Chapter 7
HOUSE TOUR
“You’re here,” I said.
His hair was wet like it had just been washed, maybe after a practice or a workout, and he had a crisp new Utah Raptors hoodie on.
“Yep,” he said. We stood there for a few moments before he nodded behind me.
“Right.” I stepped back and waved my arm in the direction of the house for him to enter. His head just passed under the height of the doorway, but he crouched anyway. Maybe he thought I’d change my mind if his roommate test-run didn’t start immediately. He might have been right.
“Come on in,” I muttered.
“Thanks.” He toed off his tennis shoes and lined them neatly next to my own pile of shoes.
“Was practice good?”
“Pretty good. Though I was short on M&M’s.”
I was about to feel bad or apologize when I realized he was joking. He was actually teasing me.
“Five bags weren’t enough?”
“You’re right, I guess I can share with hungry janitors.”
This is how inside jokes were formed: something happens, and then someone brings it up, and in no time at all it’s this little intimacy added to your shared vocabulary. The thought made my chest hot.
We stood and stared at each other in the doorway, which was also my living room. Greg Junior meowed, as he always did when attention wasn’t immediately given by new visitors.
Barry looked at Junior, who sat alert but aloof between us, then dropped his suitcase and box before crouching down.
“Who is this?” Barry asked. He didn’t immediately try to pet Junior, instead letting the tabby cat sniff the back of his hands before scratching behind his ears. Good sign.
“Shit, are you allergic? I forgot to ask.”
“No, I love cats.” Barry picked up Junior with one hand and cradled the cat to his chest. Junior did not protest, instead purring and moving his head around for more scratches.
Kate would hate seeing how good Junior was being for Barry.
She and Junior got along just fine, but she hated how much hair he shed, and Junior could sense that about her.
Their relationship was more Junior rubbing against her legs sometimes, her throwing him bits of turkey.
“His name is Greg Junior, but we call him Junior. Or J.R., or like poop face, little guy, teeny butt, whatever. He answers to a lot.”
“Hm.” Barry scratched Junior’s head and then looked up at the rest of the living room. From here, he could also see into the kitchen and the hall leading to the bedrooms and bathroom. My room was not clean, little piles of laundry—one clean, some dirty—scattered around the floor.
“Um…” I locked the front door and walked past Barry and the cat toward the kitchen. “I’ll give you a little tour.”
Barry nodded, following me, still carrying Junior like a baby.
“Yeah, so.” I performed a sweeping gesture around the kitchen. “Kitchen.”
It wasn’t much, old appliances, minimal cabinet space, but there was a big metal shelf with my mismatched cups and plates and a small island that doubled as my table, which Kate always said was fancy. By nature, kitchen islands are fancy.
The kitchen remodel would happen at some point in the next, say, five years, I guessed.
“I like the tile,” he said. The countertops were made of this pink tile in multiple shades from the seventies, which I agreed was one of the coolest things about the whole kitchen.
The bathroom counter matched. I wanted to find a tile like it for the backsplash when I finally got to remodeling in here.
The original counter was too scratched and chipped in some places to try to save it, and I had plans for all new cabinets.
I was extraordinarily aware of the dirty dishes in the sink, the egg pan on the stove, the open cereal box on the counter, the two bags of chips which were rolled closed without a bag clip. Even my dish towel felt embarrassing. It had little dinosaurs on it.
Barry opened the fridge and peeked inside, which was mortifying because I knew with certainty that I had a rotten bell pepper and a container full of food I couldn’t even remember cooking on the bottom shelf.
“Dr. Pepper,” he said. “Fine choice.”
“Okay,” I said. “I mean—yeah. I agree.”
He reached into his duffle and pulled out two protein shakes that he slid on the top shelf next to the sodas.
I led him back through the living room and pointed at the TV. “There’s HBO and Netflix, but not Hulu.” I was the one who used to pay for Hulu, but I had to cut back on my monthly bills. Between Kate’s and Mom’s logins, we were covered enough.
“Three bedrooms,” I said. “Only one bathroom on this floor, though.” I had considered the bathroom situation, and it constantly made me blush. The walls were thin, and he and I were so far from the pooping-in-the-same-vicinity level.
The house had three bedrooms on the main floor, one where I slept, the baby room, and then the third, which I used as the house project workshop.
There was a fourth bedroom, if you could call it that—a room and a tiny bathroom in the unfinished basement.
Well, I suppose the room and bathroom made it partially finished.
It was also on my five-year plan to get the basement finished so that the house could have two more rooms and another small living space, a playroom maybe, or a room where we could really sprawl out to watch movies.
I liked to imagine having space for lots of people to come visit, even though my family all lived within an hour radius of each other.
I think I liked the idea that we could have room to expand, to grow, and that the house would grow with us.
Barry meandered into the project room first, standing and looking around, quietly petting Junior.
“This will be a guest room. Eventually,” I said, clicking on and then off the ceiling light. I didn’t want him to see the wreck that was the workshop with the old plastic table covered in tubs of hardware and tools, the plastic sheet on the floor housing cans of paint and wallpaper glue.
He studied the photographs in the little hallway, ones of my family and one of Adam Driver that Kate put in a little heart-shaped frame for me. Barry didn’t ask and I didn’t try to explain.
“This is the baby’s room,” I said, in case it wasn’t blatantly obvious.
The room really did look great. I figured out wainscoting and painted the bottom half of the wall yellow, the upper half covered in the wallpaper I adored.
Ron replaced the light fixture for a newer, nicer one, and Kate and I figured out how to install new blinds on the window.
I got blinds for the rest of the house to match, but those remained in their boxes in the workshop room.
Another project that I planned to get to—after I made time to strip the paint from the windowsills.
Then, I figured, if I was going to do that, I might as well paint the walls too. So, one thing at a time.
I had a schedule and limited funds, but I was making it work. The whole house was a huge work in progress, one I worked on every weekend with the reluctant help of Jeremy and the mostly excited help of the rest of my family when they had time.
And I loved to do it. I had big, incremental plans.
The crib sat unassembled against the wall, the hardware in a Ziploc bag next to it.
It was my crib, and both of my siblings, handmade by my grandpa before Kate was born.
Dad helped me sand and refinish it last month, but I was waiting for the mattress and rug to get in before putting it together.
Barry skimmed fingertips over the smooth wood, and I swear his face went all warm.
“It’s beautiful,” he said, and I believed he meant it.
“Thank you. The house was my grandparents’. I love it.”
Barry took another long look at the room, the poster I’d hung in a thrifted frame, the dark green curtains my mom sewed from fabric we found at her favorite craft store.
I nodded for the rest of the tour to continue, and he moseyed into my bathroom, letting Junior down on the counter before he opened my medicine cabinet and bent down to get a closer look at my old prescriptions, the one I used to take for my acne before getting pregnant, an antibiotic I forgot to take all of, the leftover stack of birth-control sleeves which served me so well.
I stood by silently, gobsmacked by his shameless snooping.
“Find anything interesting?” I asked, incredulous.
Barry shut the mirror and raised his eyebrows. “Everything about you is interesting.”
He squeezed past me and gave a quick look into my room before I pulled the door shut so he couldn’t give it the same snooping treatment.
“My room,” I said.
He nodded and followed Junior into the living room.
Cozy’s the best word for the space: not particularly nice, but comfortable, cool art, colorful blankets, lamp lighting.
And so many freaking puzzles. I worried he’d comment on them—it was most definitely a thing, all these puzzles—but he smiled when he saw the lava lamp next to my multiple copies of the Twilight saga.
Barry found the switch to the orange lava lamp on my bookshelf and turned it on.
I led Barry into the basement next, clicking on the one creepy lightbulb in the stairway over the wooden stairs.
It looked like a horror basement, as it always had.
Kate, Jeremy, and I used to dare each other to go downstairs and see who could stand there longest. It usually ended up with one of us in tears.
As a kid, I believed that if Bloody Mary was real, she probably lived in that basement.
Now, it wasn’t so scary, but it was by no means a hangout spot.
I cleaned out my grandparents’ storage when I moved in, so it was empty for the most part, other than the box with my Christmas tree and some seasonal decorations.
There was one finished room with a small bathroom, which my grandpa built in the late eighties for his nephew to stay in when he went to college nearby. It had barely changed since.