A Clean Conscience

E.E. King - This was originally published as -"The Miracle of Dry Cleaning" in "The Lorelei Signal," 2021

“Forty-seven pounds?” said Sally. It was the end of fall, and she was picking up her dry cleaning, three wool jerseys, and a winter coat, from The Clean Conscience. “Why I could almost buy a new coat for that.”

The skinny, pimply girl handed her the bill, eyed Sally silently through half closed, heavily blued lids. Sally smiled nervously, as she slowly placed her money on the counter.

This girl needs a good scrubbing herself, she thought. I hope she didn’t touch my pullovers.

Sally had no children of her own. If she’d ever wanted them, it was so ago, she’d forgotten. Even, Paul Lorde, her one true love was a memory so distant it seemed like he was from someone else’s life. Paul had died when she was only twenty-five and after that she’d closed her heart to love and loss. She was fine on her own, with nothing more intimate than the slovenly dry- cleaning girl, and the overpriced dry-cleaning, she to disturb her. The only remnant of that old life long forgotten was her small upright piano, which she kept polished to a fine shine, and never ever played.

Sally slung her plastic shrouded clothes over her arm and began the short walk back home to her sensible, spotless, beige flat, perched on the edge of Oak Valley Village. Oak Valley had once, long ago, contained actual oaks as well as other trees, but these had been regularly replaced by malls, with woody names like Spruce, Yew and Birch that needed no water or fertilizer.

Still, Sally’s apartment was enclosed by a tidy white picket fence, and fronted by a tiny garden of daffodils, zinnia, marigolds, and roses. Though the flat’s walls were paper-thin, her neighbors were, for the most part, elderly like herself and not given to noisy parties or amorous interludes. Besides, her hearing had dimmed and even the raucous scrub-jays and boisterous magpies that frequented her next-door neighbor Crystal’s messy bird feeders sounded as faint and far away as lonesome doves.

Sally’s building did not allow animals, but she cleverly circumnavigated loneliness by naming her toaster oven and sewing eyes, on her tea cozy. They were quiet, much cleaner than live pets and totally legal. Sally was content.

She didn’t need much, a few flowers, a dirt-free house, and a nice cup of tea. She was not like Crystal who was always seeing miracles and omens, to give life meaning. Life was just fine as it was.

Sally paused, as she mounted her steps, shaking her head at the ugly stain on her front porch. It had been there for over a week, caused by a carless delivery boy’s leaky motorbike. It had resisted all of her efforts to remove it, even a through scrubbing with the extremely potent Filth-B-Gone, a solution known to remove paint from doors, plaster from walls and glaze from tiles, if not carefully supervised.

At home, Sally discovered a rough white cloth hanging in-between her sweaters. Though it swung from a paper-covered hanger and was carefully draped in plastic as though it had been cleaned, she could see it was badly stained.

Her fingers tingled, as she pulled it out, as though she’d touched something warm and alive. She shook her head again as she laid it on the table, trying to ignore the heat that spread up her whole body like the comfort of sunshine after a long winter.

Sally prided herself on being practical. She did not believe in the authority of dreams, or the power of prayer. She was not like Crystal who sensed signs in the slightest of breezes, saw omens in every sunrise, and heard portents in the nightly cries of barn owls.

Still, no matter how much she tried to ignore the tickling of her fingers and toes, she could not help but be aware of the warm, wonderful current coursing up her body and into her mind, filling it with wonder as she gazed out at the rainy sunset. She’d never seen a sky so lovely, so full of color, light, and hidden rainbows. All of her worries seemed small and unimportant, even the intransigent grease on her front porch, that had been plaguing her with its stubborn refusal to come clean. Life was full of love and light, understanding, sisterhood, and… Crystal pushed open her door and lurched into the dining room without even knocking.

Really, Sally tightened her lips. Some people have no notion of ….

“Sally,” Crystal cried. “I had the most A-MAZ-ING … OHHHHH.”

Crystal fell to her knees before the dirty, linen rag on the table. Tears of joy ran down her cheeks, glistening in the fading light like drop-shaped rainbows.

“What is it?” Sally asked, usually she was a bit annoyed by Crystal’s dramatics, but even she could not deny that something uncanny was emanating from the badly stained cloth on the table.

“I believe it is The Shroud of Turin,” Crystal breathed. Her words glittered like falling snowflakes. They formed tangible waves of light and transubstantiated into two shining white doves that flew toward the light shining through the window.

Unfortunately, Sally’s windows were closed, it was after all the end of fall, the days were cooling, and nights were cold. The celestial doves crashed into the glass with a very real thud and fell lifelessly onto her carpet.

“OHHHHH,” wailed Crystal.

In some hidden corner of Sally’s mind, she marveled that two such different emotions could be voiced by the same sound. The majority of her brain was too busy screaming in denial. Surely Crystal’s exclamation couldn’t have turned into birds? They must have flown in through a window, though she was certain she’d carefully shut them all before she’d left. Still, the birds had come from somewhere. They hadn’t just materialized out of words. Of that she was positive. The light must have been a reflection off the window, a mirage formed by rising heat, some residual fumes from the Filth-B-Gone, she’d used to scrub the porch. It was potent stuff.

Sally took a deep, slow breath. She hesitated, wondering if she should get some newsprint to wrap up the bodies, but as she pondered, the birds vanished, leaving only two brownish smudges on her rug.

“Where did you get it?” Crystal asked, in a breathy whisper.

Sally stared at the stains on her rug, mind black with shock. The doves themselves must have been some trick of light, but then where did the stains come from?

“I got it at The Clean Conscience ”, Sally said.

“I never go there,” Crystal clicked her tongue. “They use HOR-rible chemicals.”

The two women stared at the cloth, lying innocuously beneath its plastic coverlet. It was marked with a dark red stain that no cleaning, and no chemicals, no matter how horrible, had ever been able to remove.

Eons before, when the blood was still fresh, slaves had beaten it with rocks and left it to dry on rough, slate stone of Papyrus lined riverbanks.

Centuries later, The Sisters of the Galactic Prophecy had soaked it in scalding water and scoured it over metal wash pans, until the skin of their fingers grew as white and desiccated as albino raisins.

Decades after, the cloth had been stirred for forty days and forty nights by catholic, orphan paupers and saturated in vats filled with solvents so caustic they would burn the flesh off of­­­ anyone they touched. And, most recently, the shroud had been bleached, and spot cleaned. But still the stain remained.

Sally heard a faint whisper. If a breeze had hands and were knocking on my door, she thought, that is what it would sound like. Despite the preponderance of wonders, she marveled at her imagination. Never before had metaphors dropped into her mind like this, as easy and unrestrained as the quality of mercy.

Sally’s door creaked. I must oil the hinges, she thought. I know I have some …

Into the room shuffled, a dozen or more, dirty, tattered souls. They might have been men or, women, or children. It was impossible to tell. The bottom halves of their faces were covered by rags. Their eyes, though crusted and cloudy, gleamed with a fierce hope.

“Lepers,” hissed Crystal.

Both women backed toward the window, unconsciously stepping over the blood of the vanished doves.

“Tap-tap tap.” In came twelve blind men, and one blind woman, followed by three who might have been either. Their faces, hands and limbs were so swollen, their features were hidden in folds of enflamed flesh.

“What’s wrong with them?” Sally whispered.

“I think it’s dropsy,” Crystal whispered back.

They eyed the bloated trio.

“What’s dropsy?” hissed Crystal.

“I think it’s water retention,” Sally hissed back.

“I keep telling you about the dangers of too much sodium,” muttered Crystal. “Well, there you are! I rest my case. I imagine that all they need is a bit of boiled dandelion root and…”

“How do you know they have dropsy if you don’t know what dropsy is?” mouthed Sally.

“It’s in the bible,” Crystal whispered. “The shroud, the lepers, the blind men, some people with dropsy and ...”

She was interrupted by an unearthly howling and moaning that blew in from Sally’s front yard. In staggered two dozen children obviously in the throes of demonic possession. They were followed by six dumb men, five paraplegics, a few epileptics, a deaf man with a speech impediment, a woman with ‘blood issues,’ and a man with a withered hand.

The cries and laminations of all who were not mute, not nearly enough in Sally’s estimate, shook the walls of the tiny flat. She wondered if her hearing had improved. She wondered if that was yet another miracle, and if it was, if she could somehow refuse it.

The stench was beyond biblical.

Sally felt lost, waves of belief and denial crashing against each other. She had been, if not joyful, at least calm. Now she was drowning in bedlam. Sally shuddered. For no apparent reason she pictured Paul among these diseased masses. Surly death was a kind of disease? The worst kind. One without a cure. When he’d died so long ago, she’d rejected love, its miracles and its chaos.

“Jesus,” Sally prayed. “Please, make Paul happy, wherever he is.

“Please, heal these people, whoever they are.

“Please, take your shroud, or whatever it is and get the bloody hel- uh heck- out of my flat,” she pleaded. It was the first, and most heartfelt, supplication she’d uttered in years.

The shroud blazed gloriously.

The blind saw, the deaf heard, the paraplegic danced. They twirled, boogied, waltzed, and sang out of Sally’s home as fast as she could shoo them, leaving behind a deafening quiet.

The only remaining signs of portents and miracles were two brown smudges that had briefly been heavenly doves.

Sally felt grateful and oddly let down. So was this it? A mystery of fate? Now life would return to normal, but was normal what she wanted?

Sally went to the sink to wet a sponge so she could scrub away the blood of the blessed birds, but the liquid that poured from her tap was red and even darker than blood. Crystal, who was right behind her dipped a finger in.

“Ummm…Cabernet Sauvignon with a hint of Shiraz.”

Sally sighed and poured them each a glass.

That winter, she and Crystal opened S & C’s Holey Spirits Wine Bar. Their brew became famous for filling patrons with warmth and good fellowship. More than one happy wedding was caused by the excellent spirits. Crystal and Sally became, not only business partners, and great friends, but also Godparents and grandparents to many of their patron’s offspring. The flat/bar was no longer quiet, or spotless. Sally began playing her piano again. Sometimes, when she’d had a bit too much good spirits she and Crystal sang, harmonizing angelically. The bar ranging with laughter and music. It was still very neat, and tidy, except for the slightly stained rug in the corner. Sally had decided not to get it dry cleaned. Sometimes cleanliness could be a little too close to godliness.