Forever Friends (11 page)

The older man narrowed his eyes at her.

“I have a great deal of respect for you and the work you do in this church.” She did not falter. “But, Grady, that young man is a member of this community, a member of one of our families, and as long as I'm the pastor here, he will be treated with the utmost respect and hospitality.” Charlotte surprised even herself with her confidence.

Grady was not changed. He reached up and effortlessly pulled the toothpick out of his mouth and pushed his tongue along the front of his teeth. He rocked a bit from side to side. “That boy's a thief. Everybody here knows that. And several of us believe he's dangerous. If you're so fired up to do the pastor thing, you ought to make sure he ain't stealing from Vastine and Peggy. They're the ones who need watching out after, not him.”

He stuck the toothpick back in the corner of his mouth and readjusted his hat. “You weren't here when that boy made all his trouble; we were. And I'm here to make sure right from the start that none of that mess is going on at this church.”

He put his hands in his pants pockets and jingled his keys. “Our welcome lasts just as long as his good behavior. If stuff starts getting missing around here, we're pressing charges.”

He stared at Charlotte like he knew she was covering something. “And you can mark my words about that.” He curled his lips around the toothpick and nodded like he was finished.

Charlotte did not move. “I thank you for your concern today, Grady. I'll check the heat and lock the doors behind me.”

The man made a huffing sound like perhaps he would say more, but he didn't. He walked out of the office without even offering a good-bye.

When the back door slammed Charlotte ducked her head beneath the desk, trying once again to locate the CD player. She searched behind the trash can, next to the small table; she even got up and opened the cabinets, thinking that perhaps she had stuck it inside, on one of the shelves. It was definitely not in her office.

She recalled what Grady had said before his grand announcement about what he considered as his responsibility to protect the belongings of the church and remembered that Lamont had been standing outside her office just before church had started. When she saw him, she asked why he wasn't in the sanctuary, and he reported that he was going outside to smoke a cigarette before he joined the others. At the time Charlotte hadn't thought anything about it. But she knew that the missing item had been left beside her desk before the service.

She had played a CD for the choir director during Sunday school, an old gospel hymn that she thought the choir might
want to learn for later in the spring. After playing the song, she had taken out the CD and given it to the music director and had put the player beside where she was sitting. Lamont had come around just about that time.

Charlotte got up from her chair and walked through the outer office into the sanctuary. She sat on the first pew, without turning on any lights. Even in the darkness she could see the drippings from the candle wax that had been spilled in front of the chancel steps during the Christmas Eve service two years before. No one had cleaned the stains.

The church was quiet, the way she preferred it, and she positioned herself way down in the seat, resting her neck against the top of the pew. She laid her hands in her lap and closed her eyes. She sat in the silence and thought about Peggy and Vastine and about Lamont, the young man who had returned to the church, stirring up gossip and nerves.

She wasn't sure if she should confront the boy about the missing CD player, go over to Peggy and Vastine's and make sure that he wasn't stealing from his grandparents, or just leave things alone, waiting until she heard from them.

She knew that it would be difficult for Peggy to admit if Lamont was stealing from them, and Charlotte understood that he could take everything from his grandparents before anyone else might hear about what had happened, leaving them in dire circumstances.

The minister placed her hands on top of her head and interlaced her fingers and remembered how Peggy had appeared
when Lamont got out of the car and walked toward the house, having just come home from jail.

Peggy met them both at the porch, her face flushed and expectant. She had a dishtowel in her hands, and she waved it like a flag when she saw them. And then as the pastor and the teenager moved up the steps, the older woman jumped up and down. Jumped, Charlotte remembered, just as if her joy could not be contained, just as if she could not stand still, just as if this old woman had become young.

The grandmother was so eager and overwhelmed with emotion that after she grabbed Lamont and pulled him into herself, she led him in from the front door and straight into the bedroom where Vastine was resting, leaving Charlotte alone on the porch. The pastor had walked in behind them.

“Honey, look who's here!” she had said, her voice loud and unwavering.

Lamont, unhesitantly and with ease, had stepped beside the hospital bed and taken his grandfather's hand, “Hey, Pop,” he had said and bent down to kiss the old man on the cheek.

Vastine had reached out and held him there, their faces touching until the teenager almost lost his balance and fell into the bed next to him.

“Whoa,” he said jokingly, “you're about to pull me in there with you.” But he was obviously touched by the joy of his family, by the homecoming and welcome he had received.

Charlotte had watched from the hallway, overcome by what she had seen. She knew that the chances that the
young man would stay clean and sober and out of trouble were very slim. She understood that because of his history and recklessness, because of his addiction, which had apparently begun at an early age, the odds were that he was going to steal everything his grandparents owned, maybe even take and use the old man's medications. But, standing in her parishioners' house, a visitor invited into intimacy, she also knew what she had seen, trusted what she had witnessed.

Lamont had been welcomed home, received in love, and it had been for Charlotte the most literal and clear demonstration of a Bible story that she had heard all of her life, the story of the prodigal son, the story of an unconditionally loving father.

The pastor remembered the text from the Gospel of Luke, the parable Jesus told about a young man who asked his father for his inheritance and then took the money and spent it wildly. He wasted all that he had, ultimately finding himself with nothing, hungry and alone, standing in a pig lot, eating the slop reserved for the swine. In that moment of desperation and self-realization, the young man decided to go home and ask to be his father's servant. And when he was almost at his house, the father, who had waited and watched every day for his son's return, ran to meet the estranged child, greeted him with a kiss and undeserved mercy, and threw a party for him in honor of his homecoming.

It was, Jesus had said to his followers, a story about celebrating that one who had once been lost, now having been found. It was, in the young pastor's mind, the complete and
defining story of what she understood the gospel to be about. It was this story that called her to be a Christian. It was also, however, this story that made her ashamed to be one.

Charlotte remembered that the other character in this Jesus story about God's mercy and love was not so happy about the boy's return, not so welcoming, not so merciful. And Charlotte was beginning to understand more and more clearly that the older brother who had stayed at home and worked in the fields, the one who had obeyed the rules and lived an honorable life, the one who did not spend his father's money and would not celebrate his brother's return, was usually the one sitting in church every Sunday, the one who served on the deacon board, and the one who was determined to press charges and punish a teenage thief.

Charlotte lay down on the pew and rubbed her fingers across her eyes. She curled her legs beneath her and placed her hands under her head like a pillow. She thought about the situation with Peggy and Vastine and truly didn't know what should be her place in the family dilemma. She was unsure of her pastoral responsibility to the DuVaughns or to the other parishioners, and she was disappointed that, since the CD player was missing, fears about Lamont's behavior might be realized. But these were not the things that troubled her most.

She turned on her back and looked up at the ceiling of the sanctuary. The heater switched on, and the soft motor breathed warmth into the large room. What troubled the young pastor the most as she rested in her place of worship, pulled out of bed by the panic of the church's most prominent leader, was that
she recognized that she was working in a place, serving a people, who might never understand how a sinner gets welcomed home.

She closed her eyes, feeling heavy and grave, painfully aware of what she had always suspected. When Jesus told the story that made some people weep with joy at how a father can love, he had also reminded them that most religious people don't.

Older brothers, who live their narrow lives hiding in church, disabled by bitterness, slice and dispense mercy like small, cheap cuts of meat. And the minister, awakened and alone and dreamless, lay in the sanctuary troubled because she understood they expected their pastor to do the same.

E
xcuse me, but are you finished with the dryer?” Lana stood in front of the old man who was reading the newspaper as he sat in the chair by the window.

“I'm sorry, what?” he asked as he lowered the paper. He lifted his face, answering the young woman.

“The dryer,” she answered. “It's finished its cycle, and it's the only one not being used.”

She had been watching when the old man took his clothes out of the washer and placed them in the large machine. She had noticed the time and assumed that he should be finished when she would need to move her clothes over. All of the other dryers were being used by the staff at the cleaners, a couple of college students, and one middle-aged Hispanic woman who kept running next door to a convenience store trying to get change.

The only opportunity Lana had to finish her clothes without waiting was to be able to use the appliance that the old man had gotten to first. She glanced around the Laundromat, hoping that the other woman hadn't returned from the store yet. She had been watching for the old man's clothes to finish as well since she still had one more load to dry.

“Oh,” the man responded. “Are my clothes done already?” He checked his watch and got up from his seat.

Lana walked behind him as he headed toward the dryer, opened the door, and reached inside.

“These things are always the problem.” He lifted out a
towel, still heavy and damp. He shook his head apologetically. “You know, I think they need some more time.”

And he pulled out three quarters from his pocket and placed them in the coin slot in the machine. “I'm sorry,” he said as he turned to Lana, “but I do thank you for letting me know that my time was up.” And he patted the young woman on her head as if she was a child.

Lana turned up her lips, trying to fake a smile, but she frowned and rolled her eyes as soon as the old man walked away, returning to his seat. She moved to the washer and began pulling out her wet clothes and dropping them in the laundry basket.

Lana hated having to come to the Laundromat. She felt destitute and undignified being there. It was beneath her. Yet, in spite of how it made her feel to display her dirty laundry in front of strangers, she preferred that to having to sit with her mother for the entire morning. Lana knew she'd rather feel poor than indebted, something she always felt when she was around her family.

She had told Wallace that the washer at the house was-making some strange noises not long after his grandparents had left for their trip. She had planned to call somebody to come fix it over a week ago. She had forgotten, and the last time she washed clothes, smoke poured from the back of the appliance and it shut off just before the final spin cycle.

They had to wring out every piece of clothing by hand and use a large plastic pitcher to remove all of the water from
inside the machine. The pantry flooded, and the repairman who came the next day said that the machine was beyond simple maintenance. It was so old and used that it was less expensive just to buy a new one than to fix the one Wallace's grandparents had.

“Great,” she said as she remembered the man's report. “How can we pay for that?” she asked herself.

Lana stood in front of the row of washers, pulling out Hope's T-shirts and play clothes, checking to make sure the stains from candy and Kool-Aid had come out. She held up the clothes, examining them inside and out, satisfied that the simple wash had gotten the stains clean.

She pulled out her jeans and baby bibs, towels and her family's underwear, and surprised even herself when suddenly she began to cry. She was late for work, so broke that she didn't have money for lunch, Hope was sick again with another virus, and she was still caught in a web of deceit and uncertainty.

She had tried finally to talk to her husband a few nights earlier, thinking that he might know how to help her, that she might be able to explain, but then the baby had spiked a fever and Wallace had to take an extra shift at work and she hadn't known where she would find the right words anyway. She continued to manage things, but she realized she was nearing the end.

“I'd forgotten how much messy laundry children make.” The voice was smooth and familiar and coming from behind Lana.

She quickly wiped her eyes and turned around. Nadine was standing right in front of her.

“Yeah, there's always dirty clothes with a baby.” Lana slid back her hair and adjusted her ponytail.

Nadine could tell that Lana had been crying but she decided not to comment about it right away. She had a load of clothes she was washing for a customer and a load that needed to be folded. She set down the basket with the clean clothes beside her feet and opened the top of the washer beside Lana, placing a key in a slot just above the lever that took coins.

“Your machine busted?” she asked as she poured the detergent inside.

Lana nodded. “Last week,” she replied.

“Wouldn't your grandmother, the famous Aunt Dot, let you use hers?” Nadine smiled as she asked the question.

“Not without explaining every stain on every piece of clothing and what will and will not work to get it out,” Lana answered, remembering how her grandmother was about laundry.

“Well, then, I'm glad you're here.” Nadine dropped the dirty clothes into the machine.

“Yeah, but I hate to have to tell Mrs. Jenkins when she gets home that we broke her washer.” Lana continued pulling out her wet clothes and placing them in her basket.

“That's right. They get back next week, don't they?”

Jessie had spoken about the African trip at church, asking for prayers during the worship service before they left, a safe journey and God's guidance for their travels.

“Have you heard from them?” Nadine asked. “Have they had a good time?” She dropped the laundry into the machine and shut the lid.

“They call every couple of days.” Lana felt around inside the machine, making sure she had gotten all the clothes. “They've enjoyed themselves, I think.” She tried to see if any dryer had become available. Nothing had changed.

“That must be great to be able to visit other places like that,” Nadine responded. She turned the knob to the appropriate setting and pulled it out to start the wash cycle. “I'd love to go that far away.”

Lana turned around and leaned against the washing machine. She looked out the window at the diner across the street, the place where she and Roger had met for lunch a few times.

“Yeah, I'd like to leave here, go somewhere far away, but with a baby, well, there isn't much going anywhere with a baby.” Then she remembered Nadine's situation, the absence of little Brittany suddenly an obvious hole between the two women.

“I'm sorry,” she said awkwardly as Nadine averted her eyes and stared down at the clothes near her feet. “I'm always doing that. Lately it seems that I can't say the thing that needs to get said, and yet I always manage to say the things that shouldn't.”

“It's okay,” Nadine answered, facing Lana. “I'm not so messed up anymore that mothers can't talk about their children in front of me.” Nadine put the basket of clean clothes
on top of the machine on the other side of her and turned around and placed her hands on the washer behind her, gently lifting herself to sit on top of the machine.

Lana nodded and followed her lead, and they sat on the washers side by side.

“It's taken a long time, but I'm learning how to be alone again.” Nadine pulled out a laundry bag from the bottom of the basket and placed it behind her. “I suppose there are worse things than that.”

Lana glanced up at the ceiling. “What?” she asked, noticing the dark water stains and the dirty light fixtures. “You mean worse than being alone?”

Nadine nodded. “Yep,” she replied. “I expect there are lots of folks in huge families, surrounded by people all the time, who are more lonesome or unhappy than those of us by ourselves.”

The washer quickly switched to the next cycle, and Nadine shifted a bit as the machine began to bounce. “I see a lot of unhappy people in here.” She picked out some of the clean clothes and began to fold them. “Women with so much laundry that it takes them all day to wash.”

Lana thought about the other woman she had seen in the Laundromat, wondering where she had gone. She thought about women with more than one child, women having to raise their children without any help. She knew her problems felt insurmountable but she had always known she would have somebody to help her take care of the baby.

“They seem so miserable, so broken down.” Nadine paused. “Stuck in some life they didn't choose.” She thought
about all the people she had seen in the year she had been working at the Laundromat. She had learned a lot about life being there. She swung her body around and pulled the basket near her. She thought about her work.

Nadine hadn't been interested in a job when she got the one at the cleaners. She was only trying to get directions to the university when she stopped at the Laundromat. Mrs. Howard was working at the time. She was round and plump, a stout woman and part owner of the cleaners. She had been trying for over six months to find somebody to work the early shift so that she could spend more time taking care of her mother at a nearby nursing home.

She liked the looks of Nadine, she said. Thought she would make a fine employee. And before the young woman even considered taking a job, Mrs. Howard had shown her everything in the shop, explained to her about how the machines work, how tickets were written up, and how much starch to use when pressing to get a crisp snap in shirts.

She gave Nadine a set of keys within that first hour, without even checking her references or finding out where she lived. “I have a knack for ironing pleats, getting out stains, and reading people,” she said as Nadine filled out the tax forms. “You've got a good heart. I could really use that around here.”

And Nadine was so taken by the woman's kindness, by the anonymity in the relationship, and by the thoughts of keeping things clean, she had agreed. She started working the very next day.

Within three months she was given a raise and the title of
Laundromat manager. With her classes in social work and the time she spent washing and ironing and arranging freshly pressed clothes in plastic wrap, she had found her niche.

“Sometimes,” Nadine said to Lana, “I think of the Laundromat as a metaphor for what we all need, some place where we walk in desperate and soiled, find the right solution, the right mixture of soap and water, the right ingredient to break down whatever stains we have, the right machine.” She matched a pair of socks, held them together, and folded them inside each other. “And we cleanse and rinse, tumble dry, and walk out sorted and relieved. Clean,” she added while Lana studied her movements, listened to her talk. She smiled and continued. “But that's pretty stupid since nothing in life is ever that tidy. There ain't a place to go and get all that for seventy-five cents.” She dropped the socks in the basket and reached in for more clothes. “What about you?” she asked the younger woman.

Lana was confused.

“You ever feel like laundry?” Nadine rarely made time for idle conversation since her daughter's death. She had learned if something was on her mind it was better just to go ahead and speak it. This level of forthrightness sometimes unnerved those around her. Her mother claimed she had gotten too straightforward for people, but she didn't care. Life was short and costly. Not enough time for silly games of useless dialogue.

Lana kept her focus straight ahead. She didn't know how to respond. In the first place, she wasn't sure exactly how she
did feel, and in the second place, she had not said such things out loud to anybody. She remembered the conversation with Margaret Peele, but she hadn't admitted anything then. She had only listened.

Lana closed her eyes. She knew she needed to talk to somebody. She knew the affair was meaningless, that she was heading to a place of no return.

Wallace had begun to appear so helpless around his wife that the sloping way he walked and the careful way he spoke when he was home only made her feel more desperate. She wasn't sure whether she was going to explode, the pieces of her jumbled heart flying out from inside her and landing, like ashes, upon the skin of everyone she loved, or whether she was simply going to drift away, fade inside herself, like the women in the Laundromat whose self-worth and happiness seemed as empty and narrow as the slots on the machines where coins were dropped in and fell through.

“I'm seeing another man,” the young woman quickly confessed.

Nadine didn't respond. The machine shook beneath her, and she kept taking out articles of clothing from the basket, folding them, and placing them on the washer beside her.

“I don't love him, though,” Lana added. “I don't know why I keep going to him.” It felt surprisingly good to say it out loud. “It's almost as if I hope I'll get caught.” The words fell out as strangers walked around the two women, washing and drying and folding their clothes. Lana was shocked at
the ease with which she spoke of her trouble. It had taken so very little to get her to talk.