The girl in the launderette

The girl in the launderette’s a dreamer. Look at her, sitting over there on that dull plastic chair, scuffing a pearly pink shoe across the greying floor as she swings her leg back and forth, dancing feet, the girl whose mum painted a pair of red tap shoes white all those years ago, the foundations of the girl you see now, the one who always stood shyly at the back of the dance classes. She stands at the front of them now, fiercely proud, twelve years on, hands on her waist, flexing her feet and looking about her peers with eyes that say seriously? Derisive eyes, not like the bambi eyes she wears in the launderette now, glass bottle green and chalk board black, Bette Davis eyes fixed on the window of her machine as her clothes beat inside it. She looks peaceful, hair gently curled around a heart shaped face, head slightly tilted, like a question, foot scuffing the floor.

She likes it here in the launderette. It’s gently warm and humid, like a summer’s evening in Tokyo, and it’s clean, and humble. There’s something so 90s about the scene, or at least that’s the way she sees herself in the launderette, a Rachel doing her washing for the first time, unsure of the etiquette of how things work here, sitting pretty, innocent expression under imperious arched eyebrows, acutely deceptive. She’d been watching Friends since she was thirteen, and now here she is, eighteen, and life is gripping towards the adulthood she’d always imagined, living in the flat on the fourth floor, a life of washed out jeans and fire alarms, dried up hands from scorching water and loose veg chasing mould around a drawer in the fridge. It’s poverty compared to what she knew before, the girl in the big white house in town, the private school girl, all pressed powder face and navy suede shoes. But for all its ugly curtains and stapled together receipts, it’s a life that feels like home, easy and natural, almost dizzyingly so as she looks upon her tiny bedroom and remembers that only a few weeks back this place was just an indefinite future, not a room that lives and breathes and holds her, just like her bedroom back home.

There’s something romantic about the launderette.  Maybe it’s the flash of red in the machine, a colour she never wears, his t-shirt, that little piece of him threatening to bleed into her white chiffon shirts, spinning like a girl in a brand new dress at the heart of the machine – picture her there, midnight blue in the darkness of the club, the Zelda Fitzgerald girl, and he’s in that t-shirt, the night when he realised he couldn’t let her go. She’s not one for going out much anymore, not in this new city, away from the boys who buy her drinks and walk her home, away from the girls who drag her off dancing and take her hand as they comb through the crowds. Those were the young nights out, familiar faces and bright new shoes. None of the clothes in the machine here at the launderette have known a life like that. Except that t-shirt – he always wore that t-shirt on nights out, that’s the t-shirt she thinks of when she thinks of that time in her life, that summer. He wore that t-shirt on his first big night out, ripped it on the fence when he tried to climb back into the club after he’d been kicked out. God, he was drunk that night. She went home early. She couldn’t bear to watch him when he got like that, he hardly spoke a word to her that night anyway. He didn’t even notice her walk away.

There were lots of nights like that – wasteful nights, broken nights, nights where she stayed up cashing in her bad luck. A single tear runs down her cheek, she breaks into the soap dish at the end of the day. Don’t doubt it, not for a second though – theirsis a bright string of lights. You can tell by the way she moves, how she listens like spring and talks like June, the vibrant, laughing girl who lives in the flat above you – you can tell it’s all a fairy tale in her head, a Hollywood film, a Taylor Swift song on the radio. Theirs is a bright string of lights. They’ve known kissing in the corridors, tanks and battleships in the school library, five hour phone conversations, blankets on the sofa, laughter between pages of a German textbook, sunburn on shoulders, loungers in the garden, cartwheels and skipping and beaches and canals and shredded paper like confetti and faces drawn on eggs on the kitchen counter in permanent marker pen. Look at her – she deserves a relationship like that and God knows, she doesn’t expect anything less.

But there was a time when the lights burnt low, a time when they blinked out altogether.

Maybe she’s thinking about those times now, eyes fixed on the machine, that red t-shirt whipping round, like the life she’s known with him – a life lived like two kids spinning together on the school playing fields, arms outstretched, crossed securely, hands locked tight, heads thrown back, carefree, careless. If he was here in this launderette now, they’d be laughing, pulling faces at one and other, daft insults on their tongues, because they’ve got each other sussed out now, they can shrug their shoulders and claim to be indifferent, but the real feeling’s mutual. Picture a boy shaking as he sits on the curb, head in his hands, bare arms bitten with snow, ducked beneath the streetlamp. She kneels before him, hands on his face, tracing his skin with piercing soft eyes, trying to memorise his every feature. And now imagine it’s her with the blood drowning in alcohol, collapsing into him, clinging around his neck, given up acting like she doesn’t care – they’ve pushed each other right to the limits, and from the ruin they’ve found this: I miss you in a text, a t-shirt in a washing machine and old train tickets scattered under the bed. It’s an enviable relationship. The kind soaked in drama and dried out tears. She’s never loved any story more.

You’ll never know a story like that. You’re just sitting in the launderette, watching the last four minutes of your wash tick down

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Maybe you’re lucky that way. Maybe that’s safer. She’s the kind of girl who’s always tilting on tragedy, never content with a simple end to the day. She keeps beating on, pouring rain and hung up phones, what a life I might have known. But she doesn’t want that with him, look at the determination on that face, quietly pursed lips as she watches the washing. This time she’ll be lucky.

The washing machine beeps. Your load is done, your clothes are clean. You open the door. A gust of wind, a rainy day. A man has entered the launderette. You look up, casting a vague nod of greeting, some pretence of politeness and then you concern yourself with the washing again. You don’t know this man. The girl in the launderette however, she stops swinging her foot. She’s watching the man with a  hard expression on her face. Nothing contemptuous or sneering, oh no, nothing like that. Simply a dead expression.

He’s a young, handsome man, tall in stature, muscles rippling in his active arms. He’s tanned after months spent working abroad, gloriously bronzed with a sprinkling of tiny freckles across his nose, the kind of detail you’d only pick up if you really studied his face, took your time sketching it out, making sense of the skin stretched across his skull. The man is with his sister, or at least that’s the relationship you assume is theirs, from what you hear of their conversation. He calls her Sylvia. She takes the bag of laundry from him and sets about loading the machine and putting in the money, whilst he sits and watches the harried expression on her face moderate gently as she commits herself to the task at hand. The girl in the launderette looks on. Sylvia checks her watch and pronounces that they must return to the launderette at eleven or so to pick up the washing. Her brother nods unenthusiastically and rolls out onto the street, shaking his head forcefully as Sylvia makes a movement as to push his wheelchair.

The girl in the launderette collects her washing and returns home, clothes bag hooked over one arm like it’s Prada, red umbrella tucked like a parasol over her shoulder. She hangs up her clothes and tidies her desk. She cleans the kitchen and cuts up veg. In the evening her mother calls and they chat for a while, nothing new, nothing unthought-of. She washes her hair and finishes a book, sitting in bed wearing that red t-shirt with the tears like bullet holes in the stomach. Setting the book down, she brings her knees up to her chest and looks around the small, unimposing room. This is home now, imagine that. Home is a smaller than single bed, a no smoking sign on the window, a disappointing desk chair without the oh-so-fun spinny wheels. But no – she pauses to consider – home isn’t really here, nor there, no, nowhere concrete and grounded. Home is a boy with dark brown eyes and a tendency to leave half full cans of Stella on the bedside table. She smiles at the memory, hugging herself close, closing her eyes and dancing round the kitchen in the refrigerator light, carried round the house in his arms, laughing on his shoulders as they duck under the doorframes.

But wait – who’ll be there to light the shadows on her face? He’s going, he’s going. She gets up from the bed and goes to the window. The Royal Navy Recruitment office stands stubbornly on the other side of the street. She sees the man in the launderette rolling out of the shabby, paint peeling doors, stumps of skin, frustrated face. The cars swoop around the roundabout in the rain, and some bloke’s talking on the radio about war, and the news reporter who’d fill the frame of the TV back home is biting into her mind too, images of the desert, the tranquil beach in Wales, a Scottish accent, a copy of a play. God’s been preparing her for this reality for a long time. She remembers the other night – My year abroad will be in Afghanistan. Grains of sand on the beach – that’s all he is, and he’s slipping away from her like sand in our hands, worlds away from the safe, breathing launderette, he’s determined that’s he’s going, he’s going to be one of those guys. And what’s left for her? Sleeping with her thoughts and dancing with her views? She’s tiptoeing on a vast horizon, big plans for Tokyo and Berlin, Paris and Montreal, skipping about the world, learning new tongues and faces. But what’s she really supposed to be doing? He’s got it all so planned out, he knows why he’s on the planet, and she doesn’t really fit into that plan, she never has. He’s pushing his boat out soon, and she’ll still be here living opposite the recruitment office , God’s cruel reminder, fate’s little nudge. Grains of sand, a girl scarred and left like a sunburn. She closes the curtains and shuts out the world, little steps backwards, turning around. She’ll be okay, he’ll come back. She can keep telling herself that, because she promised herself, this time she’ll be lucky. She tilts her head up defiantly, squaring up to her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Yes, this time she’ll be lucky. It’s a state of mind.

© Cecelia Turing and ceceliatee, 2014.