The Lives of Edie Pritchard

by Larry Watson

  SUNDAYS ARE USUALLY busy times at the Seventh Avenue Laundromat, but today Edie has the business and its machines all to herself. Though the front and back doors and all the windows are open, no cooling air moves through the screens. The laundromat is stifling, and though its heat is fragrant, scented with soaps and fabric softeners, it is heat nonetheless, like a heavy blanket that can’t be thrown off.

  The last load is drying now, and while those sheets and towels twine and separate in their slow-motion swirl, Edie folds and stacks Dean’s and her clothes on the long white table. Dean’s underwear is frayed and yellowing. Her own slips and brassieres look gray. The stitching on the patch on one of the short-sleeved shirts Dean wears on the job has come undone and is in danger of falling off. Edie presses down on the embroidery—Cheyenne Sporting Goods—as if the pressure of her finger is enough to secure the patch. She’ll have to sew it on. Again. And a cuff on one of the two pairs of Dean’s cotton work pants has come unstitched, and Edie will have to tack that down too. Two socks are without their mates. Edie closes her eyes and lowers her head as if nothing could be more dispiriting than one black sock and one brown sock. Then she comes to the only garments left to be folded, the powder blue shorts and the white sleeveless blouse she wore to Bentrock.

  The stains did not wash out. Dirt, where she sat down on the prairie next to Roy. Blood. Did she cradle his bleeding head to her chest? She must have. And she must have allowed his head to rest on her lap. These stains—great, faded wine-colored blotches shaped like unmapped continents—will never come out.

  She carries the shorts and the blouse to the back of the laundromat and drops them into a trash can.

  “Must be nice.”

  Edie turns around. Janice Twilly carries a wicker laundry basket, and her two daughters follow her—the older one, no more than five or six, toting a baby in diapers.

  “Hi, Janice,” says Edie.

  Janice nods in the direction of the trash. “Was that something that’d fit me?” she asks. The women are close to the same size, though Janice Twilly’s body looks as though it’s been put to harder use than Edie’s.

  “That’s not something you’d want. I couldn’t get the stains out.”

  Janice barks out a laugh. “You think some little stains would bother me?” She puts down her basket and heads for the bin. She takes out the blouse and holds it aloft.

  “Jesus,” says Janice. “Is this—?”

  Edie nods.

  Janice examines Edie carefully, looking perhaps for the wounds that might have produced this quantity of blood.

  Janice takes Edie’s shorts out of the trash as well. “Jesus,” she says again. “Did you put anything on these before you washed them?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Janice shakes her head. “That’ll just set the stains, you know.”

  “I suppose.”

  “My mom uses baking soda and vinegar. That’ll take out damn near anything.” She drapes the blouse and the shorts over the edge of the trash bin, where she can continue to appraise them.

  The baby begins to whimper, and Janice says to her older daughter, “Put her over on the table. And check her diaper.”

  The child obeys without question. “She’s dry,” she says to her mother.

  “But is she stinky?”

  The older girl shakes her head no.

  Janice reaches into her laundry basket and extracts a pack of Old Golds. She lights one and says, “I hear Roy Linderman was in a bad accident.”

  “Where did you hear that?”

  Janice exhales a stream of smoke. “My brother-in-law takes the X-ray pictures at the hospital.”

  “Then you know all about it.”

  Janice glances in the direction of her daughters and lowers her voice. “I heard you was with him.”

  “You heard wrong.”

  Janice’s forehead wrinkles with disappointment. “Roy isn’t yours?”

  “I’m married to Dean if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Shit. I know they ain’t identical, but I could never keep them two straight.”

  Edie stacks her folded laundry into a basket, and Janice begins to unload hers, the top layer of bright pinks, blues, and yellows of children’s clothing giving way to the mud and steel colors of the garments of working adults.

  “Go get the diaper pail,” Janice commands her older daughter.

  Janice finds an empty Coke can to use as an ashtray. “I knew you was married to one of them. And the other one wasn’t married. My cousin went out with him a few times. You know her? Kids used to call her Bug because of her eyes. But get this—Bug’s mom went out with him too. Yeah. Mother and daughter. I mean, come on.”

  “Roy,” says Edie. “That’s Roy you’re talking about. Not my Dean.”

  “I guess it’s just the names I couldn’t get straight.” Janice has her cigarette pinched between her lips while she sorts the laundry and blinks from the smoke rising into her eyes. “Steve’s brother says he’s busted up pretty bad.”

  “He’ll be laid up awhile, but he’ll be okay.”

  The baby starts to crawl toward the edge of the table, and Janice deftly turns the child around. “Why don’t you ask Roy about that sometime? Why don’t you ask him what it’s like to get with a gal and her mother both?”

  The dryer buzzes, and Edie looks toward the machine where the sheets and towels are fluttering and falling to a rest.

  “If Bug ever knew about her mom and him,” says Janice, “she’d flip out. I mean it.”

  Edie opens the dryer and pulls out the still-warm towels and sheets. She stuffs them into the basket without folding them.

  “And you wasn’t with him when he had the accident? I thought sure Steve’s brother said—”

  “I have to go.”

  Janice’s daughter comes in just as Edie’s going out. The child is carrying the diaper pail with two hands, and she gazes up at Edie as if she’s looking at a photograph in a magazine. Behind them Janice calls out, “I’m going to try to get them stains out. Then what if somebody sees me in your clothes? They might think I’m you!”

  FROM THE BOTTOM of the stairs, Edie looks up. Dean is right outside the door to their apartment, sitting on a milk crate and drinking a beer. When he sees her he puts down the bottle and descends the steps.

  “Did you lock yourself out?” asks Edie, allowing her husband to take the laundry basket from her.

  “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “And what—you were afraid I’d drop off the laundry and drive away?”

  He leads the way into their apartment and sets the laundry basket on the sofa. Edie has brought his beer and she hands it to him. “We have any more of these?” she asks.

  The curtains in the living room are drawn against the heat. This dusky hour could be the one before dawn or after sunset, the shadowy indeterminate minutes of beginnings or endings. Dean brings out two long-necked brown bottles of Schlitz beaded with condensation and hands one to his wife. Edie doesn’t drink but holds the bottle against her forehead.

  “I went to the hospital. He looks like shit. But he cares more about getting his teeth fixed than anything else.”

  Edie takes a long swallow from her beer. “Your brother’s vain. If he can’t turn on that smile, he’ll be helpless. So what if he has trouble walking for the rest of his life?”

  “Jesus, Edie.”

  Edie shrugs. Then she performs the maneuver that never fails to astound Dean, no matter how many times he’s seen it. She reaches behind and under her shirt, unclasps her brassiere, slips off its straps by reaching inside her sleeves and shrugging her shoulders, and then pulls the bra off under the front of her T-shirt, all without exposing any skin. She flips the undergarment on top of the clothes in the laundry basket. “What did you want to talk about?” she asks.

  For a moment Dean stares at the brassiere. Then he backs into the doorway separating the living room from the kitchen.

  “What happen
ed up in Bentrock?”

  “I told you. Roy bought the truck and on the way home he rolled it. The truck’s totaled. And your brother damn near was too.”

  “But you found him . . .”

  Edie looks up at the ceiling and then at her husband. She sets her jaw. After a long pause she begins to speak. “I was driving on ahead. I stopped at a little diner. I’d tell you the name of the town, but I have no idea what it was. Maybe it wasn’t even a town. A gas station and a diner. I had to pee. I was tired. I had a cup of coffee. I watched for Roy. And when he didn’t drive past, I drove back looking for him. If he hadn’t been wearing a white shirt, I don’t know that I would have seen him.”

  “Out on the prairie.”

  “Out on the prairie. That’s right.”

  Dean’s shaking his head slowly.

  “What?” Edie says. “What?”

  “Something you’re not telling me.”

  Edie starts to walk away, but the apartment is small. Almost every direction will eventually move her closer to her husband. She stops and faces Dean once again. “Like what?”

  “I just know there’s something you’re not talking about. And neither is Roy.”

  “You know. How do you know?”

  “Because I know my brother,” says Dean. “And I know you.”

  “Do you?” asks Edie. “Do you know me? I wonder. There’s a me who exists in your mind and you know her. But that’s not me. You’ve made her up and you seem to have a whole life for her.”

  “The thing is, Edie, I know how Roy feels about you.”

  “Do we have to go over this again? Your brother doesn’t like to admit defeat, and I’m a conquest he didn’t conquer. That’s all it is.”

  “He came close . . .”

  “Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.”

  “And love. Close counts in love.”

  “How many times have I told you? Jesus, why did I ever say anything about that. We kissed. In high school. And you’re still fucking obsessed with that.”

  “Still. It counts. It definitely counts.”

  “Don’t you get it?” Edie sets her beer down and walks close to Dean. “It’s not what he feels that matters. It’s what I feel.”

  “Roy usually finds a way to get what he wants.”

  “You don’t think I have anything to say about it?” She reaches out and grabs the waistband of Dean’s Levi’s, loose enough that she has no difficulty getting all her fingers inside. “Now come here,” she says.

  “I’m here.” He still has his beer in one hand, but he puts the other hand at the back of Edie’s neck.

  “Closer.”

  “If I was any closer, I’d be on the other side of you,” says Dean. It’s an old joke and not theirs alone, but in a moment like this every utterance becomes private and original.

  With her hand still inside the waistband of his jeans, Edie pulls him into the bedroom.

  The light in this room is even dimmer than in the living room. Edie pulls her T-shirt up and over her head. She tosses it toward the chair where their clothes usually end up when they undress. She wriggles out of her cutoffs, removing her underpants in the process.

  “Is this,” says Dean, “ just to shut me up?”

  Edie steps into his embrace and presses herself against him. “Shut up,” she says.

  THE SHEETS THAT were supposed to go back on the bed are still in the laundry basket, so Dean and Edie lie asleep on the bare mattress. The fan on the dresser blows across their naked bodies, their sweat long since cooled. Nightfall is complete now. The only light that enters their bedroom is from the bare bulb burning over the back door of the bakery. In only a few dark hours, the truck will pull into the alley for the day’s deliveries, releasing its exhaust along with the smell of baked goods through the apartment’s open windows.

  Even in sleep the muscles in Dean’s arms still quiver from the earlier effort of supporting his weight above his wife, naked and open beneath him. And even in the darkened room, Edie’s body, from breasts to hips, is as pale as the interior of a loaf of bread, torn open in one of Dean’s rare moments of terrible hunger.

  ROY WAKES UP from an afternoon nap to see his boss, Delbert Thayne, sitting at the bedside, puffing on a Pall Mall.

  “How are you doing?” Delbert says with an easy, unforced smile. His business card announces: Thayne Home and Appliance Center. But it’s the line below that says it all: Sales and Service with a Smile.

  A few days earlier Roy was moved to a private room, and a nurse he’s come to know looks in his open door as if to ask: “Are you up to this company?” Roy nods to her and she walks away.

  “I’ve been better,” Roy says.

  “My cousin Lee busted his leg worse than you. He was hunting and he stepped over a fence right into a hole. He said the crack sounded like a goddamn tree branch breaking. You hear yours?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “My point is, Lee’s doing fine. He was laid up for a while, but now there isn’t a thing he can’t do as good as before.” Delbert crushes out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table next to Roy’s bed. “I hear the dentist is coming this afternoon.”

  “Dr. Nord,” says Roy. “About time.”

  “That’s on me, you know. Whatever you need done, I’ll foot the bill.”

  “I appreciate that. Blue Cross doesn’t cover dental. But I guess I don’t need to tell you that.”

  Delbert waves away the gratitude. He says, “I got a few changes in mind for when you come back to the store too. First of all, we’ll have you working out of Bill Strobel’s office. That way you don’t have to try to clump around the floor on crutches or whatever the hell you’ll need to get around.”

  “Bill won’t like it.”

  Delbert waves this notion away as well. “Bill needs to get out with the merchandise and meet the customers. But he’ll steer them your way. We all will. And you can seal the deal like you always do.”

  While his boss talks, Roy Linderman closes his eyes, and the energy seems to drain from him as though hearing about these activities is more exhausting than the actual work.

  “Another change we’ll have to try,” Delbert continues. “We’ll cut back on your salary.” Roy registers no more protest than opening his eyes, but Delbert holds up a hand anyway. “Hold on,” he says. “Your commission won’t change. But we’ll need a little trial period to see if the sales hold up like always. And if they do, why, your salary will pop right back to where it was.”

  The room, like every room in every hospital, has a distinctive odor: floor wax and isopropyl alcohol mingling with the sweet scent of ether and the smell of vomit from patients waking from its effects. As if Delbert Thayne is the source of an odor Roy cannot tolerate, Roy turns his head away and toward the window.

  “And as long as I’m going on about changes,” Delbert says, “I’ll tell you what we’ll have no more of. No more of your romancing the ladies you sell a stove or refrigerator to. And right now you’re probably thinking who you fuck is none of my business, and usually you’d be right about that. But when you let the prospect of a piece of ass affect the price tag on my merchandise, it’s a different story.”

  Roped in place with traction and bound tight with plaster and sutures and bandages, Roy keeps staring out the window. Finally he says, in a voice as flat as window glass, “I quit.”

  “I heard what you said,” Delbert Thayne says. “But for a minute or so I’ll pretend I didn’t.”

  Roy’s head turns listlessly back toward Delbert Thayne. “I quit,” he says again.

  THE DOOR IS open no more than a foot, and through this space Edie peers in. “Roy?”

  The only light in the room is from the sunset seeping through the slats of the blinds. All the room’s whites—bedding, bandages, charts, and plaster cast—have darkened to tones of gray, and the actual grays—chair, lamp, bed stand, locker—look as though they’re about to vanish in the shadows.

  “Edie?”

&n
bsp; She slips through the opening and takes a few cautious steps into the room. “Did I wake you?”

  “No, no. I was just—is Dean with you?”

  “He’s at work.”

  “Oh, sure. Sure. The store’s open tonight. Sorry. I’m losing track of the days in here.”

  Edie steps farther into the room but stops at the foot of the bed. “How are you this evening?”

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes. Did you come from work?”

  “I had to stop at my mom’s,” she says. “She’s not feeling well.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  Edie shrugs. “Just a cold.”

  Roy tries to sit up but raises himself only a few inches. “What’s happening at the bank?”

  “Irene Easter, this woman I work with? She has a son who just got his notice to show up for his physical, and Irene’s sure he’ll get sent to Vietnam.”

  Roy laughs. “Hey, that’s one worry I won’t have. The doctor says I’ll probably end up with one leg a couple inches shorter than the other. I’ll be walking like Chester from Gunsmoke.”

  “Oh, don’t, Roy,” Edie says, shaking her head.

  “Don’t what? Talk about being a goddamn cripple?”

  “You’re not going to be crippled.”

  “Whatever you say. Hey, could you get my cigarettes out of the drawer here? The nurse’s idea of keeping this place clean is to put everything out of my reach.”

  As Edie walks to the bed stand, she’s subject to Roy’s scrutiny. “How do they feel about your short skirts at the bank?”

  “I stand behind the counter all day. You know that.”

  “And do you notice the bank officers looking for any excuse to walk around behind the counter?”

  She gets out his pack of Camels, shakes out a cigarette, and raises it to his lips. If he has to be disabled in some way, she thinks, why couldn’t it be his vision that’s affected? If he were blind or nearly so, his remarks, his unrelenting remarks, about her appearance would finally cease. And how different their relationship would be then.