”

“I have a killer migraine and my dog is driving me nuts,” MDR reported in her patent stage-whisper, before adding with maximum drama, “And, my cleaning lady flat out quit. So my house is a mess. It looks like a bomb went off in there. Dust bunnies are taking over. Kill me now.”

And the Academy Award goes to… Alyssa Keadon for acting completely shocked to hear this news! Because, no, she had nothing to do with this shocking development. No, she hadn’t sent MDR’s cleaner Christine Plenko a Facebook message using her alter ego, Linny, to report something truly upsetting she’d happened to overhear. Nope, the message went nothing at all like this:

“Christine, I know you don’t know me. My name is Linny Steinberg and I live here in Almería. I hate to ‘meet’ you like this, but I felt it was my responsibility as a neighbor to let you know that someone in our community has been talking about your cleaning business, and not in a nice way. I can tell you the details if you want—although I understand if you’d rather tune out any gossip! Again, hope you don’t find me intrusive. I usually don’t get involved in stuff like this, but I thought you deserved to know.” 

Indeed, Alyssa had decided the best course of action was to test out the waters with Christine before wading in too deep. Was Christine curious about who could be spreading rumors about her business, or would she be skeptical about the vague nature of Alyssa’s message, especially since she had no idea who it was coming from? 

But Christine quickly messaged her back.

“Hi Linny. Thanks for bringing this to my attention and yes I’d like to know. This is my business. I am trying my very best to do a good job for all of my clients and establish a good reputation. I know ladies talk around here so it’s important to me to hear what is being said so I can address it if needed.”

Bingo! Score! Ace in the hole! Etc.

Alyssa was maybe a little too ecstatic to have made this connection successfully, so she tried not to write back too soon, lest she seem overly eager. Instead, she replied in what seemed like a reasonable amount of time, although she was anxiously pacing her kitchen in the meantime like a nervous prom date. 

“Christine, this is so hard, because I am really not a fan of gossip. But Mia Devlin-Reed has been telling a few other moms in Almería that she isn’t happy with your cleaning. She said she doesn’t care for your methods and it’s not what she’s used to. But I’ve also heard great things from other neighbors! Which is why I thought you should know.”

Moments later, another reply. “Thank you Linny. This is very upsetting to hear since I pride myself on my cleaning, but I appreciate you sharing.”

Alyssa let out a deep sigh of relief. She’d done her part—except for a quick note back to Christine to say she didn’t want her name mentioned to Mia. Not that it mattered all that much, since MDR had no idea who Linny Steinberg was anyway. Plus, if there was one thing Alyssa could be sure of, it was that if MDR had complained about the cleaner to her, she’d have flapped her plumped-up trap to many other local moms at the nail salon, at school pick-up, at the grocery store, or Starbucks. 

How Christine had wanted to proceed with this information was up to her. Perhaps she’d do nothing. Maybe she’d confront MDR. All Alyssa knew was that MDR needed a reality check. You can’t go around talking about everyone and everything without a filter without it coming back to bite you in your medically-reduced ass. 

Plus, as she reminded herself, if her call out of Lanie Lamond for confronting a bunch of kids had gained instant support, there could be no doubt that others in Almería had suffered at the hands of the eyelash extension victim she was now targeting. Who else had she bad mouthed? Who else had she hurt? Alyssa knew full well she herself had likely been the subject of a few comments and eye rolls over the years. “Who has that many kids? Doesn’t she know what causes that?” she could practically hear MDR say to Donna over a glass of wine post-med spa appointment. 

Back in the grocery store in the cereal aisle, Alyssa leaned over her shopping cart and feigned sympathy for her overcome acquaintance. While simultaneously feeding Jude a puzzlingly-crumbly cookie, she tried not to visibly recoil as MDR blinked rapidly, causing her eyelashes to look like some sort of injured butterfly attempting to escape from behind the prison of fashion spectacles.

She then learned just how well her plan worked to take MDR down a peg. 

“What happened with the cleaner?” Alyssa found herself asking in an over-exaggerated, faux-sympathetic tone as though her cereal aisle mate had just confessed to losing a family member to some unthinkable illness.

MDR’s conspiratorial delivery was almost too much to bear witness to as she related to Alyssa how Christine confronted her about spreading rumors in the neighborhood that her cleaning methods were less-than-impressive. 

But this next part, Alyssa truly hadn’t anticipated when she sought to topple MDR’s sense of entitlement just enough so she could sleep a little better at night. “Apparently,” Mia informed her, “she put on a whole show for Emmy Breeches, crying and playing the victim.” Then, a pause before Mia shrieked, “Emmy made her tea!” 

Wow, MDR was really going for it with her moving interpretation of a woman scorned by her cleaning lady.

“Emmy’s been telling people I’m, like, ‘a total Karen’ just for sharing my experience with Christine’s cleaning,’” Mia snarked, using air quotes. Then she punctuated her victimhood with an eye roll that deserved its own meme treatment. And were those actual tears Alyssa saw glistening behind MDR’s Disney princess eyelashes? No. They couldn’t be. 

Except, if anyone cared a bit too much about her social standing here in Almería, it was Mia Devlin-Reed. That anyone, especially Emmy Breeches—the carpool queen, who these days could be seen darting around the community in a brand new BMW X7, a PTO MVP, a Gucci bag carrying priestess of the PMS Club, as well as Trish McCabe and Lanie Lamond’s constant companion and a fellow MNO warrior—could think less of her, was truly a scarlet letter for someone like MDR. Her entire sense of self worth was derived from how she and her home looked and whose company she kept. Take away any one of those identity constructs, and the lady probably had no idea who she even was.

Bottom line: It seemed that Alyssa’s little manipulations were paying off. And truth be told, she wasn’t sorry, even as the wounded party before her appeared to truly suffer amid the endless boxes of breakfast fare. Indeed, as MDR paraded away with her cart, never having asked how Alyssa was doing, with her black duster coat tails flying out behind her like some sort of grocery store witch, and no doubt aisle surfing for the next Almería mom to share her tale of personal affliction with, Alyssa felt a surge of, was that pride? 

Moving on to the international foods aisle in search of ingredients for taco night, she started to think of herself as a ritzy subdivision Robinhood, stealing hubris from the self-important ruling class of Almería, and restoring peace to all the marginalized moms like her. 

With that satisfying thought dancing around in her head, Alyssa cruised on to the snacks aisle.