Roommating

Chapter Five

W e get home right as dinner is ready. I set the table, and a few minutes later we’re at the circular kitchen table enjoying a home-cooked meal of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and white asparagus.

Across from me, Marcia takes a sip from a glass of red wine. “Did you see Adam finished putting together the bookshelf?”

I swing my gaze to the right and meet Adam’s eyes for a beat. “I did.” My feminist side is still bummed that our combined efforts weren’t enough, but my lazy side is happy it’s done. “We should post an updated video.”

“Did you upload the original one?” Marcia blinks slowly. “I don’t think I’ve ever used ‘upload’ in a sentence before.”

Adam glances between us, his fork with a bite-sized piece of medium-rare roast beef an inch from his mouth. “What did I miss? What video?”

“I captured Marcia placing the first book on the shelf for my Insta. Or rather, I tried to, but then the shelf came crashing down with the book on it.” I open my phone to the camera roll and play the video for Adam.

As he watches, I hear my own voice saying, “Momentous moment here” and cringe. My voice sounds completely normal to me as I’m speaking, but on video it’s so husky, almost crackling. It takes me by surprise every time.

“I didn’t share it,” I tell Marcia. “But if we film again, I can post them simultaneously. First as a fail and then as a success.”

Adam glances between us. “You guys do this often? Post videos on Instagram?”

Marcia waves her fork. “Sabrina does. I just act in them.”

Adam gawks. “Act?”

I shrug. “I get more likes when I post something with Marcia than I do solo.”

“Young people are fascinated by anyone over sixty. They think we’re ‘cute.’” Marcia rolls her eyes.

“They like you because you’re a breath of fresh air,” I say, quoting a comment I got on my last Marcia video word for word.

Adam studies me. “Are you an influencer or something?”

I throw my head back and laugh. “Not even close. I have less than a thousand followers.” I laugh again.

“My close friend Carley is though. Well, she’s technically a theatrical makeup artist, but she’s taken her expertise to TikTok and Instagram and taught me some tricks to at least make my grid more appealing. ”

I met Carley at summer camp when we were thirteen, but we lost touch.

We ran into each other at Trader Joe’s a few months after I moved to the city, and our friendship continued where we left off, as if the ten years we hadn’t seen each other had never happened.

I’m so grateful we did, since New York can be a lonely city of eight million.

“How is Carley?” Marcia asks.

“She got her first off-Broadway show!” She’s only worked off-off-Broadway until now, and I’m so proud of her.

Marcia raises her glass. “Cheers to her! Soon she’ll be on Broadway using Patti LuPone for her old-lady makeup tutorials and won’t need me anymore.”

Adam’s eyes bug out. “This just keeps getting more and more interesting. What is this about makeup tutorials?”

I clamp my lips together to repress a laugh.

The look of absolute bewilderment on Adam’s face right now is adorable.

“Carley does makeup videos where she gives advice on how to apply certain makeup techniques depending on your age. She uses Marcia sometimes for boomers.” I smile fondly at my roommate.

“The one on how to make blue eyes pop got close to ten thousand likes!” I turn to Adam.

“Marcia was the model for that one too.”

Adam shakes his head again. “My grandma, the model.”

Marcia snorts. “Yes, the scouts for Vogue AARP edition will be knocking on my door any minute now.”

Adam’s own blue eyes twinkle. “You two seem to have a lot of fun together. Sabrina told me how you found each other, but I still don’t know why you were on that app in the first place. You dodged my questions all day.”

Marcia purses her lips. “I did not dodge your questions. I was just more interested in hearing about you .”

I sit up straighter, wishing I too had heard about Adam. All I know so far is that he’s currently out of a job and that he likes to read. Fine, Gabe. I also know that he’s hot .

“And I caught you up. Now it’s your turn,” he says.

Marcia places her napkin on her plate. “After your grandfather died, I lived alone for several years, but I was lonely. I thought a roommate would be fun. Like a mini- Golden Girls , only in New York.”

“If you were Blanche, I’d rather not hear the stories,” Adam says.

I press a fist to my mouth.

Marcia rolls her lips. “What stories? The tales from all the times I suggested going out, and Linda said no? She was sixty-eight going on a hundred. All she did was eat, shit, and sleep, and she was healthy as kale! She started almost every sentence with, ‘When you get to be our age,’ this happens and that happens.” She scoffs.

“Speak for yourself. I’m not dead yet.” Marcia sighs dejectedly.

“When the year was over, I told her that I didn’t want to renew her lease.

Extra money is nice, but not if it comes with all that negativity.

And then one morning, I was watching the Today show and saw the segment on multigenerational roommates. ”

“We were watching it at the same time. Kismet.” I beam.

“ Beshert. ” Marcia smiles at me affectionately.

“It gave me the idea to have a younger roommate this time. Someone to infuse more light in my life. And so I asked my neighbor to help me download the app.” She grins.

“I’ve used upload , download , and app in the same thirty minutes. What is happening to me?”

“You’re practically a woman in STEM,” I say.

Adam chokes on his drink.

I make an innocent face at him. “What?”

“Anyway, I completed my profile and heard from Sabrina within twenty-four hours.”

I take over from here. “My roommates partied constantly, but I didn’t want to do a complete one-eighty and live with someone like Linda.

Marcia’s profile was so high-energy compared to the others I read.

” I knew immedately she was “the one” and recall my heart fluttering as I shot off a response, praying no one had beaten me to it.

“Most of the other ads were for people in their eighties or nineties. I wasn’t sure what Marcia would even want from me in exchange for the lower rent. ”

“I wondered about that too. You seem incredibily independent,” Adam says.

“Because I am! My doctors encourage my active lifestyle, but they also caution me to listen to my body and not push it because of my high blood pressure and the fact that I’m on the dark side of seventy.

” She blows out a breath. “Sabrina picks up the slack of the more physical activities and, more importantly in my opinion, helps me keep up in the digital era. She set me up with reminders to take my pills so I don’t need to stick notes to the refrigerator!

And I’m up on pop culture thanks to her. We even listen to Taylor Rodrigo.”

Adam says, “I think you mean Taylor Swift. Or Olivia Rodrigo?”

Marcia raises her palms. “See?” She winks.

Adam narrows his eyes. “You were joking?”

“Give her some credit.” I chuckle.

“Like I told Linda: I’m seventy-two. I’m not dead.”

Adam snorts.

“I’m not the only one doing the educating.” I tell Adam how Marcia got me hooked on the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, and early Genesis. “She’s a wealth of information about classic rock.”

“Now I know where my good taste in music comes from. Dad’s karaoke go-to songs are ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ and ‘Wannabe.’” Adam curls his lip.

“Spice Girls? That one’s so catchy.” I clear my throat and sing, “ If you wanna be —”

“Please stop.” He shudders.

I whisper-sing the next line, only stopping when Adam sticks his fingers in his ears. I don’t know the rest of the lyrics anyway.

“How is your dad?” Marcia focuses on cutting the long spear of asparagus on her plate into tiny child-safe pieces in an obvious and failed attempt to pretend she’s not at all invested in the answer. It’s heartbreaking.

Adam refills his wine. “Still an uptight son of a bitch.”

“Did you just call me a bitch?” His grandmother raises an eyebrow, even as her lips twitch.

“Sorry!” He grimaces. “I didn’t mean it literally. But he is uptight. You disagree?”

“No…” She laughs. “But he’s your father.”

“Whatever.”

Marcia’s face clouds over, and it breaks my heart.

To finally make the choice to be her true self after decades of withholding a huge part of herself, only to be rejected by her own son, the person she brought into this world and loved unconditionally.

A pain like that never goes away. Even though she knows this is a Jeffrey problem and not a Marcia problem—just as I know that Audrina and I are not to blame for our dad’s abandonment—it must still hurt.

The room is only silent for a few seconds, but it feels longer, so I swerve the conversation back to music. “Do you know who Patti Smith is, Marcia?”

Marcia looks at me like I’m an alien from Jupiter.

Adam groans. “This ends now.” He opens his phone to his music app, and within seconds, familiar music fills the air. “Have you ever heard this song?”

“Only hundreds of times.” I have the urge to bop my head. Because the Night . “This is Patti Smith?”

“Ding ding ding.” Adam does a perfect imitation of me after he guessed we were going to the Strand. “Although many bands have covered it.”

I duck my head, duly embarrassed, before changing the subject. “Dinner was delicious, as always.”

Adam swallows the last bit of food on his plate and leans back in his chair. “I agree. Will you make your potato pierogies while I’m here, Grams? I haven’t had them in ten years.”

Marcia beams. “It will be my pleasure!”

“And please make extra for me!” I say.

Adam turns to me. “Do you cook?”

To avoid incriminating myself or lying, I counter with, “Do you?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

This earns a well-deserved chuckle from Marcia, who stacks some dirty dishes and walks them over to the sink.

“My last attempt was congee, which ended up in the garbage, and the time before that…” I can’t remember. “What disaster came before the congee?”

“Honey-glazed salmon,” Marcia says, returning to the table.

“Oh yes. The glaze cooked at a much faster rate than the salmon. It was a disaster.” I shrug sheepishly.

“Nonsense. You made salmon tartare with a lovely burnt-honey sauce.”

As she brings more dirty dishes to the sink, I turn to Adam. “Your grandmother is too kind.”

Adam looks over his shoulder at Marcia, still at the sink. “Relax, Grams. Come sit.”

I scoot my chair back and stand. “I’ll handle the cleanup from here.”

Marcia sits, and while I finish clearing the dishes, Adam returns the butter and horseradish containers to the refrigerator. “Do you have family in the area?” he asks me.

“My mom and sister live in Connecticut.”

“Why Manhattan then?”

“Because it’s the best city in the world.

You’ll find out soon enough.” I empty the contents of a plate into the garbage can.

“I considered Boston, but my school has a great library science program. Library jobs are hard to come by, and I secured mine before I moved. I’ve also made new friends here.

” Thinking of Carley, I add, “And reconnected with old ones. Given how expensive this city is, I’m so grateful I don’t have to share a pea-size room with fourteen roommates. ” I toss a fond glance at Marcia.

She laughs. “Yes. Sabrina showed me some of the roommate ads for apartments here. I can’t believe people live that way,” she says before excusing herself to the bathroom.

Adam sits back down. “Your mom and sister though—do you miss them?”

“I see them on holidays and live close enough to make spontaneous trips if I’m homesick.”

My mom climbed her way up the corporate ladder of a pharmaceutical company and was always working when I was younger, leaving me and Audrina in the care of Nana Lena and Grandpa Lou.

She had no choice, since my dad was a deadbeat and someone needed to put food on the table and keep me and Audrina clothed in the latest trends and up-to-date with the newest phone, but it’s hard to miss something I never had.

And as much as I love my sister, we’re so different—she’s all about exercise and fashion and I’m into books and pop culture. Small doses work best for us.

I’m about to ask Adam about his friends’ reaction to his temporary relocation from Philadelphia, but Marcia rejoins us and changes the subject to Adam’s and my respective plans for the night.

“Homework for me.” A master’s in library science involves a lot of reading. I also have to choose the subject of my young adult author study due next week.

“What about you, Adam? Going to explore the city more?”

Adam covers his mouth and yawns. “Not tonight. I’m too old. When you get to be my age…” He grins.

Marcia wags her finger at him. “I never want to hear that phrase again. Consider this your warning.”

Adam laughs. “Understood. I’m going to stay home and relax tonight. I’ve been wanting to watch One of Us Is Lying , although I doubt it’s as good as the book.”

“It’s not,” I confirm. “But it’s worth watching.”

He exhales audibly. “The book is always better.”

“Agreed!” I beam at him.

“Netflix and chill. Great idea,” Marcia says.

I choke on a laugh, assuming she hadn’t meant to encourage her grandson to have casual sex in her living room.

Adam and I share a knowing smile across the table.

The bonding moment hits me below the waist, and I might be the first person in history to speculate if her roommate’s grandson has chest hair under his Henley.

“I need a break from Jeffrey’s constant nagging to figure out my life,” he says.

Marcia frowns and kisses the top of his head. “My poor boy. Take all the time you need.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Grams.”

While I run the dishwasher and scrub the soiled pots and pans, Adam helps finish clearing the table. Marcia lingers in the kitchen and watches Adam as if she’s afraid he’ll disappear in a poof of dust.

I stop what I’m doing to observe them hug again.

Marcia’s eyes are closed, and a soft smile plays on her lips.

Her joy at being reunited with Adam couldn’t be more obvious if she screamed it out the window.

I’m truly happy for both of them, which is why I’m taken aback by the sudden desire to flee the room and cry into my pillow.

When they break apart and catch me watching, I straighten my back and smile despite feeling like a third wheel in their sweet reunion.