Chapter Three #2
An odd feeling has settled deep in her stomach, an uneasiness she notices only now that she sits too aware of herself.
It’s weird to think of home, to think of Maggie continuing on with her life today, tomorrow, the day after that.
This morning she’d woken up in her own bed.
Now she’s here. She pulls up social media to find familiar faces, old acquaintances sharing pictures of their weekend activities and growing families.
It feels like cheating somehow, sitting here.
Like she’s trying to put life on hold while everything else hurtles forward.
It hits her now that this isn’t helping at all with falling behind. Fuck.
She lies back against the floral blanket and blinks up at the ceiling, painted in uneven strokes.
It’s fine, she knows it’s fine, but part of her insists on the opposite, some kind of instinct against a danger coming from all sides and nowhere at once.
As if nearly ten years of pressure, expectations, disappointments are catching up to her now that she’s dared to take a break from her own life.
She thinks, fuck. How dare she run away.
How dare she not try harder with what she already had.
A knock on the door, left ajar, snaps her out of it. She looks up to find Louise’s fist on the door frame. Her voice comes in from the hallway. “There’ll be towels in the linen closet, just down the hall, if ever you feel like taking a shower.”
“Thank you,” Aubrey offers in response. She drops her head again and says to the ceiling, “I should think that’s bound to happen at some point.”
Louise snorts. “Funny.” Her footsteps carry her back downstairs. Aubrey drags her bag over to the mattress and takes out her journal, which she sets on the bedside table. She feels a little better right away.
When they meet again downstairs, Aubrey thanks her aunt profusely for the room and the house and this opportunity, hoping it’ll soothe the twinge in her chest. “How is this the way you live now?” she motions then at a nearby window, overlooking the big white house next door.
“Both of these places? In this shitshow of an economy?”
“Mm.” Louise shrugs, casually, but the smile she bites back betrays that she agrees.
“There was this woman next door, Elise. Close friend of mine. I’ll tell you about her.
Anyway—she was a widow and she had this house, and I went over all the time.
We drank tea, and we talked, she convinced me to try crochet.
A mess that was. She liked being on her own, so we had that in common.
” Louise’s attention drifts away for a second, back within herself.
She adds, in a rush, “When she died last year she basically passed the house down to me. She knew how much I loved it. It’s paid off and all.
I thought of what I could do with it, I don’t know.
Here we are now. I told you not to let it fool you.
The roof leaks and the floors are very crooked, and there’s a lot of other problems I haven’t had time to get to yet.
I did fix the mold thing though, so that’s good.
Anyway, I might have to remortgage to get it all fixed.
But it’s mine, even though it shouldn’t be mine, so.
” When she breathes out something changes.
Her shoulder drops. She takes a second to look up, Aubrey isn’t sure at what.
Louise looks her age then, which is unusual.
Somewhere in her fifties, but more tired and worried.
She sighs, “God, I don’t know what I’ll do if this doesn’t work out. ”
“It’ll work out.”
Louise looks over. Aubrey says again, “It’ll work out. Why wouldn’t it?”
When her aunt smiles then, it’s taut. She inhales fast and deep. “Yeah, good question. Let’s get on with it.”
They cross the lawn side by side until they pass the sunroom and reach the bright red door at the front of the house.
Louise pulls out a single key from her shirt pocket and yanks at the old doorknob until it finally gives in.
“There’s also an entrance at the back. Produce deliveries will come through there every Monday.
There are five bedrooms in the house.” Inside, the layout isn’t too different from Louise’s place, centring a staircase that splits the space in the middle.
“All of them are booked for the opening in four days. I’ve set up a little check-in area right here. ”
In the sitting room off to the right, next to the staircase, an outdated laptop sits on a tall lectern. A few items are gathered at its foot: linen sets still in their plastic packaging, pillows, tall jugs of what must be dish soap.
“Kitchen’ll be my neck of the woods, since I’m taking care of the meals and all, and I was thinking of having you on check-ins and room service, turnover, cleaning.”
Aubrey wants to point out that she doesn’t know much about any of that. She doesn’t. Louise seems too stressed already, zigzagging from one room to the next at an unsteady pace. And the internet is free.
Nearly every inch of the space is wallpapered, the seams betraying the age of the home.
It’s hard to take everything in at once—the cast iron radiators, the fireplace in the living room Aubrey knows she’ll fail at starting a fire in, the dark wooden doors with a nearly orange hue.
The kitchen and its adjacent laundry room contrast starkly with the rest of the decor—all shades of off-white, appliances in desperate need of an upgrade, slanted cupboard doors that should add more charm than they do.
This space isn’t as old as the rest of the house.
It must’ve been renovated somewhere in the seventies, in cheaper, now outdated materials.
In places, the checkered linoleum floor is chipped.
“Guests won’t come back here,” Louise explains as she grabs a damp rag from the sink and runs it across the counter almost by reflex.
She’s looking everywhere but at her own hands, and Aubrey wants to tell her to breathe.
Louise reminds her of her mom right now, of when she gets like this around the house.
The feeling sits, a little uneasy, in Aubrey’s throat. Like home.
“Upstairs, then,” Louise says, dropping the rag to head to the staircase.
“Right.” The bedrooms are small but quaint, with beds too big for the space and mismatched furniture that tries very hard to be charming. Louise hardly sets a foot in each of them, already onto the next corner, the next nervous click of her tongue.
"I’ll do breakfast and dinner, prepping the meals, dishes and such.
We don’t do lunch. You’ll have to make the beds, keep up with general cleaning, maybe take bookings—I mean, it’s a work in progress.
I’ve got to be at the hospital during the day, usually, so that’s why I need someone to help out around here. ”
“The hospital?” Aubrey stills.
“Yes, right. I work some hours there these days, at the cafeteria. Part-time food service worker, that sort of thing. I told you about that.”
Aubrey watches Louise fluttering from one door to the next, fluffing up curtains, tugging at comforter corners. Puzzled, she says, “I don’t think you did.”
“God, sorry. It’s just been so hectic around here—you don’t mind holding down the fort while I’m gone, yeah?
It’s not so hard, I bet. I’ve got everything written down, and we’ve got four days to set things up, do a couple practice runs.
” Louise breathes in and out. Then she finally stands still in the middle of the hallway, where she turns to face Aubrey and says, “You haven’t changed your mind, have you? ”
“What?”
“About this.”
“Well, I’m already here. Bit late to turn back now.
” It’s a funny quip, but the truth is Aubrey doesn’t give herself time to think about any of it.
Instead she counts the bedrooms, one, two, three, four, five, takes stock of the linen and trash bins and the little things she’ll have to remember to keep up with.
If she can memorize thirty-seven different candle scent combinations, surely she can figure this out too.
“Mm.” Louise eyes her with care. A small frown runs between her eyebrows, and Aubrey wants to reach out and smooth it.
“Let’s sit down and look over a proper schedule.
” On her way down the stairs, Louise runs a hand across the nape of her neck.
She’s wearing a linen button-down and has her hair up in a messy chignon.
Tendrils stick to the back of her ears. “God, it’s like I’ve run a marathon,” she huffs.