Claire claps her hands.
They watch for ten minutes. Gene turns off the spigot and guides the hose over the sill of the kitchen window. He flips a lever near the bottom of the washer. The soapy water empties onto the ground, leaving the pillow slips covered in suds at the bottom. Grace fills the tub half full and agitates the slips to rinse them. Then, with Gene placing his hands over hers, he demonstrates the right amount of tension needed to pull the slips through the wringer.
With a stiff pillow slip in her hand, Grace feels Gene tilting her face up to his. He leaves a gentle kiss on her lips. He calls her Dove.
Can a wringer washer save a marriage? She thinks the answer a probable yes.
Over the next several weeks, Grace happily launders every piece of clothing and linen in the house, pulling each item through the wringer. She has a few mishaps, such as when the hose with the soapy water falls back into the house and sprays the kitchen, barely missing the radio. Or when, transfixed by the agitator, she drops a piece of toast from a saucer into the washer. She puts her hand in before she stops the agitator and gets a wallop for her trouble. She pulls out the plug and tries to catch the toast with a sieve. The bits disintegrate as she touches them. The next morning when she irons the garments from that wash, she finds tiny studs of toast stuck to her favorite blouse.
She washes so many clothes that all of the outdoor lines fill. She has to put one across the screened porch and one that again bisects the kitchen. The pile of ironing grows massive.
Gene, weaving his way through the kitchen and into the living room, tells Grace that water costs money.
On a summer Saturday, which still seems to Grace like the beginning of the weekend even though Gene goes to work on that day, she dresses the children in light clothing and takes them to the beach. The sand is cool but dry. It seems that everyone from Hunts Beach and beyond has had the same idea because the seawall is lined with cars of every color and make. Grace unfolds the quilt she brought and floats it to the sand. She sets up a tent of gauze for Tom when he falls asleep. Reluctantly, she unbuttons her housedress to reveal her two-piece white bathing suit, the one with the halter top and short skirt. She knows it will flatter her skin when she tans. Though she keeps her eyes fixed on the sea, she’s aware of heads turning her way. She strips Claire to her red polka-dotted suit and together they walk to the water. Though the Atlantic is still frigid, Grace waits until her ankles are numb. She plays with Claire in the shallows, each splashing the other. The sound of the surf calms Grace—it wipes out individual voices. Claire likes the gentle action of the ocean drawing her out and pushing her back in again. Grace sits at the edge of the sea and watches Claire until she lowers herself and lets her body be dragged and drawn with Claire’s. The daughter giggles to see her mother in the water with her, and Grace laughs, too. The movement of the sea is rhythmic and sensual—she remembers this vividly from her own childhood—and before long, she like Claire has sand inside her bathing suit. They kick their feet and create suds. Grace suggests making a castle, but no sooner has Grace upended a pile of packed sand than Claire smashes her hand through it. She seems to think this is the game at hand.
After another hour, Tom, who has always been an unusually good baby, whimpers. Grace lifts away the gauze she used for a tent and discovers that her son’s face and neck are bright pink. When she presses a finger to his cheek, it leaves a clear white spot that slowly fades.
“Oh, Tom,” she says, lifting him up.
Would Rosie have given her child a sunburn? Never. Rosie would have come with an umbrella and a little cap for Eddie and would have held the infant the entire time.
A sunburn doesn’t fade in a day. By dinnertime, Tom has crinkles around his eyes. Gene says, when he walks in the door and catches sight of his son, “What the hell happened to Tom?”
This is just before he says, “My mother’s in the hospital.”
“For what?” Grace asks.
“Cancer in the breast.”
The news hits Grace at the back of her head. She offers to get a babysitter. “We can go to see her. I’ve got new roses we can take.”
“I’ve already been,” Gene says, putting his equipment on top of the kitchen table, as if the plates and cutlery weren’t already there. “I’ve been there all afternoon.”
Grace sits heavily, coffee crystals falling from a spoon. “When did you find out?”
“Last week, when I took the kids over. She’s having the surgery Monday.”
“And you didn’t say anything to me?”
“She didn’t want you to fuss over her.”
“I don’t fuss, you know that.”
Gene gazes at his raw son. “They’re going to take the adrenal gland and her ovaries, too.”
“My God,” says Grace. “Why the adrenal gland?” She is fairly sure she couldn’t point to the adrenal gland in her own body.
“Get rid of all the estrogen. Same with the ovaries.”
“Both?” Grace asks.
“Ovaries?”
“Breasts,” she says.
“Of course,” Gene answers, looking at his wife as if she were a moron.
When Grace is honest with herself, she finds that no part of her wants Merle to die. If that were to happen, Grace would lose her husband to grief, and her children would have no Nana.
“Maybe after the surgery,” Gene says mollifyingly. His mother’s illness is not, after all, Grace’s fault. “We’ll visit together. I’m going back now, just to calm her fears.”
“Is she frightened?”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
Gene kisses Claire and Tom and opens the door.
“Give her my love,” Grace calls, surprising Gene and herself with the word, one she has never used in any situation involving her motherin-law.
“I will,” Gene says, but Grace knows that he won’t. Why upset his mother with a name Merle can’t abide?
Because Tom’s skin begins to peel, Grace deliberately misses an appointment with Dr. Franklin.
After the surgery, Gene’s mother wants to die. Specifically, she believes she is no longer a woman.
Gene spends more and more time with his mother, which turns out to be fortuitous, because Mrs. Holland dies ten days after surgery from a blood clot that travels to the heart. Gene believes his mother went willingly. Grace, who never had a chance to visit, believes that when the clot hit, Gene’s mother didn’t know or wish a thing.
“How’s Gene?” Rosie asks a few days after the funeral when she and Grace are sitting in Rosie’s backyard watching the children. Rosie has completed several loads of wash in Grace’s machine.
“He’s managing.”
“Truth.”
“He’s awful. I feel guilty. He makes me feel guilty.”
“How so?”
“If I had gone to see his mother once in a while, she wouldn’t have gotten breast cancer.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
“Yes, well.” She thinks a moment. “But you know what? It feels true.”
It feels true that she might have wished her motherin-law gone. Not dead, just gone. It feels true that she caused the hurtful night in bed, even though she sort of knows she didn’t. She does know, however, that it’s been too long since she and Gene have had sex. It feels sort of true that she doesn’t want to start up again.