I live in the fluffy intoxication of detergent and dry cleaning—behind the washing machines and dryers, the rows of sallow plastic chairs and muted TV, hidden behind the rotating racks of pressed, plastic dry cleaning. I know the world only through the stains of its clothes.
My mother sits at the front of the shop near the do-it-yourself washers. She is talkative and warm, always offering advice in a chirping trill as her jeweled old fingers click against the counter along with the rhythm of the machines. Most of the customers are women. I recognize them from their voices and I know them through their garments.
It is a women's world that I cannot see, but I hear and smell and imagine it from my humming cocoon. The dresses are my only window. I clean and mend each one with care. I examine the designs, labels, and fabrics, comparing them to what I have read in the style pages of The New York Times and Vogue. I picture the bodies that live inside each gown.
Fuchsia satin with a blue band at the waist. She is voluptuous and maternal. Dark hair and skin with a chestnut undertone. She listens to Bizet in the shower and reads Harlequin novels.
Vintage Dior in cream yellow. Tailored at the knees and strapless. A faint bleaching at the armpits. She wants to wear it on Saturday because she hopes her boyfriend will propose over dinner.
Floor-length chiffon. Layers of beige paneling like an ethereal skyscraper. She is ambitious and vain. Freckled shoulders from years of riding horses, a passion she abandoned in college.
"Dusty," my mother calls, as I absently stroke the gauze-like chiffon. "He can get anything out," she says to someone. "Dustin!"
"Yes?" I move beneath the canopy of dry cleaning. The racks envelop my face and body, but I want to hear the woman's voice.
"I've got a wine stain on silk here. Can you get it out by tomorrow?"
I cannot resist silk—the cool whisper of its surface, the tautness of the threads, the thought of it grazing against smooth skin. I wait for the woman to say something. I want to know if she too is silk. She is silent.
"Of course." My deep voice is muffled through the racks.
"Fabulous!" my mother exults. "Come tomorrow at four. It'll be like brand new."
I retreat through the racks into the dry cleaning area. The oversized machines rumble. I hear my mother brushing through the forest behind me.
"Here's the dress." She emerges through the racks, one hand protecting the caramel wig poised on her head. "I told her to come back tomorrow at four—plenty of time."
I take the dress from her leathery hand and smile. It is beautiful.
"Thanks, sweetheart." She disappears through the curtain of hanging bags. The clicking of lavishly jeweled fingers resumes a moment later.
I put the dress on a hanger and examine it. The deep blue silk ripples from the bodice to the lip, flawless but for a splash of wine bleeding off the hem. I examine the seam and see that the thread has absorbed the color too. A strand of hair glints under the fluorescent light, a single blond thread caught in the zipper's symmetrical teeth. I pull the hair out and throw it away.
Hanging from a hook in the concrete wall, the gown is like a suspended waterfall. She is liquid lust. A tall blonde model. She walks with grace, certain of her allure but not arrogant because of it. She has many lovers. Her laugh is a coquettish twinkle. She was born in the Midwest, but she left behind the rural lilt and lifestyle when she moved to New York. I close my eyes and picture her languid form within the gown.
I place the dress over a steaming pot to loosen the fibers. I massage it gently. I am sensitive to the cries of each thread. The mark slowly fades beneath my vigorous touch, leaving only a damp patch. I sigh with pleasure and hang it to dry.
My mother is sick in the morning. She cannot work. I am afraid of working in the front of the shop, afraid of seeing a world I prefer to imagine from my back room sanctuary. It is Tuesday so business is mercifully slow. At three o'clock I take a ladder, hammer, and nails to mend the sign outside, as my mother had requested weeks earlier. A woman walks past me and through the door. She stands at the cash register and takes a red candy out of the crystal dish my mother keeps on the counter.
I watch her through the glass. She has a hooked nose and rounded shoulders. She holds a black bag with Barneys emblazoned in stark white letters. I try to imagine the garment she has brought to be washed. As I picture a series of plain floral blouses, she begins to walk toward the back.
"Can I help you?" I rush through the door, my eyes downcast and my hands fidgeting with my t-shirt.
"I'm here for a dress I dropped off yesterday. I'm a little early." She smiles sheepishly beneath strands of long brown hair. "It had a wine stain on it—silk."
My vision momentarily clouds. I feel a pinch at the corners of my eyes.
"We don't have it," I sputter.
"But yesterday…"
"My mother is sick today. Come back tomorrow. " The force of my own words is startling.
She hesitates for a moment but then backs away from the counter, a look of discomfort in her eyes. She hurries out onto the street with one backward glance—a mixture of confusion and concern. I wait until she is out of sight then lock the door and rush into the back.
I exhale forcefully as I pass through the familiar forest, pushing toward my secluded refuge. I feel lost. The machines purr their incessant rhythm. I reach for the gown, clutching the blue silk to my face. I stroke the dress, my nostrils filling with the perfume of the room, my eyes tightly shut. I concentrate, gripping the fabric, forcing my eyelids into my cheeks, but she is gone.
Jose Saramago's best-known novel Blindness—also his most dumbed-down, if you ask me—poses a single, chilling question: what if an entire city abruptly and inexplicably goes blind? Though the story reverts to allegorical coddling on par with Heart of Darkness (metaphor! juxtaposition! OMG, I get it!), Saramago's linguistic dexterity makes the book a begrudgingly good read.
