by Kate Tell
Everything wrong about me coalesces to become one simple fact: if I have to do something alone, I don’t care how it gets done.
Before, it was easy to care, since all I had to do was call out from the bottom of the stairs. Can you help me? And he would always come. Maybe not right away, but always eventually. In the meantime, I would wait in the living room: sitting on the couch, basket on the floor, eyes on the television, mindlessly enjoying the quiet chatter of digital strangers on a rainy Sunday stuck inside.
When he would come, we’d start with the fitted sheet first, since it required the most manipulation. Each of us grabbing corners, his long, strong arms stretching further than I ever could, the still-warm-from-the-dryer fabric gentling easing itself into my palms. We would stretch and then, on an unspoken cue, bring our arms together to fold the sheet long ways. Then rotate, fold, rotate, fold, stepping towards each other, stealing kisses whenever we were close. Sometimes, he would weaponize his arms against me and when I’d step forward, he would wrap the whole sheet around me instead, a temperate bear hug, and I wouldn’t even pretend to be frustrated at having to start over.
Now, I start with the pillowcases. Everything is still warm, because the dryer is still warm, but spending too much time over the piles of laundry has made me sweaty and irritable. Running up and down stairs to the basement where the shared machines are always full, no one but me seems to know you have to clean the lint trap between loads, and my quarters are somehow always disappearing when I need them. This barrier of a single staircase and monthly bank trips for coins means that I don’t change my sheets nearly as often as I should. Someone told me you have to do it once a week? And when I heard that, I thought, That’s a person who has an in-unit washer and dryer. Having to leave the house to wash my clothes is my most frequent reminder that the women of the past, hunched over washboards in calf-deep river water, remain better than me in most every way, and it’s such a loss that they’re all dead now.
When I do get to the fitted sheet, and I outstretch my arms like I’m on the cross, the other end just dangles sadly, grazing against the ground, and it forces me to remember the last time I dusted and vacuumed, which is always slightly too long ago. I bring the sides together, not caring to line them up perfectly like I would with him.
I fold the sheet over my own arms, evening it out only as much as I feel like and not as much as the sheet deserves. This fabric, sewn by someone certainly much further away than I was standing, that I paid money for, and slept on, tossed and turned within, it demanded a life greater than the one I could give it. It did not deserve my haphazardness, my disinterest. We should care about our sheets. He cared about our sheets. That’s why he always came when I called for him.
With him, the creases were smoothed, the corners lined up, and suddenly the laundry had transformed from a formless heap to square tiles of cloth, stacked neatly, stored neatly. Doing things the perfect way often has consequences beyond just making you feel perfect: when the sheets fit in the drawer well, it means that I can fit more, other things in the drawer, too. When I later go and put them on the mattress, I know the order in which I’ll pull out the sheets, which makes yet another chore go by a little bit faster. This is why people get married, I think often these days. This is what marriage is meant to do for us. But now, my indifference has left me with a different kind of chunky pile that I have to shove into an overpacked ottoman. Certainly it’s not good for the hinges, for the drawer, for the sheets, myself. None of them deserve this treatment except for maybe me.
When I am done, I don’t feel good, or like I accomplished anything. I feel like I have added exactly zero worth into the world. Before, though, it did something. When the sheets were folded and there was nothing left to do, a halo of pride shimmered around us, even when he went back upstairs to nap and I continued to watch television, the drumming of the rain lulling us both towards peace. Knowing that the other of us was there, even when we couldn’t see each other.
Now, where did that something go?
I can only find myself, here, a heap on our bed, desperate, stretching out for his hands but feeling only the apathy of fabric.
Kate Tell is a writer of poetry and historical fiction based in Hoboken, New Jersey. She's had work published in the winter 2025 edition of Empyrean Literary Magazine, the Equivocation edition The Martello Journal, as well as been featured on Alyssa Milano's podcast as part of the Story Not Sorry series. She is currently working on a chapbook of poems centered on grief, as well as her first novel.
