Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
The next night I’m just pulling Vin’s favorite chicken and rice out of the oven when he comes through the front door, home from helping Raff haul and assemble a new bed frame.
I wasn’t sure I’d see him before I left for the potluck.
I haven’t invited him yet, and I thought I’d feed him first, in case he doesn’t end up wanting to go.
And here he is, groaning, hungry, locking the door.
“Damn, that smells good,” he says. And then, casually, like he’s not performing open heart surgery: “Hi, baby,” he adds as he looks through the mail on the counter.
This baby thing that he reignited on Tuesday has not let up.
Baby? he calls from across the apartment. What’s the password for our ConEd account? Or, Baby, my mom’s on the phone and she wants your lentil soup recipe. Or worst yet, Let me, baby, he said as he popped out of nowhere on the sidewalk outside our laundromat, taking the laundry bag from my hands.
He’s been slowly tenderizing me with these endearments.
You’d think that would mean I’d be gently softening up.
But no. Have you ever even seen what a tenderizer looks like?
It’s a serrated mallet that you use to beat the shit out of a piece of meat.
And that’s exactly how I feel. Like something that’s pliable only because I’ve had the shit kicked out of me.
(Expansive, not over, infinity, and now this: baby)…Help me.
“Baby?” he calls, now, from the running shower.
I place my forehead on the closed bathroom door, squeezing my eyes closed. “Yeah?”
“I forgot my towel.”
“Sure, sure,” I’m muttering to myself as I storm into his room and rip the towel off the back of the door. I’m smoldering and sore. “People get towels for other people. It’s the human thing to do. The decent thing. It’s what people do for each other.”
I’m turning to leave when my blood freezes over. I can barely make myself believe what I’m seeing as I stand there, rigid and icy.
How do I emphasize what I’m looking at strongly enough? Just imagine I write the next words with daggers, and on each drag of the blade, a line of blood blooms in cursive:
Leaning up against his wall are a line of just-bought moving boxes.
The air goes out of me on a jagged gasp. I would not have been more shocked if there had been a Playboy bunny in Vin’s bed.
I guess this move is still on!
So, why fix Esther’s light fixture? Why get a drink with St. Michel? Why feed Surya’s fish? Why, why, why, baby, baby, baby if he was always going to leave, leave, leave?
I know he wants to “do for me” but this is just cruel.
On autopilot I hand the towel in to him without looking. I walk stiffly to the kitchen and put the finishing touches on dinner. When did he buy them? How long have they been in there?
And most importantly, when is he going to put things in those boxes and then take those boxes away?
He’s out of the shower now; it won’t be long until he’s sitting down at the table.
I’m muttering to myself, trying to talk myself down from opening the fridge door and screaming into it. “The when isn’t important, Roz. He’s been very clear that it’s going to happen. I’ll go, he said. And he will.”
I wait until he’s seated. I’ve placed warm bread in front of him, next to the chicken and rice, beside the salad. He’s leaning in, eyes closed, inhaling the scent.
He’s soft, open, definitely not expecting it.
“What are you planning to eat once you move out?”
His eyes pop open and he scans me. What’s going on here? I can hear him thinking.
“I mean,” I continue, arms crossed, plate empty. “I’m just curious. When you signed the lease, were you thinking about that at all?”
He clears his throat. And, to his credit, takes a scoop of chicken and rice. Brave man. “I haven’t,” he says.
“Well, maybe we should think about it now. I can write down some easy meals for you. Things you can make a bunch of at the beginning of the week and then eat for a few days.”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head, “I meant that I haven’t si—”
But I cut him off, too scared he’ll call me baby again.
“Because you can’t do microwave meals or instant noodles every night.
It’s not good money management and it’s high sodium.
” To my horror, my voice cracks. I’ve revealed way too much.
The fact that I give a shit about Vin’s sodium intake makes me feel so transparently injured.
But who could blame me? I just found moving boxes after being pounded with a serrated mallet all week and I’m weak with it, tender and sore and mad. A very dangerous combination.
I expect him to read the flashing neon shark sighted!
signs and stay the fuck out of the water, but to my surprise, he wades in.
He swallows a mouthful of chicken and loads up his fork.
“I cook,” he says. “Which you know. Because I used to feed myself before I met you. Just like you can change a lightbulb. Like you used to do before you met me.”
“Cooking is way harder than changing a lightbulb!” I say, but all the iron in my tone is oxidizing in my chest. “But fine! I guess you’ll just be fine. I’ll die falling off a stepladder trying to change a lightbulb. But you’ll still be eating home-cooked meals. So, fine. You’ll be fine.”
He chews and swallows, eyes on his plate. “Do you really think,” he says finally, “that if I moved out I wouldn’t come back to change the lightbulbs?”
And how, how could he say that to me right now?
It all piles up on me. The goldfish he bought his brother, him wiping beer off my shirt, the chicken he made and pretended it was Marcia’s so that I’d accept it, Let me, baby, and him posing for my drawings.
But that lease is still up on our fridge. Space, he says.
I’m out here dying for infinity and he’s buying moving boxes.
“Do I really think you wouldn’t come back to change the lightbulbs?” I say slowly.
He stops eating. Like he’s finally sensed the danger.
“If you’re divorcing me, then yes! Vin! I think you probably won’t come back to change the lightbulbs!”
He’s breathing hard, he’s staring right through the table. “Who said divorce?” he says in a low voice.
“Well, not you! So I’m out here guessing!
And it didn’t take Sherlock, Vin, to see a lease on the kitchen counter, left out for me to find, with a move-in date.
It wasn’t exactly a stumper to find moving boxes in your bedroom and figure out what they’re for.
I get that you are moving out. Okay, I get it.
This is fucking devastating for me but it isn’t confusing. ”
“Baby.” He’s standing, so I stand too.
“No! Let me finish. Because this part?” I point at my drawing pad on the counter.
“This is the part that’s confusing me. What the fuck is this model thing you’re doing, Vin?
You’re posing for me? You’re letting me draw you and calling me baby and carrying the laundry and food for me?
You’re sharing a glass of orange wine on a Tuesday with me?
What is this? You’re trying to make sure I’m all right before you go?
Because if that’s the case then I’d really, really rather you just left.
Because this is not making sure I’m all right, this is screwing me up before you leave.
So just go and let me take care of myself. ”
“Roz—” He is moving toward me slowly, sucking oxygen, his eyes intense like—like—like I don’t even know what because I can’t see his fucking face through the beard.
“They’re for the last of Raffi’s things.
The boxes. He asked me to bring over the books and picture frames and shit he has in the corner of the room still. ”
“What?” I need him to repeat that.
“The boxes are not for me.” He’s standing directly in front of me and now I’m the one who’s sucking oxygen. He seems to have used the trip to my side of the table to get perfectly calm and…tender? I can’t tell. “And…I didn’t know you’ve been devastated.”
This sentiment, said from his lips on a warm Saturday night in July, with our set dinner table and this familiar living room lighting, does stab me through the heart.
The boxes are not for him. They are not for him.
I feel sick with relief. Emphasis on sick. “Didn’t know I’ve been devastated?”
“You’re doing art classes. Going out with friends. Laughing with Raff. You—” His eyes flick to the fridge but he cuts himself off. “I know this has been confusing. I’ve been trying to communicate. And to show you…But things have just gotten…so far…off track.”
Okay. Well. When he puts it that way, I guess I have been trying to hide my pain from him at every turn. It just didn’t occur to me that it was working.
“What if…” I’m hanging off a skyscraper, my nail polish chipping as I hold on for dear life. “What if I asked you all the questions I need to ask and I…could assume you’d answer me.”
He looks very concerned. “You don’t already assume that?”
“I mean the whole answer, Vin.”
His brow comes down. “Ah. Well. I’m working on it. But I don’t always know the whole answer.”
“Then just say that! Tell me as much as you can and then report back when you figure out the rest!”
“Okay.”
He’s agreed to this so readily I can’t help but be humbled.
I’ve been thinking this whole time that my questions are obvious and that Vin just hasn’t willingly answered them.
But laying it out like that, having him say “okay” immediately…
if I’m really thinking about it, when Vin understands what I need… he gives it to me. No hesitation.
“Okay.” I signal him over so that we’re both sitting on the couch and facing each other.
Much better than facing off with the dinner table between us.
We’re here. We’re making headway. I’m determined to plunge us on through the tundra.
“When I saw the lease, I understood that you wanted out…And you clarified that that means space. So, okay. But now…Vin…everything you’ve been doing for me lately… are you…trying?”
He picks at a hangnail. “Trying at what?”
“Us.”