Lucy's Launderette. Betsy Burke
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corner before I got home, giving me plenty of time to clean up his mess and prepare dinner. Then he’d saunter in around seven, full of the local lager and himself, ready for his meal.
The night of the forged cheque, I didn’t prepare anything. Food was the furthest thing from my mind. When I saw that he hadn’t come home yet, I went out again and sat in the cinema at the end of the street. It was running a Fellini festival, so for a while I slouched in the seat and watched large lazy women and small horny men cavort relentlessly. I decided to go home when the subtitles started to blur before my eyes.
I approached my building by the back way. The two homeless men who often slept in the Dumpster—I’d privately nicknamed them Didi and Gogo—were there with their shopping carts and plastic bags full of junk, or rather, their worldly goods. They were ready to settle in for the night. It was September and just starting to get chilly.
I waved. They waved back.
Inside, I found Frank sprawled out on the double bed, facedown and snoring. He was wearing nothing but his dingy boxer shorts. The sight of him made me furious. Tears began streaming down my face, which rage had turned the color of a ripe tomato. I went into the living room and screamed into the sofa cushions. If I had been a Fellini character, I might have had the nerve to wake him up and smack him around directly. But I was just Lucy, about to be Frankless, and that meant some act of quiet treachery.
I was careful not to make any noise, which wasn’t easy because I was sobbing and hiccupping. I went around the apartment and gathered up all of Frank’s stuff, his clothes and books and general rubbish, and heaped them into a pile by the bedroom window. The window faced the back with the Dumpster and Didi and Gogo. As I was building the pile, Frank snorted and gnashed his teeth a couple of times in his sleep but didn’t wake up.
I left the mound by the window and went to get the scissors from my sewing box. While Frank slept, I sheared a chunk of hair out of the middle of the back of his head, as short as I could get it without rousing him. His hair was shoulder-length at the time and he was quite vain about it. I opened the bedroom window and let the lock of hair waft down to the street below. Didi and Gogo saw me. I waved to them, still silently blubbering, and began to drop Frank’s things out the bedroom window. They hurried over and gathered up as much of his stuff as they could carry or cram into their shopping carts. When I’d finished, I yelled so that the whole neighborhood could hear, “Godot has arrived.”
Frank woke up with a start and said, “Wuzza?”
I threatened him with my aerosol-pump can of pepper spray, told him to put on his disgusting corduroy jacket and leave. He staggered out of the apartment in a stupor, wearing nothing but that jacket and his boxer shorts, and the last I saw of him, he was playing tug-of-war for his possessions with Didi and Gogo at the back of the building.
“That was a bit naughty of you,” said Reebee. “You realize you had to go through it. Being with Frank had its purpose although it’s usually a while before we know what that purpose is. Did you press charges?”
“No. I was too embarrassed. I didn’t want anybody to know how stupid I’d been by putting up with such a lout. I thought I was supporting the next Michael Ondaatje.”
Reebee smiled. “I grew up in the sixties and seventies, Lucy sweetheart. You and Sky, you girls, your generation is miles ahead of mine. I fell for men just because they had nice threads and longer, nicer hair than mine. Now tell me about your dreams.”
Reebee always asked about my dreams. When I first started taking my problems to her, I was always asking whether or not I was going crazy. It was my private terror, that the genetic pool would try to drown me, that I’d become like Dirk, put on a Supergirl costume and start wandering around town harassing people, and not even realize I was doing it. According to Reebee, my dreams could gauge my mental state. In fact, it was Reebee who first encouraged me to start painting them all those years ago.
So I told her about the one I’d had the night before.
Mother was having a big house party. My father was nowhere around, in fact I didn’t even know he existed. It was sort of like our house in Cedar Narrows but it was better. There were more rooms and conservatories and rolling lawns. Drunken guests were sprawling everywhere and having a good time and I was aware that they’d been there all night, that it was light out and morning was coming. I went into the dining room and there was my mother and her new husband sitting at a very elegant table, just the two of them, about to have breakfast, like the king and queen of some land where people did nothing but party. The table was set with white linen and silverware, croissants and orange juice and caffe latte.
My mother’s new husband was Ugo Tognazzi, the actor who was in La Cage aux Folles, the macho one living with the transvestite performer.
In the dream, I was quite pleased with my mother’s choice of husband. When I came up to the table, UgoTognazzi told me that he had decided to give me a present for my high school graduation. He was holding a Victoria’s Secret catalogue and pointing at pictures of fancy black lace underwear. I told him that I’d graduated from high school years ago. So then he said, “University graduation then, you did graduate from university, didn’t you?” And in the dream I honestly couldn’t remember if I had or not. I had the sensation that there was a lot of unfinished business left over from university days.
Ugo Tognazzi said, “Look, this is what I’m going to give you.” It was the same shawl that keeps showing up in my other dreams: the white silk and lace one embroidered with flowers and vines and birds. I was touched by his gesture because it was beautiful. The perfect gift.
Reebee was nodding and smiling.
“What do you think it means?” I asked her.
“Hell if I know,” she said. “You’re the one who’s got to figure it out. But there is one interesting point in there.”
“What’s that?”
“Ugo Tognazzi. You like your mother’s choice of husband, a gay man in the movie, but in actual fact, straight in real life. The actor I mean.”
Then she left the room and came back with a large pad and oil pastels. “Draw the shawl,” she said. “Show me what it looks like.” I hesitated. It was like a smack in the face. It should have been so simple to just pick up the pastel and draw, but I realized that with all that had been going on in my life, it had been at least six months since I’d actually drawn a single line. Reebee looked at me knowingly and nodded as if to say, go on, you can do it.
“While you’re sketching, tell me about Jeremy’s girlfriend. Sky mentioned that there was some problem but I want to hear it from you.”
“Connie.”
I couldn’t say her name without feeling a twinge in the pit of my stomach.
“Jeremy wanted me to keep an eye out for Connie. A request from Jeremy was something you didn’t ignore when he was alive. And I know if I ignore this one now that he’s dead, he’ll come back to haunt me in my dreams. Connie’s pregnant. The thing is, she told me she used to use heroin. Jeremy met her in Las Vegas but I don’t know where she’s from before that. She looks like an old showgirl. One that never quite made it. Not sunny enough, if you know what I mean.”
Reebee’s expression was deadpan.
“Reebee, I can’t explain it. When I’m around Connie I feel like I’m going to be sucked into a black hole. She’s one of the scariest people I’ve ever met and I can’t even say why. But it’s Jeremy’s baby she’s having. That’s if everything goes okay. She was smoking her head off last time I saw her and who knows what else she might be doing while we’re not watching. She looked terrible when I saw her.”
“Go and see her again, Lucy. It was what Jeremy wanted. He wanted someone to watch out for her and the someone he chose is you. That’s a responsibility.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Well, you could ignore your responsibility and just not bother, but can you imagine how