I had been grinding up antidepressants and putting them in Wanda’s morning coffee every day for the past five years, so it was no surprise when she brought home an award from the Laundromat for being the happiest employee of the year. Her eyes welled up with tears when I pointed out the faint praise of being called the happiest person in a Laundromat, and she pouted that West End Laundry was a “dynamic community of people with complex ideals and emotions.” A community of complex people who do not have washing machines at home, I said, and her head sank as she clutched her certificate. It was the fifth time she won the award, which came with a small trophy.
I should be more supportive, but my shame at her choice of employment stops me cold. I met her at Dairy Queen when I was fixing ice cream machines, and she was on a break from passing out change and little boxes of detergent. Since then, I’ve moved into management, and she’s doing the same thing. We moved from a tiny apartment around the corner from the Laundromat to a new house on a quarter-acre lot across town, but she gets up at six in the morning and takes three buses to get to West End. I would drive her, but my business takes me in the opposite direction. When she leaves, I’m still reading the paper and eating whatever leftovers there are from her breakfast. Sometimes I watch a little television.
The antidepressants are for me, but I always thought that Wanda could make better use of them. When she watches television, she starts crying about characters who are going to be just fine by the end of the hour. She had to lay down for a few hours when she started my car and chopped up a cat that had climbed into the engine compartment for warmth. She wrote a couple of poems and talked to our pastor about a woman she watched get clobbered by a city bus while gazing out the Laundromat window. None of that stuff bothered me in the least. Things happen, and you move on with life. My doctor says I’m doing great since I started the antidepressants, and I couldn’t agree more.
I’ve been sleeping with a woman from work. Her name is Millicent, and I think she’s the first woman to be given that name since 1947. When I say that I’m sleeping with her, I mean that literally: when I’m supposed to be out of town on business, I drive over to her place, park my car in her garage, strip down to my shorts, and we sleep together. She has a hard time getting to sleep since her husband left her, and I usually fall asleep within the first couple of minutes, so we worked a deal out. She lays in a selection of the best – and I mean the best – junk food there is, and after we have a bite and watch a little television, we kiss and go to sleep. She says that no one understands her the way I do, and I agree. Sometimes she wakes up in my arms, and sometimes I wake up in hers. She blacked out the four glass windows in her garage so no one can tell I’m there. No one ever calls or comes by, either. She passes me little notes at work, promising expensive cookies. I like it.
The owner of West End Laundry is a man named Shackleford, and he belongs to one of the older country clubs in town, the kind with a golf course, a ballroom, a restaurant, and nothing else. He asked Wanda and I to dinner there one night to thank her for working so hard for so many years. We dressed up in our best: me in a black suit with a tie bar and cufflinks, and Wanda in a blue cocktail dress her mother said was bought in 1957. We looked good. We sipped drinks at the table and waited for Shackleford to show up, and the whole while I was thinking that Wanda was looking good, really good, and I might want to get her home pretty quick.
Then Shackleford showed up right at dusk, and he was sweaty and stinking from the golf course, with little rings of sweat darkening his shirt below his breasts. His face was flushed, and he said he was sorry. He called over to the bartender for a beer, and we shook hands. He said he was on the course when he remembered we had a dinner, but the son of a bitch in the group in front of him had a guy who thought he was Ben Crenshaw, and it took forever to finish. We felt like fools. I ordered a rack of lamb, Wanda ordered shrimp, and Shackleford had a club sandwich.
I didn’t want to get Martha home very quickly at all. I stopped the car and threw pebbles into the lake while she sat in the passenger seat. She had the body language of a woman who was sorry that she wasted her husband’s time. “But look,” she said, “you got lamb.” And that was it. We got home, she undressed, and I sat down to watch some television. I would be with Millicent the next night, and all would be good, what with the cookies and the candy and her warm skin, keeping me while I sleep.
