My husband shared pictures of my nightdress with his friends and wrote, “Did I marry the laundry lady?” I found their replies on his tablet after eleven years of marriage. By morning, his mother had taken my hand and told me to invite them over, but she hadn’t finished explaining.
My daughter slept against that nightdress when she couldn’t settle, and my husband had turned it into something men passed around.
He’d even straightened the pocket before taking the picture.
That stupid pocket.
On Tuesday afternoon, his tablet buzzed beside the laundry sack while he showered.
I reached across it for a sleeve that had caught underneath.
The message preview showed mustard fabric, then a line from Pawel.
“Does she hand you a claim ticket before bed?”
My thumb stayed against the edge of the screen until the preview disappeared.
I brought it back.
There was my nightdress, laid flat, with the sleeves spread out as though somebody had arranged an item for sale.
I knew the pocket because its corner always curled after washing.
I’d meant to press it.
Apparently Ricky had found something else to do with it.
The chat was called “After Hours,” and his messages had synchronized from his phone.
I opened the picture because I wanted it to be somebody else’s.
It wasn’t.
Dwayne had answered with laughing faces and a question.
“Tell me that’s for cleaning.”
Ricky’s reply sat underneath.
“She actually wears it. This is what I get.”
I pressed my teeth against the inside of my cheek.
Above that were other photographs, taken on different days, with the same garment draped across our bed or hanging beside the laundry.
He’d gone back for more.
In a closer picture, his thumb held the pocket open.
“Built-in storage for the ROMANCE,” he’d written.
Pawel asked whether I answered to housekeeping now.
Ricky had sent another photograph instead of telling him to stop.
I kept scrolling until my finger missed the screen.
One picture had been taken while I was downstairs helping Sana with her reading.
I remembered because he’d called down to ask where I kept the laundry sack.
I’d answered him.
I’d actually told him where to look.
His next message made me pull the tablet closer, although the words were already clear.
“Eleven years, lads. Apparently this is the UNIFORM now.”
Dwayne wrote, “You need to complain.”
“I live with it,” Ricky answered. “You only have to see it.”
The water kept running upstairs.
I stood beneath the bathroom with his tablet in my hands and read that exchange again.
He’d never said he disliked the nightdress.
He’d pulled it from the dryer for me when I’d asked.
He’d seen me put it on after a day when my waistband hurt and I couldn’t bear another thing digging into me.
That had been useful material, apparently.
I’d carried our daughter, delivered her, and spent years dressing around what needed doing next.
Some days I liked how I looked.
Some days I changed before he got home, although I’d never admitted that to anybody.
Now I tried to remember which days he’d taken the pictures.
Whether he’d kissed me afterward.
Whether I’d asked him what was funny and accepted whatever answer he’d given.
Another message arrived while I was holding the tablet.
Pawel again.
“Any new stock from the linen department?”
I could have answered.
The little space for typing was right there beneath his name.
Instead, I closed the thread and returned the tablet to the mark it had left in the laundry.
My hands wouldn’t straighten the sleeve.
I tried anyway.
When Ricky came downstairs, his hair was still damp around his ears.
“Everything all right?”
I nodded toward the washing and kept folding.
He picked up the tablet, opened the message and laughed through his nose.
I stood close enough to see his thumb tap out an answer.
“What’s funny?” I asked.
“Nothing you’d like.”
He carried it away.
After breakfast the following day, I took the car across Peoria and parked outside Eloise’s place before my nerve gave out.
Eloise opened the door and asked whether Ricky knew I was coming.
That almost sent me back.
I hadn’t prepared for her to ask about him before she’d asked about me.
Then she touched my sleeve.
“Lizbeth, what’s happened?”
I started with the photograph because saying anything bigger made my throat close.
“He took something out of our laundry.”
She waited while I rubbed under my nose with my wrist.
“My nightdress. The mustard one. He sent pictures to Pawel and Dwayne.”
“What pictures?”
“Just the clothes. But what they wrote underneath…”
I couldn’t get through the first joke without crying.
Eloise kept her hand on my sleeve while I told her about the pocket and the photographs he’d arranged.
“He called it a UNIFORM,” I said.
She asked what Ricky had said when his friends started.
I repeated his answers.
All of them that I could remember.
Then I said the part I’d been trying to swallow since the afternoon before.
“He was standing right beside me when he laughed.”
Her fingers stopped moving against my arm.
At first, I expected her to ask whether he’d meant it that way.
I’d already prepared an answer to that question on the drive.
She asked a different one.
“Do they come here? To your house?”
“They’ve been asking him to host cards.”
“And has he?”
“I keep saying I’m too tired.”
Her mouth lifted at the corner, but her hand stayed closed around mine.
“Well,” she said, “let’s give him his evening.”
I pulled back enough to see her face.
“Eloise, I don’t want them sitting there laughing at me.”
“They’ve already done that.”
My eyes filled again.
She reached for my hand before I could move it into my lap.
“I meant you don’t owe them another comfortable evening,” she said. “I’M NOT EXCUSING HIM.”
I wiped my face and waited.
“We’re going to need them here.”
Four days later, Ricky sent the invitations himself.
Card night at ours, supper included.
He read the replies to me as though he’d brought home something I’d wanted.
“Pawel’s coming. Dwayne said finally.”
“Good,” I said.
He leaned against me and asked what had changed my mind.
I kept my attention on the invitation still open in his hand.
“Your mother offered to help.”
“See? You should ask her more.”
I had to turn away.
He spent the afternoon checking the replies and telling me how easy the evening would be.
I let him talk.
Eloise arrived before his friends, and he thanked her for making such an EFFORT.
She asked him whether he’d invited everybody from the chat.
“Of course,” he said.
He didn’t ask how she knew which chat.
When the bell rang, he called that he’d get it.
I stayed beside his mother.
Pawel stepped inside first, already laughing at something Dwayne had said behind him.
Ricky turned to lead them through.
Then his mouth opened without a sound, and Pawel’s hand stayed raised halfway out of his coat sleeve.
The doorway
I was wearing the nightdress.
That was what stopped them. Mustard cotton, the pocket curled, my slippers underneath. Eloise stood beside me in the clothes she’d arrived in, with Ricky’s tablet in her hands.
I took it from her and turned the screen toward the men.
The photograph filled it. The nightdress on our bed, Ricky’s thumb hooked inside the pocket.
“Now you can see it in person,” I said.
Pawel pulled his arm back into his coat. Dwayne stayed against the door.
Ricky reached for the tablet.
I lowered it against my leg.
“Mom, you can go,” he said. “Thank you for helping. We’ve got it from here.”
Eloise sat on the sofa.
He stood over her for a moment, waiting for her to remember who her son was. I knew that wait. He used it when he wanted a cup of coffee without making the trip.
“Your friends are letting the heat out,” she said.
Dwayne closed the door.
Sana was spending the night with my cousin Tammy. Nobody in that room needed to be shielded from an adult sentence. Still, I checked the stairs before I spoke.
“I read the messages on Tuesday.”
Ricky rubbed his mouth.
“So this is what tonight’s about.”
“Yes.”
“You could have talked to me.”
“I asked what was funny.”
“You went through my messages.”
“I read the ones about me.”
Pawel stared at the floor. Dwayne took one step sideways, which put him behind Ricky. They were very good at arranging things for photographs. Less good at arranging themselves.
Eloise patted the place beside her.
I sat. Ricky remained standing between us and his friends.
From the kitchen came the smell of the supper Eloise had brought. He looked toward it, then at the tablet.
“You said we were having people over for cards.”
“We are having those people over,” I said.
He pointed toward the kitchen.
“You said supper was included.”
The curled corner
The pocket bunched beneath my hand as I sat down.
Nine years earlier, Eloise had brought me that nightdress after Sana was born. I’d been trying to feed the baby in a top that needed both hands to unbutton. Eloise held up the cotton and said, “This one opens where you need it to.”
I said the color looked like sandwich mustard.
“Then don’t put it on a sandwich.”
She washed it before she left. When she brought it upstairs, she put a clean cloth in the pocket and helped me get Sana settled against it.
On the sofa that Sunday, she reached across and freed the corner from beneath my fingers.
“I bought her that,” she said.
Ricky gave a little shrug.
“I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“No. You said quite a lot else.”
Dwayne looked at the tablet.
“Can we sit down?”
I moved my slippers out of the way. Even then. A man had come to my house after calling my nightdress cleaning clothes, and I was making room for his feet.
He sat in the armchair. Pawel stayed near the doorway.
Eloise’s plan had sounded manageable when we’d talked earlier that day. They would come. I’d show them that I knew. Each man would apologize where the others could hear him.
Then Ricky would serve the supper his mother had cooked and clear up afterward. I wouldn’t lift a finger.
It had appealed to the part of me that still wanted an evening to survive this. An apology, a plate somebody else washed, bed.
She’d also offered me her spare room if I wanted a night away.
“Bring a bag,” she’d said. “You don’t have to use it.”
My overnight bag was upstairs, empty beside the wardrobe. I’d put it there before changing.
Now Ricky sat on the arm of the sofa, close enough for his knee to touch my shoulder.
“Look,” he said, “I can see you’ve taken this badly.”
Eloise shifted forward.
“Try that again.”
He shut his eyes, then opened them at me.
“I didn’t think you’d see it.”
I wanted to ask whether he also left shopping carts rolling through parking lots as long as the owners of the cars weren’t looking.
Instead, I put the tablet between us.
“Start with the first picture.”
He didn’t pick it up.
“You’re really going to do this in front of my mother?”
His end of the sofa
“She knows,” I said.
“She knows what you’ve told her.”
Eloise held out her hand. I passed her the tablet, and she put on her reading glasses.
Ricky slid off the sofa arm.
“Can we have a minute in the kitchen?”
I followed him because eleven years is a long time to practice following someone out of an uncomfortable room.
He stopped just inside the kitchen.
“Why are you dressed like that?”
I looked down.
He pointed toward the hall.
“You know what I mean. You don’t wear that when people come over.”
“They’ve seen it.”
“Pictures.”
“You supplied those.”
He pulled a chair out, then pushed it back without sitting.
I wanted him to put his hands down. I wanted one plain sentence without furniture being rearranged around it.
He lowered his voice. “Pawel makes jokes. That’s what he does.”
“And you take pictures. Apparently that’s what you do.”
“Fine. It was stupid.”
I waited.
He reached for my hand.
I stepped back, and his hand remained between us for a second before he put it in his pocket.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There. I shouldn’t have sent them. We can get rid of the thing, buy you something nice.”
My mouth opened.
He took that for progress.
“You pick it. Whatever you want. I’ll come with you.”
There was a bowl of salad beside him that Eloise had covered with a plate. He lifted the plate and took a piece of cucumber.
I’d been awake half of Tuesday night wondering whether my husband still liked looking at me. He was eating a garnish while offering to replace the exhibit.
“I like this nightdress.”
“You’ve had it forever.”
“I like it.”
“All right. Keep it. I’m trying here.”
From the sitting room came Eloise’s voice.
“Ricky, come back.”
He glanced toward her.
“Can you please change first? We can sort this out without making it weird.”
That nearly worked.
My trousers were upstairs. So was a top he’d once said looked good on me. I could put them on, come down, accept an apology, and let three men congratulate themselves on surviving a woman’s mood.
I put my hand into the pocket.
“No.”
He pressed his lips together.
“You’re enjoying this now.”
I went back to the sitting room before I said something I would need to repeat.
Eloise had the tablet on her lap. Pawel had taken his coat off but was holding it. Dwayne sat with his elbows on his knees.
“She knows we were kidding, right?” Pawel said to Ricky.
“I’m here,” I said.
He looked at me.
“Right. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Which part?”
He glanced at the tablet.
“Any of it.”
Eloise turned the screen toward him.
“Read what you’re apologizing for.”
Ricky came through the doorway behind me.
“We’re not doing a reading.”
Dwayne rubbed his forehead.
“Let’s just get it over with.”
I turned toward him.
He spread his hands. “I meant the apology.”
He sounded annoyed with me for making him specify.
Ricky reached over his mother’s shoulder and pressed the tablet’s button.
The screen went black.
Eloise’s glasses
Eloise pressed the button again.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
He backed away.
Briefly, I thought we were still following her plan. She would make him sit, the men would speak, and somebody would say something that reached the place beneath my ribs where Tuesday was still happening.
Pawel cleared his throat.
“The claim-ticket thing was mine. It was rude. I apologize.”
He looked at Eloise after he said it.
“To her,” she said.
He turned back to me.
“I’m sorry, Lizbeth.”
I nodded because I didn’t know what else to do with an apology that arrived carrying its own request for a receipt.
Dwayne spoke next.
“I shouldn’t have joined in. I wouldn’t say that to you.”
“But you said it to him.”
“Yes.”
“And he lives with me.”
Dwayne lowered his eyes.
Ricky stood beside the sofa.
“I’m sorry too,” he said. “I took it too far.”
Eloise removed her glasses.
“Good. That’s a start.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. His thumb moved once across her cardigan.
“We’ve all said it now.”
She covered his hand with hers.
I sat down beside her, but she was looking up at him.
“What about the other days?” I said.
Ricky’s hand stopped moving.
“What other days?”
“The other pictures.”
“We’ve covered the pictures.”
“You went upstairs to get it while I was helping Sana read.”
“I don’t remember when every picture was taken.”
“I do.”
Eloise turned toward me. “He’s admitted it, Lizbeth.”
“He said he took it too far. I want to know where he thinks it started.”
Ricky dropped his hand from her shoulder.
“You’re going to pick apart every word.”
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to sit there until the wallpaper peeled and make him account for every minute he had spent arranging my clothes for men to mock.
Instead, I said, “You asked me where the laundry sack was.”
He looked at his friends.
“I asked where a bag was. Now that’s part of the crime.”
Pawel rubbed his nose. Dwayne looked toward the kitchen.
Eloise put the glasses into their case.
“Lizbeth, don’t make him beg.”
I turned so quickly my knee knocked hers.
She touched it.
“I mean, there’s only so much he can say.”
Ricky sat opposite me. He leaned back for the first time since opening the door.
“Thank you.”
Eloise’s hand stayed on my knee.
I had told her something I couldn’t tell anybody else. I’d cried with my face against her sleeve. Now her son was thanking her for making me stop.
“I didn’t ask him to beg.”
“I know,” she said. “I just think we should take a breath.”
Ricky looked at the kitchen again.
“Let me serve. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Nobody answered.
He stood and went to fetch plates.
I could hear him opening the wrong cupboard.
That sound finished me. His mother had cooked, I had spent days rehearsing how to say I was hurt, and he couldn’t locate a plate without giving three doors a try.
I started crying.
Not the tears I’d hoped to manage with a fingertip. My nose ran. I tried to say something and made a sound that belonged to neither end of a sentence.
Pawel held his coat higher.
Eloise put her arm around me.
“Oh, sweetheart.”
Ricky came back with the plates.
“See, this is why I said we should talk privately.”
I pulled away from Eloise and stood.
She reached after me.
“Go wash your face. I’ll come up.”
I walked past my husband. He moved the plates out of my way.
At the stairs, Eloise touched my elbow.
“Come home with me tonight. We can leave them to it.”
Behind us, Ricky put the plates down.
The empty bag
Upstairs that Sunday evening, I sat on the bed beside the overnight bag.
Below me, a chair scraped. A cupboard closed.
They were getting ready to eat.
I pulled open the wardrobe. My top fell off its hanger because I yanked it sideways. I picked it up and folded it, then unfolded it because I couldn’t remember whether I needed clothes for one day or two.
Eloise came into the bedroom.
“I meant to give you a break,” she said.
“From my house?”
“From this.”
She sat beside the bag.
I could have leaned against her. That was the worst part. I still wanted to.
Downstairs, Ricky said something I couldn’t make out. One friend answered. Nobody laughed, but the ordinary sound of men waiting for supper came through the floor.
“You told me to bring them here,” I said.
“I thought he’d be ashamed.”
“He was. Then you told him he’d done enough.”
Her mouth moved, but she didn’t speak.
I put the top into the bag.
Eloise took it out and folded it properly. Her hands had been helping people her whole life. They could make a sharp corner out of anything except her son.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she said.
I took the top back.
“I needed you beside me.”
“I am beside you.”
I looked at the empty place in my wardrobe.
She followed my eyes.
Ricky appeared at the door.
“Are you really going?”
Neither of us answered.
He came in and stood at the foot of the bed.
“This has gotten ridiculous. The guys feel terrible.”
I wiped my nose with a tissue.
“Do they?”
“They’re sitting down there afraid to move.”
“Good.”
He looked at his mother.
She kept her eyes on me.
“I apologized,” he said. “You can ask them. I said it in front of everybody.”
He pointed at the bag.
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
“I haven’t asked you to do anything with it.”
“Well, it looks like a statement.”
I wanted to throw the top at him. It was folded so neatly that I resented the effort it would take to unfold it for throwing.
Instead, I reached for my toothbrush from the bag’s side pocket. I’d put it there earlier, just in case.
My own toothbrush. My own pillow behind me. My husband standing in our bedroom with supper waiting downstairs.
He sat on the bed, leaving the bag between us.
“Stay if you want. Go to Mom’s if you want. But don’t make me tell them the whole evening’s canceled because you couldn’t accept an apology.”
Eloise stood.
“Ricky.”
“What? That’s what’s happening.”
I gripped the toothbrush until its edge hurt my palm.
He turned back to me.
“Tell me what to say, then. Write it down. I’ll say it.”
I looked at his mouth. I’d kissed it that Tuesday morning before he picked up his phone.
“Did you think I was funny when you took those pictures?”
He rubbed his hands over his knees.
“I thought the guys would think it was funny.”
“And that was enough?”
He stood again.
“I can’t keep answering the same question.”
He went to the doorway.
“Mom, are you taking her or not?”
The bedspread
I set the toothbrush on the bedspread.
Eloise reached for the bag. I put my hand over hers.
“Leave it.”
Ricky stopped in the doorway.
I took my top out. Then I opened the drawer and put it back where it belonged.
“You said you wanted a night away,” Eloise said.
“I wanted a night when nobody laughed at me.”
“I understand.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t give her that word yet.
Ricky leaned against the door.
“So you’re staying.”
“Yes.”
He nodded toward the stairs.
“Then can we please go down?”
I picked up the empty bag and held it out to him.
He didn’t take it.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You can use it.”
His eyes went to his mother.
She stood beside the bed, both hands hanging at her sides.
I wanted her to say it for me. I had wanted that since Wednesday. His mother would find the sentence he couldn’t wriggle out of, and I could remain the wife who hadn’t quite said anything unforgivable.
I held the bag higher.
“I want you to stay somewhere else.”
“For tonight?”
“I want us to live separately.”
He looked past me at the wardrobe.
“Over a nightdress.”
“Say that downstairs.”
“I’m saying it to you.”
“You’ve been saying things about me to them for weeks. Come downstairs and say this one.”
Eloise touched the bedspread where my toothbrush lay.
“My spare room’s made up,” she said.
Ricky turned toward her.
“For Lizbeth.”
She looked at me.
I put the toothbrush back in the bathroom.
When I came out, she was still there.
“For whoever needs it,” she said.
I handed Ricky the bag.
He held it away from his body as though I’d given him something wet.
“The guys are downstairs.”
“I know.”
He started to set it on the bed.
I took it from him and walked past.
This time, he followed me.
Three men beside the sofa
I put the bag beside Ricky’s place on the sofa.
Pawel stood.
“We should probably head out.”
“Please stay a minute,” I said.
Dwayne rose halfway, then sat again.
Ricky came down with his mother behind him.
“She’s decided I need to leave the house,” he said. “So apparently that’s where we are now.”
I let him finish.
He pointed at the nightdress.
“Because of some pictures of that. Clothes. Not pictures of her. Nobody’s done anything except make some stupid jokes.”
Pawel looked at the bag.
“Are you two separating?”
“Ask her. She’s running the evening.”
I stood beside the armchair.
“Yes,” I said.
The word came out smaller than I’d expected. Everybody heard it.
Ricky opened both hands.
“There you go. Eleven years, and this is what she does.”
Dwayne rubbed his mouth.
“You used eleven years in the messages too.”
Ricky turned on him.
“Don’t start.”
“I’m just saying.”
“No, you’re suddenly getting very careful about what you say. You were happy enough in the chat.”
Dwayne sat back.
“Yes. I was.”
Ricky looked at Pawel.
“You asked for more pictures.”
Pawel put his coat on the sofa.
“I did.”
“So don’t sit here making me the only bad guy.”
I picked up the tablet and held it out.
“Nobody has.”
He stared at it.
I kept my arm extended until he took it.
“Open the picture with your thumb in the pocket.”
“Why?”
“Show them.”
“They’ve seen it.”
“Show your mother.”
Eloise stepped beside him. He opened the thread and scrolled.
He tried to pass the tablet to her.
“Keep it,” I said. “Tell her what you did.”
He looked at me, then at the screen.
“I held a pocket open.”
“Before that.”
He pushed his tongue against his cheek.
“I took it out of the laundry.”
“Then?”
“Oh, come on.”
Nobody moved.
He shifted the tablet into his other hand.
“I put it on the bed.”
“Go on.”
“Spread it out. Took a picture. Sent it. Is that enough detail?”
Eloise put her palm over her mouth.
Ricky saw it.
“Mom. It’s a nightgown.”
She lowered her hand.
“You went looking for it.”
“I wasn’t stalking a nightgown.”
“You asked her where it was.”
“I didn’t ask for the nightgown. I asked where the laundry was.”
He stopped.
Pawel looked down. Dwayne leaned forward, elbows on knees.
Ricky turned toward me.
“You’ve made this sound like I planned some campaign.”
I didn’t answer.
He scrolled up, then down again. His thumb moved past a second photograph. Then another.
His mother put her glasses on.
“How many times?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“Count them.”
He held the tablet toward her.
“You count them if it’s that important.”
She didn’t take it.
He lowered his arm.
“I’m not doing this.”
I picked up the overnight bag and held it open.
“You don’t have to.”
Ricky looked into it.
For a moment, all I could hear was the refrigerator through the doorway.
Then he turned to Pawel.
“Can I stay at yours tonight?”
Pawel rubbed the back of his neck.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Ricky stared at him.
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“You’ve been here ten minutes and suddenly you can’t have me over?”
Pawel’s eyes moved toward me.
Ricky stepped between us.
“Don’t look at her. I’m asking you.”
Pawel swallowed.
“I can’t have you staying because of this.”
Dwayne stood.
“I can drive you to your mother’s.”
Ricky gave a laugh that stopped before it became one.
“Great. Thanks. That’s very generous.”
Eloise took the bag from me.
“You can stay in my spare room,” she said. “You will tell me tomorrow what your plan is. Lizbeth isn’t packing for you.”
He reached toward her, and she handed him the bag.
He took it.
Then he looked at me.
“You really want everybody to see this?”
“They saw the rest.”
Pawel sat down again. He took out his phone and pulled up the chat.
“The claim-ticket message was mine,” he said. “So was the message asking for more. I’m deleting what I saved.”
He worked on the phone, then turned the screen toward me.
I didn’t reach for it.
“I can’t check every place,” I said.
“I know.”
Dwayne took out his phone too.
Ricky put the bag on the sofa.
“Now we’re all putting on a show.”
Pawel stopped moving his thumb.
“You sent us the pictures, Ricky. We answered. She’s standing right here. What part of this do you want us to keep?”
Ricky’s face reddened.
Nobody helped him.
He opened the photograph again, then started deleting. His mother stayed beside him. When he reached the last picture, he turned the tablet toward me.
I shook my head.
“That doesn’t put Tuesday back.”
“I know.”
“No. You wanted me to change clothes so they could eat.”
He looked toward the kitchen.
The plates were still where he’d put them.
Eloise took off her glasses.
“I told her not to make you beg,” she said. “I said that in front of these men.”
He reached for her arm.
She moved it.
“I’m apologizing to Lizbeth.”
She faced me.
“I’m sorry. I saw you crying and tried to stop the crying. I should’ve stopped him.”
I cried again. There was no dignified way left to do it, so I used the nightdress sleeve and let everybody survive the sight.
Ricky picked up the bag.
At the stairs, he turned.
“I hope the evening was worth it.”
I put the tablet down.
“You were the host.”
The supper nobody ate
Ricky went upstairs to pack.
Below him, nobody touched the food.
Pawel stood with his coat over his arm.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
This time he didn’t look at Eloise afterward.
I nodded toward the door.
“I don’t want you coming here for cards.”
“Understood.”
Dwayne picked up his keys.
“Me neither?”
“You too.”
He nodded.
There was no argument about whose joke had been worse. They had both managed to find the door without assistance, a household skill I hadn’t appreciated until then.
Pawel stopped with his hand on the latch.
“Do you want us to wait for him?”
“No.”
They left together.
Through the window, their heads turned toward each other beside the car. I stepped away. They could talk about me if they wanted. I wasn’t going outside to supply refreshments.
Eloise went into the kitchen.
I followed her and reached for the plate over the salad.
She rested her hand on mine.
“Leave it.”
For once, I did.
She covered the food and put it in the refrigerator. Then she washed the dishes she’d used to bring it. I sat by the doorway while she worked.
Ricky came down carrying the bag and his own coat.
He stopped outside the kitchen.
“Where are they?”
“Gone,” I said.
He looked into the sitting room anyway.
“Right.”
He put his keys in his pocket, then took them out again.
“What do we tell Sana?”
“That we’re going to live in separate places. Together, tomorrow. No nightdress.”
He nodded.
“No jokes,” I said.
He looked at me.
“No jokes.”
Eloise dried her hands.
“I’ll meet you at mine.”
Ricky waited.
I waited too.
He adjusted the bag on his shoulder.
“I didn’t think you’d leave me.”
“I’m staying here.”
His eyes moved toward the stairs, then back to me.
He opened the door and carried the bag out.
Eloise stayed until his car pulled away. Then she sat beside me on the bottom stair.
“I brought a whole supper for this,” she said.
A laugh came out of me with a hiccup in it.
She touched my wrist.
“May I?”
I nodded, and she put her arm around me.
I leaned against her. She didn’t tell me it would all work out.
Before she left, she held both my hands.
“Next time I start helping him out of something he did, remind me of tonight.”
“I won’t be gentle.”
“Don’t.”
She kissed my cheek and went to her car.
I closed the door, went upstairs, and put my toothbrush back in its cup.
The clean laundry
The following Sunday, Ricky carried the last of the clothes he wanted downstairs in bags he had brought himself.
Sana was with Tammy for the afternoon. We’d spoken to her together on Monday. Ricky had kept the jokes out of it.
Now he stood in the bedroom while I folded laundry.
“Mom says I need to start looking for a place.”
I put a sleeve inside a sleeve.
“She said you told her that.”
“I told her I wasn’t asking you to come home.”
He rubbed his hands together.
“I keep trying to explain that it got away from me.”
I put the folded shirt in my drawer.
He stood there another moment, then picked up the bags.
At the doorway, he took his house key off the ring and set it on the dresser.
I’d asked him for it before he came. He’d agreed. Still, the small sound of it touching the wood made me sit on the bed.
He looked back.
“Can I call you later?”
“About Sana.”
He nodded.
There were things left to arrange. That afternoon, he carried his bags to the car without asking me to hold the door.
Eloise brought Sana home before bedtime.
She had called first.
As I opened the door, Sana came past her carrying the book she’d taken to Tammy’s. Eloise stayed on the step.
“Can I come in?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t head for the kitchen. She sat where I pointed and let Sana tell her about a word neither she nor Tammy had been able to pronounce.
We all had a go at it. Mine was the worst. Sana corrected me with the patience of someone who had only learned it six hours earlier.
After Eloise left, I carried the laundry sack upstairs.
The nightdress lay at the top.
Briefly, I held it by the shoulders, exactly as it appeared in one of Ricky’s photographs. Then I pulled it over my head.
The pocket corner still curled.
I left it alone.
Sana was on my bed with her book open.
“Can we do this bit?”
I got in beside her.
She moved against me and tucked one hand into the pocket, as she’d done when she was smaller. Her fingers found the seam.
“This one’s my favorite,” she said.
I put my arm around her.
“Mine too.”
She handed me the book, then pulled it back before I could start.
“Don’t do the voices.”
“I have excellent voices.”
“You have two.”
“That’s twice as many as some people.”
She laughed and settled against the mustard cotton.
I opened the book.
She slipped her hand back in my pocket and said, “Start here.”
If this one got to you, send it to someone who needs to hear that she doesn’t have to laugh along.
Family tensions and public put-downs take center stage in the wedding where Troy sent his ex to the “cheap seats” and the story of a father who began weighing his wife after a family loss. For another complicated in-law story, read about a twin hidden from her sister’s future mother-in-law.
