PILLOWCASE

Fay set her alarm early every Saturday morning so that she could beat her neighbors to the washing machines. With only two washers and dryers to accommodate the entire building, they became pack animals armed with All-Temperature Cheer and Bounce. All of the politeness they had exchanged by the mailboxes or on the front stoop dissipated in a feral desperation for clean clothes. Most weekends Fay would find her 80-year old neighbor Helen with her laundry baskets atop the machines, preparing for multiple loads. Fay bitterly thought that Helen could just do her laundry during the week everyone else was at work. But, with a smiling face and resignation she politely conceded the machine to the blue-haired alpha of the pack, and retreated back upstairs.

This morning she was determined. Fay grabbed her hamper and jogged down the stairs, quarters jingling in her pocket. The building was still, everyone was sleeping. She opened the door to the dank laundry room and discovered it was empty, it was hers--hers to wash, spin, and tumble dry in peace. Smiling in triumph, she tossed in her clothes, towels, sheets and favorite detergent. Laundry was such a small act that gave her such a tangible sense of satisfaction. She went back upstairs to a pot of brewing coffee that filled the apartment with a comforting scent.

She turned on her cell phone to check her messages. As expected, he had called.

"Hi baby, isss me. It’s…about 2am. Jus’ finished up my last game of pool. And—HEY! Manny-whas’ up, man? Yeah! Anyway...what was I saying? Fuck, I’m buzzed, baby. Wish I could come over. Mmm. Miss you. You’re probably asleep. Oh well, jus’ wanted to say hi, and I was thinking of you. If you get this, give me a call. You know, I wish you'dve come out tonight and--Manny, you tool! No, this one’s one me! I’m a have one more and---"

<click>

She was irritated at his slurred words and Jim Beam-fueled affection. On another man, she might have found this charming, or even saved the message. But on him this was unattractive. She just didn’t want a night of sloppy, drunken kisses. Well, not with him. They had been dating for a month, and she had tried. Tried to feel something special for him, but…. I’m going to have to break up with him. Damn.

She looked out the window at the morning sky. God, it was gorgeous. She had the whole day ahead of her.

An hour later she was folding her clean, warm laundry on the couch. Her building was beginning to wake up, through the walls she heard her neighbor moving around and the scratchy sounds that came from his clock radio.She picked up her softest, oldest pillowcase with great affection. It was the color of lavender, and so soft. It was almost threadbare; she’d had it for years. No matter what sheets she bought, she always kept this pillowcase, and put her favorite pillow in it so every night she could lie her head down on the softest pillowcase in the world. She pressed it to her face and breathed in the scent of her dryer sheets.She looked for the familiar gray smudge that had marred the fabric for several months. It was traces of mascara.

Her pillowcase was stained on a warm summer night that had followed a bad day, the kind of bad day that you could remember in excruciating detail for years. On that day Fay had managed to hold the weight of her tears until she was safely home and completely alone. Her head felt so full, so heavy, she had to lie down--a tempest churning under her skin. She was not one for self-pity, but that night she was beyond her own discipline. She curled up on her bed and cried. It was a hard cry; gasping, candid sobs, sniffles, and fat tears that rained from her eyes. She cried until her eyes stung and there was nothing left. Finally, out of exhaustion, she drifted off to a dreamless sleep, determined that that was that. Tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow she would begin letting go of him.

A perfect storm of mistakes, misjudgments, and misguided hope had been a long time coming and hit with F5 fury.

Fay never saw him coming. She never expected him.With her laundry scattered over her, she began to recall all of it. Her spell was broken by the sound of her neighbor’s radio. She heard Louis Armstrong sing of “dark sacred nights.” She liked that. She’d like a dark, sacred night.

Fay had a propensity for guilt and great embarrassment, and sometimes she would lie in bed on a dark and not-so-sacred night and think about the larger missteps she had made, the ones that caused the most damage. She wanted to repent. But redemption is slippery, and hers were not nimble fingers.

The first time she saw him Fay had the slight sensation of being punched in the stomach. That was a year ago. And looking at him, she saw something utterly lovely and completely unique to her. It wasn’t a physical or sexual response, well not at first. It was just a tremendous something that she saw, that she believed that only she could see. She could feel it, the rare beauty that lived in him. She saw him in a way that made her senses sharpen and made her completely understand fragments of lines by Theodore Roethke or ee cummings that she had read long ago. It seemed so long ago. This was before everything went to hell and she ruined her pillowcase.

It was with impossible sadness that she realized that she would never inspire any such poetry in him. He didn’t see her, and never would. She had loved him in secret, and he never even knew. So she let go of all her daydreams, her hopes, her foolish wishes that humid night, and cried away the expectation of him.

As Fay fingered the gray stain, she realized that it had become her badge, her souvenir. It was an unsought education: that purity of intent and desire is not necessarily enough; that wanting with a true heart, mind, and libido insured nothing. It reminded her that sometimes the truth is ugly and hard, and no place for ee cummings-or her heart. But above all, it reminded her that for a brief time, she felt love--raw, unruly, unreciprocated love. Despite the outcome, Fay felt fortunate to have had even a few months consumed by such powerful feelings. She had been so high that everything felt vibrant and new, and that was a gift.

Fay went to her bedroom and tenderly put her pillow in the pillowcase. She stretched out on the bed, her hand tracing the mascara stain. This was the only piece of him she could have. But, she felt only comfort as the closed her eyes. The small piece of him that held her head as she slept was as precious and sacred as a prayer.