Chapter Forty-Nine
Garrett
He bought the table on a Saturday.
He had been meaning to buy it since February, since she had unfolded the one from the cupboard and set two places on it and said you need a proper table.
He had agreed and had done nothing about it, which was not characteristic of him and which he had examined without resolution for three months.
He understood now what the delay had been: he had not wanted to buy the table alone.
He had wanted to buy it when it was already clear what kind of table it needed to be.
He knew now. He went to a furniture shop on Milwaukee Avenue, a place that sold things made from oak and walnut that had been built to last rather than to look like they had been built to last, which was a distinction his father had taught him to make at an early age.
He found a table that seated four comfortably and six without crowding, oval, in walnut, with the specific weight of something that was going to be in the same place for thirty years.
He had it delivered that afternoon. The delivery men set it up in the space between the kitchen and the west-facing windows, the space the folding table had occupied briefly and which had been empty since. He tipped them well, thanked them, and then stood in the flat looking at the table.
It was right. Not because of the wood or the dimensions or the oval shape, though all of those were correct.
It was right because it was a commitment to a version of this flat that included more than himself in it, and he had made that commitment without asking anyone's permission or waiting for the right moment, because the right moment was the one you made by acting.
He texted Cait: Come for dinner tonight. Something I want to show you.
She replied in four minutes: What time.
He wrote: Seven. I'll cook.
She wrote: I'll bring the wine. Which she always said. Which he had come to understand as her version of yes, I'm coming, I want to be there, I am choosing this.
He spent the afternoon cooking the lamb.
He had made it twice since November, once for himself and once for the Sunday that had changed the shape of things.
He knew the recipe well enough now that he did not need to look at his phone while he made it, which was the threshold he applied to everything he intended to do for a long time: you learned it until you could do it from memory.
At six-fifty he set the table. Two places, opposite each other. The walnut was warm in the lamp light. He stood back and looked at it for a moment.
His father would have approved of the table. He was fairly sure of that. His father approved of things that were built correctly for their purpose and were not trying to be something other than what they were.
The door. He went to answer it.