Their war was pathetic. Their battles never solved their problems, their disagreements or differences. Monica Sadler and Dave Keith were the unhappiest couple on Magnolia Boulevard. They slept on the same bed but they hardly ever kissed or held each in their arms before falling asleep or made love. They fought, not speaking to each other for days and then made up, reuniting again, apologizing to each other. It was a routine for them. Dave would come home, his shirt wrinkled after a long day at the construction site, his glasses skewed with dirt all over them, his breath stinking from cigarettes. He would drop his briefcase on the living room floor, not really caring where it would land, his designs and maps falling out, and then he would lie still on the couch, tired and bored. His wife Monica would appear from her office, wearing nothing but a silky, black bra and grey shorts, holding a violin bow in one hand, with a I’m-sick-and-tired-of-you-coming-home-looking-like-crap look and then she would disappear into her office again to write notes.
Dave Keith was an architect. Monica Sadler taught violin lessons at home and sometimes at Jefferson Middle School. They were married for two years and had nothing in common. They met at Monica’s friend’s wedding and claimed to their families and friends that they had fallen in love or that it was love at first sight. But the truth was that they were two desperate, lonely people in their mid-30s who needed a secure, official, permanent love, and not one of those flings or on-and-off kind of relationships. They dated for about two months and then one summer night, when Monica turned 36, Dave asked her to marry him because he was tired of unsteady relationships and failed romances. He wanted a wife. Not a trophy wife, but one who would love him in sickness and in health, who would be there when he came home late at night, weary and worn-out, the kind of wife who would never leave him. Except Monica wasn’t the typical wife. She was the type that partied with her girl friends every Friday and Saturday night, the kind that was too lazy to work everyday, the kind that hated cooking and cleaning and seldom ever said the words “I love you”.
They fought with each other over small things, like why Dave hated scrambled eggs and cranberry juice, or why Monica refused to learn cooking and didn’t have a proper job. They fought over the fact that they were never really in love with each other and should have never married. They fought over why they didn’t have kids or why their house was too big. Then they made up and Dave told her he loved her but neither one of them knew for sure.
Their war was pathetic, so was their marriage and relationship. Two years passed and then one evening Monica packed her stuff into a big, black suitcase and left. She never told Dave that she was two-months pregnant with his baby or that she was moving to London to play for a professional orchestra. She never told him that deep down she knew he had grown to love her, that she knew he wanted to hold her and touch her and watch her play because it was erotic and she played so beautifully. She knew from the way he kissed her neck as she played the violin in her silky, black bra, from the way he touched her and smelled her hair. She knew but never told him that she didn’t grow to love him, that she could never return his love.

Doing the laundry is therapeutic; it’s like taking a tranquilizer that calms you and erases all the bad thoughts. As the clothes turn upside down inside the washing machines, your thoughts do the same. Some get recycled and others are deleted. Doing the laundry is a process of recycling, cleansing, erasing and saving. When everything is done and the machines stop turning, and you take out the whites and colors, the process is completed. And you feel satisfied.
I like doing the laundry. I like putting clothes inside the machines and taking them out, filling them with bleach and softeners, and then watching as they turn upside down, inside and out. As I walk inside the Laundromat, I smell freshness; it’s like spring air. And I breathe in and out. Inhale. Exhale. And my thoughts are cleansed, so is my soul. Everything is clean and purified and fresh.
Today was the first day of a new year and Maman asked me to do the laundry. So I did.