Chapter 14
Confessing to Stacia made Cherry feel a hundred pounds lighter. (Her recommended body weight.) Maybe there was something to
Catholicism after all.
She felt almost completely unconflicted about seeing Russ the next day. They were going out to dinner for the first time,
to a Thai restaurant near Cherry’s place, and she was going to invite him to come back to her house afterwards.
It took most of Saturday afternoon for Cherry to de-Stevie the main floor. (She got out the industrial-strength vacuum.) Then,
in a fit of supernatural fortitude, Cherry decided to de-Tom it, too.
She put his boots in the hall closet. She gathered up his sketchbooks and shoved them in a drawer. She tucked half his collection
of Space Ghost toys inside the TV cabinet and then, when she ran out of space, hid the other half in the kitchen with the canned goods.
She couldn’t hide all his things . . .
Tom loved stuff. He loved little figurines and action figures and vintage bubble bath bottles. He loved mechanical toys that didn’t work
and cartoon characters that no one recognized. He loved cute things, and clever things, and contraptions.
Cherry had never wanted to make Tom bury the things he loved in boxes—but she also hadn’t wanted the house to feel like a
junk shop. She’d tried to integrate his magpie collections into her own decorating. She wanted their home to reflect them
both.
The house had become the main outlet for Cherry’s creative energy after she gave up graphic design—and while she and Tom waited to have kids.
She spent all her free time sewing curtains (there were two dozen windows) and painting patterns on the wood floors.
She watched YouTube videos to learn how to refinish all the old furniture
they brought home from estate sales and auctions.
If you took a photo at Cherry’s house for Instagram, you didn’t have to worry about your angles; the background would always
be adorable.
And Tom’s stuff was part of that. It was intrinsic. That’s one reason Cherry hadn’t surgically removed it already. Putting Tom’s stuff away would
leave big gaps in the house that she couldn’t just fill in overnight. She’d have to redo every room to make the house feel
whole again.
That afternoon, Cherry cleared away the most obvious of Tom’s things. She moved quickly, like someone getting paid to clean,
without letting her eyes or hands linger.
An hour before Russ was supposed to pick her up, Cherry changed her clothes and put on eyeliner, then walked through the house
one more time, looking for anything she wouldn’t want to explain to him.
She ended up in the dining room, staring at the photos of Tom with his mom.
She carefully took them off the wall and buried them in a drawer under some table linens.
Then she sat on the couch. To cry.
Stevie heaved herself up onto the cushion next to Cherry and laid her big head against Cherry’s chest. Cherry put a hand in
the dog’s fur and reflexively pushed her fingers through it.
The tears on Cherry’s cheeks were fat.
In the months after Tom left—and the months after it became clear that he wasn’t coming home—Cherry’s tears had changed.
There were days when her eyes felt so full, the tears ran in rivulets. She’d swear that crying had never felt that way before—that
before, she’d cried drops, and now, she cried streams. There must be some science to it, one sort of crying for transient
pains and another sort for crippling grief.
When Russ rang the doorbell, Cherry was covered in dog hair and thirsty from crying.
The first thing Russ said when she opened the door was, “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Cherry lied. “I’m fine. Come in.”
It was already less of a lie now that he was there.
Russ was letting Stevie jump on him, scratching her neck and saying things like, “You are a monster, aren’t you? You are a
kaiju. Did you fight Godzilla and win?”
He looked charming, attractive. Laid-back. He looked easy.
He looked up at Cherry, still scratching Stevie’s fur. “Is she weirdly . . . oily?”
Cherry laughed. “Apparently that’s natural. I wash my hands constantly.”
Russ looked in the dog’s eyes. “It’s like dating a woman who uses a lot of product.”
Stevie dropped to her back so he could rub her belly.
“This’ll go on all night if you let it,” Cherry said. “She’ll just keep moving to give you new angles.”
“She has so many angles . . .”
Cherry got a dental chew out of the pile of treat bags that sat on Stevie’s kennel. (Stevie could reach these bags, but never
bothered them; she was either very dumb or very well-behaved.) “Stevie, come.” Stevie came. Cherry gave her the bone, and the dog immediately trotted away to gnaw on it in peace.
Russ was trying to brush himself off. “Here,” Cherry said, handing him a lint roller. She had them stashed all over the house.
He smiled at her and went to work on his sleeves. Russ was wearing a wool sports jacket and cotton chinos. He’d come from
a work thing.
He was very bad at lint-rolling. Cherry took the roller back from him and started on his jacket.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” Cherry said, smiling at him.
He kissed her cheek. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I am. Just a little undone, sorry. I should go look in a mirror.”
“You look great,” he said. “Just . . .” He lowered his eyebrows.
“I had a moment. It’s already passing.”
He glanced around the room. “Your house is incredible.”
He was looking at the blue ribbons painted around the front door. Cinderella’s mice were hidden near the floorboards. Cherry
was a closet Disney adult.
“Did your ex do all this painting?”
“I did it,” she said.
“Really?” He turned back to Cherry. She was still lint-rolling his sleeve. “It’s fantastic. I missed all this the last time I was here.”
“Yeah, well . . .” She felt herself blush.
Russ grinned and put his arms around her.
She tried to pull back. “I’m covered in fur. I’ll have to lint-roll you again.”
He tugged her close. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
Cherry laughed and rested her arms on his shoulders, holding the lint roller away from his head.
Dinner was great. Even though the restaurant owner recognized Cherry—she’d been in before with Tom—and asked her about the
Thursday movie. Cherry ordered green curry and tried not to eat too much rice. Russ talked to their waiter about the mayor’s plan
for public transit.
After dinner, they walked back to her house and sat on the couch, kissing. When Russ started unbuttoning her dress, Cherry
led him upstairs—to her bedroom, which had also been hastily de-Tommed. (She’d basically swept everything under the bed or
into a drawer; anything more thorough would have incapacitated her for days.) They made love in her bed again, using the still-not-expired
condoms, and this time was even better. Cherry didn’t worry about any of the reveals. She knew she could come with Russ, so
she let herself do it. They were still getting to know each other. They were still smiling a lot.
She asked Russ to stay the night, and he said yes. He was out the door before Cherry’s alarm went off the next morning.