Every time I open her refrigerator, I feel like I’m messing around inside a top secret experimental laboratory. If I move the milk away from its sacred place, will it cause a widespread epidemic? Do you think for one minute there is an old onion skin floating upside down in her crisper? A potato that has more eyes than I do? I don’t think so.

I have one or two hangups of my own but I won’t live long enough to catch up to her. Beverly waxes the glass shelves of her fridge with Pledge, which in my opinion, goes slightly beyond ordinary good housekeeping and pole vaults into ‘get a life why don’tcha.’ I keep leftovers until the CDC calls for samples. She doesn’t even own a piece of Tupperware.

“I never have leftovers,” she tells me when I ask her where she stores her plastic ware. “If you measure correctly, you won’t have any waste. Ergo, no need for Tupperware.”

Should there be a few peas and carrots left in the pot after supper, she simply pours them down the disposal. One at a time, of course.

Bev has her own personal “use by ...” date stamp which she imprints on everything, even boxes of salt. I, on the other hand, have been known to put green food coloring on wilted lettuce to fool Babe into thinking it was spinach.

One time Bev thought she would surprise me by organizing my spice shelf. She started off by throwing out everything even slightly out of date. That was quickly followed by any item that wasn’t attractively packaged. My once well-stocked spice cabinet was reduced to a jar of cinnamon and some Lawry’s Seasoning Salt — alphabetized, naturally. She says she can’t stand clutter, but ask her about her collection of Jell-O boxes that dates back to Wilber and Orville Wright.

By her own admission she requires that certain items in her house have their own special spot and it’s not something she’s interested in changing after all this time.

Did I say change? That word only recently crept into Beverly’s vocabulary and only then because her husband threatened to leave.

“We’ve been using these for thirty-nine years.” He picked up a bedraggled towel and waved it in her face. “I know you hate to throw things away that don’t have a date-stamp, but these towels need a decent burial. Martha Stewart recycles them into rags. Why can’t you?”

She tossed her white-as-grits hair, a defiant stance she learned the first week of marriage. “I’m attached to those towels. When I look at them, I see myself drying all the Mr. Bubble off our two kids.”

“For God’s sake, Bev,” he boomed. “The kids are middle-aged and planning for retirement!”

He left the house shouting, “Forget it! I’ll do it myself!” And with that, he stormed down to J.C. Penney’s in time for the white sale. Knowing Bev like I do, I figured she’d busy her compulsive self by picking the lint off those ten new towels, but I was wrong. Only one of the towels ever gets any use. The other nine are packed away as carefully as if they were blocks of nitroglycerine.

“What, pray tell, are these towels doing in your freezer?” I ask.

She rolls her eyes heavenward and does the hair-toss thing again. Bev has known since high school that I would always be domestically challenged, so she doesn’t mind cutting me some slack.

Words ticker tape out of her mouth. “Towels are fluffier and will last longer if kept in the freezer when not in use.”

“At my house, if Babe needs a towel, I can promise you he does not look in the freezer. He goes to the dryer where, if he’s lucky, he will find one that’s not still wet.”

She lowers her gaze and ducks her head; a slight blush forms on her cheeks. She whispers, “I have to hide the new towels where Mac won’t find them, else he’d wear them out in no time.” She smiles conspiratorially. “He knows I’ll rip his lips off if he messes around in my freezer.” I’ll bet he does.

My refrigerator will remain mysterious. The day I start freezing towels, date-stamping salt and color coordinating cold cuts will be the day I hope somebody will just shoot me.