Chapter 10 #2
“I want everything through you. All of it. No exceptions, no site visits, no valuation people, no rooms.”
“Done.”
“If his counsel wants an inspection they send somebody and I’m not there.”
“Done.”
“And I want him off the site.” Her voice cracked on it, once, and she stopped and started again.
“I want him off the site. He’s been on it twice and I’ve now got a crew who’ve seen him standing in my building and I don’t — Roslyn, that room upstairs is the best thing I’ve ever done and he’s in it now.
He’s in it. I can’t go up there without him being in it. ”
There was a pause on the line.
“I’ll write to them today,” Roslyn said. “No site attendance by the respondent, in writing, and I’ll make it a condition rather than a request.” Another pause. “Celia. May I say the thing I said in October?”
“That reasonable people give things away in rooms.”
“That’s the one.”
“I know,” Celia said. “That’s why I’m calling you and not thinking about it.”
“Good.”
“I went up a stairwell with him.”
“I know you did.”
“It was the second time in six months I’ve done something because it was true rather than because it was smart,” Celia said, “and both times it has cost me exactly this much, and I would like you to remind me of that in June when I’m tired.”
“I’ll put it in the file,” said Roslyn, and she was not entirely joking.
* * *
Her mother called on Sunday at four, as she had every Sunday since November.
They talked about the shed. They talked about a cousin’s knee. Her father came on and asked whether the roof slate was coming from the original quarry and was delighted to be told it was.
And then Roberta said, “Are you going to tell me, or are we going to keep doing this?”
Celia stood very still at her window.
“Mom.”
“Because I’ve known since March,” her mother said, “when your father turned the internet off, which he did about four hours too late. And I have been sitting here every Sunday for six weeks waiting for you to want to tell me, and I’ve decided that was a kindness up to about last Tuesday and has now turned into something else. ”
Celia put her hand over her mouth.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m so sorry, Mom, I didn’t—”
“Celia. Stop.” Roberta’s voice did not go soft, which was the only reason Celia was able to keep standing.
“I’m not hurt. I’m seventy years old and I’m not going to spend an afternoon being hurt at my daughter for wanting one thing to herself in a year like this one.
I’d have done the same. I did do the same, about other things, and you’ve never known about most of them. ”
There was a pause.
“When,” Roberta said.
“June. The end of June.”
“All right.” A small breath. “And are you frightened?”
“Yes.”
“Good. That’s correct.” And then, in exactly the same voice: “Your father’s already made a thing.
It’s in the garage under a sheet. He started it in April and he’s sanded it four times and he’s not going to admit he made it until somebody asks him directly, so at some point in May you’ll have to call and ask him directly. ”
Celia laughed and it came out wrecked.
“What is it?”
“I’ve no idea. It’s under a sheet.” Her mother let a moment go past. “We’ll come up the week before. Not to help. To be there, which is different, and which you may find you have opinions about, and you can tell me those too.”
* * *
That night she sat at the table by the good windows with the checklist and the drawings and did not work.
She had bolted it all shut again in a single day.
Site, phone, room, everything. It had taken her five months to build the first time and about six hours to rebuild, and it was, she understood, a considerably worse wall than the first one, because the first one had been built by a woman who wanted to be left alone and this one had been built by a woman who had found out she could be reached.
The baby moved. It had opinions in the evenings now.
Celia put her hand where it was and sat in the dark for a while.
She had been so close. That was the thing she was going to have to sit with.
Four days ago she had stood in a cold room with light coming through a broken roof and a man had understood her building in nine seconds, and she had turned away to look at a rafter so he wouldn’t see her face, and some part of her — she was not going to lie to herself about this, not tonight, not after the year she’d had — some part of her had thought: oh. There he is.
The same three words she had thought in a kitchen in September making coffee for two.
She got the phone and opened the thread and deleted his number, which took about four seconds and did nothing at all, since she had known it by heart since 2016.
Then she sat back and looked at the ceiling of a four-hundred-and-ten-square-foot apartment.
“Fine,” she said, out loud. “Fine. Then it’s just us.”
She was thirty-one weeks. The mill had a roof. There were nine men who would stand at a gate for her and a client who had never once asked her to be smaller and a woman in the city who answered the phone on the second ring.
It was, she thought, a great deal more than most people got.
And it took her until nearly two in the morning to stop crying about it.