Lucy's Launderette (23 page)

“I'll be in touch about this, Lucy.” He had already slid into the driver's seat and turned on the ignition.

“By the way,” I said, “I liked your…”

But the last word, “singing,” was cut off as Sam called out, “Sorry, Lucy, really gotta go. I'll be in touch,” and roared out of the parking lot.

I felt dismal. Why was it that whenever we met in person, we always managed to disappoint each other?

 

I called Leo.

“Miss Piggy! How lovely to hear from your porkiness.”

“Hi, Leo. How's it going? How was the Rach Two?”

“I survived. My left hand cramped a little in the last move
ment, but apart from that, I was divine. I was fabulous. Martha Argerich, eat your heart out. What are you doing right now?”

“I've got loads to do but I wouldn't mind taking a break. I've got to ask your advice about something,” I said.

“Let's be hearty types for an afternoon and take your pork chops and wrinkles for a walk.”

“Where?”

“Well, it's spring. Let's go somewhere we can see the sap run.”

“The sap? Anybody I know?” I asked.

“I hope not,” said Leo. “Unless you've started hanging out at the YMCA and not telling me about it.”

“No, Leo. I'm afraid the sex change operation didn't take.”

“Good. What would I do without at least one pouchy-faced porcine fag hag in my life?”

“You flatter me, Leo.”

Leo and I met in the afternoon and walked around the sea wall in Stanley Park. Well, I walked while Leo gawked and leered at all the gay men jogging, zooming past and flinging their sweat at us. But Leo seemed to have his eye out for someone in particular.

It was a beautiful May day. The sun glistened off the ocean. Seagulls screeched and careened across the clear sky. The park was crazy with new growth. But I was anxious, impatient. At the launderette, things had come to a standstill. I wanted everything turned on at once, so until all the components were ready, nothing could happen. The espresso machine was empty and waiting to express, the jukebox was unplugged and silent, the computers were purchased and waiting in Jacques's office for the go-ahead from me, and the walls were painted and waiting for the art to be hung. Before anything could happen, before everything could be turned on, it had to be perfect.

“Leo, we need a piano and someone to play from time to time.”

“Uh-huh?”

“And someone to send aspiring musicians my way. Someone like you. Someone who knows lots of young promising talent that wouldn't mind the exposure but wouldn't have to be paid a lot.”

“What are you up to, Lucy?”

“We're opening up this business.”

“We? Who's we?”

“Me and Jeremy's old girlfriend, Connie.”

“Connie? But you hate Connie.”

“No. I don't. Maybe I thought I hated Connie. I didn't really know her. I don't think she really knew herself when it comes down to it. She's okay. Anyway, it's sort of a launderette cum art gallery cum coffee-bar cum cyber-joint cum music venue.”

“Buff. Very buff.”

“Thank you.”

“I'm talking about that man, that GOD who just ran past.”

“Leo. You're not listening to me.”

“Yes, of course I am. I have symphonic hearing. I could listen to you and forty other lardy wenches trashing your best friends simultaneously and tell you what each and every one of you said.”

“Good. Okay. In this launderette, there's a small space that would be good for live music. Small ensembles. Jazz or classical. So I figure we need a piano.”

“What did you have in mind? A Steinway baby perhaps?”

“Not a very good piano but one that sounds okay.”

“An old upright grand,” said Leo. “You can lease one for next to nothing and they're playable.”

“You think?”

“Sure. I'll come with you and try it out for sound. All you have to do is pay.”

“Good. Good. Okay. So now tell me about this guy you're hoping to accidentally bump into out here, Leo. I haven't seen you behave like such a dork for quite a long time.”

“Well…” said Leo, rolling his eyes melodramatically.

I groaned. “I know that expression. He's straight, right?”

“Well…” Leo repeated.

“And married, right?”

“Only a little married,” whined Leo.

“Like being a little pregnant, eh?” And I thought I was a glutton for punishment.

I
t was getting close. The official opening of the launderette was almost upon us. Connie and I sat in the rec room eating popcorn and playing channel roulette, but neither of us could pay attention to the TV. We were too excited.

“Okay,” said Connie. She was wearing tortoise-rimmed glasses that made her look very serious and efficient. When she wasn't shifting uncomfortably, or clasping the place where the baby just kicked her, she was ticking things off a list with a pencil. “We've got Hit and Run Kitchen set up for the sandwiches, croissants, cakes and cookies. I think we should forget about salads.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Just too much limp lettuce left over at the end of the day. If we do some decent vegetarian sandwiches, that oughta be enough. Okay. We do Italian Espresso coffee orders with Marini Food Imports. Milk delivery each morning for the
cappuccinos and lattes. The cable guys are coming tomorrow to put in the lines for the computers and your friend Jacques is bringing them and he's going to do the fiddly stuff…”

“Programming.”

“The programming. Tomorrow morning, right?”

I nodded.

“Then we got the cartoon tapes and TV set with video for the kids'…”

“Educational TV…nonstop. So we don't have to go and change tapes all the time.”

“Educational TV…for the kids' corner. Then we got the art. Listen, you've gotta get that stuff hung. What about your friend? Cindy?”

“Candy. I'm still working on her. She's a special case. And listen, I'm going to ask her if she wants to work the espresso bar. She's smart. She managed a record store. Right now she's working for her mother and that can't be good for anyone.”

I'd been doing my best with Candy, going round to Boito's Beauties and pestering her, trying to remind her of who she'd been, the artist she'd been, to reassure her that she had friends whenever she felt scared. I'd assured her that if we saw her pulling out her mascara brush and looking at a dog whimsically, or tearing off her clothes and heading for the ocean, that we'd stop her. She was still afraid of everything but had mentioned she missed painting.

I said, “She may not be in on the first show but one of these days there may be something.”

“Okay,” said Connie. “Bob is technical manager. That what we're calling him? Officially?”

“Yeah. Any mechanical or electrical problems are his. And he has lots more to worry about now.”

“Listen, we gotta look carefully at revenues here.”

“I know it's not going to be big money….”

“Well,
I've
had a few ideas,” said Connie.

“Shoot.”

“Okay, you've got your washer and dryer revenues, your very inflated soap, bleach and softener revenues, your coffee bar, your jukebox, your Internet time. And now how about tapes? You get any half-decent musicians in there you could tape the evenings. But it's gotta be a free platform. We can't afford to pay musicians but we can pass a hat. Now the paintings and drawings are going to be for sale, so the launderette gets a commission. I figure thirty percent, and maybe we can put together little books of the artwork whenever there's a new show. That could be down the line a bit when we can afford it. Keep reminding everyone it's local. It's happening here and now. It's original. You could get people who write to come and read their stuff. Poems and stuff…”

“Hey, Connie, slow down.”

“We'll make it work, Lucy. It's gonna work. We'll make ourselves proud. But there's one more thing.”

“What's that?”

“The old name's gotta go.”

I felt a little twinge of sadness. “You don't want Madison's Coin Wash? But it's a way to remember Jeremy.”

“Who's forgetting him? It's just not catchy enough. It's sort of sad and run-down, like a name from the depression years. I had a better name in mind.”

“What?”

“Lucy's Launderette. In pink neon writing with a red heart in the middle, like the decor. The launderette was your idea.”

“No, I don't think…”

Connie cut me off. “Yes. It's my place and I've decided and I'm not going to change my mind. It sounds good. And you're his granddaughter so it's still kinda in the family. It's gotta ring to it. Lucy's Launderette.”

 

Jacques arrived the next morning with two computers. When he saw the launderette he said, “Awesome. This is an amazing place you got here. If I'd known it was going to be like this, I wouldn't have brought you these hunks of junk.” He pointed to the computers.

“They look brand-new to me. What's wrong with them?”

“They're about two generations old. A generation lasts about six months. Maybe less these days. But I guess they'll do for the basics.”

I let Jacques get to work and began hanging my paintings. I didn't bother to ask him about Madeline. I didn't want to depress either of us so early in the day.

Just before noon, Connie showed up. She was walking like a duck now with the weight of her belly. She stood behind me while I adjusted my canvasses. “Your stuff's growing on me, Paleface,” she said.

 

Jacques looked up from what he was doing, saw Connie and leapt to his feet. “Can I offer you a chair, ma'am?”

“She's not ma'am, Jacques. She's Connie, my boss, the owner of this place.”

Jacques was staring at her in the most peculiar way. He rushed forward with a chair and said, “Connie, please sit down. I'm getting swollen ankles just looking at you.”

Connie accepted the chair.

When lunchtime came around, Jacques stretched and said, “All finished. Now I'm taking you to lunch. And I think Connie and her little passenger should come, too.”

 

It was two o'clock in the afternoon when my cell phone beeped at me with my first real caller. I didn't count all the times Sky had phoned me from the next room just to try it out. I had great expectations now, but they were dashed when I heard the voice.

“Mom.”

“Lucy. Brush your hair and put on some makeup. Oh yes, and do put on a bra. You're going out.” I never went braless these days, but she seemed to think I was still an adolescent trying to sneak out of the house with too much black eye-liner and too little clothing.

“Mom. What's the problem?” I'd rarely heard such anxiety in her voice.

“I'm coming to get you. I'm just finishing my coffee now, then I'll have a quick visit to the bathroom then I'm getting into the car, that should be in about five minutes, which would get me into town and to Connie's house within about forty-five minutes, so be ready and waiting on the doorstep.”

“Where are we going? Mom? Mom…?” But she'd already hung up.

She was punctual. Forty-five minutes later, I was on the doorstep, wearing a flowing, flowery summer dress. It was another warm, cloudless July day. I toyed with the idea that we might be going somewhere fun, somewhere I'd want to be seen looking nice. Sometimes my mother got urges to take me shopping, to buy me something “decent” and I usually humored her. She was good for those neutral all-purpose items of clothing, plain black slacks, sweaters, that sort of thing. And she was a great believer in support garments, ever willing to buy me new bras.

My mother's Toyota pulled up. She flapped her hand for me to get in. Before the passenger door was even shut she
was speeding out into the road. It was going to be one of her white-knuckle specials.

“What's this all about, Mom? And slow down, would you? You just cut that guy off.”

“He was creeping along like a snail. You'll see where we're going when we get there.”

“You can tell me now. I'm over twenty-one. I'm considered an adult by most people.”

“Horse-frocky. When you're married with children of your own, you'll have a better idea of what it means to be an adult. What it means to be responsible. A concept that seems to have escaped a few people.”

“Where are we going? Can you tell me that much? Because we're certainly going in the wrong direction for anything fun and townlike.”

“I suppose I can. We're going to the airport.”

“The airport? Who's leaving?”

I could picture it, my father with his possessions in a little red-and-white biker kerchief, off to see the world he'd missed seeing because he was so young when his career as a stick-in-the-mud started. Where do over-the-hill, rebel sticks-in-the-mud go when they cut loose? Marakesh? Upper Volta?

“Motherrrr. Is this about Dad?”

“Your father? Heavens no. He'll be fine when he comes back down to earth.”

“You mean he still hasn't… Oh, Mom.” I wished it had been about Dad. It was unsettling to think that my father was still a bible-thumping biker, at large. Why couldn't it be some boring parentlike reaction to a crisis of my father's. No such luck.

“The question you should ask,” said my mother, “is who's arriving.”

“Who's arriving then?”

“Wait and see.”

“Couldn't you meet them alone?”

“I might not be able to manage it.” The way my mother's jaw was clenched would have been appropriate for in-laws, but she'd never had a mother-in-law and Jeremy was gone. Was it one of her own relatives from back East? Her mother? My maternal grandmother from Hell?

When my mother was a young woman just married, she announced that she was pregnant with her first child. That was Dirk. Her mother grimaced and said, “Oh my God, how awful,” and that was that. I often wondered if Dirk, lying there as a mere squiggle of a fetus, had heard her comment through the walls of my mother's uterus and let it get to him, deciding right then and there to be mentally ill, out of protest.

My mother had escaped westward to university, but every so often, her mother flew in from the East and pounced.

“It's not Granny Clara, is it?” I ventured.

“Oh no. Spare us. You'll see in good time.”

There was nothing left to do but let myself be hurtled along as if I were a passenger on the space shuttle. I had to close my eyes a few times to avoid scaring myself. It wasn't so much that my mother was a bad driver. It was simply that she moved in another time dimension, one where everyone else drove far too slowly for her tastes.

When we reached the airport, she cut another man off and zoomed into a parking space.

“Hurry up,” she snapped. “We've got to be there before 3:25. Ridiculous rules. Some union thing makes them open and close at the strangest times.”

“The flights are always late getting in. And then there's waiting around for the baggage. Don't worry. You can usually add an hour to the time.” But my mother hadn't heard me.
She was already rushing into the main part of the building. When I caught up to her she was consulting with someone at an information desk.

“Downstairs,” she ordered. I followed obediently.

We were lost in carpeted corridors. “The passengers don't come through here,” I said. “We're going the wrong way.”

“No, we're not,” snapped my mother. “We don't want passenger arrivals.”

“We don't?”

“No.”

My mother was determined to keep me guessing. “Okay. Whatever it is, is it international or domestic?”

“International.”

“Oooo. Intriguing.”

“Here we are,” my mother announced. We were in some kind of freight deposit. “Yoo hoo. Anybody home?”

A uniformed man rounded a corner. “Can I help you?”

My mother handed him something furtively, a slip of paper or a ticket.

“Okey doke,” said the man, and disappeared again. He returned carrying a huge oblong parcel wrapped in well-traveled brown paper. “It's heavy. Better if the two of you carry it.”

My mother and I each took an end.

“Okay, Mom, I give up. What's in here?”

“Let's take it upstairs, get ourselves a coffee, then open it up and have a look.” My mother was nearly peeing herself with anticipation but refused, as usual, to give away her surprise.

I sighed. We hauled the parcel up an escalator, lugged it through the airport's main lobby, hobbled with it over to the cappuccino bar and sat it on a chair.

“Okay,” I said, grabbing a loose bit of paper. “Let's rip her open.”

My mother slapped my hand. “Not so fast, Lucille. First, the coffees.” I sighed again and went up to the counter. “A part-skimmed double latte for me and the cocoa mocha with whipped cream for my mother.” The guy behind the counter looked at my mother with something akin to admiration then started making the coffees. I waited there, gazing beyond him, looking into the milling airport crowd, looking but not really seeing. Until something caught my eye.

It was Sam Trelawny. He had his arm around a very pretty brunette woman. She was caressing his face. I squinted hard to focus better. She seemed to be crying. Then she pulled his face into hers and there was a long kiss. I felt a pang of envy and longing. It was starting to look as though a lot of other women weren't put off by the occasional lapses into plaid either.

I paid for the coffees and went back to the table. My mother, hardly able to contain herself, had started to tear away at the parcel's brown paper. I gave her a hand. There was a carton underneath, with words printed all over it in a strange script that looked like Greek.

“Go on, Mom. If you don't hurry up and open it, I will.”

My mother tore off the flap at one end of the oblong and peered down into the carton. She let out a little whimpering “Ohhh.”

I went over and took a look. “Jeeeezus. Really, Motherrrr.”

“Those criminals sent me another letter with the claim ticket. Does he look all right to you?” she asked. “I think they've done something to him. I think he's been tampered with. Poor Winky.”

I'm the only person I know whose mother makes more fuss over a missing garden gnome than she does over the rest of her family.