Lucy's Launderette (13 page)

An hour later, we lugged all the baby things up the front steps and into the house.

In the living room, the windows were open, Connie's cigarette was out, and she had a mug of something in her hand. She sipped slowly. Sky and I looked at each other. Reebee was in major mother mode and started ordering us around: put these things there, those things here, unwrap the baby clothes, show Connie those little sleepers, go get a plate from the kitchen, cut the cheesecake, pour the fruit juice.

“Heil, heil, heil,” said Sky.

Connie had a strange expression on her face. Like something really brutal had been exorcised, like there was a light coming on. The poison was starting to ease out of her. She sipped and then said to Reebee, “You know, this is making me feel better already. This is the first time in months I haven't wanted to woof all my cookies immediately. I was giving up on ever feeling normal again.”

“I know. I understand,” said Reebee.

Reebee fussed over Connie, cutting her little pieces of cake and pushing them toward her. “Here try this. See if you can keep it down. You don't have to worry about feeling terrible. Being pregnant can be the weirdest sensation on this earth. There you are, with this stranger, this alien creature, inhabiting your body, squirming around, sitting on your ovaries till you're screaming in pain, pushing on your windpipe and stomach and basically making your life hell…”

“Mother!” Sky stared at Reebee, appalled.

Reebee laughed. “One's children have the most outrageous expectations. Oh, don't get so worked up about it, Sky. You weren't an abandoned child. All those strange non-maternal feelings sort themselves out with time. But there are moments when you don't think it's natural at all.”

Connie was smiling slightly. She ate as if testing each bite, as if it all might come back up in a second. It didn't and she looked almost happy as she sat there munching. I guess it was
the Banging Your Head Against the Brick Wall Syndrome. It feels so good when it stops.

On our way out, Connie stopped me at the door. Her tone was confidential. “I forgot to tell you. Your father came around here the day after Easter.”

“My father?”

“Yeah. The whole thing was really freaky. He was pissed out of his mind. He banged on my door in the middle of the night and said he wanted to see the house. He was in a pretty bad way. I let him in. I figured an old Jesus freak like him wouldn't hurt anybody, but when I saw the way he was dressed I almost had second thoughts. He kinda stumbled from room to room touching pieces of furniture and stuff I guess he remembered from his childhood. You know Jeremy kept everything the way it was when his first woman ran off on him? You didn't? Well, that's why this place is filled with this fuckin' awful furniture. I guess I'm used to it. Then he asked if he could see his old room. Had the room in the attic, right? So I let him go up. I guess he was just homesick, missing Jeremy. He passed out on the bed. Good thing he wasn't sick 'cause I couldn't have handled it. Would have set me off badstyle. The next day I gave him the leftovers you left. It was you, wasn't it? Yeah. It was pretty weird 'cause Stu and I have never gotten along.”

I wanted to ask, Who have you ever gotten along with, Connie, apart from Jeremy? Though I suppose that would have been unfair. I was grateful she had put my father up for the night.

She added, grudgingly, “Uh…thanks for the…all this stuff…you know…for the…”

“Don't worry about it. 'Night, Connie.” I walked to the car, expecting hell to freeze over any minute.

 

Nadine called me later that night. “Wear your oldest clothes tomorrow, Lucy. We're taking down the temporary exhibit.”

Translation: I, Lucy Madison, lonely art drudge and white slave would be taking down and putting away the party of pee-pees while Nadine gave orders and ate bonbons to keep up her strength. I was relieved to hear it though. Sitting alone hour after hour in the gallery, I was starting to grow attached to all those willies, giving them names and personality traits and having little fantasies about them. What else could I do? Quick-Draw-McGraw Bleeker had only given me very brief glimpses of his pizzle. And for all I knew, it was as imposing as a puckered parsnip.

 

I dreamed the penises were all assembled in a chorus line. They'd grown legs and were adorned with colorful ribbons, fishnet stockings and high-heeled women's shoes. The music started up and they danced and did high-kicks and romped their way through a rendition of “Hey Big Spender” in funny little squeaky voices. Just as they were getting to the climax, a tidal wave swept in and washed them away.

 

I was awoken by loud gurglings. I sat up in bed, heart pounding hard. More sloshing sounds followed. They were coming from the bathroom.

I staggered out of bed and down the hallway to the open bathroom door. Anna was at it again. Possessed by the cleaning demon, she was furiously attacking the toilet bowl with my long-handled back-scrubbing brush. I shuddered. She'd probably been using it like that for ages and I'd been merrily scouring my skin with it.

She hadn't seen me. She put down the brush, picked up
my loofa, liberally doused it with Mr. Clean and started in on the bathtub tiles. I didn't let it get to me. I couldn't afford to. They say serving time for homicide in women's prison can be pretty tough.

And anyway, the one thing you can count on in life is change. Change had to come. It just had to.

 

The next day I got to the gallery early. I spent most of the day packaging up the penises and preparing them to be shipped off to their owners. In the afternoon, Nadine sent me out to La Tazza to get doughnuts, two dozen of them.

Nelly the Grape said, “You guys sure eat a lot of pastries. Gallery people must have a big sweet tooth. Artists, too. One of your artist guys keeps coming round here for chocolates. Kinda cute.” She smiled a purple lip gloss smile. Nelly had huge white teeth and a sixties back-combed flip-curl hairdo.

I carried the doughnuts back to the gallery and set them down on Nadine's desk. Then I returned to the last of the packaging. I had only been in the storeroom for fifteen minutes, but when I came back out there were only three doughnuts left. Nadine didn't even bother to look embarrassed. She said, “Three greasy doughnuts is far more calories than you need in one afternoon.”

Just before six o'clock, ten air-conditioning units arrived. I shivered. The gallery was already chilly without help. What medium had Paul chosen? Ice?

W
ednesday morning, Sky pulled up in front of my place in her mother's Valiant. On the dashboard were two double lattes and four chantilly cream-filled croissants. “Thought we needed some extra nourishment,” she said.

“I was feeling a little faint now that you mention it. You sure this old heap is roadworthy?”

“Positive. Reebee got the works done. Really. You'll feel the difference as soon as we get going.”

The radio played golden oldies and we sang along with Elvis, Jerry Lee, The Beatles, Aretha, The Mamas and Papas and The Rolling Stones at the top of our lungs for the whole way south. It was still morning when we reached downtown Seattle.

Sky parked the car and looked grim.

“What's your plan?” I asked, half expecting her to produce a shotgun or chain saw.

Sky held up a page torn from a Seattle phone book and a street map. “Directions,” she said. “You wait here and make sure they don't tow away the car or steal the hubcaps.” Then she got out of the car and stomped up the road. I watched her go in and out of three different stores. She was in the last one for fifteen minutes.

She came out and got back into the car. “I know where we need to go.” She'd traced a route on the map. I was supposed to be the navigator, telling her when to turn.

After an hour of driving around, we ended up in a suburb of large homes and tree-lined streets.

“That's it there.” Sky pointed at a white two-story fake colonial house with dark green shutters.

She parked a few houses away and we donned sunglasses and baseball caps and slumped down into our seats to wait. Sky opened the glove compartment and produced a big paper bag full of gourmet jelly beans. She said, “Try the eggnog-flavored ones. They're amazing.” Sky kept the radio on low and we sat there in a mute near-slumber, only to break our stupor to make occasional comments about the neighbors.

It was around four in the afternoon when we finally got results. A van pulled into the driveway. Sky slumped even farther into her seat. “Oh fuck. That's Max's van. I can't look. Tell me what you see.”

“Well. I see Max getting out…and an adolescent boy…a boyfriend do you think?”

“Omagod. Omagod.”

I said, “No wait. There's a young girl, too. A ménage à trois, do you think?” I confess I wasn't too broken up by the idea of Max being a two-timing slime. I wanted Sky the way she'd been before him.

The boy and girl ran up the front steps and then the boy yelled back to Max, “Dad, I haven't got my key.”

“Dad?” Sky nearly choked on her jelly bean. She sat bolt upright. “He called him Dad? Those? Are? His? Children?”

“It looks that way,” I said.

“He's a goddamn father?”

“Maybe they're adopted.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe they're all acting, reciting from a script, and there're hidden cameras rolling somewhere nearby.”

“Right. Oh fuck. Would you look at that? I can't believe it. He's wearing sweats and Adidas.”

“I don't think that's a crime.”

“Are you kidding? Max is always going on about the vanished days of sartorial splendor and how everyone looks like they're wearing pajamas when they're dressed in sweats. It's one of his pet peeves.”

“Maybe he's one of a pair, an identical twin. This is the evil twin, or should he be the good one? I can't decide.”

“It's just so awful. He's just so…so…so…”

“So what, Sky?”

“So average.”

That was it. That was the thing that had been bugging me. Max hadn't set my gay radar going. He exuded heterosexual normality under all the finickiness.

Then Sky started to cry. Again.

All those times I'd seen her so furious and sharp, and I'd wondered if she ever cried. Now it seemed she was starting to make up for lost time. She was getting wet and gushy. Wet and gushy was my classic routine, not hers. I put an arm around her shoulder.

“Sky, it's going to be okay. Really, it is. You're going to look back on all this and laugh.”

She nodded.

I rummaged in my purse and found a crumpled Kleenex. “It just looks used but it's clean really.”

She blew her nose loudly. The tip of it was bright red. Now I understood why she avoided crying when possible.

I said, “This is the first time I've come up against the straight married guy playing gay so that he can be seduced into being straight. At least that's how it seems to me. I don't know what else to say.”

Sky was already calm again. She looked resolute. “Well, I do. Let's go eat. I'm starving and if we sit here any longer I'll have a bad case of jelly bean mouth.”

We drove around for another hour then picked a place called The Spectacular All American Restaurant because the prices were good and there was a huge choice. Sky ordered lasagna and I ordered a triple bacon cheeseburger with fries.

“That's it,” she said. “I am through with men forever. I'm going to get my libido surgically removed.”

“Isn't that a bit drastic? I've heard it's an outrageously expensive operation. Where is your libido anyway?”

“Under your Freudian slip, I imagine. I can tell you one thing. When I figure out how, I'm getting it removed and taking it back for a refund.”

“They don't give you much for a used libido these days.”

“But mine's obviously defective, or it wouldn't have let me get involved with Max in the first place.”

“What are you going to do, Sky? You still have to work with him. He's your boss.”

“I don't know, but one thing's for sure. These are not things to ponder on an empty stomach.”

The waitress brought our orders. As soon as she'd set them down, she put a small bowler hat on her head and burst into the theme song from the musical “Cabaret.”

She belted it out at top volume until Sky held up her hand
and said, “EXCUSE ME. Excuse me. Excuse me for just one second.”

The girl stopped singing.

Sky whipped out a ten-dollar bill and waved it in front of her. “This will be your tip if you'll kindly piss off, unless we want food or drink. In which case, we'll snap our fingers in your direction. And tell the other waiters to stay out of our faces, too.”

The girl was completely crestfallen. She crept away to inform the others.

How were we to know that all the waiters and waitresses were aspiring musical comedy performers? That the restaurant was famous for showcasing undiscovered talent?

Sky said, “I can't stand people in my face unless I invite them to be in my face. And I can't stand musical theater if it isn't in a theater.”

We finished eating, paid the bill and got back in the car. We were on the road again by seven.

It was somewhere not far from the Canadian border, along a deserted stretch of highway, that the car began to sputter and die. Sky was able to pull over just in time.

“Shit,” she said. “No goddamn gas left.”

“Sky,” I wailed. “Whad'you mean no gas?”

“I'm sorry. I got so caught up with being mad at Max the Dickhead Daddy that I just forgot to look at the gas gauge.”

“You just forgot? I've got to get home. I've got a show to mount tomorrow. Paul's show. Paul Bleeker, the man I'm sleeping with. Well, technically not actually sleeping with but…”

“Listen. First, my advice: Do Not Panic. Take my phone and call The Mummy right now. Let her know the situation. If you leave it till the last minute it could be worse. Don't give her the chance to twist it around and use it against you later.”

I made the call on Sky's cellular.

Nadine said, “Where have you been? I've been trying to get in touch with you all day. I wanted to tell you not to come in tomorrow. Paul has decided to change all the plans at the eleventh hour. He's having the show set up by his own handlers. He's very particular about not revealing anything to anybody until the very last minute.”

“His own handlers?” I tried hard to imagine what they might look like.

“You'll be on duty for the opening. Friday night, you have to stop by at Schultz's at about six and make sure the trays of food are ready. Make sure they get the order right. They've been getting sloppy lately. Tell them we won't use them again if they don't get it right. The trays are to be delivered by seven. The champagne will be delivered earlier. Your share of the work will be during and afterward. You're pouring, cleaning up and doing the closing. And I want the place spotless. Is that clear?”

“Clear as the ice water that runs through your veins, Nadine.”

“Maybe you're not aware of it but you're expendable, Lucy.”

I pressed the phone's off button.

Change had to come soon. It just had to.

Sky and I wasted several hours waiting for the guys from AAA to come with enough gas to get us to an all-night gas station. At the border, the customs officials were sure we were hiding something and all but dismantled the car, coming up with some earrings Reebee had lost the year before and a few handfuls of jelly beans.

 

All Thursday, I practiced getting dressed for Paul's opening. I tried on nearly everything in my closet twice. I put makeup on and took it off until my face hurt. I took a three-hour bath, running more hot water whenever it got cold.

Sky still had my red dress at the Retro Metro. I toyed with the idea of wearing it to the opening, but something stopped me. I wasn't quite ready. It felt wrong. A red dress like that could be worn when you had nothing left to hide, when you just didn't care what the world thought. It wasn't fashionable but it was beautiful. It would be my day when I wore it, a day that belonged entirely to me. It wasn't the kind of dress you wore when you had to clean up afterward.

I opted for my usual cop-out artsy-fartsy dark look: hair up, black flats, black leotard and leggings covered by big black baggy silk shirt to hide bulges. Sort of like Audrey Hepburn in
Sabrina
when she cooks eggs for Humphrey Bogart. Well…okay. Add fifty pounds or so.

 

I don't know what made me call Sam. Maybe it was because Friday was such torture. The whole empty day stretching before me, nothing to do but worry about Paul Bleeker until evening. I thought I would get an answering machine and be able to listen to Sam's message voice. But he picked up and I had to invent something.

“It's me, Lucy Madison.”

“Lucy. Are you okay? Are you being threatened? Is Dirk there?”

“No, no. This is uh…an unofficial call. I…er…uh…wanted to tell you…I mean I forgot to mention last time we talked on the phone, I went to the FOBIA meeting. It was great. I got a bit of a shock though at first. All that square-dancing.”

“I thought you might get a kick out of it. Band was okay, wasn't it?”

“You were there?”

“Popped in for a few minutes,” said Sam.

I jumped in with, “Listen, um, there's going to be a big show opening tonight in the gallery where I work. Lots of
free food and champagne. It's an important artist. His name's Paul Bleeker.”

“I've heard of him.”

“Really? You have?”

“Yep.”

“I just thought, um, you might like…”

“Sure. If I get freed up in time I might take a run down there. Rogues' Gallery. In Gastown. Right?”

“You have a good memory.”

“One of the people in the office was mentioning it yesterday. She's something of an art buff, too.”

I stiffened to hear Sam say “She” then said, “It kicks off just before eight. I hope you can make it.”

“I'll do my best,” said Sam, “Thanks for letting me know. Bye, Lucy.”

“Bye, Sam.”

 

By the time I left the apartment and started toward Schultz's on Friday evening, I was a bundle of nerves. First of all, none of my friends would be there. Sky was at home, and she was going to have to have her telephone receiver surgically removed from her ear because she'd been stuck to it, talking things over with Max, since her return from Seattle.

I tried phoning Jacques's place, hoping he would come and give me moral support, but nobody was home and I had no idea where he was.

And Leo had a gig that night.

I wasn't sure what to expect. Knowing I would somehow be part of Paul Bleeker's exhibit made it worse. At first, I had thought it would be wonderful. I had planned to stand next to the portrait he'd done of me and look svelte, wait for peo
ple to notice the resemblance, then bask in the glory of being a famous artist's model.

I realized I was dreaming again. Svelte was out the window. So was standing around. Nadine wanted me to serve as a kind of mobile human trash can, ready to grab empty glasses, scrunched napkins, paper plates, the minute they were dropped or abandoned.

When I got to Schultz's, I ordered a cup of their good old-fashioned percolator coffee and checked the trays they'd prepared. They looked wonderful. And as usual, I was starving. On the excuse of having to approve the merchandise, I popped a prawn square into my mouth and declared it fantastic—like sex on tiny crackers. I told them to send the food on.

From there I walked to the gallery. There was a full moon that night. The air was warm, well…warm for Canada, salt-swept and heavy with pollen. I was brimming with a sense of expectation, a premonition of things to come, but of things with no name or shape. I was looking up at the sky, at the beginnings of the luminous moon making its way up and across, and wasn't looking where I was putting my feet. I nearly tripped over a homeless man lounging on a warm air vent. He stared up at me with weepy hound-dog eyes. In that moment, it was as though I had become him and he had become me. For a split second, we were inseparable, sharing the human chain, both of us as strong as its weakest link.

Then he sank back down onto his air vent and closed his eyes.