“My mother used to take me to a laundromat after school,” he revealed.
“This is why I started all of it.”
He looked down at the little blue disk.
“My father left when I was 11. Mom had been home with me for years, so suddenly she needed a job.”
He swallowed back a breath.
“She went to an interview and came back crying.”
I sat slowly.
“What happened?”
“She went to an interview and came back crying.”
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“The interviewer asked what she’d been doing all those years.”
“What did your mother say?”
Marco gave a humorless laugh.
“She said she’d been raising me.”
He looked at the token.
“They asked what she’d been doing professionally.”
My anger softened enough to let me hear him.
“She said she’d been raising me.”
“Afterward…” he continued. “….we sat in that laundromat while the dryers turned. Mom kept saying she had nothing to put on a résumé.”
His voice dropped.
“And I remember thinking, ‘But she does everything.’ I just didn’t know the words yet, Gigi.”
Bills, school, appointments, meals, repairs… his mother handled it all.
“Mom kept saying she had nothing to put on a résumé.”
Marco held up the token. “Years later, I did.”
I looked around his office again.
The clothes.
The camera.
The mirror.
And the measuring tape.
None of it looked suspicious anymore.
It looked purposeful.
And somehow that made what came next harder.
None of it looked suspicious anymore.
“Do you know what I did last night?” I asked.
Marco closed his hand around the token.
“Gigi…”
“I cooked dinner.”
“I know.”
“No, you know there was dinner.” I stood. “I set the table. Lit candles. And… waited.”
He looked down.
“I cooked dinner.”
“I reheated the sauce at nine, Marco. At ten, I blew out one candle.”
“Gigi, I’m sorry.”
“At eleven, I put everything away.”
He started toward me. I held up a hand.
“You spend your whole day teaching women that their time counts.”
Marco stopped.
My voice cracked. “When did mine stop counting?”
“Gigi, I’m sorry.”
He had no answer.
Good.
I needed him to hear.
After a long silence, he said, “It never did.”
“Then why did I have to make an appointment to meet my husband?”
That broke something in him.
He had no answer.
Marco sat down.
“When I started this place, people made jokes.”
“What kind?”
“That I dressed women for a living. That no man should care this much about middle-aged women getting jobs.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“So I stopped explaining.”
“When I started this place, people made jokes.”
“And then?”
“Then not explaining got easier.”
There it was.
Confidentiality had become secrecy.
Secrecy had become habit.
And habit had become a wall.
“I thought keeping work out of the house was protecting us, Gigi”
“You weren’t keeping work out,” I cut in.
He looked at me.
“I thought keeping work out of the house was protecting us, Gigi”
“You were keeping me out,” I finished.
