Chapter 6
“Margo, are you out of your mind?”
Ian tosses the remote down on the coffee table hard enough that the battery cover pops off the back. He’s still in his gym clothes, but the endorphins I was counting on have clearly already waned.
I knew he wouldn’t take this well. Which is why I waited till now to tell him.
When I got home from the playground yesterday, the timing just didn’t feel right.
He was going to the Nats game with coworkers, so it wouldn’t have been fair to put him through a fight first. Then they lost to the Mets five-nothing and he was in a terrible mood.
So, really, this is the first reasonable opening I had.
“It’s not like I asked to come to dinner,” I say, keeping my tone calm so I don’t escalate things. “Jack invited us. All I did was go to a yoga class and make conversation.”
“Are you listening to yourself? Do you actually believe that? You didn’t just ‘go to a yoga class.’” Ian holds his fingers up in air quotes. “You stalked this guy.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re being so dramatic. I did not stalk him. Ginny said her sister-in-law loves that yoga studio and I’ve been meaning to get back into practicing anyway. It seemed harmless.”
“Then why did you lie to me about where you were going?” Ian rises from our gray couch and comes toward me in the kitchen.
“Because I didn’t want to worry you! I had no idea if I’d even run into him at all, and you can be so irrational.”
“That is some good shit right there.” He laughs dryly. “Yeah, I am the irrational one.”
“Ian, come on, you know this isn’t a normal market. We have to be strategic if we ever want to get out of this place.”
“We’ve offered six figures over asking on almost every single house!”
“Exactly! And we’re still here! We need an edge, and I got us one, as fucking usual. You’re welcome.”
“Give me a goddamn break! You’re the whole reason we’re here in the first place!”
“Yeah, because I’m the one with the balls to strive for something.”
So much for staying calm. He stares at me, unblinking, gripping the back of that counter stool so hard it looks like his knuckles might burst through his skin.
Then: “Fuck you, Margo.” His voice is barely more than a whisper.
I narrow my eyes. “What did you just say to me?”
“I said, ‘Fuck you.’” He’s back to full volume, doubling down. “You’re acting like a fucking bitch.”
Is he playing misogyny bingo or something?
“Yeah, let’s hear it, Indiana!” I’m clapping now, like a lunatic. “You can take the boy outta middle America!”
“I am not listening to this.”
Ian grabs his keys and wallet off the shelf by the entry and picks up his gym shoes without stopping to put them on. He slams the door so hard the walls shake. Some Sunday morning entertainment for our neighbors.
He’s never called me a bitch before. And we have had some other epic blowouts.
The last time he stormed out like this, we were living in the row house. That time, he slammed the door with so much force the latch jammed and we had to call a locksmith to fix it. It was August 2020, and pouring so hard it sounded like the rain was inside.
I’d just given Ginny the go-ahead to list.
“Do you remember that I live here, too?” Ian asked, as he paced back and forth, fingers entwined in his hair. “I don’t understand why you think you can decide this without me.”
“I don’t think that at all.” I was looking up at him from the same gray couch—from Room & Board, one of our first grown-up purchases—my legs folded into a crisscross.
“You’re the one who said when interest rates fell below three percent, you’d be ready to sell, and now they have.
So, I was simply relaying to Ginny what you already told me. ”
If I’d learned anything from my parents’ fucked-up marriage, it was that making the other person think they’re in control when they’re really not is often the easiest way to win a fight. But Ian would not back down.
“We’re in the middle of a pandemic, Margo, and you’re almost guaranteeing that we’ll wind up in some apartment building, with two hundred other people touching the door handles and the elevator buttons and blasting their droplets or whatever all over the goddamn place.
I’m just asking for more time to think about it. ”
“Well, I’m willing to wear a mask and wash my hands for a couple months if it means we can make a mountain of cash, then turn around and buy a nicer house than we ever imagined because the banks are practically giving away mortgages.”
“Don’t you remember when you thought this house was nice?”
That had made me laugh—which of course made Ian madder—because at that very moment, I had no doubt our basement was flooding.
We’d made a lot of improvements by then, mostly thanks to Ian’s dad flying in from Indianapolis to help.
But the basement required a real waterproofing contractor, and we’d resisted spending the money.
“Be real, Ian,” I said, “we probably have two inches of standing water below us.”
“This place could be enough, though,” he said. “We could keep fixing it up. We would at least be safe here until there’s a vaccine.”
“And when’s that going to be?” I asked. “We don’t have forever. We’re trying to start a family now, right? Unless you don’t care about that anymore.”
“Jesus, Margo, do not hold that over my head. I’m not saying no. I just need to think about it some more.”
By that point, I was out of patience.
“Okay, well maybe I need to think some more about the baby.”
I didn’t mean it, of course, I just needed a conversation-ender.
Ian’s mouth dropped open. After a beat, he started to say something, then thought better of it and turned to leave.
I saw him grab a mask but not an umbrella, heard the explosive bang of the front door.
A couple hours later, he showed up soaking wet, knocking on the back door because he’d broken the front handle.
“Fine,” he said, when I let him in. “Let’s list it.”
I couldn’t have known then that we’d end up in the apartment for eighteen months. But even if I had, I wouldn’t have done anything different. Because now that I have a real in with Jack, I’m certain this whole excruciating ordeal will have been worth it.
Ian can slam doors and call me names, but he will be at that dinner on Wednesday, bells fucking on.
He’ll come around, like he always does. We may be in a rough patch now, but he is the most dependable person I’ve ever known.
He gets it from his parents. They’ve been devoted to each other for over forty years.
They’d die if they knew their son called me a bitch. Especially his mom.
Maybe I should make her roast chicken tonight. It might do Ian some good to think about her.
I tap out a text: Hey Debbie, hope you’re having a nice weekend! Can you remind me what type of white wine you use for your chicken?
Hi honey! she writes back. Usually sauvignon blanc, but anything dry will do. Just call if you need me.
Now I send another text to our neighbor Natalie to ask if she wants to tag along to the farmers market.
Really, I only care about seeing Fritter—her scruffy black-and-white muppet of a rescue dog.
Natalie says they’re in, so I head down to meet them in the lobby.
The communal areas here all have that generic, organic-modern vibe going on—matte black light fixtures, fake fiddle-leaf fig trees—and they always smell vaguely of artificial citrus because the building pumps in a “signature scent.” God, I am so sick of living here.
Natalie’s apartment is two floors above ours. I met her and Fritter on the roof deck not long after Ian and I moved in. I’d been looking for a quiet place to work on a sunny fall day. She’d been on the phone with her divorce lawyer.
“Hey, Nat. Wow, your hair!”
More platinum highlights. If she goes any brighter, she’ll be a traffic hazard. Fritter looks up at me from knee height, with adoring brown eyes. I bend down to give him a deep scratch behind both ears, the way he loves.
“Thanks, girl. I was worried it might be too much, but I think it’s growing on me. What’s up with you?”
I can’t tell her that I found my dream house or that I’m in a fight with Ian about it, so I ramble on about work for a block.
Natalie will take over the conversation any second now.
It’s chilly and lightly misting in that annoying way that isn’t helped by an umbrella.
I yank the zipper of my North Face up to my chin.
“Have you ever done coke before fucking?” Natalie asks, right on cue, in the same tone you might use to inquire about a colleague’s Wordle score. A guy walking past with a toddler on his shoulders does a double take.
“Um, no.”
“Color me shocked,” she deadpans, rolling her eyes at my lameness. “Aren’t you glad you at least have me around to keep things interesting?”
Natalie got married right out of college—evangelical upbringing and all that nonsense—and ever since the divorce, she’s been trying to reclaim her lost youth.
She was a recruiter before she started working as a bartender at some ironically divey place in Mount Pleasant.
She swears the career switch was her idea, but one time when she was drunk, she let slip that her old boss put her on “probation” for offering Molly to his assistant at a company retreat.
I tried to coax more details out of her, but she was too wasted to focus.
Natalie refers to this current chapter as her “freedom era.” Most everyone else would call it a midlife crisis, or maybe a third-life crisis since she’s only thirty-one.
She hooked up with a new guy last night—there’s always a new guy, or a new girl—and she’s spilling every gory detail like she’s dictating stage directions for a low-budget porn.
“We did it four times. And in between, he did this thing with his tongue that’s hard to explain, but it was off the charts. Then we did it once more this morning.”
“That sounds … honestly, painful.”