By Roy Dorman
“What can I do?” Lucy Fenton asked herself for probably the hundredth time. “If only I’d learned to drive, I could take the clothes to a laundromat.”
Lucy’s sitting at her kitchen table, still in her old blue bathrobe and slippers, staring at the basement door. It’s now 10:30 and she has been sitting there for most of the morning. Usually she takes care of the routine household chores early on so that she can watch her favorite soap operas while she has lunch. She takes pride in her housekeeping and looks forward to those chores that have a beginning, a middle, and an end. She likes the closure that comes with housework, even if most of the chores are repetitious and done on a weekly or biweekly schedule.
But Lucy is definitely not looking forward to tomorrow morning. Her husband, Ed Fenton, had gone down to the basement two nights ago after dinner and a short time after that Lucy had heard what sounded like a chair tipping over. Ed had not responded to Lucy’s calls to him from the top of the basement stairs. He had not responded to her calls the following day or to her calls today.
Tomorrow is Lucy Fenton’s laundry day.
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