Lucy's Launderette

by Betsy Burke

  Her face turned hard and pouty. Very unattractive.

  I turned my back on them, closed my bedroom door behind me, grabbed the pile of mail on the hall table and left.

  As I was riding the bus back toward the East End, I opened the first of the letters. It was from a downtown legal office, informing me that a copy of Jeremy’s will was waiting for me if I wished to pick it up. The letter went on to say that a copy had not been sent to the above address as they were not certain it was the right one and had been unable to reach me by telephone. I pulled the cord and leapt off the bus before it left the downtown area.

  I didn’t have to walk far to get back to their law offices. They were on Georgia, on the twenty-second floor of a twenty-three floor high-rise. The lobby of the building was very plush, cream wall-to-wall carpet, brass elevators, cream and pink marble hallways. I rode up to the twenty-second floor and stepped directly into the lobby of the legal offices. They took up the whole floor and the pervading odor was one of big money. It looked as though Jeremy, when it came to his estate, wanted to do things right.

  I went up to the secretary and handed her the letter. “I received this in the mail. I’m here for my copy of Jeremy Madison’s will.”

  “Just one moment,” said the secretary. She picked up the phone and pushed a button. “The Madison girl’s here, Doug. I thought you’d like to know. Yes, I will.” She looked up at me and said, “The third door to your right, Miss Madison.” She reminded me of the guidance counselor at high school just before she was about to inform me that my life was a total disaster.

  The door was open. Behind a huge mahogany desk sat a quite handsome middle-aged man with silver hair and bright eyes. He looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. He stood up as soon as he saw me and I instantly regretted that again, I was dressed in blue jeans. “Lucy Madison. Very nice to meet you indeed.” He gave me one of those firm handshakes, first the one hand, and then the other on top of that until you feel all your bones melting. It wasn’t a come-on from a man twice my age. I was sure that this guy had the kind of expansive personality that treated everyone, women, men, dogs, in exactly the same way. “I’m Doug, Jeremy’s lawyer.” No formalities for this man. He indicated a chair in front of the desk. “Have a seat.” He sat back down and scrutinized me. “Jeremy’s granddaughter. He told me quite a bit about you.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes indeed. He was very proud of you. Said you were a fine painter.”

  “He did?”

  “He certainly did. Care for a cup of coffee?”

  “Uh…I…”

  “Some mint tea maybe? The coffee’s sometimes a little like battery acid. An herbal tea. That’s what I usually have.”

  “No. A coffee would be fine.”

  “What do you take?”

  “A little milk, please.”

  He picked up the phone and talked to a secretary, then went on, “So tell me, how’s the pregnancy progressing?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Jeremy’s young lady. Connie Pete.”

  “Oh. She’s fine. The baby’s fine.”

  “Boy or girl?” he asked.

  “Connie doesn’t want to know.”

  “Fair enough. Jeremy wasn’t particular either way. He did have a few concerns that the young lady would be isolated though. Few friends.”

  “He talked about that?”

  “There weren’t many things we didn’t talk about.”

  “I’m living at Connie’s…well…what was Jeremy’s house, now. She asked me to. We’re opening a business together.”

  “That’s wonderful news. Jeremy would be pleased. What sort of business, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  I launched into my saga of the launderette and at the end I gave Doug one of the flyers announcing the big opening. Doug nodded and accepted it, smiling appreciatively as I talked. Then I became bolder. “I’ve seen you somewhere before…”

  “Jeremy’s funeral.” He chuckled. “Although burying the motorcycle was a little unusual. It took a bit of work to get permission for that.”

  That was where I’d seen him. He’d been one of the suits standing back from the group of bikers.

  Doug became serious. “Jeremy had great courage. I know because a few years ago we were both facing the same problem more or less. You see, we met at the cancer clinic. A man gets a very different view of things when he thinks he might be cheated out of his life. Things went better for me than they did for him. I came out with a clean slate while Jeremy’s situation was black. But he handled it bravely. He made plans for the future. He wanted to have some kind of guarantee even when he wouldn’t be around. I’ll confess, I’m being a lot nosier than I usually am with clients. I made a promise to your grandfather that I’d check on you, and on Connie, too, from time to time. You’ll see when you read the will, that he was thinking ahead.” He handed me an envelope containing several pages.

  “Should I read it now?” I asked.

  “No reason why not.”

  I began to read. The will was as I might have expected except for two details. A trust fund, with a principal sum of seventy-five thousand dollars, had been set up for the baby, who would have access to it on his or her eighteenth birthday. The other detail regarded me. It read; “To my granddaughter Lucy Margaret Madison, I leave the contents of the southwest basement room of my house.”

  I hurried home. First I told Connie what had happened with Anna and the apartment. Her expression perked up. “But you’re staying here. I don’t see the problem.”

  But I was still sulking over my drenched paintings. “This is a temporary situation. It’s just that I’m used to having my own space.”

  “But you had to put up with a roommate. You didn’t have your own space. Not anymore.”

  At times Connie could be so irritatingly accurate. “I know. It’s just that…oh, I don’t know.”

  “What are you getting so worked up about? You’re staying here.”

  “I need to have a studio space.”

  “You can make a space here. I’m glad you’re here. There’s way too much room anyway.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Connie’s mouth drooped. “Listen, Lucy, I know I’m not the easiest person in the world. If it’s me you can say so. I can take it.”

  I wanted to speak but the words wouldn’t come.

  There was a long cool silence.

  Connie persisted. “Listen. I know I can be really shitty and I know I been acting like a real drag…sometimes I just can’t help myself…it’s like I’m possessed. I know what I should be doing and saying but something stronger than me won’t let me do it…and I’m really…uh…sorry. But I’m asking you again. I don’t just want you to stay. I want you to feel like this is your home. It doesn’t have to be forever, but we might as well try to enjoy ourselves here and now. It would have made Jeremy glad.”

  She’d hit me in my weak spot. I nodded feebly. Then I said, “Connie, have you seen a copy of the will?”

  “No. Jeremy told me how things would be.”

  “How long has it been since you checked your mail?”

  “Oh, God, a while I guess, now that you mention it.”

  We both got up and went to the hall table where letters and junk mail were heaped up. Connie began to sort, then held up one envelope and said, “This must be it.” She went into the living room, sat down, tore it open and read, then started to grin at me, bursting to say something else.

  “What?” I asked. “WHAT? You’re obviously dying to tell me something.”

  “It’s amazing. It’s what Reebee calls…uh…synchronicity. I’ve really got to show you this.” She struggled up out of the armchair and plodded toward the kitchen and the basement door.

  “You haven’t been going up and down these stairs, have you?” I snapped.

  She just went on grinning.

  “Connnieeee. How many times do I have to tell you? You’re supposed to be taking it easy.”

&
nbsp; “Yeah, right.”

  We headed down the stairs into the basement.

  She said, “I was trying to clean up a bit down here. I wanna make a rec room, so when my kid’s bigger, this can be a playroom, too. A wreck room. Get it? Anyway, I found these.” She maneuvered her way through the clutter and pulled a huge tarpaulin off a stack in the corner. It appeared to be canvasses. Paintings. I moved in to take a closer look.

  21

  “These are…mine,” I whispered.

  Some of the pieces were things that had gone missing in university art shows. Others were paintings I’d done especially for Jeremy—for Christmases and birthdays. There were over thirty canvasses.

  Connie said, “These must be what Jeremy meant in the will. I gotta confess something to you. Jeremy figured you were going to be a famous painter one day. I was more than a little jealous, eh? The way he was always going on and on about it. I didn’t know he had all these down here but he did say something about you not trusting your talent. Maybe he thought you’d do something stupid.”

  “Stupid how?”

  “I dunno. Selling art to the wrong people. Selling your paintings before it’s the right time to sell them. Or just giving them away.”

  I was overwhelmed. Jeremy’s spirit was watching over me.

  It didn’t take long to get the rec room organized. I happened to mention it casually to Bob, and the guys were on the doorstep within the week. The room got some jade-green indoor-outdoor carpeting, some knotty pine wood panelling and some electric heat. The guys also helped me move my possessions out of the West End apartment. We put most of my living room furniture down in the rec room. It now had a very cozy atmosphere. Reebee added a beanbag chair she’d found at a Salvation Army store.

  “What we gotta do,” said Connie, “is sit down here and do something you do in a rec room like have a party or watch videos, then see how many spiders, you know those big ones that you always catch out of the corner of your eye, see how many of them stomp across the floor during the evening. That’s the trouble with basement rooms, eh? Big ugly spiders.”

  So when the room was finished, we decided to give it a trial run. Sky and Reebee came over, with Sky waving a video box. “I got popcorn, nacho chips, orange juice, Diet Coke and the Bridget Jones’s Diary video.”

  “Bridget Jones?” asked Connie. “Who’s she?”

  “She’s a fictional character, from a novel called Bridget Jones’s Diary,” said Sky.

  “I don’t read novels,” said Connie.

  I tried not to take this as the statement of a Philistine but of a person who perhaps preferred action to words.

  “Maybe you’ll start,” said Reebee.

  When the film was over, we all agreed that we would have fallen like fools for the hot but dastardly Daniel Cleaver, and ignored the morally correct and uptight Mark Darcy.

  “Why are we women so self-destructive?” I asked.

  “Because one minute of something wicked you want badly enough might just be worth all the trouble,” said Sky.

  “If you don’t mind paying for it for the rest of your life,” said Reebee, fatefully.

  We all gawked at her, then Sky said, “Motherrrr. How could you?”

  “I’m joking,” squealed Reebee.

  “Anybody notice any big ugly spiders?” ventured Connie.

  I was at the launderette when I remembered the unopened mail in my purse. I retreated to the new office to look through it. There were no bills. I’d been unusually responsible and taken care of them earlier in the month, and after my visit to Anna, I’d immediately called and canceled my phone and hydro accounts.

  I was sitting at my desk in the new office, facing Jeremy’s ashes, when I picked up the first letter. It was in Dirk’s handwriting, a looping wild scrawl. Each envelope contained one dirty piece of paper. The first one read: I’LL GET YOU WHILE YOU’RE SLEEPING; the second said: YOU’RE A NOTHING; another said; LET ME HELP YOU WRITE YOUR OBITUARY; yet another said: HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE HANDCUFFED TO A MOVING TRAIN?

  The last one was ridiculous. Laughable. There were hardly any trains still running in Canada. He’d say or do anything to get to me.

  I could remember occasions, in university days, when I’d come home to find Dirk lounging on my couch, having found a way into my place without a set of keys. My refrigerator would be empty, my bathroom a filthy boggy mire, my CDs ruined from being left on top of the radiator, all my possessions searched through, and my letters and diary read. This was so that in some opportune moment, Dirk could tease me with a detail of my private life, chanting it, calling it out for the whole world to hear.

  Once, when this happened, I walked out of my apartment in the direction of the nearest police station to make a formal complaint, and Dirk followed me. He grabbed me from behind, dragging me back along the street by the hair, and all those passersby, those average men on the street, not lifting a finger…it was my first really big disillusionment with mankind.

  I’d taken my case to Jeremy that time. Dirk was his grandson, after all. I’d thought at best, Jeremy might have some wisdom to impart and at worst, he could put him in his place. It wasn’t really my style to run squealing to my grandfather, but that time I’d been scared.

  Jeremy wasn’t someone to waste time or words. He sicced the gang on Dirk. They tracked Dirk down at his favorite coffee bar on Davie Street, called in their reserves and approached his table. In a knot of leather and steel and hair and grizzle they menaced him. Jeremy told him, “You lay one finger on Lucy, Dirk, and you’ll have my buddies to deal with.” It worked for a while. Dirk stayed away.

  Generally, Dirk’s brand of violence was mostly psychological, and mostly involved words alone. Deep down he knew how much he would be risking if he depended heavily on physical violence. But, it is worth noting that whenever he did manage to get a girlfriend, he usually ended up ruining things by slugging the poor girl of the moment. I know this because the ex-girlfriends, in their stunned confusion, always confided this detail to me, as if I could make a difference. As if I were my brother’s keeper.

  It was early evening when I used my red cell phone to call Sam’s numbers. I didn’t want him to hear my voice shaking so I waited a long time. I consulted with Jeremy’s ashes until I felt calm enough to talk to a living human being.

  I didn’t reach Sam at either number so I called his office.

  Francesca answered. I told her who I was and why I was calling and I have to say she was unusually sympathetic and cooperative. I couldn’t help but be suspicious.

  “Dirk’s sister. Yes. I’ve been looking over his case. You’ve had more threats?”

  “I think these should be added to his file. They’re concrete evidence. In his handwriting.”

  “Yes, of course. Sam’s out on another case. But it’s a FOBIA night. You might be able to reach him there later. He likes to pop in and touch base with the families.”

  I had my doubts. I wasn’t really up for another night of square-dancing. And the FOBIA nights were dry events. The rigid regulations prohibiting alcohol just made me thirstier than ever for a real drink. But I did want Sam to have those letters for Dirk’s file. I wanted to thrust them into his hot little hand. I wanted him to realize that I was being harassed.

  Okay. As harassment went, it was as slow and innocuous as nasty notes. But it was working. It was eroding my life. Just when enough time had passed that I’d forgotten Dirk again, he’d reappear like a debilitating condition. Like malaria. Like psoriasis.

  So I pulled out my reliable jeans ensemble and headed for Kerrisdale and the old school building. When I approached the gym I was surprised there was no fiddle music. It was very quiet in there. I opened the door cautiously and peeked in. The room was dark except for flickering candles here and there and a spotlight up on the stage.

  The space was organized like a club, with groups of people clustered at little round tables with red tablecloths. At the center of each table was a red glass containing a li
t candle. It was a little hokey but I could see what they were aiming at; the sixties coffeehouse effect.

  Up on the stage, a young woman with long black hair was getting hyper and emotional. It took me a minute to realize that she was acting. It was Tennessee Williams, one of Blanche Dubois’s scenes. The girl played subtly deranged quite well, with just the right degree of weirdness. When she had finished and everyone was applauding, I crept along the back of the auditorium looking for a familiar face. I spotted Mavis, from the last meeting, and snuck over to her table. I drew up a chair and whispered into her ear. “Hi, Mavis. Remember me?”

  “Oh hi. Sure, dear. You’re Lucy. Brother a rapid cycler. If I remember correctly.”

  “That’s right. What’s going on here? I was expecting square-dancing.”

  She whispered, “We’re having a little change of pace, dear. This is talent night. We find we can get some of our bi-po-lars involved. You know, a lot of them have talents you wouldn’t imagine.”

  Dirk certainly had talents she wouldn’t have imagined. Like wool-pulling. For years he had been getting one big free lunch from the government in the form of a pension. That was a talent.

  Mavis went on, “Now your rapid cycler wouldn’t happen to have some little specialty we could put up on that stage, would he, Lucy?”

  “Well, he did train as an actor but…”

  “Bingo. There you are right there. We just gotta get him up there and emoting his little heart out. Usually does them a world of good.”

  There was a commotion up on the stage as they set up for the next number. Loudspeakers, some kind of sound box and a video screen were rolled onto the stage.

  “This is going to be fun,” said Mavis. “This is the part I’m really looking forward to. Now my hubby’s going to sing ‘In the Ghetto.’ Know that old Elvis song? Yep. He’s got a real pretty bass voice on him. And we managed to get a few of our kids from social services in on the show to kind of flesh things out. It’s karaoke because a band was a little too complicated but it sounds real good just the same.”