Chapter Seven
Hannah
The room swells with Chris’ absence. This place has been my haven since I opened it six months ago, but sometimes it’s an aching reminder of the loneliness that allows me to live here without anyone noticing or caring.
Well, except Lucy, I think happily, looking down at her crumpled sleeping form. It amazes me how much she can sleep, drool pooling beneath her open mouth, her impressive canines poking out from under her purple bottom lip.
My parents would care, Tyler would care, but I haven’t given them the chance. That’s my fault, of course. I’ve been digging my hole of solitude even deeper.
I don’t know quite why I reacted the way I did, except that it’s embarrassing to admit that I never learned to cook. It’s also embarrassing that I don’t have any way to learn while living out of my office.
I’m approaching 26, and I’m only getting better with a microwave.
I’m afraid that if I tell Chris that, he’ll just ask more questions, and eventually the truth about my upbringing will come out – that my parents were rarely around, both working two jobs, that no one taught me how to ride a bike, either.
I think he’s starting to put it together, though. I shouldn’t have told him that I used to help my mom with the checkbook. I saw pity on his face, and I hate that.
Tyler’s a doctor. I’m a CPA who owns a business. We’re doing just fine no matter how we grew up.
But the truth is that everythingng I know how to do I’ve taught myself, and all that I’m missing is a mystery that may or may not be revealed to me eventually.
And now, how would I learn to cook, anyway? I don’t have an oven or a stovetop, or even a real kitchen.
No, it’s too much to tell someone, especially someone who looks at me the way Chris does when he doesn’t think I’m paying attention.
And if I were to catch his gaze, would I return his look in the same way? And why does he look at me in an almost sexual way?
The way he talked to me at the end of the evening, that’s the real Chris. An emotionally unavailable asshole, he’s someone who shows up uninvited and then calls his CPA names after trying to raid her kitchen. He has no manners or respect for others.
Besides, Tyler’s told me all about Chris.
I know he sows his wild oats endlessly and treats women as disposable.
He hasn’t had a real relationship since Julie left him, but he’s evidently had plenty of sex. What kind of guy has sex with a different woman every night on what was supposed to be his honeymoon?
No, I don’t care how he looks at me. I’m not entertaining any of it. And I’m not entertaining him.
The loneliness rather overwhelming, I pick up my phone and call my mom.
In a strange twist of fate, or perhaps in exactly the trajectory it was always meant to go, Tyler and I leaving the nest, albeit several years apart, allowed both her and my dad to go back to school and then build up enough money to live well.
They now live the life I always wanted to have while growing up.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but one I can’t begrudge them. They tried and did their best. But it’s why I know I need to have a modicum of success before I even consider marriage and children.
“My baby!” my mom calls out excitedly. “What did I do to deserve a call from you on this sunny day?”
“Well…”
“Oh, I know. Let me guess – darling, heart of my heart, do you need to use my washing machine?”
I glance over in the direction of my bedroom, picturing the pile of clothing I have in the closet. “Who do you think I am? I just wanted to talk to my mom.”
“So you don’t want to come over?”
“No, I do.”
“And you won’t have clothes in the back of your car?” she needles, her voice cloying with sarcasm.
“Fine,” I admit, “I need to use your washing machine.”
“Okay, but you can’t use the dryer,” she teases, and I sigh heavily as I stand and walk to the back to gather my clothes.
“I’m kidding. I’ll be home a little later. You can come on over now. God knows with that LA traffic, you won’t be here until after dinner.”
She’s right, so I go to the kitchen and grab a couple of granola bars for a snack in case the drive ends up feeling more like a road trip.
I take Lucy out to go to do her business and then pour out some kibble for her. I tell her to wait until dinner time so she’s not hungry later, but she doesn’t listen. Her ears twitch as she scarfs down her food.
Before I drive away, I change my mind and go back inside to bring Lucy along. If I know my mother, she’ll beg me to stay, and if I know myself, I’ll want to.
When I arrive at my mom’s house, I feel that familiar pang of resentment for the two story house and the big yard; all things that feel somewhat wasted on them but that I would have really appreciated as a kid.
She’s sitting in the porch swing with my dad. In his hand is a newspaper; in hers, a book that looks to be some kind of smut.
It still embarrasses me how openly she reads that stuff, but it makes her happy. Whenever I protest, she always tells me, “Don’t be such a prude, Hannah, everyone reads this stuff. No one cares.”
I can’t tell which one of us is right. Maybe I really am a prude and, once I lose my virginity, I might actually have a change of heart.
“There’s my baby!” My mom waves so hard the bench starts to swing left to right instead of forward and back. My dad grips the wooden arm and shoots her an enamored glance before returning to his paper with a subtle smile.
I start to walk toward her, but she yells, “Oh, and there’s Hannah!” as Lucy runs up to her.
I roll my eyes at the corny joke, and she says, “Now, don’t be coy – go get your laundry, dear thing.”
Caught, I turn back and go get the bag. She jumps to her feet, and the chain on her side of the swing trembles with the weight displacement. “You should really just make a standing appointment.”
I smile gratefully as she takes the bag from me and heads for the front door.
“I’ll add you to a shared Google calendar,” I mutter, rolling my eyes.
“Well, I don’t know why you’re saying it like a joke. That could work.”
She stops expectantly at the door and nods at it. “Finally, thank you. Who raised you?” she asks sarcastically when I open it for her.
“I don’t know, but I hear she’s a real piece of work.”
“Watch your mouth now,” she laughs as she leads me to the laundry room.
I’m so jealous of it. It has a folding ironing board that collapses into the wall and a shelf above the appliances for laundry detergent and other supplies. Her cleaning supplies hang on the wall and there’s a whiteboard where she’s written who’s been doing the laundry.
It brings a smile to my lips that my dad has done it the last three times.
“Seriously, when is that no-good landlord of yours going to give you a washing machine and dryer?’
“Probably never, Mom,” I say honestly as I dump my clothes into the machine without sorting. I know you’re supposed to, but I did it once and didn’t notice a difference. I’m a numbers girl. No difference, no change for me.
I used to feel little twinges of guilt when my mom mentioned my imaginary apartment landlord, but we’ve all basically repeated the lie into existence.
My fictitious landlord is a man named John who has long brown hair and a two-year-old daughter named Ruby. He’s a chatterbox who often drops in and keeps me from my work. He’s nice enough but cheap. I swear I could draw him if I needed to. I might, just for the challenge.
“Come sit with me and your dad.”
“Is there room?”
“Sure, you don’t mind being squeezed together, do you? Like old times?”
She’s referring to when we shared a bed because we surely never had a porch swing. Or a porch.
We used to have two rooms in our apartment, and my brother got his own because he was a growing boy who needed privacy. When he moved out, I got his room.
Being essentially an only child, albeit one with a much older sibling, was hard, and it’s a weird thing to explain to people, but the one time I was grateful for it was when he went to college and I got that room – and a modicum of privacy.
It was all I could do to keep myself from moving my stuff in there while he was packing up the family car. But you can believe I helped him pack.
I still remember waving at him from the curb, and the second the car disappeared around the corner, running back inside to begin the process of moving into his room.
I didn’t feel the crushing blow of loneliness, of not having him there, not hearing him snore through the paper thin walls, until later that night.
I wept quietly into my pillow until my mom came into my room and slid into bed with me to hug me tight and stroke my hair.
It’s a painful memory and one I wish she hadn’t reminded me of, however accidentally.
I look at my mom, at all the love in her green eyes, and I shake my head. “No, I don’t mind,” I lie.