Lucy's Launderette

by Betsy Burke

  I got to work. It upset me that Jeremy’s kitchen had reached such a state. It had never been pretty; it was an awful shade of yellow with gray arborite counters, and old, but he had always kept it with military neatness. Being a single dad had taught him how.

  I carried garbage bags out to the side of the house. I washed, dried and put away dishes. I cleaned the floor and the appliances. By then it was midafternoon. I cooked the steak, tossed the salad, put it all on a plate and carried it up to Connie.

  She had the TV on loud in the big upstairs bedroom. A rerun of The Beachcombers. I didn’t bother knocking. She gave me another of her stares, but I put the plate down on the bedside table and said, “I want to see you take a bite of that meat.”

  She shook her head.

  “If you don’t, I’ll call an ambulance and tell them how sick you are, how you can’t keep food down, have them come and get you because yours is a pregnancy at risk. We might even talk about drugs.” Her face went chalk white. “Then your neighbors will get all nosy and be bugging you every five minutes. I bet you don’t even have B.C. medical insurance.”

  “Don’t you have somewhere else to go? Go be a pain in the ass to someone else. Leave me alone.”

  “Not eating is affecting the welfare of the baby. If you don’t put some food in your mouth, I’ll call social services and report you for prenatal abuse and neglect. Unborn children have rights these days or didn’t you know. I have friends in high places at social services.” It was not the sort of thing to be boasting about but it was out of my mouth before I realized it.

  Connie picked up the fork and stared at the plate.

  “I already cut it for you.”

  She took a mouthful and chewed slowly, glaring at me as if I’d forced her to eat one of her relatives in a cannibalistic ceremony. Then she put down the fork and rolled over on her side with her back to me.

  I stood there, helpless, staring at the back of her and wanting to give her a good hard kick. “Have it your own way, Connie. I’m going.”

  I don’t know what I expected. Compassionate sainthood was not a role that suited me at all. I stomped down the stairs feeling the way I’d felt on the playground, age ten, when other kids excluded me because I was short and had carrot-red hair.

  When I got home, I was on the phone to Reebee, telling her about it.

  Her voice sounded a little stern. “You mustn’t give up. Just keep at it, Lucy. Sometimes there are moments in life that we just have to work past.” Now she was sounding like my mother. “I’ll be very disappointed if you give up on Connie. There’s more than just your pride at stake.”

  Then I phoned Sky, who said, “Connie? Tell her to go suck rocks,” and that made me feel much better.

  8

  For Easter Sunday, Jacques put on a suit jacket and some nice slacks. The startling effect of seeing him dressed up was softened by his Bart Simpson T-shirt. I’d never seen him in anything but his lumberjack uniform. I was outfitted for the occasion in military khaki pants and the kind of mud-green thermal long-sleeved undershirt favored by South American terrorists hiding out in mountain stations. I thought it was magnanimous of me to be going to Cedar Narrows at all, where I would be a sitting duck if Dirk showed up. My mother had told me on the phone to stop being so silly.

  Did I mention that my mother is the kind of person who hums serenely as she passes four cars in a row on the outside? Who thinks the crater of an active volcano is a fun place for a picnic?

  When we got close to my parents’ street, I didn’t tell Jacques which house it was but directed him to a parking place nearby.

  “You don’t mind walking a bit, do you, Jacques?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “There’s something else I haven’t told you about my family.”

  “I know your brother’s a Froot Loop if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, it’s not that.”

  “Lemme see. You told me that your father’s one of those big-time Dunking and Damning Christians.”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s something that’ll be evident in a few seconds.”

  “So which house is it?”

  “Keep walking. We’re nearly there.”

  “We’re nearly… Oh, hey, wow. It’s not this house, is it?” He grinned at me.

  “Afraid so.”

  “I’ve died and gone to heaven. Cool. Little people’s heaven. Get a load of this. Wow.” Jacques stood there grinning, gazing at the front yard of my parents’ house. He ran a hand through his hair, something he always did when he was amazed or impressed.

  “It’s my mother’s doing. And I should warn you. She’s very sensitive about it. It’s her biggest weak spot. Next to the fact that I’m not breeding according to her schedule. Let’s go inside.”

  “No. Not yet. I want to stand here and take it all in. Jeez, they’re all here. Sneezy, Sleepy, Doc, Grumpy…Truly amazing.” He stood back and let out a long whistle. “Hey, there’s something missing down there.” He pointed to the empty pedestal between a pink flamingo and red-and-white polka-dotted toadstool with a plaster leprechaun seated on it.

  “Winky. My mother’s favorite garden gnome. It’s a long story. I find it’s better not to bring it up. My mother gets worked up about it.”

  As we started up the path my mother was at the open doorway to greet us.

  “Lucy.” She clapped her hands together. She was wearing a large apron with a print of turkeys all over it.

  “Hi, Mom. You’ve got the wrong apron on.”

  “Have I?” She looked down. “Oh, dear. Yes, I guess I have. I couldn’t find the one with the bunnies.”

  “This is Jacques,” I said.

  “Hello, Jacques. It’s so nice to meet one of Lucy’s friends. She never brings anybody around anymore. Now, when she was little it was different. Do you remember that nice boy you used to play doctor with, Lucy? What was his name? Little Francis or little James…”

  “Mo-ther,” I hissed between clenched teeth.

  Jacques leapt in, “I was just admiring your front garden, Mrs. Madison. I must say, that’s some very fine statuary you have.”

  My mother beamed. “Do you think so, Jacques? It’s so kind of you to say so. I’ve been collecting for years. I was hoping to have started on the backyard by now but what with one thing and another…”

  “I hate to interrupt the garden party but it’s not that warm out here. I’m going inside.” I pushed past my mother and went into the house. It was quiet inside. Too quiet, in fact.

  Every Easter my father greeted guests by playing recordings of the local church’s most recent rendering of the Messiah. The choir generally sounded like a chorus of demented mice, and the alto soloist had a vibrato you could drive a Mack truck through, but after years of it, I looked forward to the tradition.

  I walked through the living room to the den, back through the kitchen and dining room. Empty. No music. No father. I went down into the basement and into his workshop. Fatherless.

  My mother was still chatting with Jacques on the front porch. As I approached, I could hear her say, “Of course you two are taking every precaution?”

  “Every precaution available, Mrs. Madison, and in a variety of colors.”

  “Call me June. Well, I’m glad you’re both careful. Not that we want to be careful forever now, do we?”

  “Oh, no, certainly not. Not forever.”

  “Otherwise how would the planet get populated.”

  “How indeed.” Jacques was smooth. Very smooth.

  “A little accident wouldn’t be a bad thing. I can’t wait forever and Lucy knows it.”

  “Mother,” I barked. “Where’s Dad?”

  “Oh, your father. I meant to talk to you about that. I’m not sure if he’s going to be…look, there’s your cousin now with Michael and the kids. Yoohooo…”

  Car doors slammed and there was the sound of children shrieking and bawling. It was my cousin Cherry and her brood. The second youngest boy escaped
her grasp, raced up the steps to me, and whacked me across the ankles with a plastic sword. I gasped with pain. The youngest brother followed suit and whumped me in the stomach with his fist while Cherry and Michael looked on smiling, as if to say, “Our little darlings.”

  But Jacques grabbed them both by their jackets and suspended them in midair. “Tell Auntie Lucy you’re sorry and that you won’t ever do it again.”

  He held the miniature mobsters there until apologies trickled out of them like coins out of Scroogey pockets. Cherry and Michael looked on, dismayed, wanting to protest but not quite able to find the words. Jacques had a special kind of authority that you didn’t question. And the fact that he was taller than everyone else helped.

  I smiled at them all. “I need a drink,” I said, and limped inside.

  My father was abstemious, but my mother snuck her daily two gin and tonics before my father got home from school. She always had something to serve guests. In the dining room, I found bottles of everything set out on a silver tray and a bucket of ice cubes nearby. Before anyone could see me, I unscrewed the top of some London Dry and took a big swig straight from the bottle.

  As I was slugging back gin, Jeremy’s ghost assaulted me again. He wafted past, reminding me of other Easters when even Connie had come out to Cedar Narrows on the back of the Harley, and Jeremy told his irreverent stories, while my father fumed and my mother pursed her lips.

  I also had an unexpected twinge of guilt, a flash of the greasy, sulking, bulging, puking, grieving Connie, alone at Easter.

  I didn’t like her. I didn’t know her that well, and I didn’t want to know her, but I had to concede that she probably wasn’t such a gold digger after all, or she wouldn’t have decided to stay and have a miserable time alone in that house. We were both tied to Jeremy, and for that reason, I couldn’t get her out of my mind. In that moment, with the void left by Jeremy yawning up in front of me, I could feel Connie’s solitude, and the way it must have been compounded by all those hormones. Her child would never know what a great father it had, and that thought made something catch in my throat.

  More voices came up the front steps. Two couples had arrived. They were friends of my parents and were all on the church vestry together. They lived for gossip, the dirtier the better.

  Everyone came inside and Michael started pouring the drinks officially. Each time I tried to ask my mother where my father was, my mother let herself be interrupted by one of the children, or one of her friends, or my cousin Cherry, who was helping in the kitchen, the very portrait of domesticity. My mother was clearly avoiding the subject.

  Jacques stayed in the living room and talked computer futures, leaving Michael slack-jawed and admiring in a cloud of cyber-dust. Jacques used we a lot and threw melting glances my way. I let myself be melted and fell deeper and deeper into the gin bottle. I wondered how I was going to repay him for his award-winning performance.

  When we sat down at the table, my father’s place was still conspicuously empty. In the past, it had been my father who delivered an endless prayer over the meal, while Jeremy would whisper something brief and to the point like, “Rub-a-dub-dub, Thanks for the Grub, Go-o God,” so that only I could hear.

  In the past, it had been on my insistence that Jeremy had joined us for Christmas and Easter meals. I told my parents I wouldn’t come if they didn’t invite him. So they had invited him, getting Connie into the bargain, and she had always sat there silently, like Jeremy’s shadow. Still, it wouldn’t have been much of a family dinner without a few of the family’s black sheep.

  My mother had laid on a huge spread. There were phyllo pastry and feta cheese fingers, smoked salmon and dill tartlets, numerous garlicky dips and dippers, and for the main dishes, roast lamb, glazed ham, chicken pot pie and every kind of vegetable…there was an exaggerated amount of food.

  My mother looked at the table and said, “There is rather a lot, isn’t there?” Everyone dug in. It was strange to realize that I had no appetite. I played with some asparagus tips, pushing them in circles around my plate. I was irritated that no one was explaining my father’s absence.

  Just before dessert, we heard the crash of glass breaking somewhere upstairs. I jumped up and ran up the stairs. Jacques, who seemed to know all the right moves, came behind me. I opened all the bedroom doors. On the floor of my old room was a rock with a piece of paper wrapped around it with an elastic band. I undid it and read the note.

  “YOU’RE DEAD MEAT, LITTLE SISTER.”

  I started to tremble and Jacques put an arm around me. He frowned as he read the note. “Jeez, that brother of yours. What a big-time butthead. He can’t be far away. I’ll go after him.” I could hear Jacques race out of the house, get into his car and drive down the street.

  “Mother,” I yelled. “Call the police.”

  “Why ever would you want to do that?”

  “Where are the emergency numbers? Where do you keep them?”

  “Just calm down. We don’t want to go airing our little tiffs to strangers.”

  “This is not a little tiff.”

  It always happened this way. I got more and more agitated until it seemed as though I were the one who should be carted away to the Padded Palace of the Stars. “Oh, forget it,” I grumbled, and stomped back to the silver tray to pour myself another drink.

  A half hour later, Jacques came back alone, looking apologetic.

  I took him by the arm. “Don’t worry about it. He’s eluded everyone, including the Vancouver police. Nobody can touch him.”

  My mother said, “Oh really, Lucille. You do overreact so. If only I’d known he was out there, I could have made him come in, change into some decent clothes, sit down at the table and eat a little lamb and roast potatoes. Roast potatoes can work wonders.”

  I just glanced heavenward. Jacques gave me a sympathetic smile.

  After coffee had been served, and the children were getting high on Easter chocolate, my mother dragged me into the den, insisting that Jacques come, too. I thought, finally she’ll tell me where Dad is. But instead, she took a wad of letters from the desk and said, “I’ve had more of them.”

  “‘Them,’ Mom?”

  She mouthed the word Winky.

  I restrained myself from screaming and forced myself into game mode. “You better show Jacques. He has some valuable connections. He might be able to help.”

  “Well, Jacques, it all started in the fall. Every year it’s something new. Being a principal’s wife has its price, I’m afraid. Teenagers! The senior high grads are the worst. You offer them an education and what do they do with it? This was the first letter from the kidnappers.” She handed Jacques the piece of paper and a Polaroid. I could see him squint, then realize what he was looking at. He tried to suppress a smile.

  Winky, my mother’s largest garden gnome, disappeared back in October. In his place, the kidnappers had left a note which said, “Dear Mummy Madison, I’ve gone to see the world. Don’t worry about me. I promise to wear an under-shirt and eat all my greens. Love, Winky.”

  Next came a note and snapshot of Winky wearing a Busby hat, perched in front of Buckingham Palace. “Dear Mummy Madison, Been to see the Queen. Fish and chips are delicious. Going to see the Crown Jewels then it’s off to the theater. We’ve got tickets for Cats. Ta Ra, your Winky.”

  The second picture and note came from Paris. Winky wearing a beret and pencil-thin moustache and standing next to a plaster Madonna in front of the Eiffel Tower. “C’est magnifique, n’est-ce pas? Breakfast at Maxime’s, a stroll through Montparnasse, Notre Dame de Gras, et l’amour. What else is Paris for?”

  More notes came from Venice (Winky in a gondola), from Rome (Winky at the Colosseum), from Madrid (Winky at the bullfights) and from Sarajevo (Winky as a Red Cross volunteer).

  My mother looked on it as an abduction. I tried to console her. “He’ll be back when he’s weary of travel.”

  “You’re as bad as them,” she snapped.

  Jacques, on th
e other hand, clucked and tut-tutted along with her and used all the right words. Dreadful. Inhuman. Deplorable. Insensitive. Criminal.

  My mother gazed up into Jacques’s eyes. “Aren’t you just adorable. You’ll stay for supper, won’t you?”

  I blasted her. “Enough. Enough Winky. Where the hell is my father?”

  My mother shook her head and sighed heavily. “I’m afraid your father is busy having a little midlife crisis.”

  “Midlife? He’s fifty-six. It’s an over-the-hill crisis.”

  “I don’t think it makes much difference. The day before yesterday he bought himself a motorcycle. What is the name now? A Barley Richardson?”

  “Harley Davidson,” said Jacques.

  “That’s it. Well, he got the whole outfit that went with it, the leather pants, jacket, the whole kit’n’caboodle, and went off Friday night, telling me not to wait up for him. I’ll hold on for a couple more days then call that nice fellow down at the police station, the one who’s always so helpful when Dirk…”

  I said, “He’s cracking. And I’ll bet, I’ll just bet it’s over Jeremy. He must be feeling guilty. He misses Jeremy.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I only knew that along with my grandfather, I wanted my stick-in-the-mud father back, the one who made me have childhood nightmares about church steeples flying into the air and exploding.

  “Yes, I suppose he does miss that old reprobate after all,” said my mother. “But I am a little worried. He’s not used to alcohol.”

  “He was drinking?” I squealed.

  “I’m afraid he did smell rather beery just before he rode away on the Barley Richardson.”

  “We better go and look for him,” said Jacques. “Any idea which direction he might have taken, Mrs. Madison?”

  “Call me June.”

  “A direction, June?”

  “He may have said something about old friends and some pool. Oh my, I hope he wasn’t thinking of going swimming in that condition.”