22. Things Get Worse Before … #2
I reread the invitation, and the answer to my question was blaringly obvious, embedded right there in the all-too-familiar address.
“You’re having this at Isla’s Attic?” I asked. That was my address. I didn’t know how it hadn’t jumped out at me upon first reading it.
Alexa and Sid stared wide-eyed at me as another hush fell over the room. This one even more stifling than the one over an hour ago when Aidan proposed. Where was Aidan, anyway?
“You know, since the space will be in flux then, we figured—” Alexa pressed the back of her hand into Sid’s stomach to get him to shut up. She stepped forward, curiosity rippling across her brow.
“Henry, can I talk to you in the kitchen?” she asked.
“You can talk to me right here,” I said, as if my anger needed an audience to not extinguish.
“Aunt Isla didn’t tell you?” Alexa asked, sounding genuinely confused. Maybe even more so than I did.
“Tell me what?” I asked, despite intuiting the answer. The masochist inside me wanted to be crushed under the words so the tears I battled back felt earned. “And where even is she today?” I hadn’t noticed her absence at the gathering until then. My selfishness felt like an added blow.
“She said she had other plans,” Alexa said.
“Other plans?” I asked, volume rising. When did she stop sharing her plans with me?
Alexa crossed the room. “Come into the kitchen, please.”
“No,” I said. “Tell me.”
“I really think we should—”
“Tell. Me.” The square of faux hardwood under my feet felt like it was quaking.
Her voice dipped. “She’s not renewing the lease.”
I scanned the room. Everyone’s eyes were on the floor or in their laps. Even the children seemed to understand a very adult conversation was inching toward eruption.
Only, the news didn’t turn me into a volcano.
Right then, it felt like I plasticized. Got so stuck in a state of shock and frustration and annoyance that I couldn’t move a single muscle. Couldn’t even get my heart to beat, though I knew it was, still, because it was loud in my hot ears.
“Henry,” Mom said, close now and reaching out a hand. Her touch jolted me back to motion. Before I realized it, I was grabbing my coat from the hall closet. “Where are you going?” she called after me.
I reentered the room. “I’m heading out.”
A chorus of “no” and “stay” and “have some tea, it’ll calm you” rang out.
“Merry Christmas” was all I could say in return before I got choked up again and had to turn away. I’d made enough of a display of myself for one holiday, one night, one lifetime.
I stepped onto the porch expecting Aidan to be on the curb where I’d left him, but the street was empty. Mom and Dad piled onto the porch, shutting the door behind them. I didn’t let them get a word out before asking, “Did you two know?”
Their matching pitiful gazes told me everything.
What made the news worse was that they communicated their guilt in the exact same way.
Thirty-something years of marriage, and they were still so in sync.
So in love. In that moment, it served as an extra punch to the heart that I probably would never have that.
“She said she would tell you herself,” Dad said, clearly not expecting absolution but needing to voice the context.
I couldn’t believe she’d let me talk her ear off about the revolving window, let me pour all that money into a cumbersome effort for the salvation of her namesake, and still coughed over the lease to Alexa and Sid for soap she didn’t even like.
Did Alexa even like soap enough to dedicate her life to it? I mean, beyond the obvious way most people like soap for getting them clean. It was maddening.
“The owner is willing to split the lease. You can keep the apartment. Sid and Alexa will take on the retail space,” said Mom.
Because that made it so much better that I could continue to rot away with a cat I was allergic to upstairs while my former best friend and a former bully successfully peddled their wares below me all day, every day.
“Only one problem,” I said. “I can’t pay rent when I’ll be unemployed in six days. ”
“Oh, Henry, don’t be so dramatic. We’ll help you,” Mom said.
“I’m twenty-eight years old,” I said. “I don’t—I shouldn’t need your help.”
In a night full of revelations, this one might’ve walloped me in the weirdest spot. Shoulds and shouldn’ts amassed in my brain. I should have a partner. I shouldn’t be wasting my degree and my talent. I should be working on my art. I shouldn’t be running away from this, and still.
“Everyone needs help sometimes,” Dad said.
I nodded, then glanced around again, searching for signs of Aidan. “I’ll figure it out. It’s been a hectic night. I need some rest.”
“Get back safe. Let us know that Aidan’s okay, too,” Mom said.
Selfishness snaked down my throat. There I was lamenting the loss of Isla’s Attic when I had hurt Aidan. At least enough that he’d left without saying anything. “I will,” I choked out.
“We love you, Hen,” Mom said.
“Love you, too.” I gave them both quick hugs before driving off in a daze.