Five—Bo
I
love my sister. I do. I wasn’t sure about living with her, but I think it’s going to work out just fine for the summer. Or at least I thought so. Mia respects my routine, my need for structure, space and privacy. And she’s good at swatches. I’ve put down earnest money on a loft downtown, and it needs to be outfitted. I’m not very excited about it, but I need a studio because of my growing business. There are a million small decisions that have to be made, and Mia knows how overwhelmed I can get having to make them. She’s patient. Much more so than Camille. Camille would be a nightmare who’d take over and everything would require a committee vote, which would be even more stressful. So, no, of my two sisters, Mia is the easiest to live with—and create a workspace with. She also gets me. She understands my need for order.
She knows I have a routine and a company to run and that I don’t deal well with distractions or disruptions. She knows how those tend to paralyze me. This is why I do not understand what is happening. What is happening? Mia has just informed me that she has taken it upon herself to rent out the pool house. She has invited a complete stranger to live on the property with us. This stranger will roam about Lullaby’s environs at will, disturbing the natural order of my life, invading my privacy, ruining my concentration. I sound like a baby, I know, and if I’d known guests were a possibility I would have made other arrangements for myself. But that’s not an option now. And my sister has had the temerity to lob this information at me just as I was swallowing my toast, which caused my throat to seize as it does when I’ve been surprised, and I nearly choked. I coughed so hard that I sprayed masticated nine-grain repulsion all over the placemat, which now necessitates a load of kitchen laundry, which is a Friday task, not a Tuesday task. What is she thinking? We’re not a commune! There will be extra noise to contend with, additional dishes to sterilize, the bathrooms will require more frequent scrub-downs. Having another person in my immediate proximity will require dedicated awareness of her presence, hyper-vigilance, and panic-prevention exercises. Of course, I expelled all of this rationale at my sister as I attacked the placemat with a paper towel, my appetite completely abandoned.
Mia looked at me with her enviable calm and said, “Breathe, Bo. I think you’ll like her. She’s very quiet, and she seems nice. Her name is Ivy, and she’s recovering from a pretty bad break-up—the worst, in fact. The guy left her on their wedding day, in the middle of their vows. How can we say no? We can’t.” She stood up, gave me a look that said we were nice people who were going to help a fellow traveler through a rough patch. “Cheer up, Benjamin. We probably won’t even know she’s here.”
Then she left. My sister just dropped her ostensibly compassion-riddled bombshell in my unsuspecting lap and walked out to live her day. And here I sit still frozen in my chair, perniciously obsessing about the death threat that’s been leveled against my intractable need for order.