Chapter Fifteen #2
This is where I get squirmy. I know Sam and Sariah are right.
I also know Everett agrees with them. He’s trying so hard to honor my request to not talk about monetizing the account, but when we were looking at it together a few days ago, stunned that it has almost fifty thousand followers now, he asked if I’d considered hydrotherapy.
I said yes but I couldn’t afford it. He got very quiet, chewing on the inside of his cheek until I put him out of his misery and told him I knew what he was thinking but I needed more time to think about it, myself.
I had a hard enough time accepting a few free tins of tea or letting Everett treat me to a nice dinner.
Asking strangers to pay for my dog’s health care by turning a public space about her joyful, authentic, unfiltered journey into a fundraising mechanism?
Or using that space to hawk products like I do on the weekends at Loden and Linden?
None of it sits right. Even though I wish it did.
As I leave R ’n’ R with Aggie in her wagon, my phone pings with a text.
EVERETT: Hear me out. Orphans’ Thanksgiving at my place tomorrow
CAMERON: How many orphans do you know?!
EVERETT: It’s a turn of phrase for anyone without a place to go
I frown at my phone, feeling like this is something I should know, especially since I’ve spent every Thanksgiving since I started college without a place to go.
Hannah always called, but otherwise I just hung out in my dorm room—or last year, my apartment—with a single-serving frozen meal I could pop in a microwave.
Sometimes I treated myself to a slice of pumpkin pie, always eyeing the whole pies with a quiet longing.
Now that I know people host special dinners for loners like me, my early adulthood looks even bleaker than I thought.
CAMERON: It’s so last-minute. Would anyone come?
EVERETT: 3 of my coworkers don’t have plans. So there’d be at least 5 of us
EVERETT: Sorry. 6 of us. Don’t tell Aggie
CAMERON: I wouldn’t dream of tainting her idolization
I consider his idea. I’ve been looking forward to having a little more time with him and Aggie over the holiday break with no classes to attend or cleaning shift on Thursday.
I haven’t met any of his coworkers yet, and while I’d like to, I’m not sure I want to sacrifice the precious hours we have alone together for hours spent talking to strangers. However...
CAMERON: Can I invite our neighbors?
EVERETT: Of course. Maybe Khalil can make us a robot turkey
CAMERON: Overnight??
EVERETT: I wouldn’t put it past him
I have to laugh at that. He has a point. And as I imagine the people on our floor gathering together to share a holiday meal in a way I’ve only ever seen on TV—with cheerful toasts, plates of food being passed around, and boisterous, overlapping conversations—I find myself smiling.
CAMERON: Let’s do it
T HE ROBOT TURKEY isn’t happening. Khalil’s heading to Iowa to spend the break with his family, but Regina and Tegan are excited to come, and while Minh Ha’s initially reticent, saying she doesn’t want to impose on “a young people’s event,” she soon comes around.
Despite the obvious route of reaching Phone Girl, I don’t have her number, so I knock on her door.
When she doesn’t answer, I leave a Post-it on her door with the key info.
The Post-it’s gone when I pass by later to meet Everett, so I assume she got the invite though I’m skeptical she’ll join us.
Still, I hope she’s only alone tomorrow if she wants to be alone, not because she thinks the best she can do is a microwaved frozen dinner and a marathon of rom-coms about overworked city girls who return to their small hometowns to fall in love while saving turkey farms and pumpkin patches, which I happen to know from experience can fill an entire day.
At the grocery store, Everett and I improvise a mostly vegetarian menu and fill a cart with food.
A cart. I haven’t used a cart since I lived with my parents.
I rarely even have reason to use a basket.
We also pick up wine and cute napkins printed with autumn leaves, though I talk Everett out of fancy candles. I get enough of those on weekends.
On the way home, seduced by a chalked ad on a sandwich board outside Havisham & Harrison’s, we head inside to buy a tin of their limited-edition pumpkin-spice chai.
While waiting in line, I give Everett an abbreviated version of Diana’s stories about her beloved wire fox terriers: the digger, the chaser, the snuggler.
When I finish, he encourages me to go use the restroom.
I tell him I don’t need to pee. He tells me I’ll understand when I get there, and I do.
While the interior of the shop is all classic dark wood against deep green walls, and tastefully decorated with whimsically arranged British antiques, the single unisex restroom is covered wall to wall and floor to ceiling in wire fox terrier art: paintings of both the impressive and comically bad varieties, framed news clippings from dog shows, hammered-tin terriers, ceramic-plate terriers, a terrier street sign, several dog-head brass door knockers.
The soap dispenser and wastebasket have terriers on them.
There’s a chandelier made of tiny crystal terriers.
I take it all in with the awe it deserves, and when I return to find out Everett has invited Arthur and Diana to join our dinner, and they’ve agreed to come, I’m delighted.
Everett insists on paying for everything and I don’t fight him on it since we both know I’d be lucky to cover the cost of the potatoes.
We haul everything home, drop it off at his place, and I pick up Aggie, who wobble-trots down the hall with only a little bit of help.
The sight fills me with joy, and I know it won’t be long until she can do the walk entirely on her own.
As Everett and I spend the next few hours peeling potatoes and chopping vegetables to prepare for tomorrow, and while Aggie brings us her ball and we discuss where everyone will sit in an apartment that’ll be a tight fit for ten, I think back on all the times my mom said happiness was a choice anyone could make at any time by having a positive attitude and a little perspective, as if we all have a switch in our brains that only requires flipping.
That never rang true to me. I don’t think happiness is only about attitude and perspective, and it’s definitely not as simple as flipping a switch.
Sometimes it’s really hard-won. Sometimes it finds us by accident.
Sometimes it’s out of reach for days or years at a time.
But right now? For me? Happiness is a dog, a ball, a paring knife, a bowl of bright orange sweet potatoes, a sentimental Joshua Radin song playing at low volume in the background, and a man in antique glasses and a cast-off sweater, telling me a story about a blanket fort he made with his sisters when they were kids.
Tonight, I don’t need to wonder what happiness is or how I’ll achieve it.
Tonight, I just know.