A day before the funeral she could sense a malaise so palpable it seemed to flatten her under its foot like a bug. While her Adagio was at school (if he were indeed hers, for she doubted the tenet of people belonging to each other as it was action and clutter of small earthly creatures who needed to fill their time and the vaccum of their minds no differently than her son and this Rick when they had played with a soccer ball, plastic and air, to gain a connection that bypassed one's lonely domain), she went into the bathroom. She stared at the mountain of his and her clothing beside the washer, which she had crowded into the stall of her shower. The molecules of their stink seemed to bang against each other in the musical vibrations of Eric Satie's musical composition, Gymnopedies; and with the dead heap of morose and musical laundry, her lethargy, and the horror of being a domesticated woman as all womanly slaves since the beginning of time, she couldn't bring herself to do the laundry.
She told herself that she was indeed a silly woman. Nine years ago she had entertained herself in this mental challenge of being desired by one whose orientation was not so inclined to women, spun herself in a specious illusion of intimacy when, in youth, sex was such a novel and believable medium of intimacy, and given birth in the belief that aborting an embryo was barbaric. Now she was struck by how this connection that she brought into the world would be an ongoing frittering away of her days. She cachinnated at her absurdity, which caused Mouse to jump on top of the washer and stare at this mad woman inquisitively. "Hi there, Mouse. Haven't you ever seen a woman laugh while doing the laundry before? You really must get a life." She chuckled at the cat.
She told herself that there were too many people in her life when really there was just one. She told herself that contrary to her precept that people should be breathed in and out she was cluttering up her life with them although really a neatly isolated and Antarctic existence would have given her nothing to contemplate. Still, she again entertained the idea of dumping her son at Peggy's for he had become too indespensable to her life and this was a deep vulnerability. Still the quandary persisted: there was no way that she could allow him to be damaged by the disparaging animadversion of a family no different than a "boot camp" or military training camp. The internecine war games in this so called family of which she had extricated herself brought most damage onto outsiders like herself and she did not want to perpetuate it to the next generation.
Gabriele heard a thump in her mailbox. She received a letter telling her that she was terminated from the local greeting card company. She rummaged though her sketches and found one of her impish ones, less pertaining to social etiquette, missing from the rest. She must have mailed it in by mistake. She guessed that this was similar to what she might have done to be ignored by Hallmark. With Hallmark she wasn't quite sure what she had done but this local greeting cards publishing house was clearly piqued. Did the subconscious, like an empress dowager, make its maneuvers on conscious reality behind the scenes? She had played such games for so long. It was no great wonder they had dismissed her. Only an idiot would have been surprised by this playing with the fates. She also realized that she could not prostitute herself more in her other occupation to rectify the lack of incoming finances. Sanity only allotted so much prostitution per week. "Oh, well," she thought. "Maybe I could sell my paintings."
The thought of herself as an artist the way some might proclaim the title as a full summation of themselves was never something that Gabriele did. She could admit, "I paint" to herself. This was an obvious fact, but she never went beyond that. This added relevance of a bleak economic situation, however, made her say, "I could possibly be an artist."
Evading the menace of time consuming laundry, she sat in front of her canvas but found herself thinking about the neighbor woman and her deceased child. That woman would have pillaged through hell for the opportunity to wash clothes for her daughter. Gabriele felt ashamed of herself for groaning about domestic chores and she felt deep empathy for her neighbor. She went to the grocery store and then brought over a packaged basket of fruit for the grieving mother. She knocked and the woman opened the door slightly.
"What?" she murmered numbly.
"Hello. I hope you don't mind. I was worried that you might not be eating."
"They let him go, you know."
"Quest?"