Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
KERMIT THE MUG
HUDSON
I’m dressed for the day, standing in the kitchen, staring at the shelves in the cabinet that actually shocked me when I opened it this morning.
In the last weeks, she moved in the small things as well.
The quiet colonization of objects you don’t notice until you do, and then you can’t remember what it looked like before.
Who am I kidding, I noticed immediately.
The mugs are the worst of it. There are too many.
There is no logical reason for the number of mugs currently occupying this cabinet.
They are stacked, if that’s the word, in a way that suggests pure optimism is keeping them in place.
They don’t match. They don’t even attempt to.
Different sizes, shapes, colors, some with sayings, some with drawings, some that appear to have been formed by hand in a moment of artistic passion and complete disregard for symmetry or function.
I think one of them has actual holes like Swiss cheese and was put here just to taunt me.
No need, sweetheart, you walking around in just the ‘sleep shirt’ you call pajamas is doing that more than well enough.
It hits her mid-thigh, I’ve seen her less clothed in public, but there’s something about the way she just wakes up and hops on the counter, bare legs dangling, that could send any man over the edge.
I shake the thought, and look back to the bright collection of misshapen pottery where my four cream stoneware mugs used to be.
Seriously. How does one woman have so many mugs?
How many cups of coffee can she even drink?
Is she hosting a daily tea service for eight that I’m not aware of?
Does she cycle through them without washing them?
Is there a system here that I’m simply not seeing, or is the absence of one the point?
I pull down a mug that looks mostly normal.
That is until I set it in front of me. It’s a frog, not decorated with frogs, not printed with a small tasteful frog somewhere near the handle.
It’s actually shaped like one, the handle is a lily pad, the body is green and slightly lumpy in a way that suggests the sculptor was either very committed to the bit or had never seen a mug before.
It has eyes. Bulging ones, that are staring at me from the rim with a blank serenity that it has accepted its fate to be filled with boiling liquids.
I stare back at it. Locking eyes with the vessel for my coffee was not on my list of things to do today. But that list is becoming more untenable the longer she’s here. And we still have a long way to go.
“That one’s mine.” She doesn't look up from where she’s sitting, folders spread open on the counter, with a yellow legal pad where she’s actually taking notes.
She’s already been at it for twenty minutes, cross-referencing notes she’s made about my life against the actual facts of it with the intensity of, well, me, studying for a bar exam.
Given the circumstances and what’s at stake, it’s not an unfair comparison.
I’m impressed. I’m— well, I’m a lot of things.
“I can see that it’s yours.”
“He’s Kermit the Mug.” I look at Kermit, and he looks back at me with his terrible, lopsided, empty clay eyes.
“Terrible,” I say. With the sneaky suspicion that this may be the source of my nightmares tonight. Who am I kidding, I know what will occupy my dreams.
“Don’t be mean to him.” She turns a page. “If you hate it, just use a different mug.” I turn to face her, holding it out in front of me, assessing it for history, chips, maybe seeing if it was once a boy turned into a mug by a witch who cast a spell on a castle. That would explain it.
“Did you make it?” I ask, skeptical, and her eyebrows shoot up as soft brown hair falls around her face. “Sorry,” I add, “him.” Because that one look made it feel necessary.
“No, I bought him off a street vendor named Lara, she was Turkish, she made the most beautiful pottery.” he starts off the story as she does everything, with a smile across her face and complete disregard for the time or any schedule I might be on, naming every character, including anyone in the background, because she feels they deserve to be seen.
“—I went back weeks later, but she was gone, so I never finished the set.”
“Bummer,” I say. And imagine the ‘rest of the set’ with some actual fear. I put Kermit the Mug on the counter and take down one of the matching set I've had for years, parting the Red Sea of mismatched ceramics to find one with no engraving, no face, and doesn’t say ‘Mug Lyfe’ on it.
I pour a second coffee without being asked and set it near her elbow, and she pulls it toward her without looking, as I fill it with milk and bring out the teddy-bear bottle of honey.
Don’t ask me. She drinks coffee, tea, drip, matcha, lattes, it’s like each day she throws a dart at a board, or spins a wheel to make the decision, whereas every morning I wake up and start my day with the same order.
At least I did until she moved in. But when I pour myself a cup, I do the same for her.
She crosses her arms and lays her head atop the open folder on the counter.
When this started, she mocked my preference for printed materials.
All of which I will shred when this is done.
But it’s better than being glued to a screen, and the way she doodles in the corners is ironic given the seriousness of the situation.
“I’m studied out,” she stresses, her muffled voice trapped in the folded cavern of her arms.
I take a sip of my coffee as I lean against the counter. “Prove it.”
“Hudson James Ellis,” she says into the countertop with a scoff, likely at the coincidence of our shared middle name that everyone else can call fate.
“Born September 9th, 1989.” With the first driver’s-license-level information confirmed, she sits upright on the stool, cracks her neck to each side, and tucks the loose hairs behind her ears, though they remain defiant as they fall immediately.
She looks at me like she’s preparing for something competitive, a glint in her eye that’s a challenge I crave.
“Columbia undergrad, Columbia Law School, it was good for you because you passed the bar on the first try, which you don’t talk about, but I know you think it makes you better than other people, definitely one.” I don’t react, even though I want to.
“You take your coffee black at home,” she goes on.
The casual use of the word home is something that is more and more frequent now.
“But it's an Americano, extra-hot, when you’re out. You had one of those hot-dog dogs growing up named Nathan,. Your first kiss was when you were a sophomore in high school to Charlotte Hartley, that one was honestly a surprise. The timing, I mean, I assumed it would have been earlier.” I raise an eyebrow, but she doesn’t stop, and doesn’t look away.
Good.
“Your parents got divorced when you were seven, which pretty much stunted who you are and your ability to commit to anyone.” She pauses.
“Or anyone real,” she clarifies, because this, right here, what we are doing is about the largest commitment one can make.
She seems to be enjoying herself, which regrettably, makes me enjoy myself.
“Your first car was a used Volvo because you considered it extremely sensible,” she continues, warming up again.
Building as I’ve heard her deliver powerful monologues, this time, about me.
“But after you made your first real ‘I’m a big deal’ money, you bought yourself a brand new one. Same brand, slightly less sensible.”
Not inaccurate.
“You use an Old Spice deodorant, but one that smells like lavender which, also a surprise. And you don’t have any known allergies, but you have that thing where you think cilantro tastes like soap.
You have strong opinions about everything, so strong they border on political, and when you’re thinking really hard about something… ” She trails off and I don’t move.
“You stand exactly the way you are right now.” The last two words are said with overwhelming pride and accomplishment as she points the glitter pen at me with her big eyes narrowed to victorious slits in my direction.
“How am I standing?”
She dramatically looks me up and down. “Like you're waiting for the part where I get something wrong so you can point it out.” It’s annoyingly accurate.
I was, on the edge of every word, waiting to correct her, but the thing she doesn’t see is how impressed I am that there’s nothing to correct.
The coffee in my hand is good, so good, I use it to swallow down the very accurate assessment of me.
I don’t confirm or deny any of this, which she correctly interprets as confirmation.
There’s a shift in her posture that’s subtle, but there. Her spine straightens. Her shoulders pull back just slightly. It’s pride. Not the way most people have it, it’s not loud. Not obnoxious. Just… present. Like she is.
She’s done well.
She knows she has. It swells me with pride and fear at the same time.
Something about the way she looks at me like she’s figured something out makes my pulse quicken in my chest. Because I know how this goes.
I know what happens when someone starts paying this much attention to me.
When they start noticing the small things, the parts you don’t offer up willingly.
It always turns into something else. And I am, historically, not built for the part that comes after that.
Part of why this agreement is possible, because there’s no one who has loved me by choice, not really, that didn’t recognize how little of me they knew.
That didn’t lob the term ‘emotionally unavailable’ as they walked out the door I held open for them.
I set my mug down.
“That was thorough,” I say and she smiles at that. Not wide and over-exaggerated, but enough to show she heard it, and she liked the praise.
“I’ve been studying,” she says, capping the pen dramatically for effect.
“Good girl.”
Her eyebrows pull together and the smile on her face morphs to something else. She won't name it, and neither will I. So instead I finish my coffee, rinse my mug before putting it in the dishwasher, and head to work.