Kid

I think the reason why the laundromat was the hardest part, even harder than the phone call or going to the police station, was it was the one part of the process I didn’t realize I’d be doing until it was upon me, worse even than the disdain from the officers and her puking in my car and in my apartment and crying to me her worthlessness as a mother, but there was the rug, and there were the sheets, and I would not be able to sleep and finish it until everything was clean.

And even if I had thought to bring a book or a magazine with me, I would have been too tired to read. So it was just me on a bench watching Oprah, and the sun getting stronger through the window, and a skin-bulged woman with her silent son who pulled the leaves of the side-table newspaper, one by one. He must have been about eight, wearing grey and black plaid flannels with running pants, wooly hair and bony face. She picked up the payphone in the back and leaned against the wall, saying things or whispering them or maybe even shouting, I never would have known because the TV was so loud.

I remembered something, and called to the kid.

“Hey.” I fished around my pocket and found the sucker Tony gave me last night before the call from the station, a mock romantic gesture. I held out the sucker to the kid but he shook his head, said no thanks. Which is exactly as it should be, I realized, what with candy and what should never be taken from strangers, and I felt pretty bad about putting him in a position of temptation.

I was beginning to question needing it all to be finished before I slept. Would it really have been so hard? Just tossing the soiled things in a corner, lying down, squeezing my eyes shut? I had been exhausted, the sky was greying by the time we got to my place. I almost didn’t stay home, almost went back over to Tony’s to bang on his apartment door, roommates be damned. But it had been bad enough, getting the phone call and telling them what it was. You pick your battles. You pick your surrenders. Maybe you can’t pick when they knock you over, but you can pick your own recovery.

Because the kid and his mother got here after me, I was done first. I left the sucker on the chair where I was sitting. He might take a gamble on it. I didn’t know. I balanced my laundry basket on my hip and shoved the glass door back with my heel. The kid’s mother was still on the phone. She wore glasses with outdated clear frames, and I couldn’t see the direction of her eyes. Her face wrapped around all her unheard words, maybe with extra enunciation, maybe that’s just the way she talks. The sun blasted behind me and I almost didn’t see the kid run up to take and hold the door.