by John Cariani
And then she headed back inside and went back down to the laundry room. When she got there, the radio was playing a song about what happens when you break up with someone in a small town. And she danced a little and wondered what her life would be like if she broke up with Eric—but then realized that she wasn’t quite ready to wonder about that, so she stopped wondering about it and sat on the bench and read the other articles in her YOU! magazine.
She read the one about the jeans.
And one about how makeup could save her life.
And one about gratitude.
And one about healthy versions of everyone’s favorite desserts. They looked gross.
And the next thing she knew, the dryers’ buzzers were cutting through a song about what love isn’t, alerting her that her clothes were dry. And she got up and unloaded her clothes and dumped them on the clothes-folding table and then went back to the dryers and cleaned out the lint filters for the next user, because that was a house rule, and Marvalyn was a rule follower.
Then she grabbed the ironing board and unfolded it, because she had to iron Eric’s work clothes. The old contraption resisted and screeched at Marvalyn as she did, and she made a mental note to WD-40 the thing the next time she used it.
Once the ironing board was set up, she got the iron off the shelf where the pay-what-you-CAN was. Then she went to the deep stainless-steel sink by the washing machines and filled the iron’s water chamber and then plugged it in and set it on the ironing board and started folding her laundry while she waited for it to steam. She folded towels and T-shirts and underwear and sweatshirts and sweatpants and jeans, and then she paired the socks, and then placed what she had folded and paired in her laundry basket.
The iron had been sighing with steam for a while, letting Marvalyn know that it was ready to be employed, so she gathered up Eric’s work clothes—khaki pants and navy and gold polo shirts with the Dollar Discount Plus! emblem on the left breast pocket—and prepared to iron them. They were wrinkle-free, but Marvalyn ironed them anyway. Because she wanted Eric to look good for work. Or as good as he could look. His work clothes were getting too small for him. She wondered when he had gotten fat. He was skinny when they had met.
After she ironed the five Dollar Discount Plus! shirts, she hung them on a rod above the clothes-folding table and concentrated on pressing a perfect crease into one of Eric’s pant legs—as if that crease was going to get Eric promoted from assistant manager to full-fledged manager. Even though Eric said he didn’t want a promotion—because his job at the Dollar Discount Plus! was temporary. He wanted to get a job at the paper mill. There was an opening on the machine that made butter wrappers.
But Marvalyn encouraged him to inquire about a management position at Dollar Discount Plus!, because if he could become a manager there, they would be set.
And then she suddenly stopped ironing. And just stared at those khaki pants. And then slammed the iron down on the ironing board. And crumpled the pants up into a ball and tried to make them as wrinkled as you could make a pair of wrinkle-free pants. And chucked them into her laundry basket.
She wouldn’t have done this had she known that Steve Doody, another tenant at Ma Dudley’s, had come down to switch his laundry from the washers to the dryers. He had started his wash when Marvalyn had gone out to smoke the last cigarette she would ever smoke. And then had gone back to his room.
Steve was surprised to see Marvalyn in the laundry room. It was a Friday night, and people weren’t usually in the laundry room doing their laundry on Friday nights. Because Friday nights were when most people were out doing something fun. Like going to the Moose Paddy. Which is what Steve’s brother, Rob, was doing on the night when all the extraordinary things did or didn’t happen. He went there every Friday night to have dinner and drink beer and play darts and pool and foosball with his friends. And Steve stayed home and did the laundry—one of the few chores he was able to complete unsupervised.
Steve recognized Marvalyn as the woman who had moved into Ma Dudley’s a couple of weeks ago. But he didn’t know her name. Because he hadn’t met her yet. And he hadn’t met the man she moved in with yet, either.
He stopped and stared at her for a while, hoping she’d turn and see him.
And wanted to meet her. He liked meeting people.
But she seemed angry. She was pulling a bunch of polo shirts off their hangers and crumpling them up and chucking them into her laundry basket. So Steve decided to not bother her. And he sat down on the bench facing the washing machines and opened up a three-hundred-page black marble composition book he had brought with him that was labeled THINGS TO BE AFRAID OF and started studying it while he waited for his wash to finish.
Meanwhile, Marvalyn unplugged the iron and shook the water out of it into the sink. And then, while she was coiling its cord, her wrist touched the iron’s hot surface. “Dammit!” she hissed, and she dropped the iron, and it bounced the way heavy metal-and-plastic items bounce. Marvalyn grimaced and shook her hand rapidly back and forth as if that would make the pain go away.
Steve wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but then Marvalyn said, “Ow!”
And then Steve knew exactly what had happened: Marvalyn had hurt herself. He had learned a long time ago that ow is something people say when they hurt themselves.
He closed the composition book he had been studying and put it in a black backpack that he always had with him. And he pulled another black marble composition notebook out of it labeled THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU and opened it to a page about two-thirds of the way through and took a stubby pencil out of his shirt pocket and added the word irons to it.
Then he looked at Marvalyn, who had made her way to the sink so she could soothe her burn with cold water and then picked the iron up off the floor, inspecting it. It seemed to be fine. It said it was heavy-duty. And then she licked her right index finger and touched it to the iron to see if it was still hot, and it wasn’t. It was only a little warm. So she wrapped the cord around it and returned it to the shelf where it lived.
Then she scooped her laundry basket up and held it under one arm and tried to get the ironing board to collapse into its flat resting position. But it was arthritic and screeched again and wouldn’t flatten, so Marvalyn had to drop her laundry basket and focus on getting it closed. And Eric’s work shirts and pants spilled onto the floor in a messy clump. Marvalyn grabbed the spilled clothes and chucked them into the basket. They were wrinkle-free. They’d be fine.
And then she refocused her attention on closing the ironing board. It seemed that the only way to get it to collapse fully was to stand it up on its feet, press the lever under the ironing surface to release the legs, and then gently guide it—with gravity’s help—into a flat, closed position on the floor. Which she had finally managed to do. Then she picked up the ironing board and slung it under her arm and turned around to put it back where it lived. As she did so, the flat face of the ironing board walloped something. She didn’t know what. But whatever it was—she had hit it pretty hard. And she turned toward whatever it was she had hit. And saw nothing but a gangly kid—or maybe he was a young man—flopping onto the floor. And she gasped and realized that he was the thing she had hit. She had been so absorbed in her ironing and in her thoughts and in her country music that she was completely unaware that there had been anyone else in the laundry room.
“Oh, no!” she cried, dropping the ironing board and rushing to Steve. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Oh, honey, I didn’t see you, are you okay?!?”
“Yeah,” Steve replied. He hopped to his feet as if nothing had happened and looked for his book of THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU, which had been sent flying.
“No, you’re not! I smashed you with the ironing board, I wasn’t even looking! Are you hurt?”
“No,” said Steve, having located his THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU book—which had skittered under one of the clothes-folding tables.
Meanwhile, Marvalyn frantically tried to make everything right.
Like she always did. It was her best quality. And her worst. “Oh, you must be!” she insisted. “I just clocked you! Where did I get you?”
“In the head,” said Steve.
“In the head!?!” cried Marvalyn, deeply concerned that she had injured this poor guy. “Oh, God!”
Steve was making his way back to the bench, having retrieved his THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU book from under the clothes-folding table.
“Okay, listen,” ordered Marvalyn, “I need you to sit down and stop moving.”
Steve obeyed and sat down and stopped moving.
“Come here,” ordered Marvalyn, going to Steve. Which confused him. Because when you tell someone to come here, they’re supposed to go to you. And not the other way around. “Where in the head did I get you, exactly?” continued Marvalyn.
“Um, right here, I think.” Steve pointed to the top of his head.
“Oh, no,” Marvalyn groaned. “Are you okay?” she asked, sitting down and checking Steve’s eyes, and then holding her index finger in front of them and moving it from side to side to see if he could follow it. “Are you okay?” she asked again, trying to think of what else she had learned about diagnosing head injuries in her one semester in the nursing program at Northern Maine Community College in Presque Isle.
“Well, is there any blood?” asked Steve.
“No,” answered Marvalyn, perplexed by the question. She was wondering why he would have thought there might be blood. Sure, he had suffered a good hit to the head. But she was sure she had hit him with the flat surface of the ironing board. And a blow from the flat surface of an ironing board isn’t going to break skin.
“Is there any discoloration?” asked Steve.
Marvalyn wondered why he would be asking if there was any discoloration when she had hit him on the top of his head. Hair would cover any bruising. And Steve had a lot of short, thick black hair. But she checked his scalp for blood and for bruising to be sure. And found neither.
“Any swelling?” asked Steve.
There was no swelling either. Not yet, anyway. “No,” she answered.
“Then I’m okay.” Steve gave Marvalyn a thumbs-up and smiled a smile that didn’t look like a smile. It looked like a smile that someone who was trying to make the right emotional choice would make.
“Okay,” said Marvalyn, not quite sure what to make of this kid—or this guy—who smiled strangely and asked peculiar questions. “Well—I’m really sorry, about that. I didn’t even see you,” she added.
“It’s okay. Most people don’t,” stated Steve simply and not seeking sympathy.
But Marvalyn didn’t hear him, because she was on her way out of the laundry room. “You stay right there; I’m gonna go get you some ice,” she called.
“No, you don’t have to do that.”
She stopped and turned to Steve. “Yes, I do, and some aspirin. To keep the swelling down and for the pain.”
“Well, I don’t feel pain.”
Marvalyn didn’t know how to respond to such a bizarre statement. “What?”
“I can’t feel pain.”
Marvalyn didn’t know what to make of what Steve had just said.
“Okay,” she said, convinced that she had seriously injured this kid. “Listen, I need you to be still, okay? I was gonna be a nurse, so, I know: You’re hurt. You just took a good shot right to the head, and it could be serious. You might have a concussion.”
“No, it’s not serious,” countered Steve. “I don’t think an ironing board could really hurt your head, ’cause, see, ironing boards aren’t on my list of things that can hurt you.” Steve offered Marvalyn his book of THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU.
“What?” Marvalyn asked, and she tentatively took Steve’s book and read—and pondered—its title.
“Ironing boards aren’t on my list of things that can hurt you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Plus, there’s no blood or discoloration or swelling from where I got hit,” Steve continued, excited to be able to explain his situation to someone. “So, I’m okay.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean—” Marvalyn was going to finish her sentence with, “you’re not hurt,” but she couldn’t, because Steve was still talking.
“And my list is pretty reliable, ’cause my brother Rob is helping me make it, and I can prove it to you!” Steve got up and picked up the ironing board as Marvalyn opened his THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU book. “See,” continued Steve, approaching Marvalyn from behind, “I bet if I took this ironing board, like this, and hit you with it, that it wouldn’t hurt you,” and, suddenly, Steve thwacked Marvalyn in the back of the head with the flat part of the ironing board and continued making his point as he did so. “See? That didn’t hurt!” he proclaimed.
“Ow!” Marvalyn cried, and she jumped up off the bench and dropped the book of THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU, rubbing her head with her hands. “Why did you do that?!?” she asked.
“Oh, no,” said Steve, concerned and confused. Marvalyn was hurt. Steve knew this because she had just said, “Ow.” And she seemed to be afraid, because her eyes were wide, and Steve had learned that, when people are afraid, their eyes get wide.
“God, why did you do that?!? What the hell was that?!” Marvalyn seemed more irritated than scared now, because she was realizing that she wasn’t actually hurt. She had just been startled.
“I’m sorry,” said Steve earnestly. “Did that hurt?”
“Yeah! Of course it did!”
“Oh, no! I didn’t think it would.”
“God,” Marvalyn sighed, her irritation subsiding, because this young man seemed truly contrite—and quite harmless.
“I’m really sorry!” cried Steve, picking up his book of THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU. “See, I didn’t think it would,” he continued, flipping through the book. “See, ironing boards are not on my list of things that can hurt you, but, gosh, maybe they should be on my list, because that ironing board hurt you. And you were afraid it hurt me just a couple minutes ago.”
“What are you talking about?” Marvalyn asked.
“I have a list of things that can hurt you, my brother Rob is helping me make it, and ironing boards aren’t on it.”
“Well, that ironing board … hurt me,” Marvalyn said impatiently—and almost hostilely. And then she realized that she didn’t want to be hostile to this guy. Or boy. Or whatever he was. He seemed fifteen one moment, thirty the next.
“Yeah,” agreed Steve, pondering.
“So … you should add it to your list,” said Marvalyn snidely.
“Yeah!” agreed Steve enthusiastically. Marvalyn watched as the odd young man dutifully added ironing boards to his list of THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU.
And she wondered if ironing boards actually belonged on that list and was about to tell him that they didn’t—but before she was able to, Steve had closed the book he was writing in and asked Marvalyn, “Should I be afraid of ironing boards?”
“Well, no, but if someone swings one at your head and wallops you with it, then, yeah, maybe you should be.”
“Well—” Steve pulled another black marble composition book out of his backpack, this one labeled THINGS TO BE AFRAID OF, and continued, “See, I have a list of things to be afraid of, too, but ironing boards aren’t on this list either.”
“Well, they shouldn’t be, really,” said Marvalyn, fascinated by the second composition book.
“No?”
“No, you shouldn’t be afraid of ironing boards.”
“But they can hurt you,” argued Steve.
“Yeah, but—”
“So I should be afraid of them.”
“Well, no—”
“So I shouldn’t be afraid of them?”
“Right.”
“But they can hurt me.”
“Well, if they’re used the way you just used that one,” she said, pointing to the ironing board on the floor, “then, yeah, they could hurt you, but—”
“Oh, oh, oh!” Steve exc
laimed. “So they’re kind of like the opposite of God!”
It took Marvalyn a moment to process Steve’s strange epiphany.
“What?!?” she finally asked, part dumbfounded and part amused, and completely interested in the explanation.
“Well, ironing boards can hurt me, but I shouldn’t be afraid of them,” Steve reasoned, “but God, my brother Rob says, God won’t ever hurt me, but I should fear Him.”
Marvalyn considered what Steve had just said for a moment. And then responded, “I guess.” She found his reasoning to be sound. She had never quite thought about God in that way before. But it seemed to her like a perfectly good way to think about Him. Or Her. Or whatever It was, because she wasn’t quite sure what God was. If everyone was made in His image, maybe He was a She half the time. Or maybe He was neither a He nor a She. Or maybe God was both He and She. Who knew.
Steve ultimately decided not to add ironing boards to his book of things to be afraid of, because they didn’t fulfill the criteria. And grumbled, “Boy, this is getting really complicated.”
“What is?”
“This business of learning what hurts, what doesn’t hurt, what to be afraid of, what not to be afraid of.”
“Okay—listen—are you sure you’re okay?” chuckled Marvalyn nervously. “You’re not makin’ a whole lotta sense, here, pal.”
“Yeah, I am. I have congenital analgesia.”
“Huh?”
“I have congenital analgesia. Some people call it congenital insensitivity to pain. And some people call it hereditary sensory neuropathy type four, but it all just means I can’t feel pain.”
“Congenital ana-what?” Marvalyn hadn’t quite caught what Steve had called his disorder.
“Analgesia. You can hit me if you want to, to see.”
“What?—No!”
“Yeah!” Steve offered Marvalyn his book of THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU. “With this!”
“No!” Marvalyn got up and moved away from Steve.
“Yeah! Go ahead! It won’t hurt! See?” Steve whacked his head with his book of THINGS THAT CAN HURT YOU.
“Stop!” cried Marvalyn.
Steve whacked his head again.
