Rainy Day Window Washing

Rainy Day Window Washing

A Short Story

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Herbert has been washing windows at the inner city high rise apartments for as long as he can remember. Although he has to be old enough to retire, or darn close to it, he is the type of man who has worked for so long that he couldn't imagine not going to work every day. He cleans the windows in a couple of other buildings,and they help pay the bills, but he considers the high rise "his baby." Even though he doesn't know many of the people there by name, he thinks of them as family. He has watched over most of them since they were babies, and is now watching over the new babies that continue to move in. He has helped parents dodge possible disasters, kids playing with matches, eating paint chips flaking off the wall, overly excited teenage boyfriends making unwanted advances to the some of the girls. Because of his age, management has hired an assistant for him. They have him take care of the upper floors, but still he is no match for Herbert. Some weeks Herbert has to go up and help him because Tony seems to have more important things to do than work, like partying, and uh, partying.

One day, while Herbert was cleaning on the thirteenth floor, Terrance, a four year old who was suppose to be taking a nap, started screaming at the top of his lungs. Julie, his mom came running in and tried to comfort him, but to no avail. She asked him over and over what was the matter. He just kept pointing out the window saying there was someone out there. She looked three times just to make him feel better, but all she could see was rain tapping against the window. She tried to convince him that it must have been the rain or a dream, but nothing was going to make him feel better. There would be no more napping today. That night Julie talked to some of her friends and found that the same thing had happened to some of them. Nobody had seen Tony, so they just shrugged it off to coincidence. Over the next couple of weeks the nightmares increased, so the moms on the thirteenth floor started asking around, and the rest of the building didn't seem to be experiencing anything unusual.

Just when they thought the rain would never end, finally a few days of sunshine. Everyone spent as much time outside as possible, even if it meant going to the park during naptime and having an earlier bedtime at night. They forgot about the nightmares since alot of the kids hadn't had naps.The sunshine gave a much needed break to the rain, but unfortunately it was short lived.

Maria is one who will never forget the day it rained the hardest, the year of the wettest spring on record. She laid on the couch to doze a little bit after putting Olivia, her two year old daughter, down for a nap. Fortyfive minutes later she woke to the loudest pounding she had ever heard. Disoriented, she jumped up, stumbled over her shoes she had set next to the couch, and realized the sound was coming from Olivia's bedroom. As she threw open the door she heard the pounding coming from Olivia's window. Instinctively, she looked toward the window. When she did, the pounding stopped, but out of the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of an image that appeared to be a person pass by the window. Immediately her focus turned to Olivia. She ran Olivia's buck bed, jumped onto the bottom bed, looked up at Olivia, and found she had somehow wound the mini-blind cord around her neck. She frantically started unwrapping the cord. She could feel a pulse in her neck, but could tell she wasn't breathing. She grabbed her, lifted her off the bed, laid her onto the floor, put her fingers under her chin, lifted her little blue face to open her airway, and started blowing into her mouth. After three of four blows, Olivia let out a couple of coughs, gasped a few good breaths of air and was breathing on her own again. Later that evening, after a trip to the emergency room to make sure Olivia was ok, Maria was telling Julie what had happened, the pounding, the image outside the window. "Could it have been the rain on the window making it look like a person?" They wondered. "Or do we really have guardian angels?" Neither one of them could think of a logical explanation. So Maria decided to investigate further in the morning.

After a hurried breakfast Maria got the kids dressed, and headed downstairs to the high rise office. When she got there the office was abuzz talking about yesterday's rain. She finally cornered the secretary, described what had happened, and asked who she could talk to. Immediately the room fell quiet, and all eyes were on Maria. The maintenance supervisor led her into his office where they could talk further. They talked for about thirty minutes, he listened intently as Maria told him everything that had happened over the past couple of months. When she finished, he explained to her that he has only been the maintenance supervisor since the first of the year but he had heard other stories similar to hers. Since he didn't know if any of the stories he had heard were true he could only recommend for her to go to the local newspaper for more details. She thanked him for his time, went back upstairs, dropped the kids off with her mom, and headed over to the Gazette.

Once the receptionist heard that Maria lived in the high rise on Center Street, she knew why she was there. She directed her to the basement to the archive department. When she arrived an elderly woman probably in her mid to late seventies greeted her,and led her over to the microfiche, where she had the article ready for her. Maria looked at her puzzled, and she explained that the receptionist had let her know she was coming. This has always been a popular story so it never gets buried too far back. The headline from April 17th 1935 read, "Window Washer Falls To His Death." Stunned, Maria sat back in her chair and continued to read. It was reported that Herbert Gonzalez, who had been the window cleaner of the Center Street High Rise for twenty eight years was caught in a sudden rain storm while cleaning the windows on the thirteenth floor. Upon inspection of his safety equipment it was determined that his death was caused by equipment failure due to the extremely wet conditions.

Dazed, Maria left the paper and walked to the park where she sat for most of the afternoon. All she could think of was how fortunate she is to still have Olivia. She hates to think how that day would've turned out if Herbert hadn't pounded on her window. How do you thank someone who has been dead for eighty years? You do it by keeping his memory alive. Not only have they convinced the manager to honor Herbert on the eightieth anniversary of his death by putting up a plaque by the thirteenth elevator dedicating the thirteenth floor to him, now, whenever there is a "nightmare" on a rainy afternoon parents make sure they tell their kids that they have a guardian angel named Herbert watching over them keeping them safe through the storm.