In “On Her Knees,” Victor Lang’s mother Carol Lang takes pride in her excellent reputation as a cleaner in the houses of a wealthy suburb. Victor, a law student, hates to think of his mother scrubbing the floors of strangers who patronize and underpay her, but still sometimes goes and helps her with jobs when he doesn’t have class.
One long-time client accuses Carol of stealing a pair of earrings and immediately fires her, but also asks Carol to return to clean the apartment for one final week while finding a replacement. Victor thinks it’s unfair of the client to ask Carol to return and tries over a several-day-long argument to convince Carol not to go. Carol insists that she will return to clean the apartment because it’s a matter of personal pride. Victor finally concedes and goes along to help her.
They continue their argument in the car on the way to the apartment. Victor finds it demeaning to clean the apartment of a client who accused Carol of theft. When he wonders why the client hasn’t reported the missing earrings to the police, Carol theorizes that it’s because the client already found the earrings and just didn’t tell her. Carol resolves to show the client the mistake she’s making in firing her by cleaning the apartment flawlessly.
In the apartment, Carol finds an envelope with money in it and a note from the client that upsets her. As Victor and Carol clean, Victor thinks about the carelessness of the clients who don’t clean their own houses, and how arrogant they must be to not be bothered by the cleaners touching their belongings. Victor snoops around the client’s possessions, hoping to discover something incriminating, but can’t find anything. In the pictures above the client’s desk, she looks decent and loved by her friends.
Victor wonders again why the client didn’t go to the police about the missing earrings. It occurs to him suddenly that the client might have suspected him of being the thief rather than Carol and decided not to go to the police as a kindness to Carol. He asks Carol whether the client suspects him of the theft, and she tells him not to be silly. He asks why they don’t just clean the place lightly and leave with the money, but Carol tells him that it would look like an admission of guilt. She won’t go to the police herself, either, as Victor suggests, because she knows it would look bad to her other clients.
As Victor vacuums in the client’s bedroom, something hard gets sucked into the vacuum. Victor has to open the vacuum to fish it out. Among all the hair and gunk, he finds one of the missing earrings. He searches the same area, and finds the other on the floor near the head of the bed. Carol realizes that the client must have accidentally brushed the earrings off the pillow and probably didn’t look for them when they went missing.
Victor thinks that they have at least cleared Carol’s name, but Carol knows they haven’t. She explains that there’s no way to truly clear Carol’s name if the client thinks she’s guilty. For instance, the client might just claim Carol brought the earrings back to save her job. Carol has no way to fight back and Victor feels sick at the thought.
Initially, Victor takes the earrings and throws them in the cat litter box for the client to find if she chooses to look for them. But after Carol finishes cleaning the apartment and declares that she won’t take the money that the client left her because she’s worth more than that, Victor retrieves the earrings, cleans them off, and leaves them on the counter beside the money. He sees Carol framed angelically in sunlight in the doorway and leaves the apartment feeling calmer.
