Lucy's Launderette (16 page)

 

I banged on Connie's door. I was wearing an old pair of loose pants and shirt that were covered with at least a decade
of paint spatters. Paint was in my hair, on my shoes, on my face and hands. As usual, Connie was hiding inside, and it took ages for her to come to the door. As soon as she opened, I asked, “Can I come in?” She stood aside and I barged past her.

“Can I just say something?” she droned.

“What?”

“You look worse than I do.”

I stared at her. Then I caught a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror. I started to laugh. “You know, you're right.” We both started to laugh and I almost went into shock. I'd never heard her laugh before. It was a raucous sound, like a couple of crows murdering each other.

“I've gotta talk to you, Connie. It's life or death. More for me than for you. But it could be important for you, too…I mean it could be…”

“Would you just quit babbling and get to the point?”

I told her what I'd done on the wall of the launderette. She didn't look happy but she didn't say anything. She found a cigarette and stuck it in her mouth. I waited but she didn't light it, just let it sit there on her lip.

“Let me tell you my plan,” I said.

“Just wait a minute.” She lumbered over to the armchair and sat down. She looked fatter, healthier. “Yeah, okay.”

I expounded for twenty minutes then asked, “What do you think?”

C
onnie stared at me in her deadpan way for a long time then said, “I dunno. It's harebrain. And whose money you planning to use?”

“You could take out a loan on the house. Jeremy told me he was debt-free.”

“Forget it.”

“It's a good plan. Don't junk it before you've thought about it.”

“Naw.”

“You haven't thought about it.”

“Listen. I don't really give a shit what you do to the walls. They couldn't be worse than they are. And I haven't talked to a lawyer yet about finding a loophole in the arrangements. I'd really like to sell the launderette. It's not exactly big business.”

“You can't sell it. There's Bob.”

“Yeah. Right. Bob.” She gave me one of her slitty-eyed stares and took a drag of the unlit cigarette. “Listen. I'm going away for a while.”

“You're what?”

I didn't want to hear this. I was getting used to the idea of having Connie as a permanent arch-nemesis.

“Your friend Reebee's idea. She's been comin' around, talkin' to me, makin' me eat. We been talking really a lot. About the past and stuff. She thinks I should take this road trip with her, down the coast and on to Arizona, maybe New Mexico, too.”

“Reebee's crazy to think you should take a trip now. And her car's an old beater. You can't take a road trip with her. Not in your condition.”

“She's been doing an okay job of lookin' after me. I wanna go. I wanna get outa here, away from Jeremy's stuff. It's depressing. Maybe you could do me a favor. Stay here and water the plants while I'm gone.”

She raised her eyebrow in the direction of one two-inch high cactus plant.

“You're being funny?” I couldn't believe it.

“Yeah. And if any thieves break in, make sure they take the valuables, all of them.”

“You serious? You're really going to go with Reebee?” I said.

“Deadly serious.”

“I think it's a stupid idea. A road trip when you're pregnant. You don't know what could happen.”

“It's my life. I can fuck it up any old way I want.”

“Yeah. I guess that's true. I have to tell you, I wouldn't mind staying here. I still need to be around Jeremy's world a little longer.”

She stared at me. Her face was so inscrutable she could have been a hundred years old, a wise woman or a zombie.
That was the thing about Connie. You just didn't know what was lurking in there. She caressed her stomach and said very softly, “You gotta remember one thing, Lucy.”

“What's that?”

“He's dead. He's gone. He's dust,” said Connie. “It's useless to hang on.” In that moment she looked stressed to the point of desperation. Her eyes may even have been glistening a little but it was hard to tell because she immediately looked away then down at her stomach again.

“Yeah, maybe you do need to get out of here,” I said. “But first, come and see the damage. If you feel like walking.”

“I'm supposed to move more. Reebee's been on my case. She made me go to the gynecologist and she got on my case, too. Everybody's on my case.”

“That's what happens when there's a baby involved. Just wait till it's born if you think they're on your case now.”

Connie took another half hour to change into some street clothes. They must have been donated by Reebee. The influence was clear. The clothes were nice, but they were shrubby earth mother clothes, dusty dark greens and tans, not Connie's usual style at all.

She dragged along beside me, puffing for air, and squinting in the bright light of day. When we got to the launderette, I unlocked the door.

“So you have the keys, eh? When did he give them to you?” Her voice was edged with bitterness.

I said, “Years ago. Before he met you. Just in case his or Bob's were lost. Bob said you didn't want to have anything to do with launderette business.”

Connie seemed almost to be pushing something away physically. “I don't care. It doesn't matter.”

We went inside the launderette and down to the back. I turned on the lights.

Connie stood and examined my work for a few minutes then said, “Hey, that one there is me.” One of the figures was a depiction of her with a huge stomach. Inside the stomach, a fat baby of undetermined gender peered around curiously. I'd painted Connie with tree roots curling out of her feet and into the ground and her hair curling wildly upward and transforming into leaves.

“And that's Jeremy,” she said. “What's he doing? Flying? And that's his Harley. Shit.”

I nodded. I'd painted Jeremy flying with long silver hair and beard almost as he'd been in my dream except that I'd added angel's wings. His bike was flying along beside him with its own set of angel's wings.

“That's Bob. Hey, that's funny considering he's a cripple.” Bob was shown the way he liked to dream of himself—running on his own legs. Flowers, birds, fish and vines wove around the figures. Some of the figures were underwater and quite content to be there, like my parents, for instance, in their
Sing-along-a Sound of Music
costumes.

There were open windows and doorways looking onto dream vistas that reminded me of Jeremy: the arbutus trees outside his cabin up the coast, his little boat in the bay of azure ripples, beach fires under a starry night sky, opal-white winter mountains.

“It's not bad. I sorta like it,” said Connie, reaching into her pocket and taking out a cigarette. Again, she put it in her mouth but didn't light it. “I gotta say though, you got one warped imagination.”

 

I was there when Reebee came in the Valiant to get Connie. I helped carry suitcases out to the car. Reebee knew as soon as she saw me that I thought it was a dumb idea.

“You've got to stop worrying so much, Lucy,” Reebee said.
“I'm a good driver. The universe is on my side. So just go and paint and let us do what we have to do. I'll see what you've produced when we get back.”

“When will that be?” I asked sulkily.

“It'll be when it'll be. When it's right.”

“Terrific. Try not to have the baby in the back of the car, Connie.”

“I would never let that happen,” said Reebee. “I had the upholstery redone.”

“Just get back here before it's born, would you? I'd really hate to miss out,” I said.

“Yeah, sure,” said Connie. But she didn't sound convincing.

 

They were strange, those days in the spring, finally alone, circumstances finally conspiring to let me paint.

I felt as though I were a figure in one of my dreams, my movements liquid and slow. I woke up when I wanted to, took my time over coffee. I wallowed quite a bit in the misery brought on by remembering Jeremy, but I couldn't help myself. If I didn't get it out then, it would get me later when I least expected it. In a crowd. On a bus. At a job interview.

I wasn't ready for anything more than the present in this strange slow-motion speed.

I revelled in that private limbo of wandering down to the launderette and painting for hours, for as long as I liked with no interruptions.

Sometimes I wandered around the streets, going nowhere in particular, just wandering and thinking. I'd see the back of a man that looked like Paul Bleeker. I'd quicken my pace to catch up, thinking he'd changed his mind and come down to this neighborhood to find me, that he'd searched everywhere and was finally here. Then I'd realize how stupid this
was and slow my pace just short of stopping the stranger in front of me and making a fool of myself.

In the long empty hours, I listened to Bob's CD collection and made lists and sketches of my big idea. I did a few chores, cleaned both Connie's and Bob's kitchen cupboards and fridges. I mowed Jeremy's lawn and pulled out weeds. I accepted some seeds and cuttings, along with condolences, offered to me by the elderly woman who shared Jeremy's back fence. Her garden was fantastic.

Apartment gardening in the West End was limited. Back at the apartment, there were just my house plants and no balcony to put them on. My weeping fig was probably dead by now since it was allergic to Anna. I also had some pots of chives and sage and rosemary on the windowsill overlooking Didi and Gogo's Dumpster.

I should have been happier without Nadine to hound me. There was all the time in the world for painting. The chance to dig my hands into the real earth had finally come.

But the thing I really felt was the loneliness.

It kidnapped me, like a spaceship from a distant galaxy, and carried me off to a dark, freezing planet where no one spoke my language.

 

It was May and I'd been at Jeremy's and the launderette for almost two weeks. Neither Connie nor Bob had returned and I'd had no word from either of them. The mural was growing up onto the ceiling. I'd cadged some ancient rusty scaffolding from a painting and construction business nearby, banking on their friendship with Jeremy, with the promise to let them have it back the minute they needed it. I was going to give Diego Rivera a run for his money.

As I was working up there, doing a good imitation of Quasi Modo, there was a violent banging on the launderette's
front door. I scrambled down, opened the venetian blind and looked out. A young woman stood outside holding on to the hands of two small children. Beside her was an old supermarket shopping cart stuffed to the brim with balled-up clothes, towels and bed sheets. She pointed to the Closed sign and held out her hands in exasperation, then she shouted through the door, “When are you opening up? I've got to do my laundry.”

I signalled for her to wait, then went to get the keys. I unlocked the door and let her in. She pushed the kids in front of her then dragged in the shopping cart.

“About time,” she said. “Where am I supposed to go to do the washing? There's only so much stuff you can wash by hand in the bathtub. There's nowhere else for miles around here. Last week, my upstairs neighbor said I could use his washer and dryer. Yeah, right, in my dreams. He's got one of those little apartment gadgets. Kinda small. With my kids that means about fifty million loads. Anyway, I went up there to do some washing and, man, how could I have been so stupid? Nothing in life is free, eh? He expected me to be ‘nice' to him in return. So I just told him straight out, ‘Look, Buddy, I've had it up to here with guys like you.' I always had to put up with that crap with the friends of THEIR FATHER…his friends were always trying it on.”

She pointed to her children who were chasing each other in circles and clambering over the benches. “THEIR FATHER plays in a band, eh? Musicians. THEIR FATHER's a bass player. And the bass isn't the only thing he's playing…nope. The field. That's what he's playing. The whole stadium. Oh, wow. What's that?” She was looking toward the scaffolding.

“I'm doing a little renovating,” I said.

“You doing that painting?”

“Yes.”

“You're an artist.”

“I don't know…well I guess…”

What was I saying? It was time to…how was it Reebee always put it? Throw out the net and leap? Something like that. “Yes, I'm an artist,” I said.

“I don't know any artists. I know lots of musicians. Too many, if you want the truth. Just hope my kids don't think they want to be musicians, too.” She turned abruptly and yelled at the children, “Get down off there.” They were swinging from the bottom of the scaffolding. Both children, a girl of around four and a boy of about two, were beautiful, with curly blond hair and huge, dark-lashed blue eyes. The mother was thin, brunette and harassed, twenty-two going on forty. Whoever he was, THEIR FATHER must have been a looker.

She gestured toward the machines. “So can I…?”

“Sure,” I said. “Just let me turn everything on.” I went to throw the switches in the utility room.

When I came back she was already stuffing sheets into one of the washers and setting her coins out in little piles. “So you're an artist, eh? Cool. My name's Rita by the way.”

“Lucy.”

“That's so cool. I can't do any of those artistic things. I can't draw, I can't sing…or anyway, THEIR FATHER was always telling me to be quiet…whenever I started singing he would tell me to shut up because I was attracting all the other sick dogs in the neighborhood. Now, I don't think that's a very nice thing to say to a person, do you?”

I shook my head.

“Well, neither do I. He was always telling me stuff. That I didn't know how to do this, I didn't know how to do that, while he sat there with his unplugged bass, plucking
away…he never lifted a finger to help with the kids, didn't do a damn thing except fool with that guitar… It's funny. When I first met him I was such a groupie. I just wanted to follow him everywhere. And I did. I loved to listen to the band. They gave me goose bumps all over. But when he was off the stage, what did he do? Nothing. He just planted himself on that couch and twiddled away with his fingers…it always looks like they're playing with themselves when they do that…fiddling and diddling while he would tell me all the things I was so lousy at. Like it was some really long boring song. I guess I just kind of got sick of it. Figured, go tell some other chick all the things that are wrong with her. I've had enough. There's only so much a person can take. But you know something? Just between you and me, Lucy?”

“What, Rita?”

“I really miss the bastard.”

 

After that, I kept the launderette open. I was surprised to see how many single mothers came in during the day. I figured that nowadays most people had washers and dryers of their own. But I was wrong. A lot of the mothers lived in cramped apartments with their children. The apartment blocks usually had a laundry room in the basement with coin-operated machines but none of the women wanted to use them. They didn't like going down there. The laundry rooms were spidery dismal concrete holes. There was always one oddball hovering around, that strange guy who lived on the fourth floor, the one who swung his cat around by its tail. The kind of guy who looked even more like a serial killer under the cold fluorescent basement lights.