My husband Ray left me for a coworker from the post office last year, in February, while it was sleeting outside — one of those rare St. Louis ice storms that shuts the city down for a day and then turns to gray slush on the sidewalks. He was fifty-three, I was forty-six. Twenty-three years together, one son, Danny, who's studying engineering at Purdue now and calls me every Sunday evening, always at eight, like it's on his calendar.
When Ray left, I found out two things in the same afternoon, sitting at the kitchen table with my sister Denise: that he'd been seeing this woman for two years, and that the laundromat — the one we'd opened together back in 2009, with both our savings and a loan from Midwest BankCentre — was in his name only. I'd worked there every single afternoon for fifteen years. I knew every customer by name, knew who dropped off sheets on Tuesdays and who came Thursdays, knew that Mr. Higgins from the apartments on Enright always left loose change in his pants pockets and I'd hand it back to him in a little baggie. That laundromat smelled like lavender fabric softener and hot iron steam, and it was as much home to me as the house I slept in.
Ray told me, sitting on the couch still in his work jacket, that "for tax reasons" the business had stayed in his name, and that now he wanted to sell it to fund his new life in Nashville with Brittany. He offered me three thousand dollars, "as a thank-you," his exact words. Three thousand dollars for fifteen years of my life behind that counter.
I didn't say no, didn't yell, didn't break anything. I drove to my sister's place, sat out on her back porch overlooking the alley, listened to the neighbor's TV running the ten o'clock news through the screen door, and thought about how I was forty-six years old with hands that could still get a stain out of a dress shirt collar better than anyone else in that zip code.
The next day I went to see attorney Karen Foglino, over on Clayton Road, the one who'd handled Denise's divorce three years earlier. I brought her everything: the laundromat's bank statements going back to 2009, the supply receipts paid with my debit card, the photos I'd taken over the years for the shop's Facebook page — always me in them, never him. She told me something that stuck: "You worked fifteen years, unpaid, in a business built during your marriage. That carries weight in family court, if you can prove it."
It took eight months. Ray tried to sell the laundromat under the table to an acquaintance in January, while the marital property case was still open. The buyer, a guy named Frank who already ran two laundromats out in Affton, backed out the moment he found out there was pending litigation — nobody wants to buy into a lawsuit.
In March the judge ruled that the laundromat was marital property, despite whose name was on the paperwork, because I'd proven — with bank records and customer testimony, yes, I brought Mr. Higgins into the courtroom, seventy-one years old, standing up straight in his good Sunday sport coat, telling the judge that "Miss Rosanna was the laundromat, the other fella showed up maybe once a month" — that I was the one actually running the business.
On June fifteenth I signed the paperwork: the laundromat came to me, in exchange for giving up my share of Ray's 401(k) and a bank receipt for twenty-two thousand dollars, the price of his half, financed through a seven-year loan that costs me three hundred twelve dollars a month, due on the fourth, a number I know the way I know my own address. The notary, Ms. Salvatore, handed me the copy of the deed in a blue folder and just said, "Congratulations, ma'am" — nothing more, but I heard that word like applause.
Ray showed up at the shop two weeks later, a Tuesday, around six in the evening, while I was pulling down the security gate. He had the look of a man who wasn't expecting to find me still there with the keys in my hand.
"Heard you changed the lock on the back door too," he said.
"I did," I said, not stopping the gate. "And I changed the name on the sign. It's not 'Ray's Coin Laundry' anymore. It's 'Rosanna's Laundromat.'"
He stood there on the sidewalk, hands shoved in his coat pockets, while I finished locking up. I didn't offer him an explanation — I didn't owe him one. I snapped the padlock shut, tugged it twice to make sure it caught, the way I always do.
"Rosanna," he said to my back.
I didn't answer. I walked to the bus stop for the number 10, the one that gets me home in twelve minutes, and I didn't look back to see if he was still standing there.
