Chapter Fifteen
It’s snowing on Monday morning. The world beyond the windows is a blinding curtain, blurring everything together. The air sits slow and quiet in the early hour. Winter is surprisingly bright in Lunenburg, when the sky isn’t too low and the snow is fresh.
In the kitchen, Aubrey busies herself with anything but the dishes piled up in the sink.
She wipes down the table, the chairs, the door frames.
On the table sits a bouquet of dried flowers she’d collected over the summer and hung to dry in the entryway closet.
Its shades of beige, brown, and purple fit well against the white kitchen.
In the background, piano music is playing for Louise, who’s meant to come home soon for lunch.
It’s something they agreed on—Louise works a lot at the hospital these days, and there are nearly no guests for Aubrey to tend to, so Louise comes home for lunch, smiles pitifully at Aubrey, and says things like, “Just call me if you get too bored. I don’t mind. ”
Both houses, however, are otherwise spotless. The guest rooms have never been tidier or the bathrooms so shiny. The dishes are a backup plan, just in case she should grow too agitated, so she doesn’t touch them for now.
She’s humming along to the music when the door opens behind her. The sound of boots knocking snow off their soles breaks the quiet.
“You’re a little early,” Aubrey calls to her aunt, with a smile to herself. She teases, “Hospital sent you home for a snow day?”
There’s laughter, but it’s not Louise’s. Then, “I honestly can’t think of a funny answer to that.”
It’s Arthur. He wears a brown leather jacket that’s faded in spots, melting snow clinging to the seams. Aubrey hasn’t seen him since her night out with Florence, and she’s so conscious now of how she looks at him, how he looks at her.
She says, “I thought you were Louise,” which is obvious, but “hi” feels harder to get out.
Arthur kicks off his boots and undoes his jacket to reveal a plain white tee. “Do you mind if I sit a minute? I’m frigid.” Already he’s making his way over to the table and pulling out a chair.
He sits, so Aubrey sits, too. They’re at the same height like this, each on their chair. “Can I get you something to drink?” she offers. How dreadfully formal.
She makes to get up again, but he says, “No, no, it’s good. Sit, here. You never told me how it went with Florence, the other night.”
“You didn’t tell me about your date.”
The retort hardly seems to faze him. His lips curl in a smile. “There’s not much to say.”
“Isn’t there? You don’t go on dates very often.”
It’s not clear really what her point is, but it seems to feed into Arthur’s amusement, and into the dampness of her palms. She’s not sure how to sit, what to do with her hands.
She picks at some of the dried petals that fell on the table as Arthur replies, “You’re one to talk.
” He’s so in control while Aubrey fails to catch up, a foreign imbalance in their dynamic.
“So it went well, then. If you’re so precious about it.” She means it playfully but it doesn’t echo this way, not exactly. She doesn’t want Arthur to think she’s defensive, so she adds, quickly, “I mean it’s a good thing. Really good, yeah. I’m happy for you.”
“It went fine, I think. We haven’t made any plans to see each other again.”
“Okay.” Aubrey stares at the table, too afraid he might read something in her eyes if she looks up.
“I didn’t have much hope in it, anyway,” Arthur says. “I just thought it’d do me some good to leave the house.”
“Right. Well, good.”
“That the date didn’t go well?”
“That you left the house.”
He sits up to slip his coat off his shoulders, and the air is too calm, with the piano and the soft light and the flowers.
Aubrey stands from her chair and heads to the counter. “I’ll make some tea,” she says. Arthur twists in her chair to follow her movement.
“Forget about the date.” He’s smiling when he speaks. “Tell me about your night with Flo.”
“There’s not much to tell there, either. It wouldn’t be any more interesting than what you have to say.”
“Well, I’d like to hear about it.”
Aubrey fills the kettle with water and stares out the little window that overlooks the yard, at the snow falling and the neighbours shovelling their entryways.
She hears herself say, from a distance, “I thought you already asked Florence how it went. I don’t know what else I could say you haven’t heard yet. ”
Her nerves are shot. Maybe she didn’t sleep well.
She counts one second, two, and then Arthur is laughing softly to himself.
It’s always like this—impossible to irritate him, like he’s just okay with everything.
It makes it very easy to say things, as if Aubrey doesn’t have to worry about the words she chooses, about how she’s coming off, because he nods and gets it.
It’s almost concerning how simple it is.
“Well, okay then,” is all he says in response.
She’s not sure what to say next. She stands there at the counter and waits for the water to boil, and of course it’s not even close to being done and Arthur just sits there, with his coat off and his hair wet.
He’s looking at her intently. “I didn’t know Florence told you about that.”
Aubrey smiles, just a little. Maybe to be polite, maybe because she can’t help it. “You must not know women very well.”
“That’s true.” He takes a beat. “Maybe I’d prefer to hear about it from you.
” He doesn’t seem embarrassed to know that Florence talked about him, or by any aspect of this situation.
Meanwhile, Aubrey’s ears are red hot. When she looks at him, he looks different, and she can’t pinpoint exactly what’s changed.
“Did you do something to your hair?” she asks.
“Why? Should I?”
Aubrey takes two mugs from one cupboard and two mint tea bags from another. “Going out with Florence was fine. Very loud, and overall a good testament as to why I’m still single, but I got the chance to put on a nice outfit and have a very expensive drink, so not a complete failure.”
“Ah, good. Florence said you had a bit of a rough time.”
“Mm, well, compared to her, maybe.” She pours the water in both cups, and for a second the steam clouds her vision. “It wasn’t too entirely different from the usual.”
Arthur clicks his tongue. “Disappointing?”
“Discouraging.”
“Ah.”
Aubrey sets both cups down and settles back on her chair with a leg folded under herself. “Do you think it’s weird when I talk about this? Dating and all?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you wish maybe I wouldn’t tell you about it? Like maybe you don’t want to hear about who I’m meeting, or the woes of my unending failure to find love?”
Arthur shrugs. He wraps his hands around his cup and the polka dot pattern disappears.
“I’ve just bugged you into spitting it out, so obviously I don’t mind.
Maybe I wish I could do something about it, in the sense of helping, I mean.
I don’t know, I just think you shouldn’t worry so much. It feels like you do that a lot.”
“I do do that a lot.”
“Why?”
Aubrey leans in to blow on her tea for a second, just so she can take a moment to think. Reluctantly, she says, “I just try to imagine the different ways things could turn out, and it seems all of them are terrifying.”
“All of them?”
She nods. “Humour me, then,” he says. “Tell me the stuff that worries you.”
She wants to give him an example, but nothing comes to mind. Nothing but one very specific example from her past that she really, desperately doesn’t want to bring up.
She stares at her tea, as if the little bag of mint leaves sinking to the bottom of the cup might share some miraculous wisdom, and says, “Well, let’s say, for example, that I do meet someone I enjoy spending time with, and I decide I’m into them, but then I only get one chance to make it work, right?
But I have no idea what they’re thinking, or how to talk about it, and everyone else seems to have figured this out, so why not me?
And what if I try to make a move on a man, but it’s true that I’m a walking red flag, and I say the wrong thing or feel the wrong way, or what if my feelings fade after all, and it turns out I got it wrong?
Maybe it was just infatuation, or despair.
Maybe no one wants to be with someone who’s a decade behind in working out how to love.
How to be a partner. You know? So then it just seems so much easier to stay on my own.
But let’s say I do stay on my own, forever. ”
She pauses for effect. Arthur is looking at her like he’s waiting for more. When nothing comes, he asks, “Okay, what if?”
“That’s even scarier.”
“Yeah.” He shifts his weight to lean his elbow on the table.
He’s watching her and it makes Aubrey conscious of her posture, her hair.
She’s got tension in her face—does she always have tension in her face?
“So—sorry,” Arthur huffs to himself, like he’s just noticed something.
“You just said a lot of things, very fast—what’s that about a walking red flag? ”
Aubrey looks elsewhere and hopes he takes it as a response.
Arthur looks up at the ceiling like the house might come for help.
“Jesus. I hate these words we’ve come up with—red flags and green flags, like they’re not just synonyms for faults and strengths, and would you ever tell someone that being on their own is some sort of flaw?
It’s just insane to me, the shit you’ve heard.
I mean, we’re adults. Not tweens who’ve yet to figure out there’s more to life than being cool and popular.
We’re meant to know better, accept each other as we are and whatever else.
Right? You’re better than this, Aubrey.”