Sponsor a story at EDF - Your message can reach thousands of readers for just $4
Jenny pegged out the last of the clothes and stooped to pick up the empty laundry basket from the grass. The sun blazed hot on the top of her head as she walked back inside, but the wind blew too, sending the wet clothes flapping and snapping.
A good drying day.
She went upstairs and began going through the drawers in each of the three bedrooms. From each she picked out a selection of carefully ironed tee-shirts, skirts, jeans, socks and underwear. She tossed everything into the basket. It was summer now, hot, so there would be no sweaters or fleeces.
When she had the basket full, she lugged it back downstairs to the utility room, sorted the clothes into piles, then loaded the whites into the machine. She might be able to get another load out this afternoon if the first lot dried in time.
While the machine rumbled and whirred, she laid the table for five and served up five bowls of the stew she’d made earlier. They all loved her stew. She cleared everything away and, soon, the dishwasher added its thrum to that of the washing-machine.
A pile of ironing teetered on the worktop in the utility room. She carried it into the lounge so she could watch TV as she worked. While she waited for the iron to heat up she picked up the photograph on the mantelpiece.
She remembered that trip to the seaside vividly. Remembered the little things mainly. Trying to rub sun-block into Jenny’s sand-coated calves without abrading her delicate skin. Carrying ice-creams that dripped and dribbled down her hands. She stood there in the middle of the group, Dan behind her, her arms around Jenny, Josie and Sam. Everyone grinned for the kind stranger who’d agreed to take their picture.
The iron ticked as it heated up, tutting at her inactivity. In the glass covering the picture she could see her own dim reflection, overlaying the seaside scene. It was hard to understand that the two women were the same person. Hard to understand any of it. Something so mundane as a lorry, crashing through the barriers, leaving her unscathed, the others not. Tears blurred her eyes.
She dried her eyes with the palms of her hands. A good drying day. This was no good. She began to work her way through the pile of clothes so she could fill up the drawers again in each of the three bedrooms.
Simon Kewin writes fiction, poetry and computer software, although usually not at the same time. His fiction and poetry has appeared in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies. He lives in the UK with Alison and their two daughters Eleanor and Rose.
GD Star Rating
loading...
loading...
Did you like this story?
A new and interesting story is posted every day.
A new and interesting story is posted every day.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed! (what is rss)
Don’t miss another story! Subscribe to Every Day Fiction via RSS.- Share on Facebook
5 Responses to “A GOOD DRYING DAY • by Simon Kewin”
Comments
« TRUE LOVE AND LOUSY SMOKE RINGS • by Daniel Vineberg | Home | Podcast EDF057: Burden • by Peter Tupper • read by Peter Tupper »
August 7th, 2011 at 12:50 am
An effective psychological portrait, with the elegant simplicity of a haiku.
August 15th, 2011 at 8:57 am
I feel like there was something much deeper going on in this story than it appeared, but I couldn’t quite grasp it.
It seems like the protagonist-Jenny is supposed to be the same person as the Jenny in the picture, but the “reveal” of that left me wondering if I had just misread the name in the first sentence. In the end I was more confused than I think I was supposed to be.
Building a confused psychological perspective into a narrator’s voice is a tough thing to pull off, and I salute the attempt.
August 15th, 2011 at 9:13 am
Heartbreaking and poignant, Simon; nicely done.
August 16th, 2011 at 9:39 am
hi read it before the site problems, but just getting round to posting now.
reads like an instruction manual.
good bit in penultimate paragraph about iron and photos.
I can see hwo life is mundane now after th etragedy, but it’s too much of a whallop. It’s unbalanced and things earlier don’t tie in or relate to it other than by contrast.
well done.
Interesting.
Thank you.
September 1st, 2011 at 2:02 am
[...] by Jessica George, “True Love and Lousy Smoke Rings” by Daniel Vineberg, and “A Good Drying Day” by Simon Kewin. If you did miss any of those, please do go back and check them [...]