“That’s weird,” says Kinky. “He didn’t tell you what happened!”
“Odd, isn’t it?”
“Pretty young, huh,” Kinky acknowledges. “Can you imagine? Being pregnant in high school?” She stares up at the moon for a minute. “But did Sal ever tell you anything about the day you were born? Surely he was there, or heard stories. Any pictures?” Kinky seems agitated on Lavinia’s behalf. “I have a ton of baby pictures.”
“No pictures of me as a baby. Only one from right when I left.” Lavinia feels sadder and heavier than ever. This loss is another to add to her cart. She sighs. “Yup, no pictures of me as a baby, and never any mention of how she died.”
“That’s a shame.”
“He just always said it was a tragedy, and that she was too young to die. Once he told me she made a mistake and she didn’t deserve to die that way, but when I followed up with him, he wouldn’t say anything more about it.”
“So sad,” Kinky said, mirroring Lavinia’s thoughts exactly.
Lavinia could see how exasperated her friend was and that made her feel better and bolder—but also she felt some regret. Perhaps she should have pressed Sal harder. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she felt she had the right to know.
“You know,” Lavinia said, “the first time I heard Sal say the word ‘tragedy’ I thought he was saying ‘raggedy,’ that Mama’s life was raggedy. When I was young I thought they were talking about the soft little blue-gray doll with a red apron I carried around with me. I brought it with me to San Francisco from Naples. It was all worn and pilled like a cashmere sweater gets. The satin ribbon around her skirt was torn at the edges, but still shiny and smooth. Rose kept pressing me to hand it over to her so she could wash the thing. She even tried to bribe me to throw it away for a new pretty pink doll, but I could never part with her. Rose meant no harm, but she misunderstood what it meant to me. She was a no-nonsense aunt. She was . . . pretty mean to me.”
“Maybe she never had a doll or a stuffed animal she loved like that,” Kinky says.
“But for me the doll meant so much more. If I cuddled it close, I could feel Mama, smell and even hear her. It was the only connection I had to her.”
“What happened to it?”
“Raggedy disappeared one day. I think Rose took her.”
“Why?” Kinky says.
“I can’t remember, but I went crazy with worry. I asked Rose every day for three days if she’d help me find her. I pestered her, and she got mad at me. She turned all red that third day and shouted for me to stop it. That night when Sal got home from work, I asked him, too. He helped me search for Raggedy, but we never found her. I hated the Barbie Rose gave me as a replacement, and I hated her for stealing Raggedy.” She stares at the ground. “Worse, I never forgave her.”
Kinky tightens her grip around her friend. There’s nothing more to say. They sit like this and Lavinia allows herself to sob. It’s a while before she can breathe evenly again. Soon after, the first chilled air of the evening comes in and they move into the studio.
Chapter 4:
WORKING LIKE A DOG
At seven thirty the following morning, Lavinia wakes up with coffee percolating in her brain. Did she and Kinky really sit up till close to midnight last night? She thinks about her friend, who’s already been at school, prepping for her third graders, for the past half hour. She pictures all those kids running to get to her, excited to begin the day. She misses that. She recalls her student teaching, the children excited to have her as their teacher, running up to her, showing their work—a good drawing or a simple addition problem they just solved—smiling, and saying, “Miss Lavinia, look at mine.” How children want attention and love to please. Both.
As she gets dressed, she puts away these thoughts, planning her schedule to include one full day in North Beach—that’ll be just right. She can almost hear the barista’s voice in her head . . . but first, her job in the Mission.
A half hour later, Lavinia is walking down Valencia Street, which is already alive and moving. In the midst of the street action—voices calling to each other as kids on watch whistle, a seeming alarm code—she’s reminded of how ground squirrels watch their territory for intruders too and kuk kuk kuk to one another. Am I an intruder?
Small groups of teenagers in colorful T-shirts and baggy jeans smoke in doorways. Mothers with shiny black hair, dressed in flowing skirts and sandals, push their babies in strollers. Lavinia sidesteps past old cars parked on the sidewalks. In this neighborhood, some doors are barricaded with elaborately carved metal fences. Other doors are open, with people sitting on the stoops in front of them. She likes the activity here. It’s the way North Beach used to be when she was growing up there, when families lived in the neighborhood and did their business close to the street. Now North Beach is too commercial, but at least the Mission still has that old San Francisco feeling. She’s grateful to live here.
On Folsom Street, industrial buildings replace small multi-family houses. Warehouses with small businesses cram together against other converted live-work spaces. George Levine, a forty-six-year-old sculptor from New York City, lives on the second floor of a former factory. He called Lavinia twelve months ago to ask about her laundry service, having gotten her name from Dr. Brady. Because he works at the far end of his studio, he gave her a key so she could let herself in. He told her he did not want to leave his creativity, his zone, to unlock the door for her when she comes.
Her job involves pulling up his canvas tarps and taking them to be laundered in an industrial washer and dryer twice a week. He has eight tarps; each time, she’s supposed to take four to be laundered.
Today, as Lavinia unlocks the heavy metal gate, a homeless man walks past, pushing a shopping cart filled with cans. She closes the gate and walks two flights up the cement stairwell of George’s building.
He rents the entire second floor of the former box factory. His workspace includes the clay room with a large kiln that heats up to over two thousand degrees; the drying room; a workspace where he sculpts; and a large, open-floor living area similar to her space. As she walks through the apartment side, sparsely furnished, she hears music. George is playing his familiar oldies. She knows this one, the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.”
Humming as she opens the door, she feels the heat from inside the studio. George, at the far side of the room, wears shorts as he kneads the clay. She watches the way he throws a slab to the rhythm of the music. Bare-chested and wearing flip-flops, he wildly slams down a hunk of clay, using the energy of the music to help him wedge the material. This habit of his always makes her laugh so she stands there in the doorway, watching, until he sees her, at which point he stops what he’s doing, wipes his hands on the black cloth on his wedging table, and walks toward her, smiling.
“Hello, Lavinia,” he says, reaching for her hand.
“Hi, George, nice music. I love this song.”
“Yeah, me, too. It’s good for kneading clay, too.” He smiles again.
“Looks like you’re ‘working like a dog,’” she jests.
He laughs. “Ever try it?”
“Working like a dog?” she asks, thinking he’s trying to make a joke.
“No, kneading clay,” he says more seriously now, looking toward his wedging table, where a slab of chocolate brown mud rests.
“Not since kindergarten,” she says.
George’s eyes glow as if he’s divining something. “Want to try?” he asks, taking her hands. Before she knows what’s happening, the two of them are waltzing around the perimeter of the cement table, twirling. He’s done this before, so she’s not totally surprised. She doesn’t mind, either. She appreciates George’s zest for life.
He holds her in a waltz position until they are both standing in front of the clay slab. George picks up a delicate clay slicer and cuts the hunk of clay in half, then slams the bottom half onto the top half.
His gesture intrigues her. First the slice, then
the slam. She stays still, mesmerized by the beat of the thump on the table, which seems to be in sync with the next Beatles tune that’s loaded: “All I’ve Got to Do.”
George does this work quickly and with ease, repeating the gesture over and over, throwing clay onto the hard surface and kneading it to the beat of the music. He works on and on—cutting slabs, throwing them onto the marble table. All the time his hands, muddied from the soft and malleable Cassius clay (the dark brown earth he prefers), work their magic.
“The pressure of one slam on the other releases all the air from the wedge,” he tells her. “Would you like to try it?” He gives her the hunk and the slicer.
Lavinia holds the wooden handles of the metal slicer and pulls it through the seamless slab of clay, enjoying the slippery way it cuts through the brown flesh. Then she picks up one half, the way George has been showing her, and slams it into the other piece, listening for the thump. The combination of the smooth, silky feel of the clay in her hands and the slamming action onto the table creates a kind of duality in her mind and a relaxation in her body.
“Brava,” she hears him cheer.
She can’t help but feel satisfied. Yet instinctively, she feels it’s time to go. She has a sense of overstaying her welcome, although George seems to have indicated anything but that. She wonders if, were she to stay here all day, he’d ever say anything about the laundry. She doubts it. He genuinely seems to enjoy her company, and she feels more comfortable with him than with any of her other clients.
Before stepping away from the table, she carefully places her dusty fingers in her inner pocket, removes a tiny fig leaf she picked from her tree this morning, and places it near the clay when George isn’t looking. She wonders if he’ll know she left it.
She heads for the bathroom to wash off the deep brown earth from her hands and the sleeves of her hoodie. Then she takes the bag filled with the soiled drop cloths George has deposited by the door for her and heads for the laundromat down the street. She has four hours. Though she prefers working on the premises, she’s happy to make an exception since George’s laundry facilities don’t include industrial-size dryers or washers—and besides he’s a little kooky.
She wonders what he creates with all that clay. She’s never gotten to see a finished piece of his sculpture.
The air outside cools her down after the dance and the throwing in the hot studio. Lavinia lifts the heavy sack over her shoulder and walks toward the laundromat in her neighborhood, which has one or two heavy industrial washers and dryers. After a few long blocks, the canvas laundry bag pulls on her shoulder so she stops to switch it to the other shoulder.
She walks on 14th Street toward Guerrero, passing trendy new restaurants with the twenty-five-pound sack of drop cloths weighing on her back. She feels like she’s Santa—or worse, a junk collector. She hides under her hoodie, hoping she doesn’t run into Andy, who would surely feel pity, if not outright disgust, if he saw her carrying a big bag down the street like a homeless person.
What made him not love me anymore? Why didn’t I ask him?
When the scent of coffee pulls her into a café, she drops the sack outside, right in front of the door. She enters the café.
After she downs a double espresso, she feels better; now she has the buzz she needs to carry the sack. She goes outside.
The sack is gone.
Frantically, she looks around the doorway, opens and closes the door, thinking maybe someone brought it inside for her. She’s never on the lookout to be robbed; now she realizes she should be. Fuck! Now what? She looks in all directions before she sees a man scurrying up 14th Street with the canvas sack on his back. He’s loping up the street, swerving under the weight of it.
She rushes after him. “Stop, you stole my bag!” she yells. “Mister, that’s my bag!” He turns to look back at her and then increases his speed, running like a mad man, and crosses Mission Street at high speed. Lavinia runs faster but the light turns just as she reaches the intersection.
“You skunk!” She paces in place, waiting for the signal to walk. It’s far too busy for her to attempt to run after him, into traffic.
When she finally crosses the street he’s nowhere in sight. “Damn,” she says out loud as she scurries from one doorway to the next. “Where did he go?” She slams her hand on her hip and stamps her foot. Damn, damn, damn.
“You all right, miss?” a man sweeping outside a small convenience store asks.
“No, I’m not! Have you seen a man carrying a large canvas sack?”
“Only in my dreams,” he says, laughing.
“A man just stole my laundry from the café.”
“Clean or dirty?”
“Dirty.” Trying to explain is hopeless. “Never mind.”
She unwraps a bubblegum and pops it into her mouth before heading back toward Folsom, hoping she’ll find the man before too long. What a mess! What will I tell George? That someone stole his laundry bag full of expensive ground covers? A lame excuse. I can’t even be trusted with an old bag of tarps. I’m even a failure at taking clothes to the laundry.
She wanders the surrounding streets for another half hour, but to no avail. She feels for the leaf she keeps in her pocket, then realizes she left it for George. She imagines its smoothness, the tiny veins. Then she screws up her courage to go back and tell George what happened.
When she gets to his workspace, she lets herself in, climbs the two flights of stairs again, and opens the door to a now-silent apartment. The music is off. He must have gone for coffee. The only sound comes from an old radiator, a humming of the ventilation system that expels hot air from other artist studios in the building. The fan system is old-fashioned.
“George?” she calls as she walks through a door into a place she’s never been before. This place must be where George sculpts. It’s an orderly space with rotating platforms and wooden stands on which sit large torsos up to four feet in height. Human-size, naked, and without limbs or heads, they still convey a gesture. The axis of their torsos, each composed in a twist or sway, is compelling.
Farther on, she stops short. The small fig leaf she left earlier has been placed in front of a bust of a woman who looks familiar to Lavinia. She even has a birthmark on her face the size of a mini chocolate chip—and that color, too. The face is young, maybe that of a sixteen-year-old girl; the smile gently curved; the eyes looking down; the lips full. The expression she wears is shy, yet open at the same time. Lavinia touches her upper lip, letting her finger fall on her own birthmark, circles it. Chills run through her body as she stares at the young woman. Slowly she gazes at her beautiful features, expecting to see a puff of breath emerge from her mouth. She reaches out her fingers and touches the young woman’s lips, her smooth cheeks; she rests her pinky on the raised bump. Time has stopped and Lavinia feels suspended as she stares, forgetting momentarily that she’s looking for George.
Waking up, she continues toward a drying room where several other busts wait to be fired. Astounding clay heads stare at her. A full-bearded man with kind eyes and high, rounded cheeks smiles at her with thin lips surrounded by hair. The clay hair reminds her of spaghetti. Another head is of a child, a girl with hair piled high on her head and long curved brows above opened eyes. Her lips open in a pleasant smile.
She stops longer at the third bust, a twenty-something woman with stray hair that has more fullness on the right side. Her eyes, dark and round, look right at Lavinia. Over her cheek is the small, raised, dark medallion like her own. The same woman from the other room, but she is older and has a dimpled chin and a graceful neck above small rounded shoulders. Again she feels the chills and her hand goes to her own face and lands on her mole. She stands in front of the woman in disbelief.
“Lavinia, is that you?” George is standing near the kiln. “Thank you for the beautiful leaf.”
“What? How? This?” Lavinia blurts out. “But I’ve never modeled for you.”
George stands now, facing her. He looks conf
used.
“But I never gave you my permission.”
“That’s true.”
He moves closer, his hands raised. She steps back, suspicious now. He moves closer again. She moves back and backs herself into a torso, one whose body seems to swivel as if to look at her, whose fluidity seems to make it come alive.
She looks at the sculpture. “This one is nude!” She feels disgusted. “Is that me?” Her mouth opens so that her gum falls out. She stares coldly at George, like fired clay itself. “Is this me, too?” She’s now looking toward another nude torso.
“I’m fond of creating sculpture in the image of people I know. That’s all.”
“But I never posed for you.”
“I’m a gestural artist, and I sculpt from memory.”
Lavinia screws up her face. “Is that why you wanted to dance with me?” she demands, her voice rising to a tight, squealing pitch. “So you could make a sculpture? I thought you cared for me. I thought I could trust you. But you’ve been using me for your own benefit.”
George reaches his hands toward her.
“Get away. You’re a pervert.”
She sees his face flush, his eyes grow alert. She puts her hands over her eyes.
“How can you say that, Lavinia?”
“Have you been spying on me at home?” She squirms away from the beautiful work that feels too intimate, too intrusive. The space with all these figures feels too small for her and George’s face appears too large. She backs away from him, feeling trapped. She wants to run, to get out of here. She begins to sweat and her chest feels tight. She puts her hand on her shirt, clutching it. He’s talking. She doesn’t hear his words. She feels dizzy, disoriented. All she wants is air and space. But he’s still speaking.
“Of course not, Lavinia. This is art. I’m an artist. And this is the art that I make. I deduce from people.”
The Laundress Page 4
