and she was.

Tap-tap-tap.  She knocked the brush gently on the edge of the sink after cleaning around its smooth, white circumference.  Glanced alongside the toilet's recess to check the surfaces there, clucking softly to herself at the already-gathering hordes of dog hair, swiping at them haphazardly, preventing herself from looking harder or further for such things.  Just keep moving, she muttered to herself, just don't look too close, just do the job.  Clean-clean-clean, wash the dishes, finish the toilets, sort the clothes, remember to grab his hamper bag, run downstairs at a gallop, jump over the last two steps, land funny on the left foot and remember that time the ankle was ballooned ridiculously out for so long.  Too long.  Old wounds that should've been given proper healing time and attention and weren't, and now though they appear resolved, linger beneath the skin.

No matter.

Dash to the machine, slam the lid with a bang! upward, begin the sorting while humming some old song that used to matter and now there are only lyrical fragments that see-saw in and out of the melody.  She knew she had to get to the store, today, because, calamity!, they were out of milk. 

Recall the forgotten tub-cleaning she'd planned, and rear up from the sorting task like a wild mustang, bearing across a field, low, rushed, at a tear, mane flashing dark and spittle-bedecked, its oats the premise of the tale.  Laughing a little at the incongruity of the analogy.  On her way back up the stairs, a little more cautious this time on account of the ankle, the old balloon still prominent in her head, the balloon a salmon pink, she caught up one of the toys left on the landing, pinching it in her grasp.  It would be joined by other items, she knew, because it was always so. 

At the store, the boy at the check stand reminded her, lightning quick, visceral-gut-punch, of an old beau, a rock-band-academic, a double-major twat, his manner and hair as similar as a photo in her archives she'd suddenly run across.  She avoided eye contact, kept her manner light, pulled her fifteen-year-old pilled fleece coat tight around her, tried to remember that this was not he, that he she held in her imagination for so many years, two years, two years too many.  Just some young checker, some new version of him, and then the irony of this store, the memory of its having been a laundromat in a previous incarnation, that she had gone with him, nay, driven him to this former-laundry-cum-grocery so he could wash his clothes and squeeze her ego into a slightly smaller compression of its former shape, all at once.  It flashed before her, she flashed an impromptu smile and looked straight into this young man's eyes and straightened, slackening her grip on the old coat, his eyes shining back at hers with a recognition that surprised her.  It was imagined, she knew, but somehow, he understood, she guessed, that she was currently in good stead with her self, her building of layers of self, that there was pride to be sussed from between those waxen images laid to rest alongside the old archived snapshots, and cobwebs and slivers of self-hatred.

Her head high and even a little haughty as she heaved her bags of groceries and stumped out from the ex-laundry and into the fresh, wet air of a different Portland than the one it had been when this was a laundry and love was encountered and flipped on its back and gone sour and ebbed into a nothing she no longer knew.

Lugging the groceries toward the crackly-painted bumper of the old van, her head lowered, she remembered who she was.  His mother, his wife, her friend, her daughter, her self.  This self.  This now.  This van and this old coat and these gray hairs and this wet, fresh, chilled air, and these aging limbs and this life.

She climbed into the van.  Started it after pumping the gas several times to get it going.

Motored away, away from the ex-laundry and toward the current house, checking over her shoulder for traffic on Division Street before lumbering into its midst.

Comments

[jaelithe]

Not pathetic at all.

Glad to see you sounding your barbaric yawp, etc. to the world once more.

And you are being so prolific you are making me feel like a slacker. *sigh*

But I will finish those garden posts, dammit. Just for you.

[Mary]

You're a f***ing rock star. This was awesome.

[Nancy]

You are so brilliant when you write. It leaves me breathless.

[Julie Pippert]

Oooohhhh ahhhhh

Living so many demands and timelines at once and then able to convey them so eloquently...my second bow to a master today.

[Gwen]

Is it really Division Street? Because that's a damn fine metaphor juxtaposed with ex-laundry and current house.

[deb]

it is, indeed, Division Street.

it felt right to put in the real name, although I hesitated to do so, but it didn't reveal itself as metaphoric until you pointed it out.

thanks, G.

[Jenny, Bloggess]

Have you ever noticed how many of your female characters are so wonderfully multi-layered from being battered by life but soldier on, both stronger and weaker from being broken?

I think it says a lot about you, my friend.

[slouching mom]

beautiful. just beautiful.

[Kyla]

Amazing, you.