Stranger Than Most

by SUSAN LAUTZ

 

When I was a tween my mother put me to work doing laundry. (I still have nightmares of her marching me down the basement stairs to piles and piles of dirty clothes.) When I was that age I naively thought that the saying “it’ll all come out in the wash,” was about erasing stains and smells. Then there was the incident with the heart-covered silk boxers I found in the guest room sheets. We’d just had an uncharacteristic amount of company so there were multiple suspects. I wasn’t even sure which set of sheets they were in. I had changed the bed for each wave of guests and when they were gone, washed all the linens together. The boxers showed up in the drier.