A GOOD DEED GONE WRONG

 

I tiptoe out of the house when the crickets are still chirping and the air smells like night. I left mum and dad’s bedroom door ajar and walked downstairs bare-footed on the soft carpet. Dad was snoring and mum slept with her mouth open. They looked exhausted like they do on a day after there’s been some shouting.

I didn’t think that the washing machine door would be so stiff. I was scared that if I pulled at it too hard it might clang open waking everybody up in a bad mood. So I used a tea towel to muffle the sound as I pulled, I’m not sure if it made any difference, but nobody woke up. I filled the laundry basket with all our clothes from the party and took it outside with me.

I put the basket on the garden table and move one of the less rusty chairs under the washing line so I can reach up high enough. I’ve got ten pegs in my pyjama trouser pockets, nine now that I’ve dropped one, let’s hope that’s enough.

Dad’s blue shirt is heavy with water, but I’m scared of squeezing it in case it gets creases. I get up on tiptoe and throw the sleeves over the line and stick the first peg on.

I like the smell of washing powder on mum’s dress. This is the one I helped her choose at the mall on Saturday and then she got me a Strawberry Bubble ice cream. I went with dad to help him choose clothes once, but we ended up buying a push-lawnmower instead. I was hoping that he’d get the one that looked like a tractor, but he said it cost like a spaceship and might chop his toes off. I move my toes inside my slippers and shudder at the thought.

Then I put dad’s jeans up to dry and they keep dropping on to me, so I get down from the chair and fling them up into the air. They fall on the line nicely folded in two. I’m quite good at throwing, maybe I should join a basketball team. Dad got us that basketball net for the garden. I thought we’d be playing outside all the time before tea, the three of us like in American soap operas. But it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe when they get up they’ll be in a better mood than usual, when they see what I’ve done; and I’ll ask them if we can play basketball, and then go for lunch to McDonald’s.

My T-shirt’s up and my shorts were easy. Now the socks and pants. I unravel the socks first. Mum tells me off if I put mine in the dirty laundry basket, but she threw them all into the wash as they were this time.

She said that it was dad who should have remembered to fill up the car with petrol and it was all his fault. He said that he was going to fill up on the way to the party and it wasn’t his fault that the BP garage decided an unprecedented early closing. And that he only had coins and his new bank card was in the post so he couldn’t pay the automatic service and mum should’ve brought hers along, even with the small party purse. I thought they were being funny so I laughed when dad pushed the car with the strength of his arms along the forecourt. Mum and I sat inside like queens. But mum told me to shut up and look for an umbrella.

I don’t understand why adults get so worried about getting wet in the rain. I mean, it’s summer, so we couldn’t catch a cold, and it’s exactly the same as diving into a swimming pool. In films people get caught in a storm and laugh hysterically as they kiss and hold each other. My dad held my hand so tight that it still hurts a bit. ‘Stay away from the road, stay away from the road,’ he kept saying as we walked home from the petrol station. As if I was going to suddenly dart away into the street like a nutcase.

I thought it was awesome the way my T-shirt stuck to my chest like glue and water gushed down my face like I was looking at an aquarium.

There’s no rain but there’s no sun this morning. Maybe I should have got up even earlier, like at four o’clock, in the dark. This stuff is never going to be dry in time for when they come downstairs.

I fetch the hairdryer and plug it in the garden wall. Mum’s dress looks quite dry already and dad’s shirt is kind of fifty-fifty, but these jeans and the socks will take forever.

I have an epiphany and creep back up to my room. I knew my old pink Barbie hair dryer would come in handy when mum and dad put it in the “throw away” box saying it was broken and I fished it back out without them noticing.

That’s more like it. The jeans are coming on nicely now that I can keep one hair dryer fixed on each leg. The bits up to the knees are virtually done. I must hurry, the bathroom light upstairs has come on.

Then it looks like someone has lit a New Year’s Eve sparkler by the electric plug on the wall and there’s a big “pop”. Woops. Was that my fault? The garden lamp posts have turned off.

The upstairs bathroom window opens and dad shouts.

‘What on earth are you doing there? The electricity has gone.’

The next-door neighbour opens her window too and shouts over that the lights have gone off in her house as well.

Dad rushes down and snatches the hair dryers from me.

‘What the hell? I thought we’d thrown this thing away ages ago.’

Mum crashes out of the back door with panda eyes like when she can’t be bothered to clean up her make up before going to bed.

‘Can’t a person have one day a week when they’re allowed to sleep in the morning, for Goodness’ sake?’ she says.

They stare at me. They’re waiting for an explanation. I point to the washing line.

‘It was meant to be a surprise. I thought you’d be happy. Cos you argued about all the clothes being wet. So I thought-’ I look down at my feet.

The old lady next door shouts, ‘What’s going on?! Lightning bolt hit our chimneys, did it?’

I hear a sudden sort of piggy-snort and then another one and I look up. My parents fail to keep a straight face and then they burst out laughing, gradually, my dad first and then my mum, and then their shoulders are shaking hard, and then dad folds in half and gets down on the lawn doing that ‘Don’t-make-me-laugh-any-more, please,’ sign, the one he does when I tickle him on the sofa. Mum kisses me and hugs me and then dad signals to both me and mum to join him in a huddle on the ground and we do that thing that rugby players do when they’re all bunched up.