The Game of Laundry

“I’ll bet ten bucks she can get all of it.”  Red Miller said.

“Naw,” Elvin Jones takes a swig of his Miller Lite. “It’s too windy. She has a lot of socks and little things.”

“I bet she can get everything but the afghan blanket. It’s huge.” Roger Zimmerman took a sip of his beer, “She needs to wrap the little things in a shirt before she tosses it on her shoulder.”

The three men sitting in Red’s pick-up all nodded and clinked their bottles. They held court with their secret men’s club in the town cemetery kitty-corner from Imogene’s Carters house. Something they had done most nights, since as far back as they could remember, especially Wednesday nights. Wednesday was laundry day for Imogene. It started out as curiosity which turned into an innocent game. Small wagers were placed, no more than five dollars, the price of a six pack.

Imogene Carter heard about her husband’s affair when she had been in the town library in non-fiction looking for a bird identification book. The two old biddies didn’t think Imogene might be lurking just one shelf over when they started snipping about her husband, Jeff, of twenty-eight years and two kids.

“I heard it’s Marie from accounting.” Said Biddy One.

“No, my sister at the bank said it’s the new teller from the city who is filling in.” Said Biddy Two.

Both were wrong. It had been the gal down at the post office who had just left her husband three months earlier. No wonder Jeff had been buying a lot of stamps as of late.

Both kids had left the house so selling it during the divorce had been emotional. Imogene took very little. The couch, her favorite end-table, her grandmother’s matching lamps and her personal items like clothing, sewing machine, laptop, etc. She wanted nothing that would remind her of her life with Jeff. She bought a small farm on the other side of town that had once belonged to her Great Aunt Louella who, rumor had it, had been the first known lesbian to live in the county.

Over the three years she had little by little brought the farm back to its glory. She replaced what needed fixing and refurbished the vegetable garden. She added flowers back in the sleeping beds and started a new patch of rhubarb and blackberries.

Imogene still couldn’t afford a new dryer because that would also require some updating with the electrical. She had installed a close line in her basement for the winter and hung it outside as soon as the weather turned nice in the spring. She saw them, two in the front and one in the back watching her almost every Wednesday night. She knew they were harmless. Roger had gone to school with Imogene’s older brother William. Red had been Roger’s Uncle from his oldest sister, Rita. They acted more like siblings or cousins than anything. Elvin had been Red’s best friend since first grade.

Imogene remembered when her brother would have Roger over after a baseball game or the few times when she got to go to the movies with them. Imogene had the biggest crush on Roger, until Roger left for college and returned with a new bride. By the time his lovely bride from the big city left him, Imogene had already married Jeff Carter, the only guy she had ever dated. They met her freshman, his junior year in high school.

When Imogene had found out about her husband’s affair, she calmly asked him about it that night when he came home from work and he nonchalantly told her it had been true and she would just have to figure it out. He had no plans of stopping.

“Imogene, look at yourself. I mean, you let yourself go.”

“But, I’m your wife.”

“And I am a man with needs.”

The sadness took some time, but eventually she learned to cope as a divorced woman. Imogene had been convinced no one knew she existed. She quietly went on with her life.

Roger knew Imogene existed. He had a crush on her from the first time he saw her as this skinny kid who came to watch her older brother play baseball during the summer league. He didn’t really care much for her brother. William could be a jerk at times, but it had been worth it if he had a chance to see Imogene. He had always felt guilty about bringing his first wife back to town but any chance he could he would try and seek out Imogene at various town socials. He had been glad when Bethany left him and his small-town ways to move back to the city. Their marriage had been wrong from the start.

“Oh, she dropped something.” Elvin exclaimed.

“Yup, I think it was a pair of socks.” Red piped up. “What did we say about dropped items?”

Red took a hard swallow from his bottle. “If she can pick it up it counts. If she can’t pick it up then all bets are off.”

“No, that’s not right.” Roger added. “If she drops something winner buys the beer next time.”

“Oh, hell, who made that one up. I don’t remember that.” Red wiped the sweat from under his stained ball cap. Mid July in a small Wisconsin town can be humid.

The three of them continued to sit in silence while watching Imogene collect her laundry. Roger knew her every move. He won most nights. He knew Imogene’s routine. She would always lay a towel or pillow case over her left shoulder before she put the smaller items over. After all the washcloths, socks, and underwear (which all three men would turn a modest eye when she collected those.) were swung over her left shoulder she would start next with shirts and blouses, followed by skirts and pants. Her large towels and sheets she would throw over her right shoulder. All the clothespins were clipped around the hem of her skirt. She looked like a spartan warrior with all of them clipped like that. Roger liked how she would waddle up the four porch steps. Imogene would sway back and forth like a drunken sailor with those huge piles of laundry covering her shoulders.

This day had been exceptionally windy. Storms, some severe, were predicted for later in the night. Imogene saw the men pull in and drive all the way around to the back. They parked on the hill under the big oak tree that Hazel Murdoch had planted next to her husband’s grave eighty-years before. She decided it had been as good as any to start the evenings spectacle.  It had been her only excitement most weeks. The Laundry Game she called it to herself.

She wrapped her delicates and personals in the t-shirt she wore every night to bed and proceeded from there to collect the gym socks. She had started powerwalking the day after her husband had told her she had let herself go. She had hoped, after three years and forty plus ankle socks, she had put herself back together. She sometimes felt she would never be anything other than damaged goods after her very public split from her husband. Who would want a woman who had been divorced in her fifties?

After the socks were nestled on her shoulder she went for a blouse when the wind picked up and blew a few socks back down on the ground. She carefully bent over and picked them up without dropping any more laundry.

“You know they put money on you and your laundry?” Red’s wife, Louise, once spilled the beans at a wedding dance the summer before. “I’m sure it’s harmless.”

“Yes, harmless old men stuff.” Mrs. Crook’s laughed. She had been seated between Imogene and Louise.

Everyone in that small town knew everything about everyone. Sometimes it was a blessing, others a curse.

Imogene had her own version of the game. Her version wasn’t any different from the men’s. She needed to get the laundry inside without the aid of a laundry basket or dropping anything. It wasn’t cash she played for. If she could get all of it into the house without dropping anything, she would grab a beer out of her fridge and walk over and join the harmless old men. Imogene won her version most Wednesdays. She just never had the courage to walk over there.

Perhaps, next Wednesday.