The steam from the hot water always made the old bathroom fan hum like a lawnmower two streets over. I pulled my blue cotton towel from the wooden rack, letting the thick fabric absorb the moisture from my face.
Clara stepped into the bathroom without knocking, carrying a small, bright pink bar of soap that smelled of artificial gardenias. She set it directly on the white porcelain ledge of the tub, her silver watch ticking against her wrist as she adjusted the band.
“There is a dampness in here, Evelyn,” Clara said, her voice high and light. “Almost like mildew.”
“It is just the autumn air coming through the vent,” I said, my fingers rising to pat my collarbone.
“Maybe your old routine isn’t quite keeping up with things anymore, Evelyn,” she said, leaning over to sniff the corner of the sink.
By noon, the eighty-two dollar water bill sat between my son and me on the yellow formica kitchen table. Arthur kept his hands wrapped around his mug, staring down into the black coffee as if the answers to his mortgage were written in the grounds.
I rubbed the inside of my forearm, where a persistent, dry heat had begun to crawl under my skin.
“Clara says you spent two hours scrubbing the baseboards yesterday,” Arthur said, his eyes remaining fixed on the table. He reached up to rub the back of his neck, his collar looking slightly too large for him.
“The house requires cleaning, Arthur,” I said. “I have kept it this way since your father died.”
“She only wants to help,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, defensive tone he used whenever his wife was in the next room. “Maybe you should let her take over the heavier chores.”
The wind off the lake was turning the maple leaves brown by three o’clock when I sat on Jean’s glass-enclosed porch. She poured chamomile tea from her brown ceramic pot, her movements slow and steady.
“You are tearing at your wrists, Evelyn,” Jean said, pulling her glasses off to polish them against the sleeve of her gray cardigan.
“It is just dry skin,” I said, pulling my sleeves down to cover the red patches. “The seasons are changing.”
“Your skin is thinning now,” Jean said, squinting at me through her clean lenses. “It reacts differently to harsh products than it did ten years ago. What are you washing with?”
“Just what is in the shower,” I said.
At nine o’clock, the hum of the bathroom fan sounded louder than usual in the empty house. The skin across my cheeks and neck felt tight, like wool that had been washed too hot and stretched to its limit.
I picked up the pink bar of soap Clara had left on the porcelain ledge. It cost three dollars at the corner drugstore, but the floral perfume of it seemed to fill the entire small room, masking the familiar scent of old wood and clean water.
I reached into the vanity drawer, pushed aside my hairpins, and slid the pink bar deep into the back corner under a stack of washcloths.
I stared at my reflection, rubbing the angry red patch on my collarbone, wondering why my own home suddenly felt so uncomfortable.
By nine the next morning, the steam from the shower had coated the mirror in a thick, gray film. I reached toward the wooden rack for a dry washcloth, but my fingers met nothing but cold, empty pegs.
Clara stepped into the bathroom doorway, her silver watch ticking loudly in the small space as she adjusted the metal band. She reached past me, picked up the blue cotton towel I had used the night before, and draped it back over the rack with a neat, practiced pat.
“That one is perfectly fine for another day, Evelyn,” Clara said, her voice rising in that high, sweet register she used when she wanted to be helpful.
“It still feels damp to me,” I said, my hand instinctively rising to pat my collarbone.
Clara smoothed the corner of the blue fabric, her fingers lingering on the hem.
“I only want our home to feel fresh, but you keep leaving these damp things around,” she said.
“I always put them in the hamper when they are done,” I said.
Clara smiled, though her eyes remained flat as she gave her watch another quick turn.
“We have to be mindful of the laundry,” Clara said, her gaze dropping to my red wrists. “Arthur says the water bill was eighty-two dollars this month.”
I did not answer her, but my skin began to itch under my sleeves.
She stood in the doorway for another moment, watching me as if she expected me to argue. When I remained silent, she turned and walked down the hallway, the heels of her shoes clicking against the oak floorboards.
At two in the afternoon, the house was quiet except for the low hum of the refrigerator. I walked down the narrow wooden stairs into the basement, determined to fetch the reserve stack of green bath towels from the cedar chest near the old dryer.
The wooden steps creaked under my white leather orthotic shoes, a sound that usually brought me comfort, but today it felt too loud.
The air down there always smelled of laundry soap and dry concrete, but today it felt unusually heavy, almost thick with moisture. I walked past the washing machine, which stood cold and empty, its lid open.
I opened the lid of the cedar chest, expecting the familiar neat rows of folded cotton I had placed there after the Labor Day wash.
The chest was completely empty.
I stood there with my hand on the wooden lid, staring at the bare cedar boards. I knew I had washed six large green bath towels and four yellow hand towels three weeks ago.
I reached inside to touch the bottom, thinking they might have slipped down, but there was only dry wood.
A soft rustle from the dark corner behind the furnace caught my attention. I stepped past the water heater, my shoes squeaking slightly on the dusty concrete floor.
There, piled directly on the damp stone floor near the coal chute, was the entire stack of green towels, tangled together in a messy heap.
I bent down, my knees cracking in the quiet basement, and touched the top towel. It was cold and held a deep, heavy wetness that felt like it had been soaking in a puddle.
I stood up quickly, my head spinning for a brief second as I looked at the ruin of my clean wash.
At five o’clock, Arthur sat at the kitchen table with three envelopes of unpaid utility bills spread out before him. He was rubbing the back of his neck, his face pale under the yellow light of the hanging fixture.
“Arthur,” I said, sitting down across from him on the wooden chair.
He did not look up from the papers, though his thumb traced the edge of a past-due notice from the gas company.
“Did you move the clean towels down to the floor by the coal chute?” I asked.
“Why would I do that, Mom?” Arthur said, his voice flat.
“They are all sitting in the damp corner,” I said. “They will be ruined with mildew if they stay down there.”
He let out a long, slow sigh that sounded more like a groan, his shoulders sinking a little lower.
“Clara is just trying to save water, Mom, we have to cut back where we can,” he said.
“Saving water doesn’t mean putting clean linens on a dirty basement floor,” I said.
Arthur finally looked at me, his eyes tired and bloodshot.
“She is only trying to help you keep things clean,” Arthur said, his voice turning defensive and short. “You shouldn’t be worrying about the laundry anyway.”
“I have done my own laundry in this house for forty years,” I said.
“Maybe things are getting a little harder to keep track of,” he said, turning his attention back to the gas bill.
I sat there, watching him line up the envelopes in a neat row on the laminate table. He did not say another word, and the silence in the kitchen grew heavy.
The house was entirely dark by ten, save for the single bulb burning in the master bathroom. My skin was still prickling from the evening wash, the red patches on my arms warm to the touch.
