Chapter 7 Small Steps Forward #2
"Kirk wanted me to sell this house and move into his apartment."
"Did his apartment have a yard?"
"No."
"Then I'm glad you didn't sell."
I look at him and he looks back at me and something passes between us that neither of us names. Then the moment passes and we both stand up and go back to work.
At one point he asks me how I got into furniture restoration.
I tell him about the first piece I ever worked on.
A rocking chair I found at a thrift store when I was twenty-six.
The finish was destroyed and the seat had a crack running down the middle.
Kirk told me it was a waste of time. He said I should just buy a new chair from a furniture store and stop dragging junk into the house.
I ignored him and spent three weekends fixing it.
When I was done it looked perfect. I still have it in my living room.
"Kirk," Ross says. He doesn't ask who Kirk is. He waits.
"My ex-boyfriend. We were together for nine years. We broke up recently."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. It was a long time coming."
He nods and doesn't push for details. He goes back to sanding. After a few minutes he says, "Nine years is a long time."
"It is."
"I was in a relationship for four years. It ended about two years ago. She moved to Portland for a job and I didn't want to leave Wildhorse. We tried long distance for a while but it didn't work."
"That must have been hard."
"It was. But it was honest. We both knew what we wanted and those things turned out to be different. No one lied about it. No one pretended."
I don't say anything. I just keep sanding.
But his words land somewhere inside me and stay there.
No one lied about it. No one pretended. That's so far from my experience that it sounds foreign.
The idea that a relationship can end without deception.
Without betrayal. Without discovering that the person you trusted most was living a completely separate life behind your back.
By five o'clock we've finished sanding all the slats and the leg repair is drying under the clamps. The bench frame is ready for its first coat of finish. Ross helps me carry everything to the covered area by the back fence where it'll be protected from the weather overnight.
"This is going to look incredible when it's done," he says. "That oak is going to glow once you get the first coat of poly on it."
"You think so?"
"I know so. I've seen enough restored oak to know when a piece has good bones. This bench has excellent bones."
I look at the bench pieces and feel a satisfaction that has nothing to do with woodworking.
I spent an entire afternoon doing something I love with someone who understands why I love it.
Nobody told me it was a waste of time. Nobody checked their phone every ten minutes.
Nobody made me feel like my interests were silly or impractical or beneath them.
Kirk never once helped me with a restoration project.
Not once in nine years. He would sit on the couch and watch television while I worked in the backyard and occasionally he'd come outside to tell me dinner needed to happen soon or to ask if I'd seen his keys.
He existed in the same space as my hobby without ever entering it.
I didn't realize how lonely that was until today.
I wipe my hands on my jeans and look at the disassembled bench pieces lined up along the fence. The oak is warm and golden in the late afternoon light. Ross is right. It's going to be beautiful.
"Thank you for helping," I say. "You really didn't have to."
"I know. But it's more fun with two people. My dad says that about every project. He's right."
"Your dad sounds great."
"He is. You'd like him. He'd definitely appreciate someone who can refinish a seventy-year-old end table for twelve dollars."
I walk him to his truck. He opens the driver's side door and then turns back.
"Same time next Saturday? For the finish coats?"
"You want to come back?"
"If you'll have me. I want to see how this turns out."
"Saturday works."
He drives away and I stand in my front yard watching his truck disappear down the street. Then I go inside and shower and change clothes and sit on the couch with my phone. I have a text from Amanda.
How's the bench?
I type back: Coming along. Ross came by and helped.
Three seconds later: ROSS came by?!
He ran into me at the hardware store. He helped with the leg repair. It was nice.
Nice. She says it was NICE. Brook Walker I am coming over right now.
Amanda. It was literally two people sanding wood in a backyard.
I don't care. I'm bringing wine.
She shows up twenty minutes later with a bottle of white wine and a bag of chips and the widest grin I've ever seen on a person.
She makes me tell her everything. The hardware store.
The dowel conversation. The afternoon of sanding.
The ratchet strap trick. The fact that he's coming back next Saturday.
"He's coming back next Saturday," she repeats. "To help you finish a garden bench. In your backyard. Brook."
"I know what it sounds like."
"It sounds like the beginning of every good love story I've ever read."
"It sounds like two people who share a hobby working on a project together."
"Those are the same thing."
I roll my eyes but I'm smiling. Amanda pours the wine and raises her glass.
"To new benches and new beginnings."
"You're ridiculous."
"I'm a visionary. Now drink your wine."
I check my phone while Amanda is getting more wine from the kitchen.
There's one text from Kirk. Just one. It says Fiona Grant sent me a letter.
We need to talk about this. He doesn't say he's sorry.
He doesn't say he understands. He says we need to talk.
As if this is a negotiation between equal parties rather than the aftermath of his choices.
I show Amanda the text.
"Delete it," she says immediately. "Everything goes through Fiona now. He doesn't get to talk directly to you about the money he stole."
"He didn't steal it technically."
"He withdrew twenty-eight thousand dollars from a joint account without telling you. What would you call it?"
I delete the text.
Later that night after Amanda leaves I go out to the patio and sit in the wobbling plastic chair.
The bench pieces are drying along the fence.
My phone is quiet. No texts from Kirk. No missed calls.
For the first time since the night I stood outside his apartment with two bags of Thai food I feel something that might be hope.
Not hope about Ross specifically. Just hope in general.
Hope that things might actually be getting better.
That I might be getting better. That the person I was before Kirk started slowly erasing her might still be in here somewhere. Waiting.
I finish my wine and go to bed. Tomorrow is Sunday. I'll water the garden and visit my mother and maybe start thinking about what I want my backyard to look like once the bench is finished.
For the first time in a long time I fall asleep thinking about the future instead of the past.