Sad Jane

But I noticed a black bruise under her left eye. I left the room wondering if her husband was right-handed.

One of the outbuildings near my flat was dedicated to a self-serve laundry for the renters. Like the main house, the place seems constructed to last centuries with a masterful brick exterior, concrete floors, and windows two meters high. A mildly fruity odor permeates the damp air, in spite of the extra-large clothes driers constantly turning against the back wall. Three foldable ironing boards sit askew around the oversized space, waiting for a resident to try their hand with the 220 volt European electric irons.

It’s taken quite a few tries for me to get the hang of French appliances, but after a couple of weekend laundry days, my process is running smoothly. Making homemade biscuits, baking an apple pie, and ironing shirts seemed essential skills for adulthood during my childhood dreams. So, each week, I wash my clothes, dry them, and set about ironing my button-down shirts leftover from IBM.

This Saturday, I’m on my second shirt, getting ready to iron the sleeves and collar. A forty-something dark-skinned woman, who entered the room wearing a black hijabf, goes to another ironing board ready to start her work. But, instead of ironing, she is watching me — staring at me. I wasn’t sure what was going on because it was unusual to see someone dressed like her look so directly at me.

Nervously, I continue to iron, finish the shirt, hang it on a nearby hook and pick another from my laundry basket.

“Hello,” the woman says, in surprisingly good English.

“Hello,” I answer. “Do you need help?”

“No. Would you like for me to iron your shirts? she asks.

I’m wondering if she thinks my ironing is terrible, but I say. “Oh. Thank you so much, but I can manage.”

“Sorry to bother you, but I’ve never seen a man iron a shirt,” she says with a smile.

“Thanks again,” I say, smiling back.

We quietly continue our ironing, while I wonder what cultural rules she broke by asking me the question.

Although I met them early after I moved in, I seldom encountered Jane or her husband face to face. They lived in one of the apartments on the first floor of this Chateau. Their apartment faced the walkway to my unit.

Often, when I came home from work at seven or eight, I saw Jane staring at the TV set, smoking, sometimes with their son slumped in another chair — also staring. I assumed that the husband traveled a lot or kept late hours, probably to the dissatisfaction of the rest of his family. They don’t seem happy.

Derek, about twelve years old, kicks around a soccer ball for hours; bouncing it against a big boulder on the far lawn or against the side of the building close to the driveway. There are children his age in the apartment complex, but they seem to ignore him. On some days, Jane or her husband join him for a few minutes, as if playing soccer is a duty of parenthood. I was tempted to go play with Derek, but he seemed uninterested in my attempts to engage him in conversation. It was not a language problem, he speaks with a beautiful British accent.

Last weekend Jane was washing laundry in our shared laundry room. I could no longer ignore her sadness.

“Hi, I’m Grant. I met you and your family when I moved in. I live upstairs,” I said over the top of my laundry bag.

“Hello, I’m Jane. How long have you lived here?”

“Oh, since last June. How about you?”

“We’ve been here two years, and we’re looking for a place to settle,” she said.

“A lot of people here are doing that. This is a place of transients. Where did you come from?”

“Lebanon. We left after things got too bad to stay.”

Over the next few minutes, I began to understand some of the reasons for the family gloom. Jane is English, her husband, Greek. Derek was born in Lebanon. The husband is a salesman and distributor of food products. Jane worked closely with Frank Reed, one of the Americans who was taken hostage in Beirut.

“No doubt you’ve heard of Frank Reed,” she said. “I used to work with him — in education. When he was kidnapped, my job and spirit went away. When things got so bad, we decided to leave. So we’ve been looking for the right country ever since. I think we’ll try England next. What do you think of the French?”

“Oh, I’ve had good experiences here,” I replied.

“Well, I can’t wait to leave. Everything is still in boxes, so it will be easy.”

Jane described her life here: living in isolation, waiting for her husband to come home at nine o’clock, then fixing dinner, watching hours of French television and being bored by it, having nothing to do but wait for a call to drive to the train station to pick up her husband, feeling badly that she was not able to find a job in teaching or education, being sick, and spending a lot of time in the French medical system that she suspected was not nearly as good as the British.

“How is Derek doing in school?” I asked.

“He goes to the international school at St. Germain, and is doing all right. He knows languages and writes well. When we go to England, he can go to a good school.”

As I listened to the story of a family adrift, three lonely, unhappy people, their loneliness a consequence of being set adrift by war and political forces. Would England or any other place finally give these three people a home — and make them a family. Or — was the source of their remorse internal?

I put my clothes in the washer, inserted my token, and pushed the green start button.

“It’s been good to meet you, Jane,” I said.

“You, too.” For the first time, she smiled.

But I noticed a black bruise under her left eye. I left the room wondering if her husband was right-handed.

This is another story from my memoir, Hand on the Shoulder: Finding Freedom in the Confluence of Love and Career (see Amazon). These stories bring back meaningful memories for me, and perhaps they are interesting to you.

Grant