Accidents Never Happen Read online

  Lily leaned back on the machine, pressing the middle of her back against the round knobs that controlled the temperature of the water and the cycle of the wash. She spread her legs a little more and the inside of her ankles rattled against the white metal. Her other sandal slid off and hit the floor. Lily threw her head back as the first wave of pleasure swept over her body and said, “Like I fucking care.”

  Joey went back upstairs to the kitchen and closed the basement door. He listened for a moment with his ear pressed against the wood. He could hear his sister moan. The sound was muffled by the violent whir of the machine.

  *

  In the following week, Lily became addicted to the washing machine. She found any excuse to use it. She carted down baskets full of clothes, curtains, tablecloths, pillow covers, sheets, towels, bath rugs, place mats, and pot holders. She spent hours down in the basement, appearing occasionally to refill her sports bottle with water and ice cubes, like she was taking a quick break from an aerobic workout. She snuck a cigarette or two on the back porch while their mother was at the grocery store, or picking up donuts for the Thursday night Bible study group she hosted in their living room. But back Lily would always go, her sandals thumping on each step as she disappeared down the wooden staircase.

  Each time Lily emerged from her pleasure dungeon, her cheeks were flushed. Her bottom lip trembled when she spoke and her hair looked more fried than usual. It was like Lily was permanently vibrated. She’d become the dazed little sister of the Bride of Frankenstein. She didn’t speak to anyone specifically, but threw out phrases like “We need more Tide” or “Can we use a different fabric softener? The smell of the blue stuff makes me sick” to anyone who was in the kitchen.

  Joey started keeping a close eye on his mother’s reactions to Lily’s bizarre new fascination with the laundry. Joey figured it wouldn’t be long before his mother caught on to Lily’s new, preferred form of masturbation.

  A routine began. A scenario played out for three nights in a row, duplicated almost word for word and motion for motion each time.

  Joey sat at the kitchen table, pencil in hand, bent over his math homework. His mother stood at the sink, silent and grim, her long, mud brown hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. Lily popped up for a thirty-second dash to the refrigerator door for filtered water and crushed ice. “Mom,” she said, “if you need anything special washed tonight, you just let me know. I’m starting a delicate cycle next.”

  Miranda stared at her daughter like she didn’t recognize her—as if some alien had invaded Lily’s body and taken over her personality. His mother’s expression almost made Joey laugh. Years ago, Miranda had shaved off her eyebrows. Now two thick straight lines lay across the tops of her eyes, drawn with a black marker. The fake eyebrows gave her a constant expression of sternness, maybe contemplating some new form of punishment. Coupled with her slicked-back ponytail that caused the skin around her eyes to tighten, Miranda looked permanently pissed off.

  “I don’t need anything washed,” she said, looking at the top of Lily’s head, perhaps searching for a transmitter device of some kind.

  *

  Joey knew from an early age his mother was not an affectionate woman. There was a cold streak running down her spine that seemed to freeze her blood and paralyze the maternal instinct Joey and Lily had every right to think she should possess. She would smile at them only in the presence of others—especially the neighborhood mothers. Alone, Miranda appeared to forget her children existed. She didn’t acknowledge their achievements—not even when Lily brought home straight A’s for the first and only time in seventh grade. She didn’t attend Joey’s soccer games or Lily’s dance recitals. She didn’t bake, sing, craft, mend, or decorate. Rarely did she laugh, joke, hum, or blush. She did what little was required of her. She spent most evenings and weekends sitting in a brown leather recliner in a corner of the living room. Beneath the pale yellow light of a standing lamp with a moveable arm she positioned with the precision of a dentist, she worked diligently to all hours of the night on her needlepoint. She wore a pair of round reading glasses too small for her broad, square face and an expression of intense concentration, as if her task was both exhausting and detailed.

  Like she was building a bomb.

  Joey was thankful his mother was not a violent woman. Although he suspected she was capable of backhanding him without hesitation. She was physically intimidating—she stood two inches taller than her husband—but she never struck her children. Instead, she ignored them. When they were younger, Joey and Lily would cling to her legs and beg to be held. They would reach for her with sticky fingers until hot tears slid from the edges of their eyes. She snapped at them, hoping they would learn to obey. She implored them to be like Sparky, the next door neighbor’s show champion schnauzer who was so obedient for his owner. As they grew older, Lily and Joey learned to seek comfort elsewhere. They knew their mother was incapable of loving them. Yet Lily and Joey never spoke about it.

  Joey was surprised when Miranda became a successful real estate agent two years ago. But that was before he realized she could turn niceness on and off like the kitchen faucet. From the backseat of the family car, he had witnessed his mother in action, in the prime of one of her many fine afternoon performances. A young house-hunting couple asked to meet his mother at an available property. Joey listened to their chatter as they stood on the front lawn, on the other side of the white picket fence. They fawned over his mother, saying they found her delightful and amusing. The wife had even said, “Your children are lucky to have you as a mother.” In return, Joey’s mother convinced them the American dream was possible. In order to sell the house, she charmed them with humorous tales of a family life that didn’t exist. She bragged about mother-daughter pie baking contests at church, volunteering to chaperone Joey’s class on a field trip to the aquarium, family camping trips that included fireside songs and roasted marshmallows, romantic getaways with her husband of seventeen years, preparing his favorite meal of Yankee pot roast after he had come home from a long day at the office (even though he was a house painter) and day-long shopping trips with her mother-in-law (even though she’d died four years earlier by falling off her roof while trying to rescue her cat, who was stuck in a vent).

  If there was one thing Joey admired about his mother, it was her ability to fool people. He wished he could wear an invisible disguise like she did; the way she was able to put on a friendly face the minute the family ventured out into public. In the grocery store. At the post office. At bake sales. She would smile, wave, her eyes shining bright with an internal love she would rather bestow on a stranger than her own family. And just as quickly, she could tuck that personality away into a dark corner of her Arctic soul. What surprised Joey and Lily even more than their mother’s bizarre duality was how their father never seemed to notice the drastic opposites his wife demonstrated. If he did, he never mentioned it to anyone. In fact, he never said much of anything. He usually looked half-asleep, communicating mostly with nods and shrugs.

  *

  On the fourth night after Lily had started her sexual affair with the Maytag top loader in the basement, their mother put an end to the relationship. Lily had been downstairs for nearly two hours, since the dinner dishes had been cleared. Miranda sat in her chair, needlepoint in hand, stitching a design of purple and pink flowers. Without a word of explanation, she put the thread and needle down, and walked to the basement door in the kitchen. Joey glanced up from his homework and waited with lip-licking anticipation as his mother stood at the door. The linoleum floor beneath Joey’s socked feet buzzed and hummed from the washing machine below. His mother opened the door and slipped into the darkness. She reached for the silver chain hanging from the bare bulb at the top of the staircase. The garish light clicked on and illuminated the basement, revealing the truth about Lily’s habit. She screamed in protest and embarrassment, and called their mother a bitch. Joey strained to hear his mother’s words but couldn’t make out wh
at she was saying. Her tone of voice sounded controlled and instructive. Seconds later the washing machine stopped. The kitchen windows quit vibrating and the floor became still. The house itself seemed to shrink as Lily’s heated passion slipped away. Her joy disintegrated.

  Joey knew his sister would never be the same again.

  Miranda appeared seconds later. She stood like an intruder in the doorway of the basement. Her mannish shoulders blocked most of the light behind her and for that moment she looked like a monster, the big bad wolf. She had something in her hand but Joey couldn’t figure out what it was until she stepped closer. It was then he saw Lily. She stood behind her mother with knotted, crimped hair and red, swollen eyes smeared with black. The front of her denim skirt was accidentally tucked inside her underwear. She followed her mother into the kitchen. Joey tried not to laugh at the sight of his sister’s pink and white polka-dotted panties. Then he noticed her thighs, and the sight of them made his breath stop in his throat. They were red and raw, chafed—like she had scraped them with rocks, or metal.

  Miranda raised the object in her hand. Joey swallowed the lump of fear that suddenly shot up from his lungs. He recognized the gray T-shirt, the blue raspberry Popsicle stain. “This is how you treat the clothes I buy you,” she said to her son. Miranda then looked at her daughter, at her half-raised skirt and the dumbstruck expression on her face, her bad eye wandering helplessly toward the refrigerator. “Pull your goddamn skirt down,” she sneered. “You look like a whore.” Lily blushed and quickly fixed her skirt. She shot a death stare at Joey, and flipped him off once Miranda had turned her back.

  Miranda took center stage in the kitchen, positioning herself at an equal distance between her children. She held the T-shirt in both hands. With a single motion, she ripped the T-shirt in half. She moved to the silver metal garbage can underneath the sink. She placed the two strips of material into the trash, wiped her hands clean from imaginary dirt, and turned back to Lily and Joey. “Both of you make me sick,” she said. Lily and Joey remained silent and still. They knew what she’d said was true. They’d known it for as long as they could remember. But at last, she had admitted it.

  Miranda moved toward the open archway leading to the living room, where she would spend the rest of the night needlepointing furiously. She stopped for a moment as another thought struck her. “From now on Joey will do the wash,” she said. “No exceptions.” Miranda left the room.

  An aching silence filled the kitchen, interrupted only by the occasional tick of the clock on the stove when the second hand got stuck on the number twelve before jumping forward to the two. Lily stood motionless, breathing deep—breathing hatred. Joey tried to turn his attention back to his homework. The math problems seemed like a jumbled mess of black. They were blurred and they started moving in a slow, shivering wave. It was then Joey realized he was crying. His sister moved toward him and her hip accidentally banged against the table. The sudden jolt caused Joey’s pencil to roll off and fall to the floor. He reached down to pick it up, his palm grazing over the cool linoleum before his fingers grasped it. Pain suddenly shot up his arm when Lily covered his hand with her white sandal, smashing it against the tile like a bug she wanted dead. “You’re a fucking crybaby,” she said, standing over him. She waited for nearly half a minute until she released her brother’s hand. She moved across the kitchen to the back door.

  Joey pulled his hand close to him. The moment made him feel awkward. It seemed like someone should be comforting him, getting him ice, reprimanding his sister. But no one appeared to make sure any of these things occurred. Joey put his hand in his lap where it throbbed with a blinding pain. He glanced down at his skin and realized his sister’s sandal had left a shoe print across his knuckles.

  “You’re a dumb fuck,” she said, her hand on the silver doorknob. “If anyone gives a shit, I’m going to find Cooper.”

  Lily slid out of the house and stumbled into the orange buzzing glow of a back porch light. Her presence lingered in the dim kitchen. It drifted up through the pale yellow curtains hanging across the small window in the center of the back door. It crept across the wallpaper, prancing over the sun-faded pattern of blue cornflowers. It twisted around the glass containers of flour, sugar, salt, and oatmeal sitting on the countertop that always smelled like lemon and ammonia. It rattled the door of the pantry like a minor aftershock.

  Joey sat motionless for a moment. His eyes darted back and forth between his aching hand and the math problems on the pages of his textbook. He listened for a moment, and was temporarily comforted by the gentle, slow rhythm of his father’s snoring. Nightly, Joey’s father drifted off on the sofa within minutes of the dinner dishes being cleared. The TV roared like a lion. The audio of a reality television show bounced off the walls in the living room, but Joey’s father slept on. Joey imagined his father was most likely sleeping on his side with an old olive green throw pillow tucked under his ear.

  To be sure, Joey stood up and inched close to the archway. He peered into the living room without leaving the kitchen. His father was asleep in the position he had predicted, in his gray sweats and favorite New England Patriots football jersey. His dark hair, thick and full, was speckled with bits of Bahama blue paint, the color of the house he was currently working on. Joey smiled at his father, even though he was fast asleep.

  From where Joey stood, he could not see his mother. Her seat of choice was in the corner of the room, against the wall dividing the living room and the kitchen. But her shadow loomed on the living room wall in front of him. He watched her movements for a moment. She worked with diligence, her needlepoint project apparently requiring the skill of a surgeon—or a wicked witch preparing some kind of poison to take down some younger, prettier, happier princess.

  For some reason, the shadow scared Joey. It seemed sinister. He backed away from it, and the living room. He welcomed the coolness of the kitchen floor against his bare feet. He turned and almost collided with the open basement door.

  The basement beckoned to Joey. It looked like a mouth waiting to devour him whole; a secret passageway to an underground world. The light from the hanging bulb urged him on, promising comfort and refuge. He crossed the doorway, standing at the top of the wooden staircase. He pulled the door to the basement closed. The silence that wrapped around him was frightening, yet thick with relief. He took his first step; then another, and another. The third to the last step creaked beneath his feet.

  He walked across the concrete floor and stood in front of the washing machine. The source of his sister’s secret pleasure seemed to smile and wink at him as rays of silver moonlight streamed in through a tiny window near the ceiling, bouncing off the white metal. Joey reached for the machine with the hand that didn’t hurt. He ran his palm across the shiny cool. He wrote his invisible initials on the lid of the washer. He tapped out a soft rhythm on the machine like some easy-going drummer in a mellow band.

  He looked down. At his feet was a hot pink laundry basket. His sister’s cut-off shorts sat on top of a pile of clothes reeking with her cheap impostor perfume. He reached down and picked up the fringed denim shorts. On instinct, Joey reached into the hip pocket—where he discovered a half-joint. He grinned, muttering a few evil words about Lily.

  He scanned the basement for a lighter or a book of matches. Finally, he discovered the same temperamental yellow lighter he’d kicked across the basement floor only days ago—before Lily’s obsession with the washing machine, before his mother had confessed the sight of him made her sick.

  He kicked the laundry basket and it somersaulted out of his way. He sat down on the floor, the coldness stinging the back of his legs for a second. He shifted in his shorts until he was comfortable. His hand still ached from Lily’s sibling rage, so he didn’t use it. He left it limp in his lap, useless. Joey lifted the joint up to his mouth, slid it between his lips. The taste of it was sweet and smoky and made his lips tingle a little. He raised the lighter. It took a couple of tries, but finally…fi
re. He brought the flame to the tip of the singed paper and breathed in deeply. Joey felt his lungs expand and swell with hot, thick, sticky smoke. It felt as if the smoke had drifted up through his throat, to dance behind his eyes before it warmed the back of his skull.

  This is awesome.

  Joey grinned as the comfort arrived, and his sister, mother, and the basement all floated away.

  When he exhaled, he spoke aloud. His words were slow, dragging out the syllables. They seemed to bounce off the concrete floor and lift up to the wooden beams—where they threatened to rip a hole in the ceiling, crawl up to the living room and slice the backs of his mother’s ankles. That would get her attention.

  “Fuck…you…all,” he said. Joey coughed, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his T-shirt, and took another drag. Within seconds he found himself craving a blue raspberry Popsicle. Only this time, he wouldn’t care if it melted.

  Albert

  When they left the post office, Albert took Joey to his favorite place to escape the cold—a hideaway in the form of a used book store on a side street near the Belmont train stop. It was a cave of a place: windowless, overheated, wooden floors creaking with every step. The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books, most of them paperbacks. The low ceiling was a metal maze of installation tubes, wooden beams, and air-conditioning vents. Strands of tiny white lights were wrapped around the square posts straining to hold the decaying place up.

  Albert and Joey stumbled in from the sidewalk, away from a sudden burst of snow flurries falling like tiny angels over Chicago. A string of bells jingled as the front door closed behind them. Their faces were flushed. Blood filled their cheeks as they fought to shake off the sudden drop in temperature. The cold had seeped into their bones and refused to let go.

  They were greeted by the fifty-something owner of the place. Shelley was a broad woman. Her hips and ass spread over the width of a wooden stool she was perched on, behind the main counter. She was hunched over the cash register, protecting it, burying it beneath the heavy heave of her massive breasts. She wore a loose-fitting floral-printed house dress, emblazoned with a bold lavender and scarlet pattern. A decadent purple hat was strategically placed on her head and tilted at a perfect diagonal. It looked like something that should have been worn to church, or worn by a gun moll in the 1940s. A wilted daffodil was pinned to the thick brim, close to her ear. Her hair was a mass of badly permed tight curls, spotted dull brown and gray. She had the tip of a pipe in her mouth. She puffed, coughed, spat out a wisp of smoke, fanning the air with a hand adorned with long candy apple red fingernails. The entire store was saturated with the sweet stench of tobacco.