Laundry
Scott hadn’t really slept the first night back at the school, only napped for a while stretched out on the couch in the rec room with the TV on. He’d turned the sound low so he could just hear the rise and fall of voices, like being a kid with the bedroom door shut and his parents’ voices sneaking in under it with the crack of light.
In the morning he’d started cleaning up, sweeping up broken dishes in the kitchen. Halfway through the morning the emergency cleaners had arrived, and Scott had reluctantly handed things over to several quiet, brisk men who didn’t blink at the bloodstains or the smashed windows.
One of them told Scott he’d seen a lot worse, that at least there wasn’t a body, at least Xavier had called them in right away and not let the blood set. Scott couldn’t take it, and he walked out and went upstairs. He stopped outside the door to their room, and opened it slowly. He had to do it sooner or later.
Her shirt was draped over a chair, her pants crumpled on the floor. Not the clothes she’d been wearing when he left. Those would be downstairs, neatly folded where she’d left them when she changed into uniform.
Scott picked up the pants and reached into the pockets, turning them out as if he were doing the laundry. Jean sorted their laundry but she always forgot to check the pockets. She’d washed lipstick with the whites once and he hadn’t known until he’d been putting his shirt on and she’d raised her fingers to her lips with a guilty smile.
He came up with a handful of things--crumpled bills, receipts, two small stiff squares. Movie tickets. Had they been planning to go to a movie? She’d said something about wanting to get out of the house on the weekend. He’d said sure, and he hadn’t been paying attention. He didn’t remember a word she’d said.
He put the tickets back in her pocket and went out of the room without touching anything. Downstairs Charles was listening patiently as Kitty and Peter told him about their escape from the mansion again, other kids saying nothing but nodding as if hearing it.
“You were all very brave,” Charles said, and smiled at them.
“Yes, you were,” Scott said, joining them. He had enough practice at getting up in front of a class and performing for them whether he felt like it or not that he could talk in cheerful tones when really he felt like he’d put his hand through a window and was just waiting for the pain to start.
He said there would be classes on Monday with only a brief glance at Charles for confirmation. “I don’t imagine any of you got a chance to do your homework,” Scott went on. “Why don’t you work on that for a while?”
He watched them go, maybe to do their homework, maybe to watch TV or squeeze onto one bed with their roommates and play cards. He wasn’t sure how any of them were really going to pick up their half-finished essays or pages of math problems, like pretending to be the same people they’d been Friday.
“We still are, you know,” Charles said.
Scott didn't think he was the same person. He didn’t have a fiancée who bought movie tickets and sighed in exasperation when he didn’t listen to her. He’d walked past a bucket full of broken glass in the hallway. He wasn’t sure where he could stand to sleep tonight.
“Scott . . .” Charles began gently.
“I’m okay.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I do, right now.”
“If you say so.”
“She didn’t get a chance to sort the laundry,” Scott heard himself saying. “I can’t--I need something to wear to class tomorrow.”
“I’ll help you.”
Scott couldn’t bear to make Charles do that.
“No, it’s okay. I’ll find something. I’ll go look.”
He went upstairs that evening thinking he’d get one of the kids to help him sort the laundry by colors tomorrow. He’d gotten as far as thinking Not St. John, he can’t even sort his own laundry before he remembered St. John was with Magneto now. It didn’t seem fair to have more than one awful thing to have to remember.
Her clothes were still on the chair. Of course they were. He found an old pair of slacks and a sweater for the morning and got ready for bed. He came out of the bathroom, and the bedroom looked normal, like Jean were downstairs grading papers or working on the computer or sitting up playing chess with Charles and drinking tea.
Scott couldn’t stand it. He went over and picked up the clothes and tossed them one by one into the laundry basket, going through the pockets of the pants again because he couldn’t stop his hands from doing it.
There was the pair of tickets. He took them out of her pocket and laid them on the dresser, carefully face down. He went and sat down on the bed and switched off the light. He lay down, tucking his head down in the only way he’d found that made it comfortable to sleep on his side wearing his visor.
As soon as he closed his eyes he thought could feel her moving around downstairs, hear her quick footsteps as she came down the hall. He was sure somewhere just on the edge of sleep he’d feel the bed sway as she climbed in beside him and the touch of her fingers brushing his forehead.
Scott opened his eyes lay looking at the ceiling in the dark. The sharp smell of bleach from the floors was creeping in under the door from the hall. He was grateful for that. It meant that maybe when he woke up in the morning there wouldn’t be a moment when he didn’t remember and then a moment when he did.