The Laundress

by Barbara Sapienza

  “Was it really that long?”

  “I haven’t seen you for two days and nights. I missed you.”

  “It felt like an eternity.” She inches even closer, feeling his breath on her face. Listening to his gentle inhalations and exhalations. She moves her lips close to his and feels his breath on her upper lip. She kisses the coffee-flavored lips of her barista. “You haven’t shaved. I like it.” She rubs her palm over his cheek. “I want you by my side,” she says, kissing his neck where his flannel shirt opens to show a hairy chest.

  He hums.

  “Hey, I haven’t eaten any real food in days, maybe weeks. Let’s have lunch together. I’m starving.”

  “Sure, it’s time for my break. Across the street?” He looks over his shoulder at his employees behind the counter. “Back in thirty!” He grabs her hand and they run out the door. They eat at an Italian restaurant on the other side of Columbus. Lavinia orders eggplant parmigiana with a side of spaghetti. Mario orders a panino with prosciutto. They sit side by side, holding each other’s hands.

  “Did you see your father?”

  She nods. “I went to his place to see his artwork.”

  “It’s weird how he’s been treating you.”

  “Words can’t describe it. I’m so baffled.”

  “Coming home again?”

  “Coming home to you,” she says.

  “You have some appetite.”

  She’s conscious of him watching her ravenously eat the sweet tomato basil sauce and stretchy mozzarella cheese. “I’ll say,” she says, dipping focaccia into the sauce. “Hey, I never asked you. Are you close to your father?”

  “Yes, very much so. I can’t believe I haven’t told you about him. He set me up in business. He’s a great barista.” Mario looks out the window toward his café. “This is where he worked and where we used to live until he got an offer at a fancy new hotel in Kona. Dream of a lifetime.”

  “Kona?”

  “The Big Island in Hawaii.” He looks out at the street, eyes wistful. “My dad and I are a team.” He puts his hand on his chest. His voice catches sweetly. “I stayed here, obviously, but he trusted me to continue the business.”

  “I can’t believe I’ve never heard this story.” Thinking about Mario’s father brings her back to images of her family, the mausoleum in clay in George’s studio, and how he’s created a living memory to her mother right here in San Francisco. She’s enveloped in wraparound feelings, the same ones she experienced in the presence of his art.

  “You’re drifting away, Lavinia.”

  “Yeah, I was just thinking about my mother, and how George loved her.”

  Mario presses his leg into hers. She pushes her plate away, not telling him she was also thinking about how her grandfather’s rage killed her mother. She doesn’t want to talk about it.

  The plates sit empty, and the waiter offers coffee.

  “But today I saw her through George’s art. She was beautiful, and she loved me so much. I saw George a little more clearly, too: how he’s spent his whole life sculpting her, creating an unspeakable beauty. I couldn’t breathe in the presence of his work.” Tenderness and sadness accompany this lightness she carries.

  Sipping the bittersweet coffee, she thinks about the unusual connections—time fast-forwarding, catching up with itself. She savors the thick coffee taste while an eternity of tears pass before her eyes. She sees the little girl and the big girl in one body.

  “And now?”

  “I don’t really know, except that I feel free of some heavy burden. It’s like the neighborhood thief took the sack of rocks I carried.” She pauses and looks out the window at the people on Columbus Street, all of whom seem to have a direction, moved by the wind. Again she thinks to tell Mario how her grandfather caused her mother’s death, but instead says, “George says I can take my time. He says he can wait for me. While I’m pissed off, I also can understand why he acted the way he did. I’m split. Part of me is like a little girl who’s finally meeting her daddy. I want to jump into his arms and be a child. But I missed that. He missed that.”

  Mario has his arm around her.

  She snuggles up to him. “What should I do?” She bends away from his hold.

  “You’ll be fine, Lavinia. You’ll do the right thing.”

  “Want to go to your place? We can make up for lost time.” She winks at him.

  “You can jump into my arms,” he jests. “I like a girl who asks for what she wants.” He pulls her toward him. “Let’s take the back entrance and not cut through the café, though.” They walk arm in arm down Columbus to the entrance to Mario’s upstairs apartment, located in a narrow alleyway beside the café. She’s never noticed it before. Up an enclosed stairway they go before entering a small flat, cozy, full of the rich smell of coffee. The sink has a few dishes stacked on the sideboard, waiting to be washed. A half-empty bottle of beer sits on a small wooden table, seasoned with water stains and spots. A Chronicle sits on the floor. A long couch has a plaid skirt like a grand dame.

  “Wow! So retro! How cool is this place.” Her eyes widen to take in the whole view.

  “This is my mother’s old furniture.”

  The floors are bare, stained with watermarks, just like downstairs. The windows, covered with plaid curtains, match the sofa. They walk into his bedroom, where a double mattress rests on the floor. Soft flannel sheets, a solid, dark green, and a blue comforter with matching pillows are all ruffled up together on the bed in a heap. Mario puts on some slow music and faces her, searching her eyes. The music flows in and around them, and they begin to dance, moving slowly. He takes each hand in his, gently presses each of her fingers. She takes his fingers in her mouth, one at a time, feels a shiver go down her back.

  Their hands and arms become entwined as they move down to sit on his flannel-covered bed. She welcomes his hands; she glides them over her breasts and torso, toward her hips, and then she lets him undress her. Their slow rhythms give rise to a kiss. They lie down on the bed.

  He’s kissing her lips, then sucking them with urgency. She feels aroused, a 10.0 on the Richter scale. His head is no longer on the pillow beside her but buried under the heap of blankets somewhere, heading down, his tongue tracing the contours of her neck, down her shoulders, and sliding slowly over her clavicle, over her small breasts. Then he moves from her belly button down to the lower torso and navel, where he stops briefly before tenderly caressing her other lips.

  She ignites with his gift of pleasure, kept a secret from her until now. How has her lovemaking always been so standard?

  Where have I been? Can this be how it is? Though she’d been intimate with Andy, it was never like this. Sex with Mario is reciprocal and generous. Lavinia feels empowered, as if Mario has just initiated her into her own sexual awakening into the Kingdom of Eros.

  “Please don’t ever stop, Mario,” she says.

  Chapter 24:

  IN-THE-EARTH PARENTS

  The morning light wakes her. She’s in Mario’s apartment alone, savoring his scent, which is mingled with hers and the coffee aroma from downstairs. Dressing, she admires the place with its heaps of comforters. She considers the grand initiation, that rite that took place last night, and smiles. Before going down into the café she makes a sweep around the flat, imagining Mario growing up here. She conjures up an image of a playful but focused child, then a strong and friendly teenager, sure of his place in the world.

  She uses the back stairway, the way he showed her in, which leads to a small kitchen much like the one upstairs. Sacks of coffee beans in special bins line the walls and lead her to a small door. She opens it and finds herself behind the bar. She doesn’t belong there! Awkwardly, she scoots out, kneeling and slipping herself under the hinged counter. Mario is too busy to notice that she’s slipped past him; he’s focused on making an espresso. She takes him in as if for the first time.

  From this vantage point, she can see how his muscular body—torso, waist, buttocks, calves—wor
k as one. Those well-developed arms just held her to him. She feels giggly. She sees new things in his face—a man’s face, mature and handsome; how gently he handles the espresso machine; how attentive and confident he is; the kind smile he shows to his customers. He dispenses two measures of coffee and flushes steaming water through the machine, cleaning it, before he sees her.

  “Good morning,” she says, moving to the front of the bar.

  “You look beautiful, Bubblicious.” He hands her the espresso he just made.

  “Thank you.” She takes the coffee. “You’re super duper.” She giggles.

  He laughs.

  She takes her coffee to the corner seat and, to her surprise, sees Zack reading at a nearby table. He looks up just at that moment, and their eyes meet. He touches the seat next to him. “S-sit down, please,” he says so softly she can barely hear him.

  “So sorry I missed our laundry day, Zack.”

  “Just more for next week.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re okay,” he says. “You look happy.” He looks toward Mario and smiles.

  “Very!” She blushes. She sits across from him as time quietly passes. She’s happy to be in silence with him, with no pressure to talk or share with him. He just silently takes her in.

  “Are we still on?” he asks after a while. “Thanksgiving break?”

  “A few days from now.” She nods.

  “All packed?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Time waits for us.” His long, thin fingers play with the knotted string he wears around his wrist.

  Lavinia stares at the bracelet of white silk threads, wondering if the three knots signify anything.

  Zack fingers the knots, seeming to read her question. “These are promises I’ve made to myself. Do you ever set intentions, Lavinia?”

  “Not really,” she says, though maybe there is something brewing. She thinks about the exhilaration of seeing the statues of her mother, the incredible sex with Mario. “But I am receiving some sort of intentions from the universe.”

  “You’re doing your work, Lavinia,” he says, touching her wrist with his bracelet hand.

  “Yes, I am.” She trusts that she is. She feels more grounded having seen her mother holding her, nursing her, loving her. She left George’s yesterday remembering how dearly Angela had loved her.

  Outside, rain pours down, the first of the season. An amazing burst of energy hits the sidewalk, slashing the windows, the roof. Lavinia thinks of Mario’s bed and how the rain might sound upstairs. She watches him spin from customer to customer, pulling shots of steaming coffee into cups. In her mind’s eye she sees George pulling clay; it’s a similar movement, a pulling and thrusting of energy like the slashing and abating rain. All in a flash, these images come to her. She imagines the dry earth under her fig tree sucking in the moisture, fulfilling its thirst after the long dry spell, just as her own body did with Mario—a quenching after a desert spell not only in her sex life but in her imagination, and her faith in herself.

  And now another richness for her: an offer to go to Ely, Nevada, with this kindly gentleman who wants her company and wants to give her five grand, too.

  She looks at Zack. “The knots?”

  “Intentions, as I said.” He fingers the first two. “I want to visit Mount Washington, where the 10,000-year clock will be buried, and I want to visit the 4,000-year-old trees.”

  “And the third knot?”

  “I wish for s-snow,” he whispers, letting the soft s sing.

  She nods as the rain pours down hard, puddling near the door, where Mario has placed a rolled towel on the floor. Noah’s Ark, Lavinia thinks. Though this talk of snow and the pouring rain outside make her shiver, she feels safe in this cozy café and sets her own intention: to cultivate her friendship with Zack.

  “Clothes for snow, then,” she says.

  “Do you want to borrow some of Margaret’s ski clothes?”

  “That would be perfect,” she says.

  Zack sits quietly, furrows his brow. “You know, they killed the oldest living tree—WPN-114, they named it,” he says. “They killed her to see how old she was. The stupids.”

  “WPN-114 sounds so alien,” she says, “like ET or Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

  “True,” he acknowledges. Then he tells her the scientists first called the tree Prometheus, for the God who stole fire.

  Lavinia remembers her mythology.

  Now he’s telling her that WPN-114, like Prometheus, was sacrificed, cut down to be studied. But Lavinia’s thoughts gravitate toward her mother, who was cut down by her own father. Talk about stupids!

  Lavinia remembers an old dream she once had about seeing the lights of Las Vegas. That dream seems so distant to her now and so much less interesting or meaningful than the trip she’ll take with Zack. Surrounding herself with people she loves is shifting something in her—toward better and more positive intentions.

  Mario is walking toward her and Zack, who’s now opened a California/Nevada map on the café table. He’s routed the trip to East Nevada via Route 50, and he’s pointing this out to Lavinia. Ely, Nevada, is speck on the map.

  “A small town of about four thousand,” Zack says.

  The road looks long, and she notices that their trip will take them nowhere near Las Vegas. She’s relieved. She doesn’t want to be burdened by old dreams. She wants to focus on her new life and new dreams.

  “What’s it like to drive to Bishop in November?” Lavinia looks toward Mario for the answer.

  “Long. Cold. And boring until you reach the incredible Eastern Sierra.” Mario fingers the map, tracing a line to Bishop at the eastern end of US 50. “The road may even be closed because of snow.”

  “I’ll have snow shoes in the Subaru,” Zack says.

  They laugh, and Mario pulls out his phone to check the weather. “Average high 48 degrees,” he says, “average low 18.7 degrees, average snow days in November is 4.4 to 5.7 percent.”

  Mario and Lavinia’s eyes lock as Zack slowly recounts a day he spent among the ancient pine trees fifteen years ago, when he was investigating the old forest as an environmental engineer in water management for the Owens Valley.

  “The path moving up to the highest elevation was dus-sted with snow,” he says. “A light snow, and it was-s-s beautiful. Early morning in June. I was the first imprint on the trail. The sun was barely up, so the white powder wouldn’t melt for an hour or so. Just me in the bristlecones, me and a light wind. As I walked toward the altitude where the living bristlecones-s-s still breathe, our breaths deepened, seeming to mix with each other.” His fingers twist his bracelet as he takes in a deep breath. “It was late spring, the time when the wildflowers bloom—mostly those luscious penstemons. Mountain blue jays sang raucous songs; I even saw a golden eagle soaring above.”

  “Wow! That sounds incredible! I’m so excited!” Lavinia says.

  “I’m so happy you’re coming, Lavinia,” Zack says.

  “You’re making me jealous,” Mario says.

  “I’m off now,” Zack says. “Got some packing to do.”

  Lavinia readies herself to leave, too. Mario has to work, and she has errands to run.

  As Zack leaves, he says to her softly, “It’s winter I’m interested in now. It’s the season of my life.” He pats her on the shoulder. “Thursday, 6:30 a.m.”

  “I’ll be there,” she says. She bids him farewell and gives Mario a light kiss good-bye.

  The rain is still coming down outside, but only as a light drizzle. She walks up Columbus Avenue to the financial district. The pyramid building seems out of place until she thinks of the limestone mountain in the desert where time will pulse for ten thousand years. If that is not out of place, what is?

  Ten minutes later, she’s on the bus, headed for the Mission District and Kinky’s house.

  She finds Mercedes in the kitchen, messing with lunch. It’s early afternoon, and the rain has stopped completely. The sky lightens up, the air is fresh, t
he spices that Mercedes blends are intoxicating.

  Mercedes lights up when she sees Lavinia. “Mijita, come and sit with me.”

  Moving to the now-familiar chairs, they sit together.

  “Kinky should be home soon,” Mercedes says. “I bet she can smell lunch right now.”

  Mercedes reaches out a hand to Lavinia. As she sinks into the puffiest cushioned seat, Lavinia imagines she’s sitting in her lap.

  “Gracias, Mamá.”

  Mercedes sits erect—spine straight, feet flat on the floor, naked and strong. Her hands rest on her thighs. Her skirt forms a flowing cup between her legs.

  “Mijita, you look happy today.”

  “I am.”

  “Sí, I see much joy in your face.”

  “I have come out of my cave—love has visited me. His name is Mario. And I have found my father, too. He was near me all this year, and I never knew.”

  “Qué bueno.”

  Lavinia looks into Mercedes’s eyes, focusing on the dark pools—reflections of love, of joy. They are so unlike George’s eyes, which reflect melancholy. “I have mixed feelings about him. He’s a good guy, a little sad, and he really loved my mother. But he betrayed me.”

  “The pain is back, mijita. I can see it in your eyes.” Mercedes leans in close to her.

  “Yes, Mamá, it is terrible. He has kept me in the dark, kept me from seeing his love for her—and for me, too.”

  “It’s hard to trust him?” she asks.

  Lavinia nods.

  “Do you want to have a relationship with him?”

  “Yes, I do, but I’m scared. What if . . .” Lavinia pauses, falls into her arms.

  “Sí, sí, entiendo, but you can go slowly, mijita, little by little you can let him in. Despacito. Despacito.”

  “Sí, Mamá. Little by little,” she repeats, unfolding from the older woman’s arms. She wipes her eyes, remembering Mercedes’s chant the last time she sat here—deep, dark sounds, hauntingly sad, like her father’s eyes. Mercedes sang with her eyes closed, sang the savagely sad song as if to add another presence.

  Mercedes, as if reading Lavinia’s mind, begins yet another song. “We will celebrate,” she says. “I have a lighter song for you today. Una canción chica, una alegría.” She closes her eyes and moves her arms and hands in a circular motion. “Ay ay ay, lie lie la, hi hi lee, la lay, hi hi hee, ya ya hi ha,” she chants. Her hands, small and firm, cup each other as she claps a one-two-three rhythm with an accent on the third clap. She sings puertacita, the little door opening and closing, opening and closing. She sings la campana, tiene cariña with some ba ma pa pa, pero ba-ma-pa-pa. Jubilantly, she claps and sings. Lavinia keeps to the beat with her right foot tapping the floor.