Betsy Burke - Lucy's Launderette

Standing in the doorway to the Sylvia’s lounge with Sky, I knew exactly what Frank was saying to that plumpish girl with the red hair, the girl sitting exactly where I used to sit. Frank was even wearing the same old rancid corduroy jacket he’d always worn, the same expression of superiority animating his face. The only difference was that his hair was shorter. Well, it would have to be, wouldn’t it? After what I did to it.

I turned around and dragged Sky away with me to some more respectable drinking establishment. I hate flogging dead horses.

The day I put an end to me and Frank, the day I discovered the overdraft at my bank and the fact that he’d forged my signature on a cheque, I’d planned on a lot of revenge, mostly cliché scenarios. I seethed and plotted all the way home. I thought of the woman who had cut off one sleeve of each of her husband’s suits and shirts, but that only works if the man has a vast, expensive wardrobe. I thought of feeding Frank one meal so full of chili pepper that it would put him in hospital.

When I got home, Frank wasn’t there.

His daily routine consisted of getting up after I’d left for work, then spending the day “writing his novel,” which was a project that required intense study of nearly all the shows on daytime television, and involved a lot of overflowing ashtrays and scrunched-up cheeseball bags. After that, he was off to the Sylvia Hotel for a few beers in his usual 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.