16. Chapter 16
Harriet: Two Months Later
The box is labeled KITCHEN in my handwriting. I’m already on my knees when I run the utility knife along the top seam, pressing hard enough that the blade catches and drags. The tape splits. Inside are mixing bowls and other baking tools.
The cream-colored walls of my apartment are filled with potential.
All decor will be my choice. The apartment is quiet.
I’ve stayed with my college friend for the last two months and today is finally a move-in day for my apartment.
I’m paying for it with my personal savings, the equity from Buck’s buy-out of the house, and the part-time income from the shelter after they had an opening. I applied and got it.
I’m halfway through the second KITCHEN box when the knock comes.
I get up off my knees, utility knife still in hand, and open the door.
Kwemby is carrying two boxes stacked against his chest, chin resting on the top one to keep it steady.
Maren is behind him with one box held in both arms, her face flushed from the stairs.
Coris is last, her box already listing to one side, her phone somehow also in her right hand.
“Hi,” I say.
Coris drops her box on the floor inside the door and wraps both arms around me before I’ve had time to step back. Her chin digs into my shoulder.
“Okay,” I say, laughing. “I’m glad to see you too.”
Maren sets her box down with more care, then catches my hand and squeezes once. “The truck’s almost empty,” she says. “Three more loads.”
Kwemby edges past us both, boxes still balanced against his chest, and sets them in the kitchen doorway with a careful lowering of his arms. He straightens and takes a slow look around the living room, eyes tracking from the couch to the table to the double windows to the stack of flattened boxes I’ve already emptied. Then he turns to me.
“Where do you want to start?” he asks.
Excited by my official fresh new start, I teasingly say, “I want us to start in the bedroom.” Then I send him an obvious wink.
“Ew, Mom!” Coris says while Kwemby winks back.
“Normally I’d say your wish is my command,” he starts, “But I want to save my tricks for when we’re alone.”
“Fair enough.” I chuckle. “Let’s finish the kitchen and go from there.”
We fall into a rhythm after that. Kwemby takes the heavy loads. Maren grabs the smaller boxes. Coris stays and helps me inside. Every now and then she shouts questions about where to place things.
“Where do the glasses go?”
“The cabinet directly above the sink.”
“All of them?”
“Yes. Plates will go to the left and bowls to the right.”
A minute later I’m attempting to move the couch a few feet to the left when Kwemby comes back with the last load.
I’ve got the back frame in both hands, tugging as hard as I can.
He crosses the living room and says, “I’ve got it, babe.
” Wedging his hands beneath the base frame, he lifts the weight with a single, fluid shift of his body and sets it flat against the wall.
Swoon.
Coris appears in the kitchen doorway with a mug in each hand, one blue, one white. “Which one do you want on the counter?”
Kwemby has moved on to carrying the boxes inside to their proper places. With a box for my bedroom, he says, without stopping, without even fully turning his head, “The blue one. Left of the coffee maker.” Then he’s around the corner and into the bedroom.
Coris holds the mugs mid-air, her brows lifting as she looks at me. I hold her gaze, a sudden warmth prickling behind my ears. He knows my morning routine down to the inch.
After meeting her in the doorway to the kitchen, I take the blue mug from Coris’s hand and carry it before setting it to the left of the coffee maker.
I go back to the living room.
The afternoon light has shifted while we’ve been working, moving off the center of the floor and climbing the far wall.
The armchair sits in the corner at an angle Kwemby adjusted without being asked, so it catches the window light while I’m reading with my tea.
The last of the stacked boxes is thinning along the wall.
“Rug,” Coris announces from the couch, where she’s collapsed with her shoes still on. “This place needs a rug.”
“Shoes off,” I say, unable to help myself.
“Sorry.” She unties them and takes them off.
Maren comes in from the truck with the final box—BOOKS—and sets it down beside the bookshelf. “That’s the last of it,” she says, pressing her hands into the small of her back and stretching.
“Thank you,” I say to the room in general.
“Don’t thank us yet,” Maren says. “You still owe us dinner.”
“Right,” I say. “Let’s vote: Chinese or pizza?”
“Mom!” Coris calls from the kitchen. We ordered Chinese food, and she’s in charge of getting everything together. “Are there forks in any of these boxes? I only count two for our takeout, and I am not sharing with Maren.”
“Check the box on the kitchen counter, the one with the blue tape.”
“Which box on the kitchen counter with blue tape? There are two.”
“Check both,” I shout. My children are adults and capable of searching for a fork on their own.
Turns out, the forks were in the second box, wrapped in dish towels.
Coris brings out all of the takeout containers, silverware and plates.
I help her so she doesn’t have to make trips.
Grabbing a fork Coris unpacked, I bring it back to the living room and hand it to Coris, who immediately uses it to spear a piece of tofu from Maren’s container.
“That’s mine,” Maren says.
“You weren’t eating it.”
“I was about to.”
Kwemby has claimed the armchair by the window with his own container.
He doesn’t grab a plate. The food is from the place two blocks from here, which Maren picked out.
She has already located every restaurant within a fifteen-minute walk of my new address and ranked them by category.
She presented me with the list last week in a text message, and it was eight items long.
I told her she’d have to narrow the radius down to a five-minute walk for our future orders, because my knees aren’t what they used to be.
She promised she’d filter the list for me tomorrow.
I lower myself onto the couch between them, Coris on my left with her legs already draped across my lap, Maren on my right tucking herself against the armrest. The container is warm against my palms. I balance it on my knee and reach for a fork.
“The TV goes on the dresser,” I say.
Coris makes a noise of protest.
“My apartment,” I say. “My dresser.”
“She makes a compelling argument,” Kwemby says.
Coris points her fork at him. “You’re supposed to be neutral.”
“I’m agreeing with the person whose apartment it is,” he says.
Maren tells us about her internship, something about shadowing a junior analyst and getting to experience a proper project by late summer.
Coris interrupts twice with unsolicited opinions about finance as a career, then pivots to questions about the adoption process at the animal shelter I work at, because she’d like a dog.
We go back and forth about the pros and cons.
Kwemby asks one question about differences between large and medium dogs compared to their energy levels, and Coris talks for four more minutes with genuine enthusiasm. Meanwhile, I eat my food and listen.
At some point the light outside the window has shifted entirely into evening. The single lamp in the corner makes the cream walls appear warmer. I might paint over them eventually, or I might not. Either way, it’s my choice.
“You need a rug,” Coris announces. “I said it before and I’ll say it again.”
“I heard you the first time,” I say.
“I’m just making sure.”
I look around the room. The jewelry box is on the wall in the hallway, the cedar visible from where I’m sitting.
Inside is my ancestral ring. Kwemby had hung it for me while we ordered food.
Through the kitchen doorway, the blue mug sits to the left of the coffeemaker, handle facing out.
The bookshelf is empty, waiting for the BOOKS box I haven’t opened yet.
I take a bite of my food. It’s good.