story: Out

Out
by Christopher Garlington

She was ironing. She ironed everything. She ironed all the shirts, the sheets, the pants, his work jeans, even the towels. She was passionate about creases. A collar could absorb her for twenty minutes or more as she patiently smoothed its wrinkles and its pillowed fabric down to a perfect plane.

“Always work from the middle,” and she pushes the iron away from her, “oooout. From the middle,” again the iron sails toward the edge of the board, gliding suddenly upward in a graceful practiced arc, “oooout.” That was her motto and her lesson to anyone foolish enough to ask her about ironing. Not that you had to ask, the conversation would eventually get there all by itself.

This morning she walked into the ironing room after her husband had left. She had her cup of coffee. She clicked on the little TV and turned it to CNN. She turned on her iron and stripped off her blouse.

The new Cuban shirt her husband’s brother had sent him had a collar as wide and as clear as a sail and she spread it out on the ironing board to flatten it. She touched the tip of the iron to check the heat. She sprayed some starch and went to work. After a minute or two, she had one side perfect. Then she pressed the edge of the iron against her skin, just under her right breast.

The pain was quick. It drove through her like a spear. She shook her hair and said “hmmph,” and finished the collar out. The next one was a pale blue ruffled skirt for her niece. It had 37 pleats. She laid it out across the board and touched the edge of the iron to her skin just a little off from the first burn. She shook her hair again, like she’d just done a shot of Jack in a roadside bar.

She was absorbed in the pleats when the screen door opened up and her sister walked right in. She whirled around with the iron in her hand, tits bouncing.

“Rhonda what the fuck are you doing?!”

She automatically crossed her arms over her tits and sunk the edge of the iron into her shoulder. She stared right at her sister as it burned. Her sister took a step toward her to grab the iron and stopped with her hand stretched out. Her sister could see the steam ports patterned like a daisy on her skin. She followed the criss-cross pattern down Rhonda’s arm to the elbow, then she saw her belly.

Starting around her navel, a floral pattern of tiny triangles was burned into her sister’s torso. They bloomed up to a hand’s width from her perfect tits. She couldn’t take her eyes off of them. She looked up at her sister.

“But you’re so pretty.”

Rhonda’s eyes welled up with delighted tears. She would never be able to explain it. She put the iron down and took her sister’s hands. She looked earnestly into her sister’s plain eyes and said

“It makes me happy.”