The Visitors by Catherine Burns

Author:Catherine Burns
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press

LAUNDRY

The little travel alarm by her bedside (why did she have a travel alarm, she never went anywhere?) said 10:15, but the heavy weight of dread that pressed down on Marion stopped her from getting up. It was Monday. Monday was a bad day because of the laundry.

Eventually she gathered the strength to push off the weight and forced herself to get out of bed and go into the bathroom. After washing herself she sat for several minutes on the edge of the bath thinking about what she had to do. I don’t know why you get so worked up about this, she said to herself. All you need to do is gather the dirty laundry from the baskets in your and John’s bedrooms and then stuff it all in the big washing machine. And then when it is done, leave it to dry in the face-wardrobe room. That was the simple part. What filled her with dread was washing the third basket that contained the things belonging to the visitors.

Of course she could have refused to do their laundry, but that would have meant bringing up the matter with John, and if they were never mentioned, it was easier to pretend that they weren’t really there. Sometimes she would even think to herself: How could there possibly be people living in the cellar of our house? John is only going down to meddle around with his tools, to try and fix all those old broken things he brings home. Then laundry day would come along, reminding her that they must indeed exist, and she would be once again overcome with a brittle, cold feeling of fretfulness.

She always tried to deal with their things as quickly as possible, piling them into the washer, then dragging them out again, trying not to look too closely at anything. But every now and then something fell on the floor and she would have to pick it up. And once you looked at whatever it was—perhaps a pair of panties decorated with blue butterflies, a pink flower-patterned T-shirt that almost seemed small enough to belong to a child, or that yellow silk bra with wire poking out through the ragged lace trimming—then a picture got stuck in your head, and you couldn’t help wondering about the person it belonged to.

Even if you did manage to get it all done without really looking at anything, it was impossible to ignore the smells; sometimes they made her feel quite sick. And that would start her thinking about other things, such as how they went to the bathroom and washed themselves. She seemed to remember there being a sink in the cellar and a drain near the steps at the back. One supposed foreign people, especially if they were poor, might be more accepting of such primitive “facilities,” yet conditions must be unpleasant, inhuman almost. What if one of them decided they would no longer put up with the situation and wanted to leave, would John allow

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