Melynda took her clothes from the dryer, hoping to keep her emotions under control on a gloomy Sunday, the first trip to the laundromat since the breakup, one month to the day with his parting words: "We're not on the same page anymore, I don't see us working toward the same future."
"All I said is that I don't want kids, I've never really been able to see myself with kids, but we can still get married, buy a house, get a dog if you want...I don't want the responsibility of bringing someone into this rotten world, who knows what is going to happen to the environment, with China, with Iran, with the economy that's not really improving, unemployment, the faltering schools, radiation spewing out everywhere, air travel a nightmare, the utterly hapless politicians, the media feeding us a daily diet of sleaze pretending they've got our best interest at heart because we've a free press - free to warp all future generations."
"You've got to stop reading the newspapers and watching TV," he exploded. "You can't let these things that aren't real, aren't a part of your life affect you so, you'll go insane, Mel, you're making me insane."
"I don't know how you can ignore it, it's the world you live in," she said. "You want to bring children into this? Why? We're having trouble keeping ourselves together."
They left the coffee shop and went their separate way, she to her job as a veterinarian's assistant and he to fuss over his latest start-up but when Melynda returned home that evening she had a message saying he really couldn't see any future for them, she depressed him, he liked to look on the bright side, he was
going camping with his brother and his family.
That was a month ago and Melynda could no longer postpone doing her laundry; she had been using the washer and dryer in his very own kitchen where they happily played a domestic couple, making breakfast on Sunday, reading the paper and doing the laundry - with desultory talks of marriage.
She put off going to the laundromat as long as she could but some things can't be put off forever; she needed socks, towels, clean sheets. And she was doing okay - fighting for machines with the usual customers: the old Chinese woman with a baby girl in a sling, the crotchety old Pakistani man, the Mexican family that had so much laundry it took three people to do it and almost all of the available machines, a burnt-out hippie with a dangerous edge, all seemingly able to do the laundry without an emotional breakdown.
Melynda too was managing just fine until she pulled one of his socks from the dryer, a leftover from the last time he spent the night and she broke down there in front of the usual customers, tears freely flowing though she would not go so far as to actually sob. Now he would only have one sock from the pair he liked so much, they bought them in Macy's on their first shopping trip together. She would have to mail it to him.
The mother of the family looked upon her with pity. The old Chinese woman averted her eyes and the fierce looking Pakistani man softened his hard stance unable to ignore a woman's tears. He cleared a path for her to move her clothes to the table. Two of the children came toward her as if to ask her to play though their father held them back.
Have none of these people read the news today? she thought. Do they not know that we are all doomed? She looked at the one lost sock that had once been part of a couple. Maybe she would take it to his place instead of mailing it. Suddenly she could see a future of noisy kids continually losing their socks. She did not know how she could prevent this. She folded her clothes, placing the one errant sock on the top of the pile, left the laundromat, its mayhem and heat, and knew that despite wars and strife, sickness and struggle, that the world would more than likely continue its awful trajectory, she would be too busy with the laundry and all the missing socks to notice. Somehow she knew she had come through an abyss. Though outwardly nothing at all had changed, she realized that a world had been traversed and she smiled, hesitantly, for the first time in a month.
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