Listen to a reading of this story by the author:
Jess shows me how to load her dishwasher. The ringing of the glasses, the clack of the plates, the clink of the cutlery. The little pouch of soap, the buttons. I intend to forget all of this before she invites me back.
“It’s so easy, Mom!” Jess beams at me like she did when she was a baby. “Don’t you wish you had one of these at home?”
No, I do not. I know how to wash the dishes.
My Dan sits at the kitchen table. He plays with the Minolta he loves above all other cameras, taking picture after picture of me in black and white, the press of the button, the snap of the shutter, until he runs out of film. I stand at the sink with my hands immersed, the lemon scent, the rising steam. Sunlight streams through the window, the perfect light at the perfect angle. The golden hour, Dan calls it. Perfect light for a perfect woman.
Jess tuts when she sees the shattered dishes on the kitchen floor. She thinks I dropped them. She can’t imagine me hurling china against the wall, the weeping, the screaming, the smashing, the crashing.
There is no Mother outside of motherhood. If I weep, she turns her head.
Dan stands behind me, hands on my shoulders, mouth on my neck, running fingers down my arms to grasp my hands in the dishwater, then back up again. The water on my sleeves, across my collar, down my back.
The linoleum floor, cold against my bare shoulder blades, then hot. The dog who thinks we’re playing, the laughter.
The unbreakable dishes Jess hauls out of the attic, bought when she was a toddler, stored there since she moved away.
The wedding china, what’s left of it, packed up and brought back to Jess’s house for safekeeping. “They’re heirlooms, Mom! We don’t want anything more to happen to them.”
Dan always helps me to dry. The china, the glass, the careful stacks in the cupboard. We are new together, we are fragile, fine-boned, taking cares, taking pains. The caresses as we work. His hands, my new husband’s hands.
Oh, the golden hours.
The woman Jess sends in to “help” me once a week. The vacuum cleaner, the wood polish. She tries to erase the years of scratches from Brownie’s claws as he chased Jess up and down the hallway, the giggles and the barking, the exhaustion and the joy.
If I don’t do the breakfast dishes before she rings the doorbell, she’ll wash them herself. The briskness, the efficiency. She leaves them in the dish rack to dry.
Dan drops the camera and clutches his chest. The ambulance ride, the surgery, the waiting. Brownie at the front door, worried, whining. Jess at a friend’s house until Dan pulls through, or doesn’t.
“Don’t you wish you had a dishwasher at home?” Jess asks again as she drives me back to my own house, away from the noise of her own family. When I get out of the car she follows me in, even though I haven’t invited her.
We walk into the kitchen. “Surprise!” she yells.
The presence of this intruder under the counter. The memory of hands. I cry; she looks away.
The driving lessons, the college fund, the empty room. The wedding china back from the attic, the slow dancing in front of the kitchen sink.
The second heart attack.
Later, when I bathe Dan’s body, I imagine his hands guiding mine to all the places I know so well. I imagine my hands guiding his.
The condolences, the concerns, the advice. Dan’s hands folded together, wrinkled skin shifting with every farewell touch.
My own hands, wrinkled and stiff, as I dip them in the hot soapy water, wiping the plates in slow, wide circles. The lemon scent, the steam, the slant of the light. The silence of the unused dishwasher.
Linda M. Bayley is a writer living on the Canadian Shield. Her work has recently appeared in voidspace zine, Five Minutes, BULL, Short Circuit, FlashFlood Journal, Underbelly Press, Stanchion, Does It Have Pockets, Roi Fainéant, and Tiny Sparks Everywhere, the National Flash Fiction Day 2024 Anthology.
Find her on Twitter and Bluesky @lmbayley.
Oh Linda, this is so heartbreaking
That is one powerful story and so brilliantly put together. Not a word wasted and the ending is perfection. Wonderful stuff.