Chapter 24
The next day, I proposed Nicolo’s idea to Lou. She looked confused. “What, so we’d all live together? The three of us?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Like it was with Becca, but I’d be in the living room. Partially. If that sounds okay to you.”
“And this was Nicolo’s idea? I don’t get why he doesn’t just move out. He’s universally despised.”
“I don’t despise him, actually. And I don’t think you do, either. Honestly, you both remind me of each other. Would you move out just because someone didn’t like you?”
Lou seemed to seriously consider this. “Well, obviously not,” she said. Then, in a scathed tone: “I remind you of Nicolo?”
“In some ways. That’s why you clash. To be honest, I think he’s scared of you.”
“I didn’t know you two were so close.”
“We’re not,” I said. “He’s just an obvious kind of person.”
Over the course of the day, Lou slowly opened to this new arrangement.
For dinner, she cooked us both a Thai green curry using paste from a jar.
While we ate, she scribbled on the back of a takeout menu, making complicated-looking calculations.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” I chewed quietly, unsure of what she was thinking.
“Okay, yes, I think this works.” She handed the sheet to me, which showed a proportional split of rent and utilities based on square feet.
I couldn’t believe how low the numbers were.
Her only request was that I take over cleaning and maintenance of the living room.
“That’s fine,” I responded with a little too much enthusiasm. “I don’t mind cleaning.”
The first order of business was to remove my things from the makeshift storage I’d created from old boxes under her desk.
After dinner, I sat on the floor and unfolded my clothes, then categorized them into neat and separate piles.
While doing so I felt excited, nearly giddy.
I had the urge to jump up and run around the block, shouting to everybody that I passed: I live here now, I live here.
I wanted to text James with the news, but we hadn’t spoken since I messaged him on Halloween.
Our exchange confused me. I couldn’t stop thinking about his suggestion that he still wanted us to be involved somehow, even though he’d initiated the break.
Sometimes I felt myself reaching for anger or indignation.
I would convince myself it wasn’t fair, he was assuming the more controlling position again.
But I knew that he was perfectly justified in expressing how he felt to me, especially after I asked.
Whenever I tried to be angry with him, I always ended up feeling sorry instead.
I wanted to stop thinking about him in such black-and-white ways: whether he was the solution to my problems or their enabler, whether he was exceptionally good or terribly normal.
Maybe I wanted to stop thinking about myself that way, too. Whether I was loved. Or safe. Or free.
—
By the next evening, I’d already rearranged the living room corner and stacked my clothes in neat cubes below the window.
Nicolo returned from work with his arms full of groceries.
He looked at the smoothed-out air mattress I’d found on Facebook Marketplace, a temporary solution, and arched his eyebrows.
“Ah, you have finally decided to pay rent,” he said.
“You were right,” I said. “This was the most obvious solution.”
“I know that.”
“What have you brought with you, anyway?”
“A turkey.” He removed a giant raw bird from the bag. “For Thanksgiving.”
“I didn’t think you were the type to celebrate Thanksgiving.”
“Why, because it is an American propaganda holiday?” He snorted. “I have to make something for my work potluck next week.”
“And you signed up for turkey?”
“Is it hard?”
“I swear your oven doesn’t work.”
“It’s our oven now, no?”
“Our oven,” I said, feeling shy. Even if he was only correcting me, Nicolo’s comment felt like a blessing, pardoning my long intrusion into his and Lou’s life. “It doesn’t work half the time. And it’s probably not even big enough. You’re going to have to cook it in parts.”
“You know how to make turkey?”
My mother and I made turkey every year. After Thanksgiving Day, we’d buy one for cheap, chop it to bits, put it all in the freezer, then roast a little each day onward. This usually lasted us a week, though the last time it was two. I recounted all this to Nicolo.
“Why after Thanksgiving?”
“It’s cheaper that way. We always did Thanksgiving the day after. We’d make up for not celebrating on the day itself by having loads of turkey for a whole week.”
Nicolo cocked his head. “That is a very sweet tradition.”
“No propaganda involved.”
“Fine,” he said. “I accept your help.”
“Oh, I don’t remember offering.”
“It’s a payment to me for helping to fix your life,” he said.
Most likely he said this to me as a joke, but in his accent the statement sounded sincere. His words hung in the air, echoing with false gallantry. It was true, he’d helped me. I was fixing my life. I walked over and hugged him.
“Wow,” he said. “I didn’t mean it.”
“But I’m grateful,” I said.
“So make me the turkey.”
A pleasant feeling unwrapped in the back of my brain, recognition of something invisible and important unfolding.
A near-stranger learning what I used to do with my mother.
Being asked to do something for someone, then committing to doing it.
I thought of Bruno sniffing Silver’s butt and Silver licking his ear.
I didn’t want to be afraid. I wanted to lick somebody’s ear.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll make you the turkey.”
—
When Lou returned that night, she was tipsy and in a great mood. For the past few weeks, her co-worker had been talking about hosting her twenty-fifth birthday in Sicily in June. Lou didn’t think she would be invited, but she was. “Sicily in June,” said Nicolo. “Have fun with all the tourists.”
Ignoring him, Lou turned to me. “I see you’ve made yourself cozy.”
“Yes,” said Nicolo. “She is part of the family now.”
“You and me are not family.”
“You offend me.”
“Katie is my friend, not yours.”
“I think you will find,” Nicolo said, “that she is also mine.”
I interrupted. “Don’t fight. It’s my first night. You can fight tomorrow.”
“First night!” Lou clapped. “You’re right, we should celebrate.” She grabbed my wrist and pulled me to the kitchen, where she began to pour vodka into a cup.
“Okay, don’t kill me. I’ve only just moved in.”
“Grow up. Also, you did not just move in. You’ve been sleeping in my room for a month.”
“Then why are we celebrating?”
“I’ll take any excuse.”
I put my arms on her knobby shoulders. “Thank you,” I said. “You’re a very nice person.”
“You’re so awkward.” She squirmed away. “We need a chaser.”
In the absence of a suitable beverage, Lou diluted the vodka with a mysterious cherry liqueur, which seemed undeniably worse than drinking it straight.
Nicolo refused the drink at first but eventually gave in with a groan.
We toasted. A few drops splashed from my cup onto the rug.
Lou pointed at the pink blob, then at me, then snapped her fingers. “Your responsibilities begin.”
“Lou, you are the fascist,” said Nicolo.
By some miracle, they were smiling at each other. I bent to blot the stain with my shirt. My sleeve became wet, but I didn’t mind. I felt calm, even happy.
Lou and Nicolo fought over the Bluetooth, which automatically connected to Nicolo’s phone. “I knew it,” she said. “You’ve been using my speaker.”
“You’ve been drinking my vodka,” he responded. I sat on my air mattress, flat and folded like a square of origami, and sipped my drink while they bickered.
This was my home. It was a new home. It was a home I had chosen.
I thought about my mother, who had lived for years now in that red house she did not choose.
All this time I’d felt sorry for leaving her alone in that place when I was the only one who could help her.
But I was beginning to understand that my guilt was futile.
No matter how hard you tried, you could not care someone into becoming.
You could not protect them from their life.
For a moment I was hit with grief, the same grief I’d experienced when I put away the paints for the final time in Holme.
But the feeling didn’t last long. I closed my eyes, saw colors.
When I opened them, I felt relief, and I felt love, too, the way love felt when I was a child, like something ancient, something that would never change.
Better—a love with sympathy for my mother, free from our guilt and our resentment, clean.
I went to the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water, then finished it in one breath. I poured myself another glass and finished it again.
I called my mother.
She answered on the second ring. “Katie?”
“Hi, Mom.”
“You called me.”
“I know.”
“You never call me.”
“I was thinking of you.”
She did not respond.
“I wanted to tell you”—I poured another glass of water, convinced it gave me courage—“that I’m sorry. For not calling on your birthday. I’m sorry about everything. The money, the way I left last year, not telling you about James. I’m sorry that we’re not close anymore.”
“Where is this coming from?”
I told her about the job interviews. About Holme and the Hartleys and Isabelle. Finally, I told her about Silver. How much I loved her, how playful and sacred she was, how I’d made a mistake and now she was gone.
“What I’m trying to say is, all this stuff made me think about you.
I’m always thinking about you. How you would feel about something, what you would say.
If you’d laugh at me or be disappointed in me.
If you would forgive me. I’m scared you think I’ve just left and forgotten about you, but I haven’t. I think about you all the time.”
Water dripped from the tap. I twisted it open, focusing on the sound of the rush. I considered hanging up.
“You feel sorry for me,” my mother said.
“No.”
“You do. You always have. I don’t blame you. You shouldn’t have had to see me like that.”