Confessions of a Neurotic Housewife

She’s used to obliging by the machine’s capriciousness. She waits, expectant, for the beeper to go off – she’s a perfectionist in nature, and never does anything halfway. The artificial lavender scent escapes the metallic container as soon as she opens the small circular door. It’s always reminded her of a ship’s window. When she was little, she used to imagine the washing machine was a unique submarine, one that could go on land because it contained the water inside itself. Something about reversing the concepts comforted her. Now she’s taking out the heavy ball of wet clothes and sheets, carrying them up the stairs. She feels the weight on her legs, and her shoulders bear a tension that has, almost imperceptibly, become denser over the years.

She begins dismantling the ball over the clothes rack, allowing the garments to breathe. It strikes her how jealous she is of the t-shirt she just peeled open by the chest: the white calm it releases is blinding. She envies the pants she shakes vigorously –once, twice–, like an unmalicious whip, nevertheless free in its reckless force. She sits down for a moment, dizzy. It’s almost like she’s part of the room. She feels most like the rack sustaining all the heavy clothes, giving them the space on which to dry and become clean again. Once they’re dry, they’ll be picked up and worn, and I’ll be left here, empty, discarded, until I’m needed again.

She breathes in once, no longer inhabiting her body. Is this a psychotic episode? She focuses on her breathing, to stop her mind from rushing. It’s moments like these that remind her she will never be like Sara.

Where is she, anyways? Last she heard she was somewhere in Poland – the name of the town was hard to pronounce, with a lot of w’s and a couple of r’s in improbable combinations. She keeps on breathing, trying to disengage from the passing thoughts. It’s not working. She needs to focus on something easy, something methodical. She picks up a sock, finds its homologue and spreads them both on the metal cable. Each garment is separated by exactly one inch. The result is always implausibly aesthetic; like the ensemble has been predesigned, conceptualized on a paper with a ruler and mathematical calculations. The colors are always coordinated too. But they never appreciate it. Most of the time, they even have the inattention to pick off miscellaneous items – a pair of socks to throw in their gym bag on their way out, their favorite bra, that’s dried before the rest of the clothes. Still, like Sisyphus, she perseveres in her task. It’s a matter of principle. 

After each load is done, she takes a moment to contemplate her work in satisfaction. This time, her triumph doesn’t last long –a phone call interrupts her. She shuffles downstairs in search of the self-indulgent gadget.

It’s Sara. For a moment, she contemplates what the call could be about. She imagines some crazy announcement – they’ve bought an old Polish dive bar and are going to renovate it and run it; they met a homeless woman who moved them so much with her story that they’re starting a charity to raise awareness on some mental illness; Sara broke her leg and discovered a new meditation technique for dealing with pain, and she’s made it her mission to popularize this method across hospitals with limited access to pain-killers. She sighs.

She can almost picture herself again, smoking on a terrace in Madrid, the sun in her face, two cañas on the table and a pincho de tortilla de patatas in between. Sara had convinced her to go. She’d found two tickets for $300, one-way.

“I don’t have any money, like I literally barely have enough to cover the ticket. How do you plan on paying for our expenses there?”

“We’ll figure it out as we go, relax.”

It was always like that with her. Unprepared, unstable. Capricious. They’d fought over this several times. The worst argument was by far the last one they’d had, though – when their mom died. Sara had some sort of epiphany; a carpe diem kind of realization. She uprooted her entire family: quit her job, sold the house. Now she was travelling around, with no fixed itinerary and a two-year-old and a newborn.

She’s probably calling to ask for money now. She sighs.

She sets the phone back down, allowing it to keep ringing. Today, she doesn’t have the strength. Besides, there’s still another load of laundry to do.