Drive-Through Laundry  by Cherri Randall                                            

---

            
            There was a guy in a tuxedo handing out fresh carnations just inside the door.  The sign on the front of the grocery store had changed names about four times in fifteen months.  The latest owners were celebrating the completion of their extensive remodeling project with cake, punch, drawings, coupons, hot dogs, and flowers. 

            
            "This is nice," Mallorca told the guy.  "It's been eight years since a guy gave me flowers.  Will you marry me?"

            
            The guy smiled and held up his left hand.  "It's against the law to have more than one wife."

            
            "I understand."  If it wasn't there'd be some men who'd line them up like dominoes.  She headed for the produce department for a bag of instant salad.  In the frozen section she bought broccoli in cheese sauce, the expensive name-brand because, after all, it was worth it to get Melissa and Chucky to eat vegetables.  Twelve-packs of soda were on sale cheaper than bottled water.  She put the limit of two-cases in the cart.  One twelve-pack was Fresca, for me.  I'm really going to lose some weight now that the divorce is final.  Some boy who wasn't even born when Mallorca was in high school bagged her groceries and carried them out to the trunk of her nine-year-old Honda. 

            
            "Mallorca," the boy said.  "That's a pretty name, ma'am."

            
            She followed his eyes to her name tag from the let's-get-acquainted PTA luncheon.  Why couldn't you give me a normal name like Cathy or Lisa?  Because, my little Junebug, you were born with pearls for your birthstone and my favorite pearls are Mallorcan.  Oh mother!  She looked at the boy closer.  He looked vaguely Slavic.  Do you speak Castillian Spanish?  It's pronounced Mayorka.  

            
            "Thank you."  She smiled as she slammed the lid of the trunk down.  She didn't mean to be rude, but you had to slam it to catch the clasp since she'd backed into a dumpster.  What makes you think I want some young puppy like you to call me ma'am?  Women peak in their thirties, punk. 

            
            In the driver's seat she checked the receipt.  Nearly three bucks for Roma tomatoes.  I hate picking tomatoes.  Would you rather pick the green beans and I'll pick the tomatoes?  She hurried with the tomatoes so she could help Momma finish the beans. When I grow up I'm never going to eat tomatoes.

            
            At the bottom of the receipt the balance on her EBT card read thirty-seven dollars and change.  It's only the tenth of the month.  Let me just tell you, Mr. President.  And let me just tell you, Members of Congress.  When a woman has to live in HUD housing and use her child support for utilities and her part-time wages to keep the kids in Payless sneakers she is going to buy those kids stupid stuff every month like candy and bubble-gum and broccoli with built-in cheese sauce just because she can.  Just because she wants to say yes just this one time each month.  She drove to the day care automatically, not noticing the other drivers, while she calculated the contents of her freezer against the end of the month.  No matter how many coupons she clipped or how much comparison shopping she did, there would be a couple of days before the first when it would be Ramen noodles and Kool-Aid and day-old bread.  People are starving in Siberia, Mallorca.  People are starving in Bosnia, Melissa.  Heck, people are starving in America, but don't tell my children yet.  Last night she wanted to make tuna salad for her lunch but the tuna was gone, all five cans.  After much grilling she elicited a confession.  Momma, it was for Marshmallow.  I know I can't have a pet but he's not really mine, he's nobody's.  Can't I feed him?  Then she remembered the PTA luncheon.  She didn't have two dollars left for lunch in the cafeteria unless she dipped down into the laundry money.  While she was there she got enough for a bag of generic dry cat food. 

            
            At the day care Melissa's mouth was bleeding where Randy hit her.  It was always Randy.  Randy was given a time out the supervisor said.  Great.  Forty-seven time-outs this semester.  Maybe the next one will make a difference. 

            
            When they arrived home all the good parking spots in front of their apartment building were gone.  She had to call the kids back to the car to help unload the trunk.  On the way up the stairs Chucky dropped a twelve-pack of soda.  The cans went rolling everywhere.  One of them exploded and splashed caffeine-free Dr. Pepper all over the wall of the breezeway. 

            
            "Make a sandwich while I clean the wall," she told them, scattering the bags on the kitchen counter until she found the one with the Mr. Turkey ham and wheat bread. 

            
            "Sandwiches again?"  Chucky said.

            
            "I only like turkey breast," Melissa whined.  "Not turkey ham."

            
            "Look, I've had a long day too.  Just be glad you have it.  People are starving  --”

            
            “-- in Bosnia!" both her children chorused.

            
            She started the laundry next.  The basement facility was a dank little hole that always smelled like hot dirty clothes.  The decor was pre-war cinderblock and the fragrance was compliments of Mallorca's many teenaged neighbors who believed a washing machine could adequately launder a load of clothes so long as the lid could still be closed.  Hate to see some of these people at an all-you-can-eat buffet.  Her student-worker check would be in sometime during the next five days.  She would be able to do laundry for three more days.  After that, it would pile up till she restocked the quarters.  Which means I'll have to do it Friday night if paychecks take five days or I'll be out of underwear.  What kind of woman can't afford more than three pairs of panties at one time?  She could buy fast food and instant salad and microwave dinners, if she was willing to spend the extra money for the luxury of some extra time.  But there was no getting around laundry, not the time spent lugging the basket up and down the stairs or the money lost playing those slots in the commercial machines with roll after roll of quarters.  Someone should invent drive-through laundry.

            
            Mallorca walked back upstairs to the apartment.  When she walked in, the table was covered with empty cans and bread crusts and one fluffy white cat eating a slice of turkey ham.  She could hear the jingling bouncing noises of Mario Brothers, or whoever was cool now, and decided to clear the table off herself, thankful the kids were occupied for a few moments without squabbling.  She sliced onions and tomatoes and warmed up leftover lentils.  She sat down to have a nice quiet dinner.  Marshmallow wound himself around her left leg. 

            
            "Are you a kitty or a tom?" she asked the creature.

            
            Miaawwooo. 

            
            She forgot the salt and pepper.  The cat followed her into the kitchen.  She picked it up and rubbed the ears.  Put him down.  "You are a tom.  Funny name for a guy."  Walking back to the dining area she noticed the cardinal red carnation on the floor, stepped on and ruined.  She picked it up and inhaled the scent of the crushed petals.  Well, it wasn't worth waiting eight years for.  The last flowers she received were pink, when she had Melissa.  With Chucky she got blue helium balloons.  She smelled the carnation again, blinking fast.

            
            The beans were cold already.  She ate them anyway.

            
            The clothes made a small mountain on the floor next to the couch.  She folded while the kids did homework on the dinette.  She smiled when she came to Chucky's shorts.  He wanted to wear boxers like his father.  She hadn't been able to find boxers in boys' sizes.  I looked everywhere.  I'm sorry, Baby, I couldn't find them.  Well, you'll always be my baby.  Charles wore boxers.  It had surprised her the first time.  She was not a virgin, but not promiscuous either.  She had never even contemplated what kind of shorts different men preferred.  Since the final decree came in the mail last month, she had considered every man who crossed the threshold of her life, even if it was only in a movie.  Boxers or briefs?  You look like a bikini man to me, Monsieur Depardieu.  Yesterday, at work in the biology lab, Victoria came by to gloat about the new love in her life.  Mallorca listened for a while and finally asked her whether he was a brief or boxer man.  Victoria laughed. 

            
            "If you really want to know, he doesn't wear either kind."

            
            In that case I didn't really want to know and, ouch, what about pubic hair in zippers or is Romeo bald there too?

            
            Not that she had anything against bald men.  If she had time, she would love to watch Star Trek, the episodes with Patrick Stewart.  Yummy.  It might be worth it to do his laundry. 

            
            Finally Victoria asked Mallorca about her love life. 

            
            "Same as always.  Still in love with Dr. Coates."  The lab director overheard this.

            
            "You know he has a significant other," he mentioned.

            
            "Yes, I know.  They've been together seven years." 

            
            "Oh.  Well, just so you know what you're getting into." 

            
            I'm not getting into anything except the most fantastic fantasies in my spare time, which is typically about three minutes at four o'clock in the morning every other Friday.  So I set the alarm and if I can wake up I think about Dr. Coates, only I call him Jack at four a.m. of course, and we have perfectly meshed fetishes until I go back to sleep and someone else gets stuck with his laundry.  As a card-carrying member of Mensa, I have learned there are advantages in choosing unattainable men. 

            
            At nine o'clock she finally got the kids to bed.  Chucky's breath smelled like Halloween candy, the surplus of which was supposed to be hidden, but the number of secret caches was finite in a small apartment.  She yelled at him to brush his teeth.  He was over the age limit for the pediatric dentist now, and their HMO didn't have another dentist on the list within fifty miles.

            
            "Get off my case, Woman!"

            
            When did it become okay to yell at me?  Is this what you learned from your father? 

            
            "Look Buster, it's not like I don't do my share around here.  You can at least take responsibility for your own dental hygiene.  I cleaned up the Dr. Pepper."

            
            "You bought it!"

            
            "You drink it!"

            
            "So?"

            
            Her hand smacked his face like a striking cobra, numbing her palm with the venom of anger. 

            
            "Go to bed!  Forget about the teeth!  Get back in the bed this minute!"  She was shaking, blazing, shrieking.  He stared at her, his eyes trying to spill over like two fishbowls tipped to the rims, his small hand holding his cheek.  She ran out of his room.

            
            I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry.  I forget when you talk that big you're still my baby.  I'm sorry.  God, I am sorry just look what I learned from your father.

            
            Mallorca could not go back in there till she was completely back in control.  She picked up her text book, "Evolutionary Concepts in Biology," to study -- anything to keep her mind off what she had just done.  She looked down and noticed the PTA name tag still on her sweater.  Do you think the board of officers would revoke my position as Hospitality Chairman over this?  Maybe if I would have told them to find someone else I wouldn't be this stressed out.  But she knew better.  It wasn't any one thing.  It was the combination.  She went to Chucky's room.  He was asleep with the lamp still on.  She felt the lava rise up from her heart again, felt it in her eye sockets and turned away.  The video game contraption was scattered across the floor, a gift from Charles.  I did all the work so I divorced him and now he can afford a new car and stuff for the kids and I am still doing all the work.  If it was against the law to marry a moron I'd have made parole by now.  What's wrong with this picture?

            
            It was hard being the good parent.  Daddy lets us stay up late.  Daddy buys Happy Meals.  Daddy rents videos.  Daddy has a pretty girlfriend.  She's 23. 

            
            It was really hard to hide her feelings from the kids.  They told her about their time with their father, although Charles would not believe she didn't solicit the information.  Believe me, I don't want to know.  The flowers he bought for Carlotta.  Gee, I got flowers from him too.  I only had to have a baby to get my bouquet.  What'd you do?  Did He-Man finally realize his Greek fantasies?  The places they went to eat, the movies they saw.  He went with you and Carlotta to a movie and neither Steven Seagal nor Jean Claude van Damme was in it?  Jeez, I bet he even shaves on weekends and puts the seat back down.  Will wonders never cease?

            
            Mallorca went out with two guys in the months since Charles moved out.  To be fair, one was 22.  Almost young enough to be a grocery bagger.  Almost young enough to be my son.  Technically, I could have had him at 14.  The other guy arrived early to pick her up for their first and only date.  The sitter showed up late.  Chucky stuck his tongue out at him.  Melissa asked him if he was somebody's grandpa.  He made a face that might have been a grin or might have been a grimace but whichever it was it caused the furrows across his forehead to simultaneously deepen and plump up.  On the way home from the dollar-a-pop movie and McDonalds he got pulled over for a traffic violation.  In the dashboard light she noticed according to his license he had shaved a decade off his age.  He had also said her children would be okay as soon as they had a man in their lives to enforce some discipline.  I certainly think someone who lies to me would be a great candidate to instill discipline in my children.  Melissa was right, you old fart.   Between working and going to school and being a mom, there was no room for anyone anyway.  She looked down at her toes, the polish on the nails worn off and grown-out so that only a few streaks of fuchsia were visible.  Eight more weeks.  The semester is over in five weeks and then two weeks with just me and the kids for Christmas and then they go back to school and I have seven days all to myself.  I'll spend the whole week buffing and polishing and waxing and waning.  She opened the blind to look for the moon.  Lightning streaked across her vision and she realized a storm was blowing up.  Worse than the one in here.  I never noticed.  She went downstairs and stood in the middle of the yard.  She felt like a snowman.  A snowwoman.  I was snow white, but I drifted.  Her teeth chattered.  The wind carried away her screams while the rain washed away her scalding tears.  She was soaked while she watched the sky; green lightning exploded when it hit a transformer on the north end of town. 

            
            Back in the apartment, she towel-dried her hair and put on her flannel gown.  She looked at the biology book.  She had four chapters to read and a report to write.  What's the worst thing that will happen if I don't get it done?  Will it mean the difference between an A and a B?  Will it mean the difference between yelling and not yelling tomorrow night?  She crawled into bed without turning the light on.  Her hand brushed against someone and the palm automatically smoothed the hair back from her son's forehead.  She curled against him. 

            
            The next morning she did not remember any dreams about doing Jack's laundry.