The Sock
At thirty-six weeks pregnant, I cried over a sock.
It was a Thursday night in October. Nine-forty. I’d been on my feet since six that morning. I’d taught four classes of second graders how to find a book in the library using the call numbers, and I’d done three loads of laundry after supper, and I was standing in our laundry room in Fort Collins, Colorado, folding the last one.
One sock fell. A gray athletic sock. One of Cole’s. It slipped off the top of the pile and dropped down into the gap between the dryer and the wall.
I looked at it. Down there in the dust and the lint. About eighteen inches down.
I couldn’t reach it.
That sounds ridiculous. I know it does. Eighteen inches. A grown woman can reach eighteen inches.
But I was thirty-six weeks pregnant. My belly was the size of a beach ball. My lower back felt like somebody had driven a railroad spike into it, right above my tailbone. Bending over meant folding myself in half around a seven-pound baby, and every time I did it, she kicked me in the ribs so hard I saw stars.
And my husband was standing right there.
Cole was leaning in the doorway of the laundry room. Scrolling on his phone. He’d come in to get a clean T-shirt out of the basket. He’d been standing there for two minutes.
He was close enough to reach it. One step and a bend. Three seconds.
“Could you get that?” I asked.
He glanced up from his phone.
He looked at the sock. Then at me. Then back at his phone.
“You’re pregnant, Maren,” he said. “You haven’t lost your arms.”
He said it lightly. Like a joke. The way he says most things.
Then he took a T-shirt off the top of the pile I’d just folded and walked out.
I stood there in the laundry room for a long time.
Then I started crying. Over a sock.
Not loud. I didn’t want him to hear. I stood there with my hands on the dryer and cried into the warm laundry. Big, stupid, silent tears. Because my back hurt. Because I was so tired I couldn’t think. Because there was a sock eighteen inches down and I couldn’t reach it, and the person who could didn’t think it mattered.
We both worked full-time.
I’m the librarian at Bauder Elementary. Seven-forty to three-thirty, plus after-school book club on Tuesdays. Cole is a sales rep for a beverage distributor. He drives a company truck all over northern Colorado, calling on bars and grocery stores and convenience stores. Eight to five.
We make about the same money. We split the mortgage. We split the bills. Down the middle. Fifty-fifty. Cole’s idea, when we got married four years ago.
“Partners,” he said. “Equal.”
Somehow, only his evenings belonged to him.
He’d come home at five-thirty and sit down on the couch with his phone and the TV. Or he’d go to the garage and work on his truck. Or he’d go to the gym. Or he’d play video games with his college buddies online, with a headset on, until eleven.
I’d come home at four and start dinner. Then clean up from dinner. Then laundry. Then lunches for tomorrow. Then the dishwasher. Then the bills, which I did because I’m better at spreadsheets. Then the nursery, which still wasn’t done. Then a shower. Then bed.
And now there was a baby coming. In four weeks. Maybe less.
I didn’t pick up the sock that night.
I left it. Down there behind the dryer. In the dust.
I finished folding the laundry and carried the basket upstairs on my hip, one step at a time, holding the railing, and put everything away, and got into bed.
Cole came to bed at eleven-twenty. He kissed my shoulder. He said goodnight.
He didn’t say anything about the sock.
Chapter Two: Saturday
When his mother, Della, visited Saturday, I was carrying a laundry basket against my hip.
She lives in Loveland, twenty minutes south. She drives up once a month to bring us food. A lasagna, usually. Or a pot of her green chile. She’s sixty-four, small and fast and sharp, with short gray hair she cuts herself and reading glasses she keeps on a beaded chain.
She’d been a nurse for thirty-one years. At the hospital in Loveland. Night shift, mostly. She retired two years ago.
She came in the front door with a casserole dish in her arms and a big bag from King Soopers on her elbow. She found me at the bottom of the stairs.
I was holding the laundry basket. Towels. The good bath towels, which we’d need for when the baby came, because the hospital said to have clean towels ready. I’d washed them that morning and folded them and now I had to get them upstairs to the linen closet.
Fourteen stairs. I’d counted them that week. Every single one.
Cole was on the couch. Watching college football. Colorado State versus somebody. He had his feet up on the coffee table and a bag of tortilla chips on his chest.
“Hi, Mom,” he said, without getting up.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Della said. She set the casserole on the kitchen counter. She looked at me at the bottom of the stairs with the basket. Then at Cole on the couch.
“Cole,” I said. “Could you take this up for me? Please?”
He didn’t look away from the TV.
“What exactly have you done all morning?” he asked from the couch.
I stood there with the laundry basket on my hip.
I started listing things. I don’t know why. I just did. Like I had to prove it.
“Breakfast,” I said. “For both of us. Dishes. I unloaded the dishwasher and loaded it again. Towels. I washed all the towels. Two loads. I put the crib sheets in the wash, because we have to wash everything before the baby comes. I wiped down the bathrooms. I called the hospital about pre-registration. I paid the electric bill. I…”
I stopped. My voice was shaking.
Della crossed the living room.
She didn’t say anything. She just walked over to the bottom of the stairs and took the basket from me. Out of my hands. Like it weighed nothing.
Then she turned around and looked at her son on the couch.
“Why are you making her prove she’s tired?” she asked.
Cole sat up. He set down the chips.
“I’m not making her prove anything,” he said. “I’m just asking. She acts like she’s been working in a coal mine.”
“She’s thirty-six weeks pregnant, Cole.”
“Lots of women are thirty-six weeks pregnant,” Cole said. He shrugged. “They still do stuff. They don’t fall apart over a sock.”
He looked at me. I didn’t know he’d heard me crying on Thursday night. I’d thought he was in the garage.
“Mom, come on,” Cole said. He leaned back on the couch. He was smiling. Easy. Teasing. “You raised three kids. You never acted this helpless.” 