Pretty Dishtowels
Short Story
Robin Macquarrie
I was planning on renting out a room in the large, old and cold house
where I lived with my two children. The house was given to me by my
parents who bought it when property was still very inexpensive, when Santa
Rosa was a country town instead of a sprawling cityscape. The house has
four bedrooms, an attic, a basement, and a huge backyard where my
parents converted the garage into a small cottage. Behind the little
cottage was a gazebo that my parents converted into an even smaller cottage. The property is worth a lot of money though I could never sell the
house and I'm sure my children couldn't either. The house owns us.
The room for rent lies between the kitchen and living room. It's the
only room downstairs and its window faces the neighbor's driveway where
a lot of activity takes place: auto repair, leaf blowing, arguing etc..
Luckily it was a quiet afternoon when Christina came to look at the
room. Christina was only twenty at the time, a young, aspiring actress who
worked days as a waitress and nights with a local theater company. She
was enchanted by the old house, commenting on the beauty of the stained
glass, the architecture, the high ceilings etc.. She even liked my old
dog Hairy and thought my youngest son was adorable , and when he liked
someone he was sweet and shining. She'd get to see his dark side later
on. Things went well that sunny afternoon, so we shook hands and she
handed me a check.
Christina proved to be an excellent roommate. She kept her chaos
behind locked doors, spent nights at her boyfriend's house and always paid
the rent on time. When she was at home we'd manage to connect and
became good friends and confidants. I was fifteen years her senior but
younger and less evolved in many ways. We were both poor, always on the
ever-sinking financial edge, looking for easy ways to make extra money.
We saw an add in the paper for women to make fantasy phone calls and
decided to give it a try, but chickened out . The manager of the company was going to give us a
call, a trail run of sorts. He suggested that we speak with a sexy tone
and talk about what we were wearing. I was wearing old jeans and army
boots. I knew it wasn't the job for me.
Christina loved Betty Boop so I bought her a Betty Boop coffee mug
and hid it away to give to her for Christmas. We were watching TV
together one evening and someone on the show had given a gift of dishtowels
to their friend. I mentioned what a boring gift I thought dishtowels
were. You might as well give someone a mop, was my comment. She seemed
a little upset about my response, but I hadn't a clue why until I
received my Christmas gift from her, a box of (you guessed it) dishtowels. It was
hard for me to convince her that I loved the dishtowels, and thought it
was a lovely, much needed gift, for someone accustomed to dish rags. I
believed her when she said she loved her Betty Boop mug.
It's been almost twenty years since Christina moved away. We
haven't kept in touch and I have no idea where her life's path led her. I
still have remnants of the dishtowels she gave me. They're dishrags
now and how I wish somebody would give me pretty dishtowels for
Christmas.
Pretty Dishtowels© COPYRIGHT 2005 Robin Macquarrie.
Reproduction prohibited without permission from the author.
02/22/05
