Chapter Thirteen
THE APARTMENT IS ON the second floor of a converted Victorian in downtown Annapolis, twelve minutes from Dad’s house.
One bedroom, one den that will become a nursery, a kitchen with exactly enough counter space for one person who doesn’t cook elaborate meals, and a living room where Dave immediately claims the best window, asleep in a patch of afternoon sun.
I sign the lease on my own terms. Between my savings and the deposits from my commission calendar, I qualify without Evan as a guarantor, without touching our marital accounts.
The landlord runs my credit. I pass. I sign my name, Penelope O’Hara Drake, and I hold the pen for a second longer than necessary because the signature means something today that it didn’t mean six months ago.
Evan offers the marital house. He calls on the afternoon I sign the lease, and he pauses before answering, choosing each word.
“You could take the house,” he says. “I’d move to the DC place. Dave would have the yard.”
“I don’t want your house, Evan. I want my own place.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “Okay.”
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t offer to pay the rent, furnish the apartment, or send someone to help with the move.
Instead, he accepts the decision without negotiating, which is new.
Evan has spent his career acquiring properties and his marriage acquiring control of conversations he didn’t want to have.
I notice the restraint. I mark it alongside the unpainted nursery walls and the cinnamon in the coffee.
DAD HELPS ME MOVE. He carries one box, declares his back insufficient for further labor, and supervises from the armchair I brought from the guest room at his house.
Oscar inspects the apartment, registering complaints about the square footage, the carpet texture, and the absence of a manuscript surface. Dave claims the couch.
Amy arrives with cleaning supplies and a bottle of wine I won’t be drinking for another three months.
“Where do you want the couch?” Amy asks, standing in the living room with her hands on her hips.
I look at the space. The couch has two possible positions, either against the wall, which opens the room, or under the window, which gives Dave his preferred sunlight. Nobody is telling me where it goes. Nobody is hiring a designer or arranging the room while I’m at a charity lunch.
“Under the window.
Dave needs the light.”
“Bookshelf?”
“By the door. Reference books on the bottom. Commission binders on top.”
Amy nods. Dad offers an opinion about optimal reading-light angles, which I consider and disregard. This is my apartment, and the bookshelf goes where I put it.
The mundaneness of the decisions startles me.
There’s couch placement, shelf order, and which drawer gets the silverware.
For the few years, most decisions in my life were either made by Evan or made in opposition to Evan.
These are just mine. They’re a couch, a shelf, and a drawer but also much more.
I put the silverware in the drawer closest to the stove because that’s where Mom kept hers.
Amy stocks the refrigerator, labeling shelves because she knows I won’t organize them otherwise. “Your father asked me to give you this,” she says, handing me a sticky note. Dad has written one rule on it. Apartment rule #1—
Oscar has visiting privileges. Non-negotiable.
I stick it on the refrigerator.
“About time,” Dad says. “Oscar and I need our space back.”
He holds me in the kitchen doorway for a long time after that, longer than either of us acknowledges.
His arms are thinner than I remember from childhood.
For a moment, his age hits me in a way eighty-one usually doesn’t, and I hold on tighter.
He steps back, adjusts his reading glasses, and tells me the kitchen needs better lighting.
DAD TRIES ONE MORE time.
“I’ve found someone for you,” he tells Amy over the phone. I’m in the room, and Amy has him on speaker while she unpacks my kitchenware. “He’s a retired naval attaché. Excellent posture. Speaks four languages.”
“Sam, no.” Amy says.
“You put me on that computer dating thingie. It’s only fair. He has a house in Annapolis. Walking distance. I’ve already given him your email.”
“Sam, you need to stop.”
“His name is Richard. He subscribes to three history journals.”
Amy sets down a mixing bowl and takes the phone off speaker. Her voice drops to the tone she uses when she’s about to say something Dad needs to hear. “Sam, I’m not lonely. I like my work and my life. I like this family. You don’t need to find me a man to validate any of that.”
She listens. I can hear Dad’s voice, quieter now.
“Your generation is smarter about some things than mine was,” he says, “But give him a chance.”
Amy sighs. “Okay. One date. “
THE APARTMENT SETTLES into itself over the first week.
I set up the workshop in the den for now.
The nursery will have to share space with basswood and reference books until I find a proper studio.
Amy has already sent me three listings and informed me that working beside an infant with a rack of X-Acto knives nearby is “not a sustainable business model.” O’Hara Miniatures now has a six-month commission calendar.
Amy manages inquiries from Dad’s kitchen table and mine, splitting her days between his footnotes, my invoices. She has never lost a receipt.
She’s had one date with Richard and accepted a second. Dad is insufferable about being right.
I hang Mom’s reading-room photograph in the living room.
The ultrasound photos go on the refrigerator next to Dad’s sticky note about Oscar’s visiting privileges.
Mom’s unfinished blanket goes on the couch, where I’ve been working on it in the evenings.
The stitches are getting closer to Mom’s, though mine are tighter than hers were.
Amy says the tension will relax as I get more comfortable with the pattern.
She’s probably right about the knitting.
She might be right about everything else too.
On a Thursday evening, I’m sitting on the couch with Dave at my feet and the blanket in my lap, counting stitches.
The baby kicks. She’s been kicking for a few weeks now, real kicks, not the tentative flutters from earlier.
This one is strong enough that Dave lifts his head and looks at my stomach with the concerned expression of a dog who suspects something is happening inside the person he depends on for dinner.
I pick up my phone. I call Evan. “She’s kicking a lot tonight.”
He’s at my door in twenty minutes. He must have driven from DC without stopping. I let him in. Dave thumps his tail once from the couch but doesn’t move, because Dave has never moved for anyone who isn’t carrying food.
Evan stands in my apartment, in the living room I furnished without him, surrounded by the life I built while he was learning to build a nursery. I take his hand and put it on my belly.
The baby kicks his palm. He holds still. His hand is warm and steady on my stomach. Our daughter is pressing against his fingers. We stand in my living room with Dave on the couch, Mom’s blanket draped over the arm, and the refrigerator covered in ultrasound photos.
Neither of us says “come home” but it’s on my mind. I picture us trying again, and in my mind, it’s here in my space, where he finds a place to squeeze in instead of me rearranging myself to fit his life.
It’s a nice fantasy.