Laundry Day

It’s Tuesday—laundry day. Molly drags herself out of bed, long brown hair cascading down to hide her haggard face. Every week is the same. Get up, dig through piles of sweaty, dirty clothing, and fold the heaping piles of lavender smelling laundry the washer produces. Molly hates lavender. She can still remember the first time Susan thrust the plant into her arms, beaming from ear to ear.

“It looks like little fairies pasted flowers on top of each other!” She had exclaimed joyfully as the scent filled Molly’s nose.

Back then the smell was calming. Not anymore.

           When Molly makes it downstairs the coffee maker refuses to work. She angrily pushes the buttons on the tiny screen but nothing happens. She is forced to eat her oatmeal without one of the most vital drinks the world has ever produced. This is not going to be a good day.

           Molly pulls her brown hair back into a tight ponytail and swipes some mascara onto the thick eyelashes that form a veil over her chocolate eyes. Then she turns on the news and readies herself to dive into the laundry basket. The announcer bellows on about the latest death, the latest illness, and the latest bombing. Molly switches it to the gossip channel. She can deal with back-biting women—not with more death and destruction. With a sigh, Molly plunges a slim, tan arm into the pile.

           The laundry is especially dirty today. Mike had his soccer match just two days ago and May decided to run onto the field after her big brother. It was not a pretty sight. Molly yanks out fluffy pink underwear from their hiding place among Mike’s once-white shirt. On the television, the women gasp and scream about the latest celebrity mess-up. Maybe they’re talking about the British royal family, maybe they’re picking on Taylor Swift. Molly doesn’t know and doesn’t care.

           In goes the first pile of clothes, shoved and packed tightly into the washer. Molly picks up the detergent and pours it into the dispenser. The smell of lavender fills her nostrils and tears flood into her eyes. The smell is too strong, she tells herself. She’ll have to get the Hawaiian scented detergent next time. Molly reaches down and snatches a flowery blouse from the basket. Memories come, unhindered by her brave efforts to stop them. This is the blouse her sister gave her, the one that her mom had handed to Susan while beaming like the sun itself. And Susan had beamed when she gave it to Molly. That was before everything fell apart. Before Susan married Thomas and ran off. Before Susan refused to talk to Molly after blowing up and telling her how much she’d always hated her sister. Even now five years later Susan’s words feel like stabbing knives in Molly’s heart. She drops the blouse onto the floor like it’s a lump of hot coal burning a hole in her hand. It’s now that she realizes a few tears are wriggling bravely down the bridge of her nose. Molly swipes them off.

           Bill comes downstairs and grabs Molly into his best bear hug.

“Morning hun.” He says warmly, settling his large body down to eat.

“Morning,” Molly replies. Her mind is miles and miles away from her joyful children and jovial husband. Miles and miles away in Arizona where Susan lives with the man she chose over Molly.

Silence fills the room for a few minutes, broken only by Bill’s munching. Then he turns in his chair and frowns at his wife.

“What’s the matter? Didn’t sleep well?”

Molly shakes her head.

“I slept fine, Bill.” She bites her tongue at the last moment, regretting the shortness in her voice. Bill is not the problem, she reminds herself.

Bill gets up slowly from his chair and strides into the laundry room.

“Oh,” He says. “It’s April 15^th.”

In mere seconds he has wrapped Molly in his arms. They hold each other soundlessly. It seems like eons go by, eons filled with contentment, before Bill pulls away and plants a kiss on her forehead.

“I gotta go now, Molly. See you tonight.” He grins. “I’ll bring cake.”

She gives him a small smile.

“Love you.”

His “Love you too” fades into the distance as the garage door swings shut behind him.

Molly turns back to face the laundry and to wonder why she chose to take this particular day off from work.

           The next piece of clothing to surface is a floppy hat. Molly is not sure how it got where it is now or who decided it needed a wash. But the piece seems to call to her to caress its braided edges with her finger. This was her mom’s hat, the one she had worn to shield her head during chemotherapy. She had always smiled so brightly, even when the pain became more than most people could bear. Molly smiles. Her mom always was a superhero. Even after Susan stopped talking to Molly, her mom always tried to bring the sisters back together. When they were small her mom would get them to stop fighting with a single look. Molly wishes it were that easy now.

           Five pairs of Mike’s dirty underwear bob to the top of the pile like buoys and Molly groans. How many times does she have to tell that boy to wear one pair a day? She guesses she should count herself lucky. Her dad complained about how his brother left his undergarments hanging on bedposts and bunched up on the floor. Molly’s dad was the cleanest man there was. She remembers the first time he taught her to change the oil in the car. Molly had begged and begged until he finally agreed to teach her. He had, what looked to her, to be about ten different rags lying about ready to clean the grease off his delicate hands. He had musician’s hands yet he used them to type for hours on end, line after line of code flickering across a dimly lit screen. Molly had always admired his way with coding. She can understand the mechanics of a car or computer but never speak to it as he could. Susan can code a little yet she never fully became interested in learning more. She is attracted to manicures and fashion magazines and little pink, fluffy pillows on the bed. Molly knows she can never expect Susan to understand the feeling of grease under the fingernails or the smoothness of an engine rumbling under the hand.

           It’s eleven o’clock by the time Molly finishes and Mike and May have already left for school. There’s nothing left to do now but wait for the heaping piles of clothing to come out of the washer and demand to be folded. Molly eases herself down on the sofa wondering how long it’s been since she had a day off. There’s a wavery feeling in her throat as if it's threatening to burst. She realizes now that it’s been present all day. Molly’s eyes roam the room and rest on a picture of her and Susan sitting placidly on the bookshelf. They’re both grinning from ear to ear, hands making thumbs-up signs, arms slung over each other’s shoulders. Cotton candy is dripping down from Molly’s hand onto Susan’s curly bronze hair. There is laughter in that photo; laughter, and life.

“What happened, Susan?” Molly asks, “What did I do wrong?”

Minutes pass as Molly sits there, still as a stone, listening to the hum of the washer and the drone of the television. Then, slowly and cautiously, like a person approaching a wild animal, she gets up and walks to the kitchen table. Her cellphone lies atop it, light blinking to signal some scam artist’s text message or some store’s email. Molly’s long fingers wrap around it, blocking out the blinking light. Her breathing quickens and sweat rolls down her forehead. The thickness she has felt in the air all morning becomes so bad she can barely breathe. Feeling detached from herself, she gingerly dials a number and brings the device up to her ear. Just as the washer dings, signaling the end of a load, Molly hears a familiar voice on the other end of the line. She takes a great, heaving breath and turns to look back at the photo of her and Susan. They were so, so happy back then.

           Molly’s lips are as dry as sandpaper and her tongue feels like a slab of frozen meat. Somehow the croaked words push their way out of her straining throat and into the tense air.

“Happy Birthday, Susan. Can we talk?”

The tense air breaks and shatters into a million little pieces on the kitchen table. As the wavery feeling in Molly’s throat explodes into a thousand falling tears, the smell of lavender floods the room. This time it is calming.