Chapter 11
APRIL
LEO IS GRADING PAPERS WHEN I get home. The windows are open to air out paint fumes, and the evening sun waltzes in. I sneak a peek in our entryway mirror, cleaning a smudge of makeup from my eyelid.
“Hey, how was it?” he asks.
I sigh. “Not great. I haven’t found the right book yet.” I have a challenging new student. But it’s one of my favorite parts of the job, matching the book to the person.
“What about you?” I set my bag down. “How was your day?”
It’s been a few short months since we got married, and we’re still new to setting things down in a shared home at the end of the day, reaching feelers out to ask, How are you, and who are you, and are you actually happy here with me?
And then going beyond that into the sexless audacity of the mundane: Is the dishwasher clean, and are leftovers okay tonight, and is that really where you’re going to leave your shoes?
Leo stretches. “Not bad. Introduced the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Only one kid nodded off.”
I notice Leo’s handwriting on some pages tucked beneath his student papers, and I ask, “Working on your book?”
“Not really.”
I bite my lip. “I have an idea.”
He waits.
“Have you heard about that new local bookstore, Ellipsis? Since I need a book for work and you need time to write, should we go check it out?”
He hesitates, so I backpedal. “Or not.”
“No, it sounds great. It’s just, no pressure if you don’t want me to tag along.”
“I do, that’s why I suggested it.” It’s an early-days dance, so careful of each other’s toes that we stand miles apart.
We slip into our shoes and close the windows. On the way out the door, Leo gets a whiff of vanilla. “Ay, cabrón.” He jogs across the room and blows out a candle. “Almost forgot.”
I elbow him playfully. “Don’t burn down our house.” I look up. “Your fresh white ceilings.”
He grabs the keys. “Yeah, it’s the wrong white. I need to repaint.”
“Isn’t white just white?”
He shakes his head. “April, April, don’t you know how many types of white there are?”
I smile. “I’ll take your word for it.”
And I do. Then I take him to Ellipsis in search of more words. It’s an unremarkable evening plucked from the timeline. Nothing to burn its mark on our memories, just a day that will lift away like so many, happily swallowed in nonspecific domestic life.
A couple of hours later, I walk back through the door of our home with a book in one arm and my husband in the other.
Leo kisses my temple and clicks on a lamp.
A rosemary white-bean soup is almost ready in the slow cooker.
And our car sits in the long driveway off FM 407, engine cooling, home from the bookstore.
Home, where we need to redo the tile in the half bath.
Where the ceiling is not yet the right white.
Where we will learn what lasts and what doesn’t.
Where a window has been left open, and a breeze becomes a wind.